WHO would have guessed that a pair of public lavatories and a pumping station for some fountains would combine to produce a singular work of architectural excellence? Yet there it is, towards the western end of Battersea Park, not far to the south of the river walk and Peace Pagoda, and part of the beautiful renovation of the gardens that has been going on over the past four years, the whole of which was officially opened by the Duke of Edinburgh at the beginning of this month.
Here is a very small building where a lesson in architectural design is given by Rod McAllister, an architect who is now a partner of Sheppard Robson. It is a lesson in the simplicity, geometry and form of a structure in landscape: of two separate elements, one oval in shape — the lavatories — the other, the pumping station, a rectangle, linked by a canopy which acts as their frame and makes a perfect whole. Balance is the essence of the lesson.
But of course there is much more to it than this; a fascinating plan and a volume of space, as you are immediately aware when approaching the building from the direction of the expanse of water and fountains next to it known as the Grand Vista, a relic of the Jubilee Gardens made for the 1951 Festival of Britain.
Seen from a distance in its remodelled surroundings of lawns and mounds, of terraces stepping down to the water’s edge, this structure, with its overhanging canopy and flowing glass bricks screening the interior, has a startling likeness to something extremely familiar, known and enjoyed in the past.
This is no accident: when younger, the architect visited a doctor at the Health Centre in Finsbury called Berthold Lubetkin, the great Russian innovator who brought the modern European architectural movement to this country. McAllister says he was very interested in, among other things, the space of the entrance, screened by a gently curving glass-brick wall. It is probably a mistake to read too much into experiences of this kind, but there can be no question that this work catches the spirit and atmosphere of a Lubetkin building, the Health Centre in particular, and the entrances of Highpoint One and Two, completed around the same time, 1938, as well. This is partly because it was in these fine Highgate blocks of flats by Lubetkin that glass bricks were first used aesthetically in Britain.
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The appearance of the pumping station and the lavatories are deliberately underplayed — the steel frame and solid panels of the first and the glass bricks of the second blend with the setting. But open the doors at the opposite ends of the men’s and women’s sections and you are met with a blaze of sunshine yellow, lit by the light shining through the translucent walls. This encapsulates the message of this brilliant little structure: from the bare minimum of materials extract the maximum effect. I am sure Lubetkin would have approved.