Towering

Last weekend the rain finally abated long enough for me to photograph some of the current building projects occurring round our way.

The most noticeable one is a dramatic new tower presiding over what is colloquially known as the Liberty junction.  I’ve passed it repeatedly over recent weeks and been struck both by the visual complexity of its incomplete skin and its domination of the surrounding area through  vastly incongruous scale.  I'm also slightly reminded of Breugel's depictions of the Tower of Babel under construction.

Pieter Breugel the Elder, 'The "Little" Tower of Babel',
Oil on Panel, c. 1563

The completed tower will comprise student accommodation.  In recent years blocks of such apartments, amongst other major buildings, have multiplied rapidly to the west of central Leicester and signify the burgeoning ambitions of De Montfort University.  This one has massive architectural impact and with its elliptical foot print and generically corporate high-tech aesthetic, it seems to belong to the financial quarter of a major city more than the low-rise red brick environs it inhabits.

Juxtaposing this immense monolith with adjacent terraced housing emphasises just how times have changed.  In my student days a brief first year sojourn in halls of residence usually led to a succession of low-rent houses of just that type and many by-passed institutional accommodation altogether.  Different neighbourhoods and communities were sampled and, erratically, a degree of worldly independence acquired.  Student expectations regarding laid-on facilities have clearly changed.  In turn, universities and housing corporations have realised the potential of housing a captive market of tenants in multiple occupation blocks - particularly where lucrative foreign students are concerned.  They're certainly piling them high round here.

I’ll confess the building excites, (in a Ballardian kind of way), and intimidates me in equal measure.  It’s easy to reach for post Situationist interpretations of it as evidence of the globalised commodification of ‘The student experience’ and of students no longer fully inhabiting a locale but gazing down on it with lofty detachment.  Part of me recognises the validity of such views and the imposition of such architecture of spectacular alienation by corporate interests is clearly transforming the area’s entire character.  However, another less ideologically aligned part of me prefers to relish a less politicised range of subjective responses and psychic disturbance aroused by the existence of such a crass statement.  If I'm honest - there's a guilty thrill in it.