Jean Nouvel's first forays in the UK show us all what we have been missing
YOU WAIT NEARLY 40 years to see one of his buildings in the United Kingdom, and then two come along at the same time: the Serpentine Pavilion in the swards of Hyde Park and One New Change in the City of London. Jean Nouvel, black-clad rebelle-philosophe, has finally arrived.
Nouvel’s huge eight-floor retail and office development, covering 90,000 square metres of floor space — his description of it as a “stealth bomber” is unlikely to stick — is not due to open for several months, but judging from the exterior, the City of London has never seen the like of it before — and is unlikely to see the like of it again, if critics who have already voiced their displeasure have anything to do with it. However, the developers will be more interested in how successful OneNC is in transforming this part of the City into a shopping and coffee-drinking destination in its own right.
At OneNC, a huge gash between two blocks (and a public roof terrace) will open up previously unseen views of St. Paul’s. And most of the glazing panels – there are 4,500 of them — have undergone a technique called fritting as Nouvel attempts to transform his inspirations, usually to be found outside the world of architecture, into a successful building. The extent of the use of the technique has led some commentators to say that this is a pioneering building. A couple of miles away, AHMM have used the same technique for their commercial Angel building, but it is not used as experimentally as at OneNC.
Coloured patterns of varying density are screen-printed onto the exterior of the glass. Twenty-one different colours are used, which are all supposed to be related to the colours of the brick and stone in this part of the City. The glazing panels are supported by a steel and concrete structure, and form a double skin on the upper floors. It all adds up to an incredibly smooth facade with pencil-thin joints and junctions.
As well as, of course, controlling reflection, one of the concerns of the City planners, and mitigating the effects of glare and solar gain, this fritted palette leads to myriad subtle, and less subtle, effects, enhanced by the angles that Nouvel introduces in plan and in section. For example, in the morning, a red filter seems to hang across the top floor. Later in the day, the red haze has covered most of the Cheapside façade, in contrast to the smudged beige of the other glazing panels. On Bread Street, the panels take on a greyish tinge and rise to form a massive screen that recalls Nouvel’s ground-breaking Cartier Foundation in Paris.
The reflection of an overhead aeroplane travels across the Watling Street façade and, rather disconcertingly, suddenly disappears. The dome of St. Paul’s is reflected not once, not twice but somehow three times on the New Change façade, and Wren’s sturdy columns tip alarmingly and bulge. Parts of structural elements can be seen through some panels but, unexpectedly, not through others that seem identical. And this is during just a few hours on a sunny autumn day. Who knows what visual surprises the building will afford us at night and in winter? Even Nouvel probably doesn’t know, although he would see this as an advantage: buildings with few surprises lack a certain mystery.
In this way, Nouvel readdresses with ardour themes of his earlier work: an architecture of illusion and dematerialisation, creating something seductive from the all too solid elements of building. The longer it takes you to get a handle on his buildings, the better Nouvel believes he has done his job.
That OneNC is unlike the sober, Portland stone-addicted buildings that surround it, and the other macho megaplexes that will transform the City skyline – the Shard et al – is mainly to do with the fact that it has a different purpose: to bring the weekend to the City, and perhaps forever to end that haven of urban tranquility that we have enjoyed for years. It is hoped that OneNC’s galleries, which reference London’s Leadenhall Market and the Burlington Arcade, will suck tourists from Tate Modern and the Millennium Bridge to the retail and eating opportunities within. If Nouvel chooses to do so by avoiding the dull, repetitive facades of countless City buildings and by responding to the context in surprising ways, OneNC is all the better for it.
The red-fixated Serpentine Pavilion displays further visual tricks up the Nouvel sleeve. Beams seem to continue into the distance when they do no such thing. Rotating panels appear to be made of the same material, but either reflect the surroundings, or filter views of the park beyond. A column is reflective on one face but just painted red on another. From one standpoint, the pavilion looks like a temple in the Forbidden City, but walk a few paces to the side and you see that it is for the most part a series of simple steel supports for the awnings, sunshine through which gives the slightest tinge of red to everyone’s skin.
Nouvel is surely the only architect of worldwide reputation who can – or wants – to achieve such felicities. “I like English parks,” he said. “Is it necessary to add something? Perhaps not. But we could add one optimistic note, one more reason to come.” He certainly has provided that, as hammock lovers, and ping pong and chess players will attest, after more serious-minded pavilions by the likes of Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind.
Whether OneNC will last longer than its predecessor, a bland post-war office block with public spaces that were marked by the lack of people who ever used them, is open to question. Like the designers of the refurbished Brunswick Centre, OneNC’s planners hope that a lifeless, dispirited public space will be transformed by the seemingly insatiable desire to consume the latest products and to eat and drink in the latest restaurants fashioned by the global chains.
I am not sure either that hard-pressed City workers will have the time or inclination to savour OneNC’s cerebral delights. They certainly won’t miss its bulk, and it will offer shelter from the weather during rainy lunch hours. However, it finally introduces Nouvel’s unique voice to the national architectural discourse, which in the City at least has been over-dominated recently by Foster, Rogers and Grimshaw.
A massive edifice, in a historically sensitive site, OneNC vies against its own weight and presence by introducing the visual allusions that have become Nouvel’s trademark. In this way, he has added some much needed French spice to the national dish. His influence in architecture schools up and down the land is not in doubt, but his influence on what has been actually built is. OneNC is his attempt to change all that, and we should applaud that attempt.