Society. Spaces. Screens

Abstract

A theme in Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) is the materiality of space. One area that reflects the changing materialities of space, and place is the urban environment of Tottenham Court Road (TCR) in central London. TCR is approximately three-quarters of a mile long and runs from the Euston Road in the north to St Giles Circus in the south at the junction of Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road. This area was once the site of the infamous St Giles Rookery as depicted in William Hogarth’s Gin Lane (1751). The city slum was cleared in the mid-nineteenth century which saw the creation of New Oxford Street. Further changes were underway when Tottenham Court Road Underground station opened as part of the Central London Railway (Central Line) in 1909. More recent interventions include the opening of the Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) with its contemporary glass and steel station entrances. These structures are set against a backdrop of Victorian and Edwardian brick and mortar facades, twentieth-century concrete structures, and shiny twenty-first century constructions. The Now building opened in 2022. With its giant public atrium, the building facilitates the Outernet, a digital media experience which supports the world’s largest LED screen deployment in one space. This paper considers how this site of design and digital media connect, or don’t, through the real and the virtual, the centre and the edge, the screen and the frame, and the object and the experience. Conclusively it considers how digital technologies are creating new liminal states, and materialities of space for London.