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| Tate Modern Bankside, London, UK,
Museum |
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| Media,
Graham Bower,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F3
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Turning ugly old power stations into ugly new buildings is not a new concept. In our post industrial world, the landscape is littered with evidence of our former industrial age. Yawning hungry chasms that used to house heavy machinery now lie empty and dormant as the nation turns it's attention instead to the trappings of the information age - clicking mouses and answering phones.
Which leaves us with the problem of what to do with all these useless and ugly old buildings. Other countries have found an excellent solution to this problem - they KNOCK THEM DOWN. In Britain, however, this is more problematic. The Brits are a sentimental and nostalgic bunch who don't take well to knocking anything down, regardless of how ugly it may be. And it is this attitude which has led us to the oxymoronic situation where the national collection of Modern art is housed in an ugly Old building.
If you just experienced a rapid indrawing of breath and a "tusk-tusk" on reading that last comment, you're not alone. People in Britain treat projects like Tate Modern as "Queen Mums" - too nice and vulnerable to dare to make any criticism. But let's be honest. It's great that the UK finally has a decent space to feature modern art (despite the fact that most modern art is a pile of horse shit - sometime quite literally), but did it really have to look so boring and ugly.
When you consider the striking, distinctive and memorable modernity of the new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, you realise what Tate Modern could have been, and the opportunity that was lost. So why are all British public buildings doomed to being dull and boring (or should I say domed?)
The original Bankside Powerstation was designed by a tedious Brit named Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. Sir Giles's main claim to fame was that he designed the distinctive, although distinctly outmoded red phone box. Of course this fact prompted the sentimental old Brits to cry out - how can we pull down a building designed by a man with such a claim to fame? Of course, there's always some excuse to avoid change and maintain the status-quo, even when discussing an inspirational new home for the nation's collection of modern art. It takes guts to try something new and modern, especially on a big budget high profile public building, and it seems like we Brits just don't have the balls.
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