If you knew that it offered meals, you might anticipate of
somewhere called The Labworth a futuristic celebration of molecular gastronomy,
where you would be served by staff
dressed in white coats in a space-age gravity-free environment, where you could
enjoy an efficient ingestion of some cognitively-enhancing functional food,
washed down with a squirt or two of vitamin-enriched liquid nitrogen,
guaranteed to crackle the taste buds and to make you live for ever. I suspect
that both the menu and the ambience are somewhat different, though the reviews
are good. At the time I took the photographs I wasn’t particularly hungry, so I
can’t offer my own opinion on the available edibles, but clearly the place was
popular with the locals.
The name ‘Labworth’
is fortuitous, deriving apparently from that of a local farm, but the sense of
futurism is palpable. When the building was designed in the 1930s, by Ove Arup,
a better future was envisaged or at least yearned for widely, following the
tragedy of the Great War and accompanying the flourishing of technology and
scientific rationalism. Architecture and design were visible manifestations of an
optimistic zeitgeist. An innocent decade, evidently; concrete and glass, arterial
roads and electrification, gymnastics
and lots of UV, outdoor lidos and art deco would herald a cleaner, pleasanter,
healthier world. The Soviets and the Nazis shared similar architectural visions
to the international modernism practised elsewhere, such as here on the shores
of Canvey Island, Essex. We know now what the end of that decade brought, but 73
years to the week since its most symbolic and terrible revelation of what man
can do to man, the imagery of The Labworth remains one of hope and excitement. Simply,
it elevates one’s mood. Hooray for Canvey Island and hooray for a better
future.
