For some reason I've been paying more attention to building sites recently. Three in particular.
Noho Square has been of interest for a while because it's right next to our school and I walk past it almost every day. It's where the Middlesex Hospital used to be. It's been controversial, mostly because lots of the residents like to think they live in Fitzrovia rather than Noho. (Although we're embarrased by both and tend to say "just off the Euston Road".) We really paid attention when the demolition work started, because it really disrupted life at the school. And we were imagining what the subsequent building work was going to do. And then, just as the thing had been knocked down the credit crunch struck and the whole project ground to a halt.
I'm not quite clear who owns it now, and if anyone's got the money to develop it. Reports are confusing. But we're rather pleased that it's not dispruting the life of the school much. The joyful thing has been the way the lack of a hospital lets you see so much more of the sky. It's rather nice around there at the moment. And makes you realise, if you live your life in the middle of the city how deprived of long sight-lines you can be.
The shame that always strikes me though is what a waste this flat bit of nothingness is. Couldn't there be something better that could be done with it while the real estate people wait for the economy to get stupid again? It'd make a brilliant little park if you could quickly turf it over. Or stick some temporary astroturf on it or something. Someone needs to invent some sort of Temporary Playful Zone technology that can be deployed over bricks and rubble.
The other two sites are sort of related:
One's called Central St Giles. I walk past this a lot too. Again, I was excited for a while because the destruction of the previous thing opened up the sightlines to the back of Centrepoint - which has always been my favourite London building. (And which I keep writing about in the hope that I'll get an invite to become a member of Paramount)
St Giles and St Giles' Circus are the best sign-posted, least known places in London. There are roadsigns for St Giles' Circus all over Central London (at least I think there are, there used to be, but I don't drive enough to know any more) but if you ask most Londoners where St Giles' Circus is they won't know. I guess most people would call it Tottenham Court Road. The station below has usurped the identity of the land above.
I bet this'll get even more pronounced as Tottenham Court Road gets rebuilt and expands. (That's the other third one.) Seeing the Astoria shut and the shops close down along Oxford Street brings home how extensive it's going to be. I hope they don't close the snooker club.
Central St Giles is sort of interesting because it's a developer really flying in the face of psychogeography. That little bit of London seems to have a history of being a bit disastorous. It was once known The Rookery, and was one of Victorian London's worse slums. And the Centre Point bus station is a bit of a blight to this day.
Be nice to see if it really can breath new life into St Giles or if it'll just be more shops.
Anyway.