200words: 33 bond street

When in Rome, the insecure become Greeks to the Greeks, second-handers, emperors with no clothes but new clothes; as such, the clotheshorses and the celebrity art buyers of Bond Street unveil here a nostalgic tragic Trojan conceit: social injustice has always been a timeless way of building. The haves and the have-nots have nothing in common, except the view over the brinks of the chasm in the recession wrought landscape which now divides them, and on this side, the Mayfairer side, the revivalists are resuscitating old oligarchic structures, while the 99% grin in their vendetta masks and bear market it. In the post-post-modern world we revisit the past without irony.

Too much, too strong? Definitely too oblique.

With regrets I couldn't get inside, I enjoyed this handsome addition to Bond Street, the confidence of its stone composure, the pictures in the picture window, the unstriving sense of proportion, the playfully handmade handcrafted claim that things can yet be done well by humans in a technopolised world. The lighting design is mysterious, showy and counterproductive. Why highlight, with grazing-incidence uplights, the warp and joints in the stone columns and not light the frieze? Many whys. And whos and hows?

http://www.richard-green.com
http://www.adamarchitecture.com/