The Royal Pavilion: A 19th Century Googleplex?

The more I wander around the Royal Pavilion, the more I’m conflicted about George IV’s hilarious spending. It should be easy just to condemn outright: history doesn’t look kindly on him, especially now, with parallels bouncing around to today’s flashy super-rich; Britain’s great profligate (and useless!) royal spender in a time of war and strife. The harsh critique ought to be a no-brainer.

Yet – filtered through almost 200 years of perspective – the sheer breathtaking scope of innovation: the cutting edge extent of progressive design and ‘making’ going on in George’s Royal Pavilion – stands right in the way of the simple view. Instead, I keep being drawn to a different, more nuanced comparison, one that connects and empathises far better with the desire to create lasting legacy and an expensive-but-quirky HQ with one’s disposable wealth: the 21st century’s leading global tech companies, in particular Google. Not so much their core businesses but their infamous indulgent, progressive office spaces.

Last year I was lucky enough to get an informal tour of Google’s funky London base opposite Victoria Station. This lovely techie guy Daniel took us around and fed us free pizza; showed us the self-serving coffee bar; the games and music rooms; and half a London bus installed on the fourth floor. And more besides, in return for an acoustic gig.

Now, the more I get under the skin of the playful early 19th century tech inside the Royal Pavilion, the more it is exceptionally reminiscent of Google and her contemporaries.

The Royal Pavilion’s Great Kitchen, 1826.

Beautifully decorated pillars in the Royal Pavilion kitchens resemble bamboo at eye level, then weirdly become palm trees just beneath the high ceiling. But who’d decorate a kitchen, when it’s just for busy staff? Well, someone who’d take the rare step of bringing his VIP guests back into that kitchen to show it off. It feels strikingly similar to Google’s fake tree-lined garden full of deckchairs where staff eat lunch. And that’s not just aesthetically but as part of a broader process.

I love the Pavilion’s automatic rotisserie as well, for example. At a time when, in most stately homes, servant boys (‘spit jacks’) would sit in the scorching heat beside the huge fire to rotate the meat spits by hand, the Royal Pavilion has one that harnesses the power of the rising hot air (a ‘smoke jack’) to rotate itself automatically. There are so many examples, many mentioned in the guided tours but many missed out, or not even on display to the public. The sheer number of flush toilets, compared to any other stately home of the period. The underfloor central heating. Beautifully decorated pillars in the middle of large gallery rooms that are actually waste pipes.

People definitely indulge the tech world’s ‘office-as-playground’ trope (hugely influential over a whole industry; who now ride around their open plan warehouses on plastic tricycles, or try to eat their lunches on bouncy castles) because of its sheer outstanding quirkiness. Yet it is criticised as a kind of passive imprisonment (providing employees with everything they could possibly need, so they never leave the building) or a distraction from ‘real’ terms and conditions (no unions in the tech industry!). But we’re easily tempted to admire the chutzpah first and question the ethics and tax avoidance second.

Just look at the extent to which we collectively turn a blind eye to workers’ rights in China because what they’re assembling is the smartphones we find so sexy and essential.

Anyway, I just love the nuances (for good and ill) in this comparison. So here’s the idea I’m mulling right now, perhaps for Brighton Digital Festival in September. An audio (or even ‘live’) alternative tour of the Royal Pavilion (downloadable as a podcast or MP3 for smartphones, or – imagine this – added to some of their official audio tour devices!) to emphasise innovative design, ‘making’ and progressive geeky thinking that fills the Pavilion and makes it like a 19th century Googleplex.

A point of this kind of heritage is to impact us with the ‘good‘ results of what probably felt horrible at the time, at least enough to ignite these questions instead of immediately condemning King George. So. Was he truly so indulgent, or not? And are the modern equivalents so hip, or will history see them more similarly to how we see George IV?

Chris T-T, Blogger in Residence

Kachin Soldiers

The 17-year-long ceasefire agreement between the so-called ‘reform government’ of Burma and the Kachin Independent Organisation broke down on 9 June 2011 at the Burmese army’s initiation. So far the current civil war has already produced more than 100,000 Kachin refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). Within a year, numerous killings and instances of torture, rape and abuse committed by the Burmese soldiers have been documented.

On the Kachin side, civilians are involved in the fighting, alongside political leaders and soldiers. They are defending their national identity which is under assault by the Burmese military who are threatening the complete extermination of Burma’s Kachin community

In the current civil war, Kachin soldiers are playing an important role. Many of them joined the army to protect their land and cultural identity. For them fighting for future generations of Kachin people is more important than their own life. Their first intentions were not to become soldiers. They joined the army in the hope of resisting the brutal attacks waged against the Kachin people by the Burmese government and of preventing the inhuman acts of the Burmese soldiers.

Many of the photographs taken by Green in north-eastern Burma in the 1920s feature Kachin soldiers. These soldiers worked under the British colonial administration and served in the British Army. Green described them as the being amongst the ‘toughest and most disciplined’ of British military recruits.

Today the majority of the Kachin population respects and supports the Kachin soldiers since they understand their underlying desires. Moreover, Kachins believe that Kachin soldiers are brave and skilful as history has proved.

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My name is Gumring and I am a member of the Kachin ethnic community of Burma. Facing many current political challenges and uncertainties, Kachinland is located in north-eastern Burma, between India and China.

I was awarded a scholarship from the James Henry Green Charitable Trust for my postgraduate studies at the University of Sussex. Currently I am working on the James Henry Green collection of photographs and textiles relating to the Kachin community in Burma. This is my third blog about this collection, which is cared for at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery.

The History of Brighton Museum and Library

Twentieth Century Art & Design Gallery at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, 2008, RG001116

Although the history of the Royal Pavilion has been thoroughly researched by several writers, the history of Brighton’s unique Museum and Library has rarely been explored in detail.

On 15 August 1872, the Brighton Gazette devoted its most lyrical sentiments to the new Museum and Public Library, labelling it “the pride of Brighton”: ‘No Acts of Parliament can so well shape, fashion, or restrain men’s minds and inclination as the beautiful and true in life – we have become wealthy in a few moments as it were – rich in art, in science, in the mysteries of the world…The old stables have disappeared, the court yard, where high-mettled royal steeds have pranced, is gone, and thereon stands the metamorphosed building which is now a fit sharer in which is justly called “the pride of Brighton”.’

The site selected for the Museum and Library was in Church Street, beside the Royal Stables and Riding House (now the Dome and Corn Exchange) which were completed in 1808 by William Porden. At the lower end of Church Street Porden had built only a screen wall, with no building behind it. A tennis court was intended for this space, but never built. Instead, Jospeh Good (the architect of the North Gate) built further stables and coach houses here for Queen Adelaide in 1831. After the purchase of the Royal Pavilion Estate by the town in 1850, this area was used by the Army until 1871, when the Council resolved that a new Library, Museum, and Picture Gallery should be built on the site.

1871-3 

Expanding Art Collections

Design by Philip Lockwood for the Picture Gallery, c.1871. The gallery as built corresponds with design in all respects except the roof, which was constructed in the form of a shallow barrel-vault. CAIL000011.36

Art exhibitions had been held in the Great Kitchen of the Royal Pavilion since 1852, and in 1859 rooms on the first floor of the Pavilion were adapted as a museum. However, as the collections increased it became obvious that new galleries were needed. The work was directed by the Borough Surveyor, Philip Lockwood, who created an entrance which led into a small hall, at the side of which was a Post Office. At the rear of this hall was the large Picture Gallery (now the Twentieth Century design gallery) which, as the Brighton Gazette commented on 15 August 1872, ‘is the room of the building in which “Art” takes its seat’. The gallery was originally top-lit through a double roof, the lower part being glazed with ground glass.

Moderate Moresque

The Church Street frontage remained much as it had been in 1808, but Lockwood altered the windows and the main entrance, which became an archway supported by columns with ‘Moresque’ capitals. The Brighton Gazette commented on 16 November 1871: ‘The style adopted of course could be no other than that in which the Pavilion was originally conceived, though forms of a more moderate and strictly Moresque character have been maintained.’ The work cost £6,289, and was executed by the well-known Brighton builders, Cheesman & Co. The Clerk of the Works was Maurice B. Adams, later to become editor of the Building News and a successful architect in his own right. The Art Gallery was opened to the public in January 1873, and the Museum and Library eight months later.

1901-2 

It soon became apparent that the accommodation created by Lockwood was too small – especially when the Lending Library was opened in October 1889. Remodelling was finally begun in 1901 under the direction of F.J.C.May, Borough Surveyor, and the total cost amounted to £50,000.

Paupers and Prisoners

May’s task was to develop the site to the west of the Museum, which had been occupied since 1856 by the Brighton Board of Guardians, who were responsible for providing poor relief. When the Guardians moved out in 1892, their quarters were used as a Magistrates’ Court. The Brighton Herald of 1 November 1902 observed that ‘Brighton’s Home of Art was freed from the weekly procession of applicants for poor relief and from the proximity of the parish bread van…[but] for a while the procession of paupers was only exchanged for a procession of prisoners.’

The ‘west entrance’ to Brighton Library and Museum in 1905, CAIL000011.11

May completely remodelled the library in a style that the Brighton Herald called ‘Persian’. Windows were encrusted with Islamic ornament and the building was surmounted by two copper domes. Two new porches provided entrances to the Library and the Dome: they were highly elaborate and fitted with splendid wrought iron gates. All the wrought iron in the building, including the remodelled staircases, was designed by May and made by W. Saunders of Kemp Town. The entrances were filled with tiling designed by George Elphick and executed by Craven Dunhill & Co. from 1894 onwards. Inside the porch were panels ‘recalling the Moorish design on the Alhambra in Spain’. The staircase and walls were lined with a geometric dado in greens and blues crowned by a rich frieze. The walls of the entrance hall were also decorated with cool green scale-pattern tiles. The screen in front of the staircase, again in the words of the Brighton Herald, ‘must represent the highest degree that faience work has reached in its application to the constructive parts of a building.’

Poisoned Arrows and Poetry

May added several new galleries to the museum. One large room was devoted to ethnography. The Brighton Herald patronisingly commented that ‘it comprises a collection of the war clubs, poisoned arrows, and more peaceful implements of savages.’ Three new exhibition galleries upstairs were given ceilings of vaguely ‘Renaissance’ plasterwork and an advanced system of top-lighting through the sides of the roof.

The new Reference Library on the first floor was admired by the Herald for its ‘specially handsome ceiling, distinguished by three glass domes. The mouldings have that Elizabethan touch that the bookworm likes to see in a library along with old calf bindings and antique bookcases.’ The Lending Library was also praised. When the borrower presented a ticket, ‘the attendant presses a pedal; a wicket gate opens and admits him into a charmed circle, where he can roam at will up and down shelves marked “Theology”…”History”….”Poetry”.’

Critical responses 

Repellent?

The Church Street frontage of Brighton Library, Art Gallery and Museum, as it appeared c1905, CAIL000011.08

The new Library and Museum was opened on 5 November 1902, and although the Library has since switched venues, the design of the Museum in Church Street has remained substantially intact. Modern critics have questioned the building’s architectural worth: Goodhart-Rendel, writing in the Architect and Building News in 1933, remarked that ‘The eastern style…began by Porden, and luxuriated in by Nash…re-appeared, in a rather repellent form, to take possession of the Public Library and Art Gallery.’ Today, perhaps, we are better able to appreciate the architecture of the Museum and Library, and to declare, with the Brighton Herald of 1902, that ‘it adds yet another to the varieties of oriental architecture of which the Pavilion estate is in itself quite a museum.’