Our ambitious architecture

On Wednesday evening we popped along to the launch of the new exhibition at the Museum of Croydon, which opens to coincide with this weekend’s Open House Festival. Yes, goodbye Creative Health and hello creative architecture, as ‘Shaping Croydon: Architecture and Ambition’ replaces the summer’s exhibition on our borough’s health and wellbeing through creativity, in the museum’s large Level 1 exhibition gallery.

‘Shaping Croydon’ explores ‘the intersection between architectural innovation and ambitious town planning, focusing on the changing vision of the town centre from the post-war period to today’. Basically, we’re a town that’s never been shy about reinventing its spaces.

The exhibition introduction describes Croydon as a ‘palimpsest’ town. Yes, it was a word I hadn’t heard before either, but it essentially means something that has been continually written, rewritten and layered over time – which definitely sounds like our Croydon!

The space is neatly divided into four sections, and through architecture we’re introduced in turn to Croydon’s skyline, Croydon’s identity and Croydon’s future, with the final section a takeover by Croydon Urban Room.

In case you’re wondering what Croydon Urban Room is, they describe themselves as ‘a physical and digital space where people can help shape the future of Croydon, fostering meaningful connections between people and place – past, present and future’. You may have visited their space in the Whitgift Centre – a former Monsoon store in a previous life.

Contemporary photography plays a big part in the exhibition, with work from a dozen or so photographers. There are names familiar to us, such as Glenn Foster (AKA The Croydon Photographer), Ameena Rojee (think Rural Croydon), Romantic Croydon (who has even guest blogged for us), Michael Shilling (360-degree photographer and another guest writer), Christopher Hope-Fitch (of Brutalism in Colour fame) and Chris O’Donovan (who also photographed the private view itself – a rather meta moment when you think about it). Then there are new names we’ve discovered too, from Gareth Gardner and Danilo Murru to Avery Moss-White and Anna Kroeger, to name just a few.

But it’s not just contemporary photography. Images of today’s Croydon are juxtaposed with archival paintings, films and objects, including some rather beautiful tiles from the Croydon Colonnade – yes, the big white skyscraper near East Croydon station that looks like it’s been dipped in blue paint at the base. I was surprised by just how large the tiles are when you see them individually and close up.

A mini concrete model of our beloved 50p building is also on show for visitors to touch (we have one sitting on a shelf next to where we work). There are activities to get stuck into too, from pinning your own architectural memories to a map of Croydon to having a go at building your own Croydon architecture.

It was also nice to see a little of Croydon’s punk history making an appearance, courtesy of two Sex Pistols-linked artists who met at Croydon School of Art in the late ’60s. The exhibition includes a drawing of Southern House by Malcolm McLaren, who later became the Sex Pistols’ manager, alongside an edition of Jamie Reid’s ‘Suburban Press’ zine – Reid, of course, went on to create some of the band’s most iconic artwork.

As with Creative Health, I again had the pleasure of designing the graphics for the space, this time working alongside Museum curator Donata Miller-Obebe to connect a wonderfully diverse mix of material without competing with it.

Inspired by the exhibition content itself – Croydon’s tiled surfaces, gridded façades and stacked architectural signage (think Davis House and Norfolk House) – we created a modular graphic system from squares. A bit of a no-brainer really. The elements combine, stack and shift to echo the idea of Croydon as a ‘palimpsest’ town – continually shaped and reshaped by changing architectural ambitions.

Whether you’re a Croydon native like me or moved to the borough just last week, I guarantee you’ll find something to wonder at in ‘Shaping Croydon’, whether that’s something from our borough’s architectural past or present, or how we might imagine its future.

For me, one particular gem is a spread from a late ’80s brochure showing a visualisation of the then-yet-to-be-built Purley Way water park, the Water Palace. It brought back fond memories of lazy rivers and pelicans – and a place where I’m fairly sure I celebrated my 11th birthday. 😁