ift.tt/1ubE7Pw Network Front | The Guardian Its been 20 years since the national lottery first began providing funding for public building in the UK. Here, Rowan Moore reflects on the legacy of a venture responsible for the Eden Project, Tate Modern and the Millennium Dome There are moments in history that leave their mark in buildings. With hindsight, these structures define a period, its ambitions, values, skills and frailties. Like fossils in a geological layer, they are precisely recognisable they could not come from another time. So it is with the baroque churches of the counter-reformation, the colossal palaces of Americas gilded age and the spare modernism of the Attlee governments buildings for health, education and housing. So it is also with the greying Teflon and white-painted steel, the straining cables, the walls of planar glazing and the gaudy graphics that tell you that a building project was started in the early years of the national lottery. This month, it will be 20 years since Noel Edmonds and Anthea Turner hosted the first draw, and the strange alchemy started by which eminent committees converted the spinning coloured balls into art galleries, sports stadiums, parks, discovery centres, bridges and places of more-or-less vague environmental purpose. This spree of public building was often wasteful and absurd. The way the lottery was set up encouraged constructions of unclear purpose and insufficient means of maintenance. It helped launch the ill-conceived idea that to regenerate a place you need only install a cultural icon and leave the rest to the private sector. Continue reading...
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 11:14:20 +0000
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