I have long been promising myself a rant about this building and just the other fine morning remembered to take a photo. Speaking as a purely amateur architectural critic, from the first floor upwards the array of vertical elements is not displeasing. There is something rather ad hoc going on on the roof but at least it is mainly out of sight to the casual passer-by. The same can not be said about the seriously gross design of the canopy, a feature which no one using North Street can avoid seeing and, it follows, has had the potential to offend the eye of the vast majority of Brightonians and countless visitors.
One wonders why it had to be so deep and thus obscure part of the view of the first floor windows. What did it need to cover, apart from its own structural members and a few electricity cables? Or did the architect simply have in mind making some strong horizontal statement as counterpoint to the facade above? If so he surely failed badly. For such a prominent feature to stand any chance of success it needed the highest quality materials and utmost attention to detailed design. Instead the whole idea is trashed by the shabby cladding and the shoddy arrangement chosen to finish off the roofing of the canopy. The latter looks more suited to a garden shed than a prominent building in a busy City street.
To pile on the visual offence, many years ago the roof of a lorry came into contact with the edge of the canopy and took a chunk out. This draws the eye even more certainly to the canopy and away from the better features of the building. It appears no one cares enough to have it repaired.
The Premier Inn stands on the site of one of the many Prudential Insurance Offices designed by famous victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse in his characteristic red-brick victorian gothic style. It was demolished in 1967 when my back was turned.
Hello!
ReplyDeleteI'm the manager of the Premier Inn, and was surprised to see this post pop up in my google reader! Have been following for some while!
You will be pleased to hear that the landlord and our managing agents are actually in talks to 'update' that front canopy. No one can agree quite yet on what will be done to it, but all agree that it needs updating!
The reason nobody has repaired the canopy where it is broken is because of the material (heavy marble) that the fronting is made of, Obviously the remaining panels have been made safe, but the new works will incorporate this! I wish I had a date for you!
As for the funny additions on the roof, it houses the 6&7th floors of bedrooms, and the boilers and extraction units etc!
I have no idea who the Architect was, although to my knowledge Pru still have some ownership of the plot.
I hope this has been of some reassurance that it won't be like that forever!
Thanks very much for the comment Lauren. It is a great relief to know some alterations are being considered. Thanks for following :)
ReplyDeleteBloody 'ell!
ReplyDeleteI have no idea if this post might still be monitored, but thought that the OP would be interested in my connection to this building.
ReplyDeleteI joined the Pru at their High Holborn offices in London around July of 1965. I had been employed as a junior in the Architect's Dept.
The Chief Architect was a Mr K C Wintle in who's name virtually everything was done. One of the section leaders under him was Norman Cull who's Senior Architect for his half of the office was John Fleming who was qualified initially as a Chartered Surveyor and subsequently as a Chartered Architect. He was my new boss there and he was at that time carrying out the working drawings for this building in North Street. I got the impression that he had also been the designer.I worked on various drawings under John Fleming's direction for certain parts of this building and visited the site during construction a couple of times.
I remember well the canopy and it's cladding, which whilst described as 'heavy marble' in comments above, was always referred to as 'faience' by John F, and I can recall seeing the drawings for this element.
I suddenly thought of this building today having watched a TV programme set in Brighton and decided to see if it was still standing. Although this post is over a decade old, I imagine that the building is still there, but I will perhaps take a peek at Google Street View to see.. It has been most interesting to have found this post. I am almost 75 now, and joined the Pru at age 18, so I doubt very much that any of the more senior and much older people who also worked there back then are still alive. My fellow junior at the time, Robin Brown from Whetstone, sadly died at least a quarter of a century ago. The only possible survivors apart from me might be Alan King, John Cater and Chris Durrant.
One minor detail from the time, John Fleming actually set out the canopy to scale along the office floor (the office was probably 50 ft long) partly to ensure that the faience setting out was accurate - we didn't have CAD back then, and when I arrived, they had only recently stopped using real blue prints made from pen and ink drawings on waxed linen, held in place on antiquarian drawing boards with huge brass drawing pins and using separate hardwood Tee-squares'.
Sorry, I should have added a name to the above comment regarding the design of the Pru building in North Street - I am Gordon Stephens
ReplyDeleteThanks Gordon for those fascinating memories and details.
ReplyDelete