Friday, March 25, 2016

My hero / Berthold Lubetkin by Marina Lewycka

Lubetkin's penguin pool at London Zoo. Photograph: Chris Gascoigne/View Pictures


My hero: 

Berthold Lubetkin by Marina Lewycka

Lubetkin became my hero when I discovered that he had built some of the finest council housing in London, as well as tthe now-abandoned penguin pool at London Zoo


Marina Lewycka
Fri 25 Mar 2016

N
ear where I stay when I’m in London, behind the junction of Farringdon Road and Rosebery Avenue, is a strange boxy building set behind wonky green railings – it looks a bit like a stranded spaceship that has landed in someone’s front garden. A sign identifies it as Finsbury Health Centre. One day, curious, I stepped inside. On the wall, I found a tribute to the Georgia-born Russian architect Berthold Lubetkin, who built it in 1938. Some of Lubetkin’s sketches were displayed, with notes on his design. A joyful atmosphere would be achieved, he said, by “an entrance hall flooded with light, through a wall of glass bricks, clean surfaces and bright colours to produce a cheerful effect.” This is in striking contrast to the fusty, gloomy Victorian redbrick piles of the past with their labyrinthine corridors and poky corners.

Lubetkin wanted buildings to empower people. “Architecture can be a potent weapon,” he wrote, “a committed driving force on the side of enlightenment, aiming however indirectly at the transformation of our present make-believe society, where images outstrip reality and rewards outpace achievement.”
The health centre is now a listed building, which sits awkwardly within our semi-privatised NHS. The GP practice based there cannot afford the repairs, and the building looks shabby with peeling paintwork. Six years ago it was almost closed and sold off, but public protest forced the health trust to think again.
Lubetkin became my hero when I discovered that he had also built some of the finest council housing in London, as well as two spectacular private blocks in Highgate and the now-abandoned penguin pool at London Zoo. He may not have understood the needs of penguins, but, unlike some of our present politicians, he did understand that, in his words, “nothing is too good for ordinary people”.
• The Lubetkin Legacy by Marina Lewycka has been shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize.




2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016


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