KEYBRIDGE HOUSE

"Keybridge house is a piece of faceless brutalist architecture situated on South Lambeth Rd just west of Vauxhall. Walking past it last week on thursday I saw it and said that it was either the ugliest building in london or the most beautiful?

Not beauty in the correct sense of the term, but a building of interest and emotion non the less. I immediately had a desire to discover it, to document it and fundamentally to animate it!

It had a immense, monstrous approach to the world without a care for its position on the street.

Looking at it further the reasons for this became clearer, there were no signs of any life inside the building, no human in sight either in the grounds, at the reception or either at any of the monotonously filthy windows. In fact you could hardly see into any of the windows in any case as they all are covered by dirty, broken old blinds. The concrete slabs between floors stained and the vertical metal cladding running all the way up the building severe and oversized.

My next observation was that unlike most buildings the facade of this building does not change from pavement to sky, the ground floor has no extra architectural consideration at all. It is like it has simply emerged from underground or been dumped from above.

It is repetitive to the extreme, as you walk round it is as if the building is turning away from you, keeping a secret hidden?"