NewMillennium, New Architecture? Elain Harwood is enthusiastic about the prospects for British architecture in the first decade of the new century. There is a partyish spirit down by the Thames these days, as the London Eye or Millennium Wheel nears completion. Photographers are out in force, lying on the pavements or clambering across the mud, all remains of the Jubilee Gardens, for the best shots. Tourists chat with the workmen, as the last sheets of glass are swung into place over their heads on to the entrance kiosk behind the hoardings. Nobody seems to mind that the ticket office is shut, an apologetically hand~written sign referring queries to County Hall. The Wheel has caught the popular imagination as no other new building in London since the Lloyd's Building opened briefly for public viewing back in 1986. If the shuffling scrummage that was this New Year's Eve experience for many of us London dwellers had one plus, it was in our rediscovery of the river. This is one reason why the Wheel is such a success: its open net-like structure forms a visual link between the well known landmarks either side of the Thames and it promises to be gentle fun for those who can get a ticket. Above all it is beautiful. Heading down there, hearing the clunk of cables against flagpoles in the breeze, and watching the sun quiver across the sides of the Royal Festival Hall, I wondered if this was as close as we had come in nearly 50 years to the atmosphere of the Festival of Britain of 1951. Had that show on the South Bank worked, as those of us who could not be there are told it did, not because of its buildings or exhibits, but because it respected and exploited its river setting? All those references to Britain as a sea-going nation, all that steel, canvas and rigging that made up Basil Spence's Seas and Ships Pavilion and its neighbours, seemed suddenly to make sense. Is the Wheel a sophisticated Skylon for our age? And how long will it last? Will it survive the ten years needed before a file requesting its listing can land upon my desk? Well, it is a consoling thought that the Eiffel Tower was supposed to be temporary back in 1889. As there is a great state 'festival': a trade fair, Coronation or special event Context65 March2000 TheLondonEyefromoutsidetheformerCountyHall. only once a generation, or about as often as a football World or European Cup is staged in England, it is easy to forget that there is a tradition of staging exhibitions and events that goes back centuries. Roy Strong wrote of the Festival of Britain that "like all the great fetes in history it solved nothing, but for a brief fleeting moment, it presented a mirage of hope." Willthat be our memory of Millennium night? The reissue of Carol Reed's film, The Third Man (1949) back in September was timely, with its key scene played out in a creaking wooden cabin high above a ravaged Vienna. It was another bit of nostalgia for the post-war, an era in its own right as much as the war itself ... "How long will the post-war last .. . shall we win the post-war, how does it go?" wrote Stevie Smith in the same year, reminding us of the hardships of those austere years. Is this link with 50 years ago so much idle nostalgia, or a desire to return to the collectivism and strange innocence we associate with CONSERVING TWENTIETH CENTURY BUILDINGS those years? My mother recalls friends visiting London for the first time just to go to the Festival, swathed in new outfits specially bought. Architecture and exhibitions now have to compete in a far more sophisticated, cynical world. There isanother association between the Millennium celebrations and the Festival of Britain. It was a magazine columnist's dream to find that Peter Mandelson, bete noire of the Millennium Dome in the first year of the New Labour Government, was the grandson of Herbert Morrison, styled Lord Festival for his promotion of the South Bank show and its related nationwide exhibitions back in 1951. Comparisons between the Millennium Dome and Ralph Tubb's lost, lamented Dome of Discovery were thus legitimised. The Dome of Discovery was designed to house the story of what Edward Millscould in 1953unquestionably call "British predominance in exploration and discovery, not only by land and sea, but also into the nature of the living world and the universe". It was the largest in the world at the time, 109 metres in diameter, 27.9 metres high and 13.5 metres to eaves level, and was designed as a slightly off-set circle within a circle, surrounded by two galleries. It resembled a gentle flying saucer, whose image persisted in sci-fi comics and early BBCTVdramas for the next decade. There is no such innocence about the present Dome, though it too is the largest in the world, at 320 metres, suspended from 12 steel masts each 100metres high. Its circumference is 1 km, and at its centre it is 50 metres high. In other words, it is about three times bigger, and most closely resembles a giant grapefruit savaged by cocktail sticks. Climbing out of the new underground station at North Greenwich, there is no view of the river, only of a bus station and taxi rank, with a distant view of the old tramways station at Greenwich the only familiar landmark. There is a bigger buzz to be had looking at itfrom Charlton, Woolwich or Plumstead, where locals point proudly to the impact it is making on the regen7
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