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    London Deco: Offices Part 2
    London Deco: Offices Part 2
    London Deco: Offices Part 2
    Ebook102 pages33 minutes

    London Deco: Offices Part 2

    By Gregory Edwards

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    About this ebook

    Take a journey into a part of London that you never knew existed. Explore the city’s many Art Deco office buildings in a profusely illustrated two part ebook by award winning author Gregory Edwards. In amongst the great jumble of styles present in Central London you will find the Art Deco offices that were created between the two world wars when London rebuilt itself and expanded with bright new styles in all directions. Many of these buildings survived the blitz and can still be seen. Part 1 moves from the buildings on the riverside, once a major form of urban transport, through offices in Victoria, Mayfair, Soho, and Fitzrovia to the West End. In Part 2 the historical survey continues through the glory days of Fleet Street's newspaper business through to the financial district and beyond. In addition to this you will discover offices in recent years created here in a Post-Modernist style that recaptures and adds to the original Art Deco period of the twenties and thirties. There is also a chapter called 'Art Deco cemetery' about buildings that have fallen due to the pressure of progress, and mention of some that are still around but under threat from development.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGregory Edwards
    Release dateJan 5, 2016
    ISBN9781310946547
    London Deco: Offices Part 2
    Author

    Gregory Edwards

    I love to write poetry in my spare time, which generally consists of sitting on trains going in and out of central London. In addition to writing poetry, my work is concerned with art and the urban environment. I call this theme ‘The Decorated City’, and I am dedicated to increasing awareness of how important it is for urban dwellers to have a beautiful and inspiring environment, and not simply empty walls of concrete and brick.My first printed book ‘Hidden Cities,’ (1991) was a book about history, art and design in architectural details, and was published by Vancouver Canada publisher Talonbooks. I researched and wrote the text, designed the book, and shot all of the 371 photographs in it. ‘Hidden Cities’ won a City of Vancouver Heritage Award for 1992. It was also a nominee for the Vancouver Book Award. You can still find it on Amazon.In 1994 I moved to London where I have lived, worked and studied for over twenty years. During this time I have exhibited photographs of Art Deco architecture on numerous occasions, and given talks about London’s Art Deco architecture. From 2006-2012 I also had a website called ‘London Deco’.In September 2014 I published the first volume of a series of ebooks: ‘London Deco: Offices’. This was the first publication dedicated to exclusively examine the city’s considerable number of Art Deco office buildings, most of them in central London. This ebook has over three hundred photographs in it, and includes sections devoted to buildings that no longer exist, and also on contemporary ones which reference Art Deco. This was only available from Apple, but has now been translated to Smashwords, albeit in two volumes due to the high number of photos in it.This was followed by ‘London Deco: Residences – Part 1 Suburbia’ and some time later with ‘London Deco: Residences – Part 2 Central London’. These two ebooks effectively divide the tremendous number of Art Deco apartments – ‘blocks of flats’ to Londoners – into outer and inner segments which in turn each revolved West - North - East - South. With these two volumes a broad survey is presented, showing the many forms of Art Deco flats constructed in the Greater London area, mainly in the 1930s, but sometimes later. Both feature hundreds of photographs, many in single album frames. At this point only available from Apple.Another work, ‘London Deco: Introduction’ is available as a free download. All of these books can be located by searching for ‘gregory edwards london deco’. This is available from Apple too, but also from Smashwords for non-Apple users.Art and poetry activities have so far resulted in ‘Stay Up Late’ which is a collection of science-fiction and fantasy poems available from Smashwords and Apple. I have recently published a new work, an illustrated collection of poems called: ‘Rotten Rhymes’. This is intended to be fun, light reading with the occasional bite of comment on life.

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      Book preview

      London Deco - Gregory Edwards

      Preface

      The London Deco project began in 1996 out of a gradual attempt to catalogue the countless manifestations of Art Deco architecture that were to be found in the city. To throw a big net around all that which might fit into some context of Art Deco does not guarantee recording every single building which might fall into this category, but nonetheless still attempts something of this sort. London is an immense city and sifting out suitable candidates from its endless streets has taken time... and time has taken its toll, from the bombings of the war to the constant demand for land for development.

      In fact this has proven a fascinating, if at times daunting task, as the period between the wars, when most, but not all, of these were built, saw a building boom not only in the city, but also expanding ever outwards to distant and newer suburbs. Some British architects made use of the new ideas that came from Europe and America at the start of the twentieth century, but these were frequently mixed in with existing styles. These can often be found in areas replete with many historical forms, and thus often tend to blend in invisibly with their surroundings.

      With hindsight, looking at the many buildings throughout this book, we might automatically consider that British architects in the early years of the twentieth century were either terribly conservative, or saddled with clients who were. The truth is that the country was at the same time always interested in innovation, yet rather suspicious of modernity, and preferred to update and hybridize familiar styles, rather than leaping forward with any of the shattering new ones.

      After the end of World War l Britain was still in the possession of a considerable empire, and many commercial concerns engaged in the construction of substantial new office blocks for themselves, or building new ones. We will look here at these, and other Art Deco offices in the centre of London. There will also be a chapter dedicated to buildings and their architectural details of note that no longer inhabit the city.

      Finally, it was Post-Modernist architecture that brought about the reappraisal of the application of Art Deco’s specific forms, and London now has many contemporary buildings that either incorporate Art Deco decorative pastiche elements, or take from its vocabulary of forms. This new generation will also be examined

      Introduction

      The Growth of the Office in Mid-war London: Stepping Up

      London's offices began to ascend further upwards in the late nineteenth century era of Victorian gingerbread, with architects beginning to make buildings more than six storeys high. Any British architects who had been to American cities at this time would certainly have been inspired by the astonishing vertical race taking place among their transatlantic counterparts. Though never hitting the sky-scraping heights, and rarely matching the polychrome splendour of those new towers in New York, Chicago, and other major American cities, there are some exceptional examples in central London.

      Similarly, while there were, with the exception of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, no British architects who directly contributed to the extensive vocabulary of visual elements collectively

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