Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xm8r8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-17T13:30:51.773Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Universal experience: the city as tourist stage

from Part I - Social polities: history in individuals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2009

Tracy C. Davis
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Illinois
Get access

Summary

My destination is “Universal Experience: Art, Life, and the Tourist Eye,” an exhibition exploring the phenomenon of global tourism, at the Hayward gallery in London's Southbank Centre. The irony is that I can't find the entrance to the Hayward despite the fact that I'm a native Londoner and have been going to the gallery since it opened in 1968, and despite the fact that I'm now a tourist in London (living away from the city for more than twenty years) and so, apparently, hailed by the exhibition's claim to universality. But, then again, I've never been able to find the entrance to the Hayward. Although the building is easily visible from street level, and stairways and walkways provide helpful signage, the actual entrance is obscure and absorbed into an unrelenting concrete landscape, populated chiefly by the usual skateboarders and other (lost?) cultural visitors. The Hayward was designed by the Department of Architecture and Civic Design of the then Greater London Council (GLC) to be a significant cultural contribution in the ongoing renaissance of central London in the postwar period. Notably, some of the department's staff were contributors to the 1960s avant-garde architectural magazine Archigram, and today the Hayward is often heralded as a textbook example of Brutalist architecture championed by, among others, the Archigram Group. The gallery is elevated above street level, a severe mass of concrete among multilevel surfaces, connecting walkways, and oddly positioned circular staircases; as critics often observe, this part of London's Southbank Centre complex more resembles a public car park than a cultural space. And, in this vein, the Hayward is perhaps best captured by the architectural critic Hugh Pearman: “this is uncompromising concrete at its most heavyweight, most muscular, most brutal. But I do like it, for it is a unique record of the period. It is the Mike Tyson of arts buildings.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×