ABSTRACT
Plantation Place This is a bit of a beast, reminiscent of Denis Lasdun’s effort just north of the Barbican ( Milton Gate) i.e. its all glass — plus decorative stone fi ns (the planners insist on stone). But it is not unattractive, has a splendid upper level garden terrace, enjoys superb views and is extremely well detailed. In brief, the building replaces Plantation House — a scene of trading in exotic goods for generations — and the challenge to its designers was to articulate a massive bulk as a series of discrete parts. They strive to do this vertically in a familiar divide between the lower and upper parts — the latter all glass; the former decorated with stone fi ns. They also divide the urban block between north and south parts, with an alley in between (where we fi nd an art installation called ‘Time & Tide’, by Simon Patterson and featuring pictures of the Moon’s surface). But it is the southern facades that are by far the most intriguing and successful (those belonging to Plantation Place South; 14,215 sq.m. net) in their striving to express a more tectonic kind of façade. It then becomes all the more regrettable that, immediately one leaves the street, the façades reduce to something comparatively cheap ‘n’ cheerful. This might accord with a long City tradition of how to treat the alleys and backlands but it doesn’t help such places become more important and it is a distinct betrayal of modernist ideals that had aspired toward a different set of values — compare this, for example, with the work of Hopkins at Bracken House. Also compare with the work of this same practice at Broadgate, where the strategy of stone on the lower façades and a breakout to aluminium and glass on the upper parts (now commonplace) was fi rst explored (as a variation on the podium and tower theme).
