I know I was once in the same room as Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
And I know where it was – at a signing at the Strand Bookstore in New York, but I can’t remember when it was. It seems like only yesterday, but Jeanne-Claude died in 2009 so it was at least before then. Christo died in 2020. This means that the wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe, currently to be seen in Paris is a posthumous work.
But, you might say, who needs artists at all, when you can currently walk down Kingsway in London, as I did at the weekend, and see this:
It’s a building (or two buildings depending on how you look at it – the tower and the office block next to it came as a set) that has gone by various names. It was originally Space House, then Civil Aviation Authority House, with the tower known as I, Kemble Street. And, it may be changing its name again – I understand the Civil Aviation Authorityhas moved on - to Gatwick.
It’s a building I ‘discovered’ for myself while walking around, a bit of not too brutal sixties Brutalism, and a lot of Londoners seem never to have heard of it, which strikes me as surprising since it was designed by George Marsh of the Seifert’s architectural practice for the property developer Harry Hyams. This is the same lot that – the same team that built Centre Point, which I did (secretly) like even when it was a symbol of capitalist evil.
Pevsner said Centre Point was ‘coarse in the extreme.’ He called Space House (as it was then) ‘an intruder.’ Will it surprise anybody if I say that both buildings are now grade 2 listed.
Here's a picture of Christo walking.
