This poem grew out of fieldwork around the Brunswick Centre, where I was exploring how residents experience a building that places domestic life above commercial space. Although the route itself is imagined, my fieldwork made me think about how differently the Brunswick is used from one level to another. Time spent on the residential side changed how I understood the building. The upper walkways felt more exposed than the concourse, especially when the wind moved through them. Sound carried upwards in broken pieces, but quietness was just as important. There were fewer people passing, and the space did not invite the same brief encounters as the commercial level below. The Brunswick began to feel less like one unified architectural object and more like a place divided by use. Its temporality sits in the overlap between the few minutes a passer-by spends below, the time built by people who keep returning to the same building, and its history as a post-war design that sought to bring domestic and commercial life into one structure.
where Russell Square keeps people inside the lift a little too long.
When the doors open, Bernard Street is already busy.
The Piccadilly line stays with a student for a moment:
overheated, the feeling of having left home five minutes too late.
On today’s agenda is a 9am lecture on campus.
The quickest walk would leave coffee behind.
The Brunswick sits just off that line, close enough
to make the risk feel reasonable. So the student turns.
The concourse is already busy. Shopfronts run along both sides,
and people pass through with somewhere else pulling at them.
Through the bakery window, the queue is even longer
than it looked from the concourse. The student checks the time, then stays.
The body has decided before the timetable can object.
Waiting gives the eyes time to wander.
Above the shopfronts, windows repeat; balconies look out across the route.
The student looks up once, then back at the line.
Coffee first.
At the counter, the order is said quickly,
as if speed might refund some of the minutes already lost.
The card reader beeps. A few more people are served.
Then the name they gave is called, and the cup is handed over too hot.
Outside again, the student glances back past the bakery
towards the flats above. No revelation.
Only the small interruption of having noticed them at all.
The coffee is still too hot to drink,
so the student walks faster, beyond the Brunswick, towards Gordon Square.
The morning has not been saved. It has been bargained with:
a few minutes gone, a little energy promised.
A slight detour through the Brunswick is supposed to be nothing.
And mostly, it is. Coffee before campus.
A small delay traded for the feeling of being in control.
The student does not know who lives above the concourse,
and probably never will. What they do know is,
their lecture has started.
But at least their coffee is finally cool enough to drink.
