Nooks and Corners

Piloti, Private Eye

Unknown date

South Kensington Underground Station – the principle gateway to the V&A and other great cultural attractions around Exhibition Road – is a modest thing.

The circle and District Line platforms were once covered by an arched iron and glass roof, but are now open to the sky. At street level, a charming arcade of shops runs from Pelham Street to Thurloe Street within a curve of one storey buildings which are enlivened by the ceramic frontages with Art Nouveau lettering added when the Great Northern, Piccadilly & Brompton Railway arrived soon after 1900.

All this of course is a monstrous under-utilisation of an extremely valuable bit of real estate in a wealthy residential area. But not for much longer.

In 1999, anxious to exploit “air rights”, London Underground devised a scheme to finance £25m worth of improvements to the station by working with commercial developers to build over the tracks and redevelop the site. Although granted planning permission by the royal borough of Kensington & Chelsea (RBKC), it was uneconomic. So Stanhope plc and the Hong Kong-based company Hutchison Whampoa Property have now come up with a much bigger £110m scheme by Terry Farrell.

At the rounded, sharp end of the site will rise an 11-storey glass tower of offices, while a seven-storey block of high-density flats will cover the rest of the station site. This will require the demolition of the terrace along Thurloe Street containing, among other things, the celebrated Polish restaurant Daquise.

RBKC loves this scheme even though – as the South Kensington Underground Development (SKUD) Action Group points out – it violates the council’s own unitary development plan. Many locals consider the proposal much too large when compared to the mid-Victorian stuccoed squares and terraces nearby.

They also wonder if the station really needs all the improvements, which are supposed to be the raison d’être of the scheme: after all, it works reasonably well already and is pleasant to use. Furthermore, South Ken is a residential and cultural district in which a large commercial development is inappropriate.

The current plans are opposed by the Victorian Society and English Heritage as well as several local amenity societies. What is rum, however, is that the principal local society, The Brompton Association, is all in favour.

Obviously this has nothing to do with the fact that it hon. secretary, the architect Susan Walker, aka Lady Anstruther, is a member of the family which owns much of Thurloe Square and land to the north of the station. Nor can it have anything to do with the fact that the hon. treasurer, Tim Kemp, owns the Pelham Hotel and other property near South Ken station. Many ordinary members of the society are, however, furious with the committee for accepting the huge scheme and want an emergency general meeting.

But there’s another curious aspect. While supporting the South Ken redevelopment, RBKC is also promoting the “Exhibition Road Project” with the City of Westminster and the mayor of London. Launched this year, it is seeking someone to wave a magic wand over Albertropolis. “The Project” announces the brochure “requires a forward-looking design, focused on Exhibition Road, which will be the most visible manifestation of South Kensington’s renaissance.”

It’s difficult to grasp what the promoters have in mind (other than encouraging the “attendant commercial opportunities”). For the only practical proposal in the brief is to improve the pedestrian tunnel from the station to some of the museums.

One thing is clear, however; and that is that it’s a terribly small world.

The Exhibition Road Project brochure quotes Sir Stuart Lipton, chairman of CABE – the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment – making a “passionate plea” for better quality public spaces. Sir Stuart, who somehow manages to combine his public-spirited role at CABE with being chairman of Stanhope plc, which happens to be co-developer for South Ken station, has often worked with our old friend My Lord Rogers of Riverside, who lives in two adjacent (gutted) terraced houses in Chelsea and is to co-chair the panel of assessors for the Exhibition Road Project (the other is Cllr. Cockell, leader of RBKC).

Roger’s brother, Peter, meanwhile, is technical director of Stanhope. Sir Stuart also advises Imperial College which, as a neighbour, supports the Exhibition Road Project, among whose panel members are Julia Peyton-Jones, the director of the Serpentine Galley, where Sir Stuart is holding this year’s CABE Christmas party, and the architect David Akjaye, who designed the interior of CABE’s offices. It certainly is a grand vision all these luminaries have for poor old South Ken and its (so far) unexploited neighbourhood.