…at Camden’s Regent’s Canal, a burst of joy

A walk along Regent’s Canal Towpath shines a kind light unto the good deeds of eclectic architecture. The south of the canal is restful to the eyes while teeming with engaging quirks. As we pass under the Pirate Castle we meet the bustling market, cheered by the ‘Welcome to Camden’ sign.

A walk along Regent’s Canal Towpath shines a kind light unto the good deeds of eclectic architecture.

Our scale feels right, taken into account as we move towards the quieter eastern side overlooking the staggered roofscape of the TV-am Television Studios, playful yet comfortably reminiscent of traditional townscapes. We walk alongside riverboats and watch the dams being filled and emptied in order to let crafts pass, with the Sainsbury’s complex as a backdrop, its shiny metal hull accentuating the nautical references of its rounded windows. Little things that make a stark difference with the vertiginous walls luring above us on the northern side of the canal.

Thankfully, however, we are too close to the cliff-like buildings sitting alongside our pedestrian path in order to take too much notice of their imposing heights. Some of these giants have textured claddings which make their vertiginous straight walls more gullible, but they are still not half as pleasant or entertaining a sight as the one we have looking South.

Little things that make a stark difference with the vertiginous walls luring above us on the northern side of the canal.

The building diversity surrounding the Camden Regent Canal is a breath of fresh air in an architectural world that, for too long, took itself too seriously. As soon as Louis H. Sullivan penned the words “form follows function” in his essay The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered (1896), an avalanche of change set in motion in the world of architecture, drastically shaping its aesthetic and conception.

Praise of urbanism shifted rapidly from the old-town multiform assortment to the high-rise dream of controlled planning. Modernists became untouchable gurus of design, and the built world followed their aesthetic ideals blindly, starting a new age of machine-inspired architecture. As Le Corbusier explained in Toward An Architecture (1927), new buildings should follow the example of aircraft design: striving to function as a perfect machine for living with all unnecessary additions stripped from it.

Modernists became untouchable gurus of design, and the built world followed their aesthetic ideals blindly, starting a new age of machine-inspired architecture.

Modernism brought along many great buildings and technological advances… and only for introducing reinforced concrete to our structural capabilities, Modernists deserve the highest of praises. But modernism forgot a physically small yet hugely relevant aspect of architecture: us. In their endeavour to become the perfect machine, modernist buildings disregarded our tastes, our cultural nuances, and our love for things familiar to us that we can identify with.

The rebellion against the alienating machine is the seed from which Postmodernism and urban settings such as the Camden Lock and Regents Canal grew. Postmodernists were the goofy rebels of the 1960s, the ones who told well-established architects that they were taking themselves too seriously. They brought decorations back to facades and introduced pop culture to the aesthetic of the city… they made literal references, included colourful elements, and added to their buildings quirky forms that followed no function whatsoever. They had fun with design.

Postmodernists were the goofy rebels of the 1960s, the ones who told well-established architects that they were taking themselves too seriously.

At this point, we must pause to clarify that most architects shudder at the very mention of the word Postmodernism. In the world of academia, it considered a cure worse than the disease. A movement that made architecture commercial, hypocritical, even silly… Yes, Postmodernism, much like Pop Art, has a clownish side; but also like Andy Warhol’s work mediated the rift between an industrial world and its effaced consumer, Postmodern architecture tried to bridge the gap between an established design that felt foreign and its confounded users.

Across London, this positive side of Postmodernism is nowhere better felt than in Camden. The rogue neighbourhood proudly displays its cartoon-like ‘Camden Lock’ sign and an African-themed colossus in the middle of its market, it built a fort on the canal and called it “The Pirate Castle”, and gave Terry Farrell -one of the very few unapologetically postmodern architects- the design of the iconic TV-am Television Studios building at a prime location.

If we browse through the records of architectural history, this truly eclectic setting around the market and Regent’s Canal becomes the perfect embodiment of Robert Venturi’s hugely influential work Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966), which later developed into his book (jointly written with Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour) Learning from Las Vegas (1972). Venturi’s work defined a turning point in the design world by arguing for aesthetic nuance in architecture. In the second book, the authors praise the boldness and frankness of the Las Vegas Strip and the architecture of “the everyday”.

They empower the famous casino street as an icon of what modernism failed to do: engage. We must remember that Postmodernists, although serious in their argumentation, liked to have fun; we must not take their praise of casino architecture as the perfect example of urban development, but rather as a metaphor of what we might be missing out on… and the fact is that architecture affects the mood of passers-by just as much as, say, the weather.

We must remember that Postmodernists, although serious in their argumentation, liked to have fun…

Much like The Strip, the loud and eclectic heart of Camden has become a place associated with leisure and laid-back entertainment -mostly shopping, browsing, and being confounded by the sounds of the crowd as they merge with the overlapping music coming from endless stalls- aided by its good-humoured surroundings.

Postmodern architecture was never about becoming the epitome of design, but bursts of joy like Camden bring a much-welcomed break from the sober architectural styles that dominate cities today. It will not leave our jaws hanging in awe or our eyes filled with emotion. But it has lent a helping hand at a time when the built world had started to feel like it was someone else’s, or no one’s at all.

The unsophisticated decorations of the area raise a few eyebrows and a few smiles with their naive simplicity and, on a more relevant level, they bring back a sense of scale and differentiation at a time when design can feel too authoritarian, too ready to state what is right and what is wrong.