Advantage In Height: The Hub, Milton Keynes

Source: Glenn Howells Architects

Call it force of habit, but on a summer's Friday night, when I've completed the last commute home to Milton Keynes from London for another week, I like to drive along Witan Gate past The Hub. There's just something so convivial about the people sat drinking outside the Living Room, the waiting staff arriving at the back doors of restaurants in the throes of gearing up for busy Friday nights, and just the general sense of people kicking back after a week at work; all of this helps me with my transition from corporate life to family life.

The other reason – the main reason – I like driving past The Hub is one of personal aesthetics: I love tall buildings. I think towers are graceful and elegant. Don't get me wrong, I am appreciative of architecture generally, both modern and historic, but tall buildings in particular have always fascinated me. Trips to Birmingham as a child were all the more thrilling for the views of the Rotunda looming over the city, while sporadic visits to London found me simultaneously intimidated and intrigued by the likes of Big Ben. I didn't have enough Lego bricks in my box to build skyscrapers, but I'm sure I would have done if I could. During the first year at university, I resided in one of the lower floors of a brutalist brick tower; while it was clearly not in any way 'beautiful' in the traditional sense of the word, I thought the simplicity of the repeated floor patterns and the hard vertical lines scaling the height of the tower were nevertheless pleasing to the eye.

Back to The Hub. Designed by the London / Birmingham firm of architects Glenn Howells, the elegant main tower (Manhattan House) is fourteen storeys tall. That would be positively diminutive for London, let alone Manhattan. But compared to elsewhere in Milton Keynes, the principal tower at The Hub is a giant. Surveying the topography of this young city, buildings have rarely ever had more than three or possibly four storeys. They aim at bulk rather than height. Examples would include the dense, brick-clad Santander building on Grafton Street which occupies an entire block. It's vast, but only three storeys tall. Another example is the office of the Inland Revenue on the corner of Witan Gate and Silbury Boulevard. The only exceptions to this are Xscape – a landmark entertainment destination housing a ski slope, gym, multi-screen cinema, bars, restaurants and shops – and Mellish Court in Bletchley, which is an archetypal Sixties residential concrete mass rising seventeen storeys.

The Hub consists of various buildings, all of mixed use and of varying height. The ground floor of each is let to popular restaurant chains, cafés and shops, while the upper floors are all residential. In total, the complex consists of 408 apartments. The buildings are arranged around a large central piazza (Mortimer Square) which occasionally hosts public events, and which also includes a sequence of fountains flush with the paving – popular with toddlers who, defying their parents, love getting drenched in the jets. Each of the buildings has a name which aspirationally links the development to Manhattan. In its own way, this is nothing new – Milton Keynes already has a high-speed variation of the New York grid, and the nomenclature of The Hub appears to be an attempt to develop a quintessentially Milton Keynes version of its buildings too, sporting the names Manhattan House, Brooklyn House, Staten House, Carnegie House, Metropolitan House, Dakota House and Chelsea House.

The latter contains Brasserie Blanc, Raymond Blanc's mid-priced chain brasserie; in defiance of the sleek modernism evident across The Hub's design, the incontrovertibly traditionalist Blanc replaced the flat entrance to his restaurant unit with an old wooden revolving door salvaged from a Brighton hotel; outside it looks awkward, uncomfortable, but from the inside makes complete sense.


Source: MK_Tom / Panoramio

Apparently there was a degree of negative public reaction to the design of the buildings, as there often is to tall buildings generally. The positioning of The Hub towards the top of a hill makes it visible from quite a way off the centre of the city; but, unlike London, there are no views of St Paul's to obscure. This is a city that has existed for around half a century and all of it could thus feasibly be described as 'new'. To my mind anyone complaining about another modern facet to the city is a hypocrite in my book. The buildings required the removal of one of Milton Keynes' coveted underpasses, and unlike anywhere else in the city the buildings are situated right on the edge of the surrounding gates and boulevards, eschewing the usual grassy banks and wide walkways evident elsewhere.

The Hub's inclusion in the city is, to me, more than welcome, and certainly long overdue. But it is also disappointing. When a new tall structure appears on the horizon, it should signal a broader acceptance of such buildings, paving the way for more similar-sized schemes. Sadly, with the exception of the beautiful and chunky Pinnacle, which rises nine floors and has a roof design that references Hugh Stubbins and Associates' Citicorp Centre in New York's Midtown, other new buildings on the cards see a return to the squat, derivative structures abundantly available already in the city: the new National Rail offices, on the site of the old hockey stadium, will be a sprawling 'groundscraper', a design which is all the more disappointing after the advances of The Hub and the Pinnacle.

The Life And Times Of Milton Keynes Gallery

Mark Leckey, Untitled (MK:G model with green screen), 2010 (detail)
Image courtesy the artist, Cabinet Gallery and Milton Keynes Gallery
Photo (c) Andy Keate

First off, let me say that I don't 'appreciate' art. I see things I like, and like them because I like them; I don't necessarily see what a piece of art might be trying to portray, convey or otherwise, and so I don't attempt to understand it or explain what I see. That said, I still like art and visiting galleries, but for me to enjoy something I have to feel a principally visual, rather than visceral, connection to what I see.

I took Daughters #1 and 2 to Milton Keynes Gallery on Saturday to see The Life And Times Of Milton Keynes Gallery. I'd resolved earlier this year to take them to each new exhibition here, mainly because they do seem to enjoy galleries and looking at pictures and the like, but also because I think trying to culturally enrich their minds is important from as early an age as possible. Plus I think having their imagination stimulated by means other than the TV is even more of a requirement of parents in the modern age. Daughter#1 loved the linear images of the last exhibition we went to see, of Nasreen Mohamedi's works, and both girls were really excited about visiting again.

The current exhibition, organised by artist Mark Leckey and director of London's Cabinet Gallery Martin McGeown spreads across the four principal ground-floor spaces and is intended to act as a celebration of Milton Keynes Gallery's tenth birthday, an event which you'll be forgiven for having missed given that a far better known gallery, Tate Modern, is celebrating the same auspicious anniversary this year.

The clinical, large concrete spaces should have provided ample room for a major retrospective or something more weighty than the slightly tongue in cheek line-drawn renderings of cubes, ears and animals drawn on large curved hanging sheets of paper by Viz cartoonist Lee Healey. These were to be seen in the Cube Gallery either side of what was supposed to be a projection of the revolving pink scale model of Milton Keynes Gallery being filmed in real-time against a green screen; on the projection, images of hypothetical architectural concepts were supposed to appear behind the moving pink gallery image. Except that the camera seemed to be out of tape, leaving just a static blurred image on the wall.

The Middle Gallery featured more Healey images and a video of what could be a computer-generated rendition of the interior of the gallery (From The Long Via The Link To The Middle To The Cube by Tim Bacon). The organic monochrome line drawings and the fast-moving video seemed incongruous together, and like so often with art I couldn't see the point. The room just felt clinical – and not in a good way – and sparse.

Probably the best part of the exhibition was the display of miniaturised excerpts of exhibitions past stuck to the wall in a messy mosaic style in the space known as the Link Gallery. Here was colour, variety, interesting and arresting images. I asked Daughter#1 which was her favourite. 'This one,' she said, pointing at a skull. It was that sort of morning.

The Long Gallery contained a video projection with rapid jump-cut imagery and a booming, computerised voice, all of which felt like a Burroughsian nightmare or a scary wartime propaganda educational film. If it wasn't for the girls getting slightly freaked out, I'd probably have enjoyed it.

So, once again, I've probably totally missed the point of this exhibition, but in my limited frame of reference all I will say is that it felt a bit narrowly-focussed and could have been much, much more than it was. But what do I know? I buy frames from Ikea after all.

The Life And Times Of Milton Keynes Gallery runs until 27 June 2010.

Woughton Centre, Milton Keynes – Accident / Incident Frequency Report

Go to: Audio Journal / twitter.com/mjasmith


Source: MJA Smith

M and I took our eldest daughter to her first dancing exam on Saturday at the Woughton Centre in Milton Keynes. I’ve taken S here for one of her lessons, and several years ago went to a gig here at the Pitz (Client supporting Mick Jones and Tony James's Carbon / Silcon; click here for my review of Client). It’s not a terribly auspicious place, but the dancing school is good and S enjoys it, and that’s the main thing.

Whilst waiting to go in for the exam, as S was busily putting on her jazz shoes, I noticed this printed piece of paper, which I found a bit strange. It basically seems that the Centre – either by law or entirely voluntarily – needs to list the number of accidents that have occurred during the last half of the year.

I can’t possibly think why this might be. Is it supposed to enable some sort of Which?-style comparison between leisure centres for safety records? Surely not. However, as with all statistics, it’s all relative and unless you’re able to make a meaningful comparison there is often little value in simply showing absolute numbers. On this measure, what a terrible month May was – at seven, the highest number of individual incidents of the past half year. A grave month indeed, for both staff and customers it seems. I blame the onset of Summer.

The best of these incidents, or worst depending on your viewpoint, must surely be ‘violence’, which is defined beneath as ‘fights and violence towards staff’. Why on earth would you even think about advertising this to customers unless you absolutely had to? And in only seeming to selectively show violent incidents toward staff, what about violence among customers? Doesn’t that matter? And what do they classify as violence anyway? Murder? Bringing a machete into the changing rooms? Biting thy thumb at thee for beseeching thy Nike‘s? What?

I also especially like the fact that there are three incidents described as ‘bumps incurred through moshing’ during Pitz events. When I think of moshing, not that I’ve ever been known to throw myself willingly into a moshpit, I hardly think of ‘bumping’ – kicks to the shins and punches in the face perhaps, but never ‘bumping’, which to my mind sounds awfully polite and rather pleasant if you ask me.

Station Square, Milton Keynes

Go to: Audio Journal / twitter.com/mjasmith


Source: propertymall.com

Only the most imaginative mind could possibly conceive of Station Square in Milton Keynes as a thing of beauty. The Square is a large and uninteresting grey plaza bordered on three sides by sheer squat glass office buildings – Phoenix House, Elder House and MK Central – containing retail units, restaurants and the concourse and entrance to Milton Keynes Central railway station.

In that last fact, Station Square is at least half correctly named. On the downside, as far as I can see the area isn’t square at all, but rectangular, but these of course are mere semantics.

Station Square represents to a large extent the personality and character of Milton Keynes – the ‘city in the countryside’ as clever marketing types have dubbed it – distilled into a single concept. The Square includes two large open and well-maintained raised grass areas, an abundance of space, modernist architecture in the reflective glass offices that are repeated elsewhere in the city, and that thing that Milton Keynes loves so much: concrete. Thus, the greenery that is in much abundance in this city clashes with the necessary grey ingredient that Milton Keynes has celebrated and paid homage to throughout its boulevards, bridges and walkways.

That concrete is represented here in the form of thousands and thousands of paving slabs, most of which have seen better days. They are of a mottled grey texture which reminds me of cheap pork pie meat when you get those slightly dubious dark spots in the meat.

I believe that plans exist somewhere for a wholesale redevelopment of the entire Square, but I’m not aware of what that entails. I do know that many residents of the city and fellow commuters have expressed concern at the notion; personally, I think any sort of redevelopment would be a very good thing. The Square completely lacks character and seems to have forgotten its purpose. There are flagpoles without flags, sporadic tree plantings laid out in a strict and very Milton Keynes formation and the whole thing seems like a waste of space. In this it does remain a perfect counterpoint to the now very dated modernist-style office buildings, but if someone pulled the lot down tomorrow and started again I wouldn’t be terribly disappointed. The most interesting feature is the round modernist clock atop a pole (reminiscent of those outside the Reuters Building in Canary Wharf), behind which you get a view of the majestic Pinnacle Building, the most adventurous design to have been realised in Milton Keynes for many years.

Source: The Mark, Flickr

A couple of years ago the ground floor reception areas of the office buildings were redeveloped to allow retail units to move in, presumably to capitalise on those finding that their train has been cancelled because London Midland failed to organise any staff for Sunday services, as well as those commuters who want to grab a quick ready meal after another gruelling day in the Smoke. And so we now have a Costa, a M&S Simply Food and a Subway. We also have a mortgage broker and betting shop to complement the cosmetic dentist, Indian restaurant, newsagent and Richer Sounds that have been here for much longer.

The fact that a few of the retail units have remained unlet – both before, during and as we emerge from the recession – is perhaps indicative of how businesses feel about moving to this relative outpost in the city. A swanky bar (Blueprint) opened up recently, offering decent food and cocktails, its windows draped with stylish voile panels and its chairs and tables significantly more adventurous in style than anything else in the Square. For a while, I wondered if anyone actually went there, then noticed the tell-tale notice stuck to the door that suggests that the bar has gone under. I had always intended to go there as well. Bugger.

Occasionally the Square gets used for events and happenings. In late September, as a conclusion to the Celebr8 diversity march, the square hosted a gay, lesbian and transgender pop-up disco here, and we’ve had things like a man-made beach and mini concerts before, but none of this was ever done with gusto or major promotion. The central area of the Square was used a couple of years back as part of an art installation from MK:G, the city’s principal art gallery. In this installation, artist Wolfgang Weileder and a team of building students built, dismantled and rebuilt a scale model of different sections of the gallery, the theme purportedly linking the impermanence of existence with the more defined permanence of architecture.

A permanent piece of art on a raised grass plinth can be found in the Square. The sculpture, which again looks like it was hewn from a lump of concrete, is called ‘O, Wert Thou In The Cauld Blast’ by Ronald Rae. As part of the FingeMK city-wide arts festival, the sculpture was converted into a temporary art installation by someone calling themselves ‘Mrs Smith’, in which the two lumpen depictions of people were given a cosy blanket and some mad fluorescent pompoms for eyes.

Source: MJA Smith

The Square does seem to have begun a faltering transformation, or at least a few preparatory steps toward some sort of change. Sleek new bike racks were installed, and a model of the 1009 Wolverton locomotive that was displayed here – and which provided a logical thematic connection to the station itself – was removed a few years back. For trainspotters, the geograph.org.uk website had this to say: ‘It is a replica of a LNWR Bloomer class locomotive, designed by McConnell in the early 1850's. She was one of a later series built in 1862 at Wolverton works, just a short journey down the line from Milton Keynes.’


Source: Martin Addison, geograph.org.uk; usage requested

However, just when it felt that the Square was being geared up for a radical redevelopment, in the past few weeks the council have installed new tourist signage to help the dazed people emerging into the sunlight from the station concourse understand which direction they need to point themselves in. Whilst the colourful pillar sign immediately opposite the station entrance is welcome, it’s an indication that the town planners are more keen to tinker with the original brutalist expanse than undertake anything more challenging. And that is perhaps the biggest disappointment of this tired and depressing expanse.