Tonight:
5°c
... and inside the newly renovated St Martin-in-the-Fields there's still room for all the homeless people...
The church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, beneath its confident Portland Stone wrapper, is like a picture by Hogarth. All human life is there. It is the Queen's parish church, and a royal box, glazed and shuttered like a little saloon, flanks the altar.
On the other side is a similar box for the Admiralty. The church has also been, ever since the First World War, refuge for the capital's homeless and luckless.
It was designed to be a place of music, and still is. It is the centre of London's Chinese Christian community. The charities Shelter and Amnesty International started there and, with South Africa house next door, it became a base for protests against apartheid.
It is extraordinary and wonderful that this seemingly rigid building could prove so baggy and capacious as to house everyone from royalty to destitute teenagers, but until recently its structure was like that of HG Wells's Time Machine. Above, the Eloi could listen to early music played on authentic instruments beneath a cloud of exquisite plasterwork. Below, the down-and-out Morlocks occupied damp caves originally designed as burial places. While the homeless were always welcomed into the upper world of the church, the symbolism remained powerful.
More than a decade ago, the condition of the underground vaults drove the vicar, Nicholas Holtam, to start a rebuilding project that is now complete. In the beginning the plan was only for some redecoration but it turned into the rebuilding of several layers of underground space, the restoration of the church, the rearrangement of a block of church-related buildings to the north of the church, and of the public space between them. The total cost of the project, designed by Eric Parry Architects, was £36 million.
The biggest decision was to move the charity for the homeless, the Connection at St Martin-in-the-Fields, out of the vaults and into the range of buildings to the north, with the subterranean space now housing a café, shop, music rehearsal facilities and a hall for events. Much of this takes place underground or behind existing façades, but the change is signalled by a new glass entrance pavilion standing alongside the church. The glass object inserted among stone has become a commonplace of sensitive modern architecture but this one is more considered than most and more satisfying to experience.
Containing a stair and lift down to the underground spaces, the pavilion is in the shape of two glass cylinders partly merged to form a fat number eight in plan. A certain amount of the budget and a great deal of thought has gone into giving the pavilion just the right weight in the space: the shape is monumental but the material gives lightness; the glass is partly reflective, giving richly warped images of the buildings around, but also transparent. Additional sheets of glass are installed on the inside, creating a sense of multiple layers.
From the pavilion you descend into a big hall, a little too neutral and hangar-like, with shop, ticket office and the brick vaults of the church, now a café, off to one side. The space sinks further down into a dark wooden box containing an events and banqueting room. Deeper into the subterranean world, now clean and well-lit, are offices and the rehearsal spaces. Above is the church itself, whiter and more light-filled than before, the bubble-like quality of its delicate vault enhanced.
The pavilion stands in a pedestrian thoroughfare, a version of the route that has always passed alongside the church — only now it has been made wider by relocating its railings. At the end of the same oblong space Parry has cut a hole in the pavement, of the same dimensions and eight-shape as the pavilion, but a void rather than a solid. This is a light-well, illuminating the underground spaces. Between them, the pavilion and the void mark out the territory, asserting that change has happened. The project has brought the homeless “into the light”, as the vicar puts it, doing so without much fuss.
The Connection has a separate entrance to the general public, and the Regency façades, which look like those of a bank or legal firm, give little clue to what lies behind. There is, however, a window between the refuge canteen and the public foyer, allowing eye contact between the homeless and people gathering for weddings and corporate functions in the events space. The window was risky — it could have been voyeuristic — but apparently it works well. The seats next to the window are the most popular in the canteen.
The achievement of all this has needed not only architecture and engineering, but also epic diplomacy. Westminster City Council, English Heritage and the London Diocesan Advisory Committee for the care of churches had to be placated and engaged. The Georgian Group, too, as the church is a major work of the Scottish-born, Rome-trained James Gibbs, built in the 1720s.
Unfortunately but inevitably, this meant incurring the enmity of the Victorian Society, as there was also some 19th-century work that had to be altered if aspects of the original were to be brought back. It wasn't possible to please the Georgians and Victorians at the same time.
And there was the dread figure of Prince Charles. Two other corners of Trafalgar Square bear the imprint of his foot-stamping, the classical Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery and Grand Buildings, on the junction with the Strand and Northumberland Avenue. The first stands on the site where a different project was planned, attacked by the Prince as a “monstrous carbuncle” in his first-ever speech on architecture. The second was a mediocre replica, under the Prince's influence, of a mediocre Victorian building.
With St Martin-in-the-Fields' connection with royalty, it was inevitable that the Prince would get involved, and he was invited to be patron of the project's development trust. This meant that, as well as all the other bodies, the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment had to be consulted. Given this monumental work of chewing-over by learned committees, it is a miracle that the finished work is not a piece of grey, masticated gum.
It could also have been a work of ponderous toady-tecture, like others under the influence of the Prince. Instead, the design is respectful and careful more than radical and iconic, but also assured and decisive in most of its moves.
The totality errs slightly on the side of discretion. It adds to London's growing catalogue of buried treasures. As with the subterranean concert hall at the recent Kings Place development, we have a knack for putting culture, architecture and millions of pounds of investment deep under the pavements. Poetry and passion are denoted by art — verses by Andrew Motion inscribed into the stone, a new east window by Shirazeh Houshiary — but the extraordinary richness of the brief is played down more than up. The amazing world of St Martin's remains understated.
But, given the intricate politics of the site, and the fact that there is very little room above ground, it is hard to imagine anything much more dramatic happening here. It is indeed an achievement that anything has happened at all. What is there is intelligent and skilful and has moments of beauty. It would be hard to ask for more.
