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Centre Point fountains |
Crossrail may wash Jupp’s fountains away
The new rail route and the backlash against 1960s concrete could seal the fate of an émigré artist’s creation, writes Dan Carrier
TRENDS come and go. What in one decade is seen as cutting edge will fall from grace, only to be remembered and revitalised further down the line.
When plans were announced to build a new Crossrail station at Tottenham Court Road, the fountains at the foot of Centre Point were deemed surplus to requirements. Designed in 1963 and Grade II-listed, they are in the way of a new concourse.
To some, removing the fountains would be like taking Eros away from Piccadilly Circus. Others say they are brutal reminders of the creep of concrete, and their destruction a worthwhile sacrifice for the incredible civil engineering project that will bring a new, super-fast cross-London underground rail link.
Their loss is imminent. Because of a Parliamentary Bill, the usual procedures for planning permission do not have to be strictly followed: the Crossrail line can essentially carve its way through central London without having to refer the intricacies of its route to councils for rubber stamping.
The fountains are the work of Jupp Dernbach-Mayen, an émigré artist whose designs exemplify the trends of the period. Dernbach-Mayen was born in Germany in 1908, the son of a stonemason. Aged 12, he became a decorator’s apprentice. Jupp spent his lunchtimes painting and his boss was so impressed with his talent he paid for his tuition at the Cologne School of Art. He went on to work as a set designer for the State Theatre in Berlin.
As for so many of his generation, the rise of the Nazis spelled despair; a Roman Catholic, he worked to help Jewish people escape persecution until he was tipped off that the Gestapo planned to arrest him. He fled to Ibiza where he spent two years as a decorator while working on his own studies.
With war on the horizon, he returned briefly to Berlin in 1938 to close up his studio, and by the summer of 1939 had arrived in Eton Road, Belsize Park. He was interned as an enemy alien and then did a stretch in the Pioneer Corps before being hospitalised. In 1942, struggling under the strain of war, he had a nervous breakdown.
Once recovered, Jupp had to find work. With no connections in the art world, he got a job coating watch faces with luminous paint. Then in 1946 he found a job working with potter Lucie Rie. Setting up shop in Albion Mews, St Johns Wood, Jupp showed his wide range of talents by designing and building a larger kiln for the studio.
“He had an ability to turn his hand to anything,” recalls his daughter, Mireille Burton, whose Kentish Town home is full of her father’s work.
“He was an experimenter. He liked to be able to work in all sorts of mediums. He was multi-talented and it means it is hard to focus on just one aspect of his work. But the fountains were typical of what he wanted to achieve.”
Dernbach-Mayen’s art ranges from watercolour scenes to abstract oils. He built furniture and his sculptures include a mosaic that graced the 1951 Festival of Britain. The courtyard of the five-star Sanderson Hotel in Covent Garden includes his friezes and water features. He worked with Basil Spence on Coventry Cathedral and designed wallpaper for Heals.
Then he was asked by Centre Point architect Richard Seifert to produce public art for the base of the tower block.
“He was inspired by designs he had seen in Grenada, Spain,” recalls Mireille. “He envisaged the fountains running at different heights. He crafted them in fibre glass in his studio and they were then taken to the site where he filled them with concrete.” Whether they are worth saving will depend on the current architect, Roger Hawkins, having a change of heart.
Mr Hawkins’ practice is currently redesigning Tottenham Court Road Tube station. The plans include a new connection to the new Crossrail station and he says to make it happen the fountains have to go.
“It is a complete mess there,” says Mr Hawkins. “They were designed at a time when people were thinking of things like elevated pedestrian walkways above our streets. We have to look at the potential of this space. It is going to completely and radically change. It is simply not relevant to put something back that does not function.”
Part of the vision is to make it easier for pedestrians to walk from Soho to Covent Garden – a route currently cut off by the fountains. “We are being very careful ensuring quality art is looked after,” he says. “But I do not think there is space for them in the redesign. Our designs will much improve the area.”
But Mirielle is keen that her father’s legacy is saved. “Why does this need to be destroyed? Surely room can be found for them when the work is completed,” she said. “This is a form of cultural desecration.”
Only time will reveal whether Dernbach-Mayen’s fountains will continue to flow.
Victorian revival threatens buildings
ALTHOUGH Richard Seifert and his fellow architects are often accused of vandalising towns with their driving modernism, the fate of the fountains raises a far wider issue. Does modernism of the late 1950s and 1960s, now often appearing to be dishevelled and unloved, hold no value?
For a time, anything Victorian was seen as past its sell-by date – rows of two-up-two-down railway workers’ cottages in Gospel Oak were replaced with Lismore Circus; the classical Euston Arch that greeted railway travellers was torn away. Some spoke out – Sir John Betjeman campaigned to save St Pancras Station and Midland Hotel – but much of Victorian London disappeared, unmourned.
But as trends change, and Victorian London is once more held in esteem, the architecture that replaced it is increasingly under attack. Public buildings and public art put up during the surge of post-war civic projects were immediately threatened by a twin attack. First, their upkeep was hit by the 1970s economic crisis. Then public spending dropped – meaning the maintenance of 1960s and 1970s buildings was further undermined. |
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