45 Squared 29) AERIAL SQUARE, NW9
Borough of Barnet, 80m×20m
God I hate Colindale, most soulless of the suburbs, and all its horrible stacky boxes. Not the old part but the new cuboid dystopia near the station, a hellhole devoid of flair whose architects should have been forced to live there in perpetuity. Whichever way you look are bland apartments meeting minimal criteria, also scraps of lawn and prairies of public realm littered with concrete blocks masquerading as character, all shoehorned into a tiny part of Barnet as part of an "area of intensification". What hurts is that so much of this was public buildings and what it's become is private assets, benefitting the few rather than the many. This is the 21st century we're sleepwalking into and I despise it. Welcome to Aerial Square.
Where we are is opposite Colindale station, currently under reconstruction to create a portal to this upthrust hellhole. To the northwest a former hospital has been mulched to create 714 homes. To the southwest the British Newspaper Archive was unceremoniously replaced by 395 flats after its contents were despatched to West Yorkshire. And to the southeast what's been expunged is the majority of the famous Hendon Police Training College, skidpan and all, to be replaced by 2900 residential receptacles of varying sizes. It's a vast site, the Met Police having worked out they could consolidate all their operations into two buildings rather than 25, squeezed into 11 acres rather than 73. The capital's recruits still get trained so they're happy, and thousands of new Colindale residents get somewhere to live for good measure. Aerial Square is the gateway to this underwhelming crush.
Essentially the square is a broadened walkway, a funnel to feed folk from the farthest-flung blocks through to the main road. You can tell how far you are from civilisation by the letter your block of flats begins with, so Ashbrook House, Bronze House and Blackheath House are up front by Aerial Square, while Xenon Court, Youlston Court and Zambra Court are hemmed back by the railway and the M1. Ashbrook House is owned by UNCLE, the gratingly-upbeat rental company who prioritise facilities over square metres, this their largest project with 347 serviced hutches. According to their blurb the block comes with a wellness room, gym and movie room, this because they can upsell a few communal spaces for several extra pounds a month. Spaffing out on BoConcept designer furniture costs extra. It saddens me that London keeps building concierge stacks with fripperies for better-off renters rather than affordable flats unencumbered by extortionate extras.
I looked in vain for a sign saying Aerial Square because what's spelled out instead on the front wall is Colindale Gardens, the name of the estate. Gardens my arse, it's mostly hardstanding, towers and locked courtyards. Aerial Square includes half a dozen wedges of not especially lovely grass, some with raised edges to encourage people not to walk on them. Three further shards include patches of shrubbery with scrappy plants lifted from the underwhelming end of the horticultural catalogue, also a couple of rings of stunted birches providing the absolute minimum of elevated greenery. The artist's impression will have suggested a verdant nirvana but the reality is more a cityscape in greys and browns, thus depressingly less inspiring. You might consider sitting out here in nice weather, but having watched an owner allowing his dog to defecate down the far end I wouldn't recommend it.
What's missing at present is a vibrant frontage, no company yet having taken advantage by renting New Commercial Units 3, 8 or 11. I'm surprised a coffee shop hasn't moved in yet, but maybe that's because New Colindale already has its fair share of anodyne refreshment and snack-based opportunities nearer to the station. When the sales office finally packs up I expect a froth and pastry merchant will descend, and cup-clutching residents unbankrupted by their service charges will then be able to assemble on the fake stone polyhedra dumped out front. I note that these are blocky enough to sit on but with faces carefully angled to ensure overnight sleeping is impossible, because being a public realm engineer these days requires embedding hostility by default.
One day, if we let it, more corners of London will look as nondescript as Aerial Square. It could be anywhere, rather than a former police college and aerodrome, the only nod to variety being that they used three shades of fake brick to create the cladding. We desperately need more housing so it's great to get some, but without character and charm this mesh of flats risks becoming an insipid ghetto and future slum. God I hate Colindale, most soulless of the suburbs, and all its horrible stacky boxes.
