Gavin Stamp has called it Britain's "worst new building". It is built from standard Modernist materials (steel and glass), but sculpts them into a fossil-like, crustacean shape. With its continuously undulating surface, the form is polysemic - variously interpreted as a wave or shell (both associations arising from its proximity to the river). It also echoes the Tyne Bridge in its overall shape.
At first glance, then, it seems very different from Modernist icons like the Seagram Building, New York, which is relentlessly linear and geometric. It has a Post Modernist sense of play in the overblown proportions, resembling a giant sea-shell. It has evidently picked up something from Post Modernist design - the extra handrails are echoed from the Jumoke nursery designed by Matrix, the feminist design collective. The building's rationale is arguably Post Modernist in intention - it offers an eclectic, democratically-minded music programme, mixing high and low culture. This is compounded in the library where all musical genres are reflected in the books and magazine rack, and pre-programmed music stations encourage diversity.
On closer inspection, the steel framework supporting the glass skin is honestly expressed, following the edicts of Modernism. There is an evident celebration of engineering in the colossal beams that are refined into points where they meet the roof and floor, emphasizing the physical forces they delineate. The steel frame is intermittently revealed between the decks. These rest on piloti (simplified cylindrical columns), a characteristic Modernist device. Stacked upon one another, the galleries are clean white curves spaced at intervals. They are reminiscent of the ribbon windows and horizontal strata of the Villa Savoye and other Modernist designs. However, the composition of suspended galleries is barely related to the outer skin. The windowed walls expose the interior, revealing construction by making it literally visible, but the protean shape of the external surface does not articulate function in the way that conventional Modernism would demand.
The toilets have no doors, only folding corridors which screen the interiors by obstructing sight-lines but maintaining an unimpeded flow of space. Is this also indicative of a relaxed attitude to gender divisions? The building is split down the middle, with rubber seams running through the floor and a minute internal bisecting all the metallic fittings. This prevents vibrations from propagating between the two auditoria. It could be seen as either a Modernist display of function or an overt, Post Modernist "quotation" that parodies the edicts of Modernism. Overall, I would say that the Sage and High Tech architecture in general represents a Modernist response to Post Modernity. It pushes the principles of Modernist to their extreme, but logical conclusion.
