Portsmouth’s Carbuncle: The Tricorn Tragedy

(Originally published in Prototype X2, 2006)

The Tricorn is no more. Finally levelled, its absence worries like a pulled tooth. In place of its concrete tiers and towers, the flatness of a temporary carpark yawns between the red brick Gothic of haunted St Agatha's (cut free at last from the Dockyard and with God reinstalled, but still marooned from its age and its surroundings) and the ripped backside of Cascades, Portsmouth's very own air-conditioned nightmare. Driving past this desolation, we see the manifestation of urban folly and bureaucratic indecision. Like the Saturday afternoon achievements of Pompey (a deep-seated love of football is compulsory in Portsmouth), this is supposed to make us proud. "Tricorn Down - Portsmouth Up!" was the official slogan displayed Maoist-style by the Tricorn as it awaited its own execution.

The Tricorn, of course, was never intended to provoke indifference. Designed by Rodney Gordon of the modish Owen Luder Partnership, it was a product of the school of architecture which had acquired the name 'Brutalism' from the French term for the material employed; béton brut or rough concrete. Strong reactions were aroused right from its opening in 1966, when the Lord Mayor of Portsmouth reportedly admitted "It looks horrible from the outside..." The following year, the Tricorn won the Civic Trust Award in recognition of its "exciting visual composition". In 1968, it was voted “the fourth ugliest building in Britain”…

Sections of the ‘quality’ press, however, were ecstatic in their enthusiasm. The Sunday Times applauded "an exotic essay in reinforced concrete, using towers, pyramids and minarets to give an eastern feel - the character of the Casbah", whilst Ian Nairn in The Observer gushed "At last there is something to shout about in Portsmouth. Britain's primary naval port has a dreary record of post-war buildings; in fact, nothing grand has gone up there since the 1890s. The new Tricorn development designed by Owen Luder will change all that. It is in Charlotte Street, part of the main shopping centre, and it provided the full developer's repertoire: shops, supermarket, rooftop carparking, a tower carpark as well, flats, two pubs and a wholesale market. This is in fact a complete town ... every student's dream made visible; spiral staircases, heroically modelled facades, writhing compositions of cross-overs and pass-unders. Everything is going on at once on about six different levels."

Picking up the 'Casbah' theme (oddly appropriate, given the “star and crescent” of the Portsmouth city arms, said to have been brought back from Palestine by the crusading King Richard the Lionheart), architectural historian David Lloyd had this to say about it in 1972; "In form it is a romantic piece of 'concrete sculpture' on a huge scale ... The shape of the Tricorn as seen from the road to the north-west suggests allusions both to an Arabic city and to an oil refinery, expressed in the medium of concrete. The effects of the horizontal 'trays' of car parking space separated by dark space are dramatically exploited as are the concrete driveways up the round towers at the angles. The main building is massively chunky in form, and the irregular skyline is punctuated by round-topped turrets." Some years later he remarked "If only the building were painted in white ... its wonderful sculptural form would be even more emphasised."

This brings us to the Tricorn's greatest shortcoming; concrete decay. Its Space Age aspirations were fatally undermined by the encroaching ugliness of its physical fabric. It gave ammunition to the building’s enemies and caused resentment to a general public ignorant of the advanced science of concrete restoration. Only poetic souls, attuned to the interplay between Man and Nature, could gain lugubrious sustenance from the stained grey walls and stalactites. For most people, the tabloid tag "ugliest building in Britain" quickly gained resonance.

There were other problems as well. For a start, the structure was not completed. The “hanging gardens” of greenery envisaged for the upper storeys were never planted, lighting and street furniture were not installed, and the social housing built into the complex experienced problems with leaking. The overall design presented a challenge; self-contained and inward-looking, despite its high-profile visibility from the road, the Casbah-like Tricorn insulated itself from the rest of the city centre. A wise move, some might say, but this did nothing to endear it to Portsmouth’s town planners, who wanted a more integrated shopping area. Most worryingly, the complex failed to attract a “big-name” store such as Marks and Spencers. The concrete sculpture, however audacious, appeared to be incapable of shifting sufficient units. Murmurings about the Tricorn’s future began at an early stage, but it was widely believed that it would be too difficult and expensive to knock down; the pre-stressed concrete would explode catastrophically when struck by a demolition ball. Under-investment and neglect followed. Portsmouth was stuck with Luder’s decaying citadel; a grim relic of the ‘brutalist’ past.

Built in a socially optimistic era, the Tricorn’s warren of entrances soon became a lurking ground for muggers and vandals and a haven for late night pissers. The smell of urine blended with that of rotten vegetables from the market to create an aesthetic experience that was quintessentially Portsmouth. Stalls and barrows from the Charlotte Street market crept under the concrete to create a scene that crossed Charles Dickens with J G Ballard. To the shopper seeking respite from corporate cloning, this was the joy of the Tricorn; its maligned structure sheltered a community of independent traders. From the clothes stalls downstairs in ‘Charlotte’s Superstore’ to the top floor, which hosted at one stage a secondhand paperback shop, a comic shop, a secondhand record shop, a witchcraft shop, a retro-clothing store and a classic ‘greasy spoon’. There was not a ‘High Street’ name in sight (although the Tricorn had once been the home of Richard Branson’s very first Virgin record store). All these businesses have now been ethnically cleansed, having no place in the portion-controlled paradise envisaged by Portsmouth City Council. Gone too is Basin’s Night Club, which once reverberated to the likes of the Pink Fairies and Robert Calvert.

Ultimately, the Tricorn didn’t stand a chance. Its future had become the city’s past. In 1984, Charles Windsor made his notorious “carbuncle” speech to the Royal Institute of British Architects, speaking up for “‘ordinary’ people (who) need not be made to feel guilty or ignorant if their natural preference is for the more ‘traditional’ designs”. He soon turned his royal sights on Portsmouth’s ‘carbuncle’, describing it as “a mildewed lump of elephant droppings”. Modernist eyesores should be swept away from his forelock-tugging Utopia. Thatcher’s Britain looked back to the future, dreaming of a Merchant Ivory world of country houses and rose-tangled gardens. All evil, from teenage sex to striking binmen, was blamed on the left-wing ‘60s. Bundled into this demonology, radical architects were exposed as contemptuous technocrats engaged in social engineering; crypto-Stalinist manipulators of public space.

Yet still the Tricorn remained, implacably concrete and Portsmouth to the core (one admirer hymned the “poignant relevance” of “its tough macho quality”). Although older residents had grounds for viewing it as an alien interloper, for those born in its own decade it was as much a fact of life as the seagulls overhead and the diesel fumes belched by buses. In its decay, it captured the zeitgeist of a city past its prime. In the eyes of the superstitious, it was held responsible for all the city’s ills and worthy of a witch hunt. Portsmouth South MP Mike Hancock led the campaign for its destruction, hissing that “it has dragged the economy down for years”. Insanity formed a sub-plot. The manager of the Tricorn’s pet shop went on a rampage in Sainsbury’s, hurling bottles of single malt whisky at terrified shoppers until the police arrived to section him. Just another life, caught up in the march of progress.

Even boarded up and in a semi-derelict condition (and it was kept in this condition for ten years), the Tricorn retained its defenders. The serious-minded patricians of the Portsmouth Society conducted a campaign to have it listed, something which should, of course, have occurred without question. Ambitious plans were commissioned to rejuvenate and remodel the building, seeking to resolve some of its problems and provide Portsmouth with much needed housing and siting a new “winter garden” in place of the failed department store. Optimistically, the Society explained “We have all noticed that public perception of what is beautiful or ugly works on the pendulum principle and reaches its nadir just before a fresh and positive evaluation.” In the Tricorn’s case, however, the pendulum had reached the point of no return.

The end was long and protracted. Like an inmate on Death Row, the Tricorn clung to existence, in the vain hope that its uniqueness would overcome commercial considerations and be recognised by the Heritage Minister. In its sunken state, it became a magnet for art students and an endless source of controversy. ‘Middle England’ jumped in for the kill and Luder’s once-lauded masterpiece was voted “ugliest building in the UK” in a poll of Radio 4’s Today Programme listeners, apparently blind to the numberless out-of-town retail hulks scarring Britain’s landscape. The principle of the Tricorn’s architect Rodney Gordon was working in reverse; “If people don’t notice it, it’s not architecture”. Imagination scorned, everyday ghastliness and mediocity could be accepted without question. Safely superior, the presenters guffawed. As always, they were right. How could anyone think differently to their enlightened followers?

A group of would-be Lettristes calling themselves ‘Proles for Modernism’ attempted to engineer a situation by insinuating themselves into plans to hold a ‘Tricorn Festival’ to mark the building’s demise. Issuing homemade psychogeographic tracts about a dubious “Tricorn Ley Line”, they declared the failed shopping centre to be “a demotic symbol of resistance - it contradicts the role to which it’s assigned”. Foaming with mock rage, they vowed to “spit on ‘Prince’ Charles, and on the scum who execute his wishes.” All of this alarmed Taylor Woodrow, the Tricorn’s original builders, now playing the role of demolition contractors, who pulled the plugs and withdrew permission for the festival. The official reason was that they suspected a graffiti spree. In view of the greater vandalism to come, the irony was deadly.

The death sentence was finally announced in March 2004. Mike Hancock lost no time to engage in some populist gloating: “With new developments like Gunwharf Quays, the Kings Theatre saved and now the Tricorn coming down, “Pompey’s on the up.”” Owen Luder defended his creation to the end: "My problem now is that there is a lynch mob - the 'tear it down' lot - who have not given any thought to what the Tricorn was or what it could be. As it is, all they are going to do is knock it down and have a surface level car park, which is where I started in 1961. Portsmouth will regret having demolished the Tricorn in the long term."

At 11.00am on 24.03.04, Mr. Stuart Hamilton, Portsmouth resident and lucky winner of a Council competition, ceremonially commenced demolition to the strains of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, a sarcastic reference to Ian Nairn’s 1960s Observer article in which the award-winning edifice was described as "an orchestration in reinforced concrete that is the equivalent of the 1812 overture". Defeated and solemn, members of the Portsmouth Society and other Tricorn supporters lined up in the crowd to witness the crass spectacle.

The campaign to eradicate the architectural heritage of the 1960s continues apace. Next on the death list is Luder’s second Brutalist classic, the Gateshead multi-storey car park which acquired iconic status due to its appearance in the classic British gangster film ‘Get Carter’. Meanwhile, Portsmouth has a new Middle-Eastern inspired architectural emblem in the shape of the ‘Spinnaker Tower’, a half-sized replica of Dubai’s Burj-al-Arab hotel overlooking the harbour. Originally meant to be the centerpiece of Portsmouth’s Millennium celebrations, the scandal-ridden project was finally completed in October 2005 at a cost of £35.6m. £11.1m. of this, contrary to promises given at the outset, was funded by taxpayers through Portsmouth City Council. The building is constructed from concrete.