History and Critical Thinking Writng and Architecture Melissa Hollis Building Fictions
The Senate House in London has come to occupy multiple histories across space and time that are in part real and in part fictional. While the Senate House has maintained its purpose built function as the headquarters and main library of the University of London since in the1930s, it is noted that its repurposed role during WWII as the Ministry of Information [MOI] has skews the public perception of the built form. It is said that the occupation of the building inspired the despotic vision of the Ministry of Truth depicted in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. It is the strong architectural association made in this literature and subsequent film representations that links the built form of the Senate House directly with the potential for political, social and cultural control that is firmly embedded in the historic familiar, and the emerging future. The perceived reality of the Senate House thereby interpenetrates with an experienced imaginary history, this architecture builds fiction. So what is it about the Architecture of the Senate House that enables such a convincing despotic account of authoritarianism that is embedded in its built fiction? Completed in 1937, the Senate House was said to be the first sky scrapper, standing at 64 metres, and remained the single solitary secular rival to Saint Paul’s Cathedral for many years. While some eighty years later, the Art Deco monolith is somewhat dwarfed by the slender shard of glass that spears five times as high in the city’s south, the ’static massive pyramid’ (Whittick) of the Senate House tapers remain a prominent and permanent part of the otherwise low-lying metropolitan skyline. Stripped of unnecessary ornamentation, the Portland stone-clad facade assists the ’strangely semi-traditional, [yet] undecided modernist’ (Pevsner) form, in bridging classical and modernist aesthetics. Its merged aesthetic endures today, still “not quite in the fashion, [yet] not quite out of [fashion]”.(Holden) This ambiguity is its strength; ageless by resisting tradition, timeless in never providing something entirely progressive. It simply projects a quite, insistent permanence and prominence that would appeal to any authoritarian power. It is not surprising then, that the Orwellian Ministry of Truth, or Minitrue, fictionalises this enduring aesthetic of the Senate House embellishing it as an ‘enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete rising 300 metres into the air’. While the Senate House sort to create “an academic island in [the] swirling tides of traffic, a world of learning in a world of affairs” (Beveridge) aimed to transition Bloomsbury’s from a residential area towards an academic centre, the Orwells’ Minitrue rises aggressively above the labyrinth-like metropolis like mount olympus; authoritative, untouchable and ever-present.
The Orwellian Miniature however, is more than a superficial manipulation of the Senate House’s authoritative prominence in the sky. As Architect Charles Holden knew, having successfully taken parts of the city underground, an ever-permanence lies in the flexibility built in to its carefully co-ordinated interiors. He designed“something that could not have been built by any earlier generation” (Beveridge) providing a proto-minimalist plan by maintaining full ceiling span and fully integrates modern services within the design. Perfect for war time adaptation, the University HQ not only provided a central location and flexible interior arrangements made the Senate House no only ripe for War time occupation; but it was also fully equipped the information and communication services that enabled the MOI’s ‘propaganda machine’ to control and subvert the production of information The MOI deemed the production of misinformation as “…not only necessary to provide for the preparation and issue of National Propaganda, but also for the issue of ‘news’ and for such control of information issued to the public as may be demanded by the needs of security.” George Orwell experienced the inner workings of the Senate House under the authority of the MOI, participating in the ‘necessary’ subversion of ‘truth’ as a condition of Journalism during the War. Some may agree that the distortion of the role of truth in communicationis a necessary evil during war aimed to rival Germany’s own Ministry of Propaganda, but by distorted of the role of government in communication with deliberate acts of misinformation is perceived as entirely undemocratic. It is this perception that manifests and transfers to the collective reception of distrust that becomes associated with an Orwellian styled architec ture. But the post-war Senate House has resumed and maintained its University HQ and library status. So, spatially, it could be said that the building itself continues to present a stable and knowable facade as a facilitator of higher education, despite its dystopian representation. However, it can be agued that this reality will continue to interpenetrate with its fictional manipulation of the Senate House during its historic occupation. In an urban reality today, where the populous is coming under constant technological surveillance at threat of misinformation and secrecy of government, it the Orwellian monolith has already been used to build new fictions at street level; its image is almost weaponised by the form of the propaganda it seeks to subvert. Its message is ‘keep calm and carry on’.
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