Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

Department of Energy and Climate Change, Whitehall Place SW1

What a pleasure it is to happen on a fabulous building you had never noticed before despite it being in an area you have been cycling round for forty years.
Admittedly, it isn't on any of the tourist trails, being built in 1951 for the Ministry of Agriculture. The architect was C.E. Mee of the Ministry of Works, whose only other work I can find is a school canteen in Clacton.
The style is an official, safe version of the Lutyens classicism of twenty years before, and as such is very acceptable and well handled. But the outstanding element is the sculpture by James Woodford, who created the bronze doors and guardian figures on the RIBA in Portland Place.
Woodford carved a massive royal coat of arms over the front door, adding fecund ears of wheat. On either side are men riding a bull (left) and a dolphin (right).
Woodford also carved a sequence of attractive keystones depicting various animals just below us in the food chain, which I will post over the next few days.
The building was reconstructed behind the facade in 2003 and is now occupied by the Department for Energy and Climate Change, so Woodford's sculptures are still appropriate, sort of.

Royal Institute of British Architects, Portland Place W1

The RIBA is a building with rich layers of irony.
It is both forward looking and reactionary, a simple modernist cuboid but clad in stone, and it is devoted to architecture but helps destroy one of Europe's finest architectural compositions.
Even the sculpture looks rather old-fashioned - international modernism already had its hands firmly round the throat of the architectural establishment in 1932 when the competition to build it was won by Guy Wornum. Fortunately, the carved figures are of the highest quality.
Nottingham-born James Woodford did the man and woman that stand on pylons on either side of the front door with its magnificent bronze doors, also by Woodford. They look admiringly up at the central figure of Architectural Aspiration, of which more later.