Over the past 75 years the South Bank has established itself as one of London’s most vibrant art and culture quarters, founded upon its collection of landmark postwar institutions, including the Royal Festival Hall and the National Theatre. But more recently, the South Bank has begun to assert itself as an enticing place to live, with the arrival of major developments such as Southbank Place and now Bankside Yards, which is just getting under way. 

The postwar story of the neighbourhood, which I have explored in a new book, was one of London’s greatest success stories in terms of urban renewal. The question now is: can the story of the South Bank move on to such acclaim? 

With their County of London Plan, urban planners Patrick Abercrombie and J.H. Forshaw first marked out the South Bank as a prime site for a new cultural campus, with its collection of “people’s palaces”, back in 1943. They saw that this bomb-damaged area was exceptionally well connected, being a short walk from The Strand or Covent Garden just across the Thames, and close to major rail and Tube stations, as well as being well-served by the river itself. It was also conveniently located next to County Hall, the offices of the old London County Council (LCC), whose politicians, planners and architects would play an important part in the evolution of the South Bank over the coming decades. 

Fortunately for the South Bank, the idea of a new cultural campus coincided with a grand plan for a Festival of Britain in 1951, a national celebration of British identity and postwar revival. The Royal Festival Hall — designed by LCC architects Leslie Martin, Robert Matthew and their team — formed the one permanent and enduring legacy of the extraordinary South Bank Exhibition, and the following 25 years saw the South Bank turn into a microcosm encapsulating the evolution of Britain’s mid-century modern architecture, charting the rise of brutalism, as seen in the Hayward Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall and — eventually — Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre, which opened in 1976. It was a long and fascinating journey.

There are some contentious new developments here that underline the sensitivities around the evolution of the setting. Chief among them is the redevelopment of the old LWT and ITV Studios complex by Make Architects, now known as 72 Upper Ground, which could see two new office towers, the tallest 26 storeys high, sitting on a prominent site overlooking — and dwarfing — the National Theatre, as well as Lasdun’s listed IBM Building, which is currently being upgraded. Critics of the scheme, which was approved earlier this year but is subject to an upcoming judicial review, want to see any new design “protect and enhance rather than dominate its surroundings”. 

The new tower blocks “would overshadow London’s favourite passeggiata,” argues Michael Ball from the Save our South Bank action group. The 20th Century Society’s Coco Whittaker adds that the organisation has no issues with the principle of redeveloping the site but that it “strongly disapprove[s] of the approach adopted in the consented development”, including concerns related to its “scale and massing” on the riverfront. 

But projects such as the Southbank Place development, which is nearing completion, have proved less controversial in their mission to introduce much needed homes into the area. A master plan by Squire & Partners adds office space and around 880 new apartments — of which 98 will be available at “intermediate” rent, 70 will be “affordable” homes and 19 will be private homes for sale by Lambeth Council — across multiple new buildings alongside the Shell Centre. The seven new towers have been designed by a collective that also includes Patel Taylor, Stanton Williams, GRID Architects and interior architects Johnson Naylor. 

One reason for this might be that the new mixed-use schemes “build upon the regeneration that the Festival of Britain ignited,” as architect Tim Gledstone, partner at Squire promises. Fewer heritage considerations and constraints on the site, he says, “allows for the emergence of a new London vernacular with international ambition”. The new towers of Southbank Place sit between the listed mid-century icons upon the riverside and Waterloo Station, and arguably help to tie the neighbourhood together. They also bring a new sense of character to the South Bank’s previously unloved hinterland. 

The Festival of Britain and the people’s palaces along the river have been a key influence. GRID referenced graphic designer Abram Games’ famous Festival Star — as seen on the 1951 Exhibition catalogue and elsewhere — in the design of the facades for the Belvedere Gardens residential towers at Southbank Place. Meanwhile, Fiona Naylor at Johnson Naylor found multiple sources of local inspiration, including the spiral staircases of the Southbank Centre, the influence of which can be seen in her stairs leading from the lobby to the residents lounge at Southbank Place. 

Naylor has form in the area. She collaborated with Kohn Pedersen Fox on the interiors of the nearby Southbank Tower, an imaginative conversion, extension and retrofit of mid-century architect Richard Seifert’s King’s Reach Tower office block, which marked the beginning of the fresh injection of residential space into the neighbourhood when it was completed back in 2016. 

The Bankside Yards development further along the river, which will be mixed use, including apartments and a new Mandarin Oriental hotel, promises to anchor itself in the local design language too. As well as repurposing many of the area’s railway arches at street level, Bankside Yards will offer eight new buildings, four of which will be residential. Working to a master plan by PLP Architecture, the architectural team here includes Stiff + Trevillion, Gillespies and Make. 

The first residential building will be the 50-storey Opus, designed by PLP, which will be the tallest residential building in central London upon completion in 2026, sitting within a cluster of taller structures that have grown up around the junction of the South Bank and Bankside. “Its form tapers as it rises upward . . . and the tripartite plan allows us to create as many as seven corner units on a single floor, which are spatially different and have floor-to-ceiling windows,” says architect and founding partner of PLP, Lee Polisano, of Opus. He “I feel this is just the beginning of the South Bank as a neighbourhood, but its success will depend on . . . creating truly mixed-use communities.” 

A new chapter is being written for the South Bank, with many twists and turns, as the battle over 72 Upper Ground suggests. It’s a delicate balancing act: protecting the mid-century history, while reinvigorating the area with fresh homes — and combining retrofits with new additions. The end result needs to preserve the essential character of this unique enclave, which has — slowly but surely — won the hearts of so many Londoners.

South Bank: Architecture & Design, by Dominic Bradbury & Rachael Smith, will be published by Batsford later this month

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ZeroKey has brought on board former FE fundinfo head of proposition Stephen Mitchell in an advisory role.

He previously spent 18 years at FE fundinfo and spanned both the asset management and financial advice sides of the business, including FE Analytics and FE CashCalc.

Since leaving FE fundinfo earlier this year he has taken a variety of advisory roles, which he will combine with his latest role with ZeroKey.

ZeroKey co-founder and chief executive Joseph Williams said: “Steve is a big believer in how 1% improvements can all add up to make a significant difference.

“His approach is therefore completely aligned to what we are seeking to achieve with ZeroKey, but more importantly Steve brings with him vast knowledge and experience, and will inject an exciting dynamic into the team.”

Mitchell added: “I passionately believe in the theory that the aggregation of marginal gains can slowly but surely transform our profession and help to close the advice gap.

“So as soon as I heard what Joe [Williams] and Matt [Wiltshire] were up to, I was keen to get involved. They are a formidable team and I’m very excited by what’s to come.”

The news of Mitchell joining ZeroKey comes shortly after the publication of NextWealth’s latest research, which highlighted integration between systems is still a significant pain point and re-keying data is a major source of frustration.

This further added to the findings published independently by Intelliflo and FE fundinfo earlier this year and original research by Origo and the Lang Cat in 2019.

ZeroKey is currently available to use in beta mode.

This includes integrations with both Intelliflo and Iress, as well as ‘quick actions’ into FE CashCalc, Voyant, 7IM, Fidelity, Fintegrate, Fundment, Oxford Risk, Transact, Aviva, Timeline, Mabel Insights, M&G and Abrdn.

A ‘quick action’ is a feature that is designed to help streamline repetitive tasks, such as manually keying client details into a platform.

HOLIDAYMAKERS travelling to the Balearic Islands will see the tourist tax rise next year.

In a bid to combat overtourism, local government officials in the Balearics announced a tourist tax rise.

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Brit holidaymakers heading to Majorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera will pay more tourist tax in June, July and August.

While the exact figure hasn’t been announced, the tourist tax in the high season is set to increase, according to the Balearic President, Marga Prohens.

The new measure, which has been dubbed an “eco-tax” was announced during the General Policy Debate of the Community.

Local government officials have yet to determine the exact increase in tourist charges.

This is because the Balearic Government is looking for formulas so that residents will not pay the “eco-tax” through tax deductions.

Tourist tax charges during the low season (December, January and February) could be reduced in a bid to encourage more visitors to the islands in the colder months of the year.

It is not yet known if the low-season tourist charge will remain at its present level (making it lower than the proposed charge) or be reduced further.

Visitors to the Spanish islands currently have to pay the same level of tourist tax throughout the whole year, whether low or high season.

Current tourist charges cost anything up to €5 a night extra, payable on arrival, depending on the quality of the accommodation.

Balearic President, Marga Prohens also announced other tourist restrictions, such as limiting the number of rental properties for holidaymakers.

All new tourist rental places in all multi-family homes are set to be banned as part of the tourism measures.

Properties that already rent to tourists won’t be impacted by the announcement.

In a statement, Marga Prohens added: “The discomfort of residents due to the externalities of tourism is increasingly unanimous and transversal.

“This summer‘s demonstrations are a test, and we cannot put ourselves in profile because we listen to everyone.”

Despite the measures, the Balearic President stressed the importance of the tourism sector for the islands, by adding: “we are a hospitable land where tourists are welcome”.

A law is set to be approved in February, which will bring the measures into force.

The news comes after a series of anti-tourism protests took place on the Balearic Islands throughout the summer.

In May, over 15,000 locals took to the streets in Palma, Majorca to campaign against tourists visiting the island.

OTHER TOURIST CHARGES

Earlier this year, Greece introduced a new levy for overnight visitors in a bid to combat the damage caused by extreme weather conditions.

Holidaymakers traveling to Greece during the high season (from March to October) are required to pay an additional tax on overnight stays.

Just like the previous tax, the rate will vary depending on the type of accommodation tourists have booked, and it will range from €1 (£0.86) to €4 (£3.45) per night.

The new tax will be added to the country’s existing accommodation tax, with charges rising as a result.

All holidaymakers heading to Tunisia will be forced to pay a new tourist tax under plans outlined by the country’s government.

Meanwhile, this popular tourist destination is also planning to increase its daily tourist charge.

And this UK seaside town became the first to tax tourists this year.

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Innocence and its corruption, that enduring theme in postwar American culture — from Catcher in the Rye and Lolita to Jeff Koons’ balloon dogs for billionaires — found its final 20th-century chronicler in Mike Kelley, a working-class kid from Detroit, self-described “blue collar anarchist”, honed into conceptual chic by 1980s California. His chaotic, corrosive, often creepy installations and films, portraying childhood as a catastrophe, are the subject of an exhaustive retrospective touring Europe, and just landed at Tate Modern.

Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit is anti-modern to its fingertips, or rather to its glove puppets and the ragged trails of the fabric animals heaped across the gallery’s floors. An early caption explains that “Kelly engaged with craft to resist the dominance of modernist art, which he saw as inherently masculine.” But his first target was to undermine tropes of innocuous play and joy. “More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid” (1987), his best known piece, squashes grimy thriftstore soft toys and knitted blankets on to canvas: a homespun craft parody of an all-over Jackson Pollock drip painting, nudged with suggestions of love as abuse.

In “Ahh . . . Youth!”, among mugshots of felt and fur creatures, bear, rabbit, monkey, some eyeless or spewing stuffing, all inanely staring, we meet Kelley as recorded in his high school yearbook snapshot, an acne-scarred, unprepossessing teen. Older viewers may recall the crocheted orange bug from this series grinning on the cover of rock band Sonic Youth’s 1992 album Dirty.

Kelley began his career in a punk group, Destroy All Monsters, its instruments including hair dryers, vacuum cleaners and rattles. The mission to irritate was life-long, but at Tate the soundtrack to the line-up of cuddly toys with menacing names (“Eviscerated Corpse”, “Manly Craft”) is an audio cassette recorder playing his faux-adolescent whinge: “I didn’t ask for life . . . don’t leave me mother if you love me how can you bear to see me suffer this agony of fear”. The words get mangled with those blaring from a nearby film, “The Banana Man” (1983), where Kelley in yellow suit with deflated balloon-trailing prick, plays a children’s TV character, initially giggling, then sinister: “come on I can take it harder bigger . . . don’t shrug me off I’m not responsible”.

This demonstrates, says Tate, Kelley’s “persistent deflation of symbols of power” as he champions “the failed, the abject, the proto-queer”. So he does: one minute donning blond plaits as the 19th-century Alpine angel-girl in “Heidi’s Four Basket Dances”, the next directing naked S&M performers doing nasty things to toys while apparently defecating, in “Nostalgic Depiction of the Innocence of Childhood”. (“Paint is used to simulate bodily waste”, Tate reassures.)

These are low hanging fruits: it’s easy to mock sentimental childhood fiction or appropriate the anal fixations of toddlers. The show gets more interesting with gibes at art history’s purities: at minimalism in “Torture Table” — sunken bucket, pillow, knife — and at formalist abstraction in the psycho-architecture of “Educational Complex” (1995), unfortunately displayed here only as slideshow images. A model of white cubes and other pristine geometric constructions, it reconstructs in miniature every building where Kelley was educated; blank spaces represent forgotten sites or “repressed memory syndrome”. It doubly mocks ideals of innocence: Bauhaus and Le Corbusier’s utopian Modernism, and psychotherapy’s false promise of salvation from neurosis by unpacking “recollections’” of childhood abuse. Repressed memory, a 1990s catchphrase, “strikes me as simply an inversion of the family romance”, Kelley said.

Inspired by comics, he returned to architecture in the “Kandors” (2005-09), model cities in crystal hues shrunken into bell jars, converging allusions to Superman (Kandor is his mythical home) and Sylvia Plath: American heroic self-belief and its claustrophobic underside. 

Kelley called his final, unfinished work, the raucous, sprawling, insistently trashy “Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction” (2000-11), “a contemporary gesamtkunstwerk that is not utopian in nature but is an extension of our current victim culture”. It restages teen school photos of folk entertainments, dressing up pageants, proms, musicals, as a cacophony of video performances and installations. In flashing lights and candy colours, Hollywood, Halloween, hammer horror, funfairs, “Shy Satanist”, “Sick Vampire”, “Farm Girl”, parades of am-dram witches, devils and their shrieking victims, compete for our attention. In “Switching Marys” the Madonna turns torturer. One wonders how much notions of original sin — Kelley was brought up Roman Catholic — underpin the adolescent transgressive naughtiness.   

“This is not real!” screams a boy cowering in an attic, while a juddering motorised fuchsia cloth, “Pink Curtain” spins endlessly, noisily, revealing then concealing the silhouette of a dancer projected on a wall. An early Kelley performance piece was called “Plato’s Cave”. Bananas return too, giant hanging sculptures — slapstick, absurdist, a reminder also of how slippery Kelley always is, and not only in his dramas of illusion versus reality.

What does it mean to exhibit subcultural America in a modern art gallery, or to sell it to wealthy collectors? (Christie’s lauds Kelley’s “sociopathology of everyday life”.) Is it patronising or a pious pose, political — the disconnect between western liberal elites and their left-behind hinterlands — or merely postmodern?

“The world seemed to me a media facade, a fiction, and a pack of lies” Kelley once said. “I was experiencing . . . what has come to be known as the postmodern condition, a form of alienation quite different from postwar existentialism because it lacks any historical sense — there is no notion of a truth that has been lost.”

His persona as disgruntled, deracinated adolescent belongs of course to the gesamtkunstwerk of abject expressions that became his career, every pronouncement — “I make art to give other people my problems”, “I chose to become an artist because I wanted to be a failure” — provocative, though not necessarily untrue. I used to consider those passive-aggressive, outsider-insider stances maddening affectations, but changed my mind when Kelley died by suicide in 2012.

Dovetailing allusions to his uneducated, possibly abusive background — “where you grew up, that’s your inner world” — with the cerebral cool imbibed in California from his teacher John Baldessari, Kelley throughout played around with fiction, make believe, masks, warning of the dangers of nostalgia, foreseeing the America of fake news and identity games. The one consistency is the absolute nihilism.  

Art about alienation doesn’t have to alienate — Munch and Hopper are enormously popular — as Kelley does. I didn’t enjoy the show, so devoid of beauty, hope, visual excitement, so heavy on theory and sociology. But I did enjoy afterwards thinking about Kelley, his concern with art’s relationship to society, what gestures might illumine the human condition now.

Tate overrates him: comparisons in the catalogue with James Joyce are risible. More convincingly, art historian Robert Storr suggests Kelley as Pop Art’s dark side, “implicitly correct[ing] Pop’s policy of thinking dirty while keeping clean”.

Pop Art, crisp and fresh, created iconic images; Kelley, murky and insidious, doesn’t. He used to ponder ghosts and spirits, believing that the former soon vanished, the latter hung around. In part his work already looks dated, forgettable, even parochial, but its subversive spirit lives.

To March 9, tate.org.uk

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BANK payments for millions of customers could be paused by up to four days as part of a crackdown on fraudsters.

Banks and building societies currently have up to the end of the next business day to process or decline a transfer.

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But under new Government legislation coming into effect at the end of the month, this will be extended by an extra 72 hours.

It will give banks more time to investigate potentially fraudulent activity that can see customers scammed out of their hard-earned cash.

It comes as Government figures reveal an estimated £460million was lost to fraud just last year.

Tulip Siddiq, economic secretary to the Treasury, said: “Hundreds of millions of pounds are lost to scammers each year, targeting vulnerable communities and ruining the lives of ordinary people.

“We need to protect these people better, which is why we are giving banks more time to investigate suspicious payments and break the criminal spell that scammers weave.”

The new law will better protect a growing number of vulnerable customers targeted by purchase and “romance” scams.

These scams see victims targeted and tricked into transferring large amounts of money.

Ben Donaldson, UK Finance managing director of economic crime, said it was “delighted” to see the new legislation put forward.

He added: “This could allow payment service providers time to get in touch with customers and give them the advice and support they need to avoid being coerced by the criminals who want to steal their money.

“This could potentially limit the psychological harms that these awful crimes can cause and stop money getting into the hands of criminals.”

Under the new rules, banks who believe a customer could be scammed will need to tell them if their payment is being delayed.

They will also have to explain to the customer what they need to do to unblock any payments and compensate them for any interest or late payment fees they receive because of any delays.

Rocio Concha, director of policy and advocacy from Which?, said the new law was a “positive step in the fight against fraud”.

“While it should not affect the vast majority of everyday payments, it’s important that banks can delay a bank transfer and take action if they think a customer is being targeted by a scam.”

The new rules on extending the time banks have to investigate fraudulent transfers will come in just weeks after the introduction of a fresh scheme on fraud compensation.

UK banks currently don’t have to compensate customers who have been scammed out of money.

However, from next Monday (October 7), refunds up to a cap of £85,000 will become compulsory.

Nicola Bannister, customer support direct at TSB, said the bank welcomed the new rules coming into force.

She added: “Social media and telephone companies must now work tirelessly to cut fraud off at source and protect their users from scam content.”

How to protect yourself from fraud

While the Government’s new law will go some way to protecting customers from being scammed, there are other steps you can take to avoid being conned out of cash, according to Action Fraud.

First, never give out any personal information including your name, address, bank details, email or phone number, to organisations before checking they are legitimate.

And always think twice when receiving an unsolicited call, text or email requesting these types of details.

Instead, contact the company directly using a known email or phone number.

Second, make sure your computer, laptop and phone has up-to-date anti-virus software installed which will block any malware.

Third, always keep an eye out for phishing emails or texts which pretend to be legitimate but are designed to steal your personal information.

These messages usually come with a link which, if clicked on, can see your personal information including bank details stolen.

Fourth, be wary of post, phone calls or emails offering you business deals out of the blue.

If an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is, so always question it.