Do architects rebrand the city for the young and fit?

Published: 10 June, 2010

• I HAVE been looking for Renzo Piano “peering round a corner” of his new Central St Giles development, but so far to no avail (It’s a new Circus act! June 3).

I would have told him that it’s no use saying grand things like “It had to become part of the city life”, and then putting in seats that a high proportion of us cannot use with any degree of comfort because, true to the current fashion, they have no backs.

Seats like those look trendy and modern, but for most older people and a fair few younger ones too, they are quite useless. 

Not having a back support places all the pressure on the legs, hips and lower back, the very areas that wear out first! It becomes painful to sit on such “seats” (if indeed they can be dignified with the term) after a couple of minutes. 

I would have expected an architect of a certain age like Signor Piano to have understood this and to have ensured his new square contained seating suitable for everyone to enjoy.

Still, he’s not alone, as practically every new development in London in recent years has involved chucking away the “proper” seats and replacing them with these slabs of wood or metal or concrete.

It’s as though they’re all saying we want to rebrand London for the young and fit. 

If you are so decrepit as to need a back on a seat we don’t want you cluttering up our swish new schemes. 

Stay at home.

To add insult to injury the signs scattered around this latest, inaccessible, development say, in typical meaningless modern gibberish, “Central St Giles: Adding a new dimension to the West End”. 

What a pity that this “new dimension” did not involve a couple of feet of wood angled upwards from the back edge of the seats.

I guess it needs councils to insist on all seating, in all developments, being inclusive and accessible as a condition of planning consent. But, then, councils themselves are the worst offenders.

Between them, Camden and Westminster have systematically stripped central London of almost all the “proper” street seats that they once had in abundance. 

I have sat in more comfort in Third World cities, than I can now in my own city of London, unless I want to pay a fortune to sit on the pavement seats of a café of course.

CHRIS WESTON
Edward Road, E17