Midland style

Above: the Midland Hotel in Morcambe in the early morning sunshine.

Recently I was at a conference in Lancashire, a county I had never visted before (unless you count Liverpool). One morning I got up early and had a big fried breakfast and drove across to Morcambe on the coast to see the Midland Hotel. The hotel is a fine example of art deco architecture, but the rest of the town was very run-down (and Heysham even worse).



Above: sculpted sealions above the main entrance.

The Midland Hotel has been restored fairly recently. Like many art deco structures, it has a nautical theme, inspired by great liners such as the Normandie. I only had about twenty minutes to look around before I had to leave to get back to the conference.



Above: on the seaward side the windows looked out over a terrace, the beach and the wide expanse of Morcambe Bay.



Above: Morcambe Bay from the hotel terrace.



Above: I went into the hotel to look around. Here you can see the main reception area. I am not sure if the furnishings are original - they don't quite look right (actually they look a bit cheap, whereas one of the characteristics of art deco was the use of expensive materials).



Above: looking up the main stairwell to a ceiling mural that seems to feature Neptune.



Above: the hotel sign in characteristic font.

The Midland Hotel in Morcambe is important not just as an example of art deco architecture, but as a final flowering of the Midland Railway style (in its final manifestation as the LMS). In this sense it is doubly interesting as both art deco and the Midland style were totalitarian design codes in which everything (exteriors, interiors, fittings and furnishings, signage, uniforms, letterheads etc) all conformed to an overall look. In the Midland Hotel we see this the result of this obsessive need to control everything.



Above: one of my favourite books - I never tire of reading it.

We think of "corporate style" as being a modern concept, but it goes back to Victorian times and was brilliantly executed by the Midland Railway which created a design empire which stretched throughout the United Kingdom (and terminated in London at the wonderful St Pancras station). People look at the Midland style today and think it is fussy and old-fashioned, but they miss the essential point. The Midland designers realised that when people make rail journeys they are under stress (the stress of getting to the station on time, the stress of standing in a ticket queue, the stress of the journey itself with the inevitable delays and hold-ups etc). Thus the entire time you were travelling by Midland railway the environment was designed to calm you down so that you almost suffocated in comfortable familiarity. This idea has been lost by modern architects and designers. Airports for instance are designed to increase the stress and alienation that travellers feel (what do Richard Rogers and Norman Foster care about ordinary passengers - they are more interested in building monuments to their egos).

Generally I feel that architects and designers are responsible for a fair amount of the stress people experience in modern life. This is because designers do not tend to study psychology and think that everything has to be "striking" (whereas most people do not like being struck most of the time). The coinage for instance - just at the time when we want people to have confidence in the currency we have that garbage design where the national symbols are chopped up.



Above: the contents page of Midland Style. Just leafing through this book I am transported to another world. I can't see the Network Rail corporate guide evoking the same sensation.



Above: even the colour swatches are calming to look at. Perhaps that's why I like this book so much. The designs are still working and reassuring people.