|
|
 |
| |
In praise of Sobell
• I SHOULD like to draw attention to the attractions of the existing Sobell building and site layout and the unattractive features of the proposed replacement options.
The existing building, opened in 1973, was designed by Bill Laming, of Richard Seifert and Partners, who I understand gave their fees free to a project sponsored by the Variety Club of Great Britain. It has a two-storey outer part with curvilinear plan wrapped around three sides of a three-storey large rectilinear sports hall. It is well set back from Isledon Road and Hornsey Road, leaving room for a broad and well-treed green open space on those frontages, with car parking to the north and service entry to the east. The main sports hall is well lit by clerestory windows all round.
The curved plan form sits very well in the site with two external corners, seeming to respond to the stream of traffic pouring round it down Isledon Road towards Holloway Road, or turning up into Hornsey Road.
Despite this potentially noxious location, the green space is so ample, separating the centre from the roads, that it is allowed a comfortable peace. The green space is also so generous that families have picnics there, people sit on the benches there, and it is a genuine pleasure to walk through – a suitable green forecourt for a leisure facility in a borough notoriously starved of green space.
The huge shallow arch in the ribbed and bush-hammered external concrete walls that announces the position of the centre entrance is an exciting and dramatic feature that takes up the theme of the curved plan form and is enhanced by the radial voussoir-like ribbing in the wall above it.
The more recent porch fixed in front of this feature mars it and replaces with a more tortuous route the original direct entrance into the fine entrance hall. The use of vertical ribbing on a curving wall is reminiscent of the (listed) elephant house at London Zoo.
The curved outer wall means that many of the smaller sports spaces within have an interesting plan form, with a softer curved outer side and a rectilinear inner side towards the main sports hall. The sports hall itself is impressively spacious with an upper viewing gallery all round at first-floor level and continuous clerestory glazing above that, and roofed with handsome steel trusses.
The original entrance hall has features characteristic of many Seifert office buildings – marble-lined walls and a free-standing terrazzo staircase of inventive design with stepped soffit leading to the viewing gallery. There is no evident “wasted space”, so the claim that only 44 per cent is actually used for sports cannot readily be believed.
By contrast to this, the three proposed options all reduce the green space to the south and west to a narrow green strip that will be truly unusable other than as a thin and ineffectual screen, and the rectangular blocky shapes make no gesture towards the curved boundaries of the site.
It is evident that the claimed increase in open space is achieved mainly by decreasing the amount of car parking – in itself a doubtful move: it was fully in use on Saturday, June 14. But if such a measure is considered possible, then much of the present car park could equally be converted into an extension to Kinloch Park, as proposed for the rebuild options, without demolishing the existing building.
A comparable increase in green area would be achieved, but it is evident from the drawings of the rebuild options that the resulting space would be incoherent in shape and likely to be charmless. Equally evident is the absence from any of the rebuild options of any space comparable in grandeur to the existing main sports hall. If the present ice rink is too small and its plant too noisy, convert it to something else – a swimming pool for example – and rebuild it somewhere else!
JAMES DUNNETT
Barnsbury Road, N5
• SINCE swimming was ended at Hornsey Road Baths there has been nothing provided in this densely populated area. A swimming baths should be built at the redeveloped Sobell Centre. People should not have to go to Highbury Fields.
The destruction of the beautiful, listed art deco building in Hornsey Road was an act of extreme cultural vandalism. It could well have been turned into a cultural centre, even though its continued use as swimming baths was not feasible. To compensate for this vandalism, a new cultural building or community centre should be incorporated in the Sobell redevelopment. This part of Holloway is a cultural desert.
The intended sacrifice of open space at the Sobell is another disaster waiting to be committed. This is a densely populated area, severely deprived of adequate open space. As it is, the existing open space around the Sobell Centre is so user-unfriendly it is amazing anyone can speak with surprise of it not being much used. It is adjacent to a Tarmac-covered car park, there are no bushes or hedges to act as a buffer with Tollington Road. Even Hornsey Road has minimum cover.
We should not be stuffing yet more housing into an already overpopulated area. The Hornsey Road baths site is going to add to population density, as well as proposed student housing fronting Seven Sisters Road and in Holloway Road.
While retaining all the houses on the west side of Thane Villas and buildings fronting the east side of Hornsey Road, the rest of the workshops between Kinloch Park and Seven Sisters Road should be bought up and demolished so that a continuous park or open space can run uninterrupted from Seven Sisters Road to Tollington Road.
What happens should not depend on a future two-week sporting event in east London but should be a long-term investment for the people in this part of Islington and for their future in an area of the borough that badly needs it.
JEREMY ROSS
Seven Sisters Road, N7
|
 |
|
| |
| Your Comments : |
| |
| |
| |
|
|
|
