Wonderland

Punctuating the ecclesiastical gloom, each occupant is cocooned in a puddle of light dripping from overhead lamps.  In silence, their heads are bowed to the documents in front of them.  Periodically they refill their coffees or green teas, even though no tithes are levied here.  

By the windows there are livelier groups and an unobtrusive susurration coats the air.  A man holding a small child on a table like a puppet leans forward to talk with two women.  A group of suits has commandeered a space and conducts urgent discussions.  Forthcoming events are being planned by a T-shirted huddle. ‘We’ll have Hamlet by then,’ I hear one say.

What happens on the stages of the National Theatre - tributes to august playwrights, experimental offerings - cannot compare with the incidental dramas enacted in its foyer.

The advent of mobile technology combined with the vacuum created by the closure of libraries, pubs and church halls creates an opportunity for the remaining public realm spaces.  Here is light and warmth, comfortable seating, convenient tables, well-provisioned toilets, plentiful food and drink and a bookshop.  Only an airport could offer so much under one roof!

No pictures adorn the walls.  The sepulchral grey is relieved only by cerise and mauve poufs, more art objects than furniture.  A cleaner manoeuvres an old-fashioned carpet sweeper around them; perhaps vacuum cleaners are deemed to conflict with the ambience, or maybe this is performance art.

The interlocking slabs of concrete and honeycombed ceilings suggest the building has been slotted together, like the house-building cards we had as children.  Ascending the stairs, I pass arrow slits offering truncated glimpses of each level.  Three naked toilets glow green eerily.  A bored attendant, surreptitiously reading an ebook, explains. ‘It’s a promotion for wonder.land.  Let me help you with the virtual reality.’  Sitting on a loo, encased in the headset I watch luminous bubbles rise and fall, and a leering Cheshire cat drift pointlessly.   I return to Denys Lasdun’s wonderland.  Stage lights, hanging from poles like some strange fruit, illuminate the concrete columns.  They bear the imprints of wooden boards, 1970s architectural chic, and soar through the building, reminiscent of the trees whose trunks they echo.  On the next level, a restaurant manager is inspecting bone-white napery and precisely placed silverware.  Rectangular windows make photograph frames for panoramas of the City of London.  At the summit, beyond all but the most intrepid visitors, surplus catering equipment litters the floor.  Light reflected from the river assails a man asleep against his rucksack: an exhausted tourist or inebriated tramp. 

Back in the foyer, the flickering clusters of students and office workers are replaced by theatregoers, jostling for drinks and scanning programmes.

Functional convergence has blurred the boundary between work and leisure.  Offices host cafes; cafes often resemble offices; bookshops hide cafes; cafes offer book exchanges.  Without compromising its original purpose, this space has embraced the change.  Perhaps as they crouch over their laptops in the corners and crevices, the cappuccino drinkers are incubating the plays of the future.

© David Thompson 2016