This is the photography blog of clickclickjim, Jim Stephenson Architectural Photographer. As always, plenty o’ pics on my website.

Afternoon all. Last week marked the end of one of the most interesting and diverse commissions I’ve ever agreed to undertake, as an architectural photographer. After a series of extensions, “Before I Sleep” closed at the former Co-Op building on London Road, Brighton. Now it’s finally closed, I can lift the self-imposed embargo on my images since they will no longer ruin any of the many, many surprises of the show.

I first met Tristan Sharps, director of noted promenade theatre company dreamthinkspeak, back in December 2009. Over coffee we went through his plans that were to form the centrepiece of 2010’s Brighton Festival (the UK’s largest arts festival outside of Edinburgh). Two things struck me after we left. The first was that I still don’t like coffee. The second was the sheer architectural ambition of his ideas

The venue was the old Co-Op building on London Road, Brighton, familiar to most people who live in the city. Opened in 1931, the Co-Op was the largest department store in the city when it closed 3 years ago. It has been neglected since, but prior to this it was central to the areas community and had been for many many years. By nature, the Co-Op stores in the UK tend to become central to the community, being the largest community co-operatives in the world. A large department store, wandering around it was incredible to see how quickly it had fallen into such a bad state. It reminded me of the first few chapters of “The World Without Us”, where Weisman talks about the processes that would take place around, inside and on our buildings should humans disappear. Indeed, it could be a study of such processes – damp creeps in everywhere, stripping render from the basement walls and warping and tearing the plywood paneling upstairs. Plant life eases through gaps and cracks. Carpet has lifted and the building has a terrific smell of decay. Yet in the stockrooms, still evident, is graffiti from the early 70’s – name checking footballers that have long since retired, bought pubs and passed on. Locally, there has been calls, growing stronger and stronger, for the owners or the council to inhabit the building. This is where dreamthinkspeak stepped in to temporarily transform the former department store into an incredible series of set-pieces, opening up such a familiar building to a public for the first time in three years, curious to see what had happened the their local shop.

The show is based on Chekov’s masterpiece, “The Cherry Orchard”, although (as the programme tells us) it “is not a version The Cherry Orchard, but a new creation inspired by Chekov’s work”. I’m now going to borrow heavily from the programme and use Tristan’s words to describe the concept behind it.

“The play itself manages to capture an elusive moment when one world is about to die and a new world about to begin. However, the overriding sense is that we are witnessing a world in collapse rather than in renewal”

The cherry orchard in Chekov’s play is being sold, for redevelopment just as the existing Co-Op is.

Architecturally, the show is incredible – combing the existing building with amazing sets and taking us on a journey through the theatre piece and through the history of the building. I’ll try to explain.

“Many of the other characters will fall thought the gaps created by this upheaval, including Firs, the elderly manservant. Tragic-comically abandoned at the end of the play, while the orchard and the old world that he represents is being destroyed, he is one of the key figures in Before I Sleep. Our piece reimagines him lingering in the long-abandoned house, trying in vain to go to sleep or perhaps to die, but being constantly interrupted by the influx of new audience members, who could be prospective purchasers, and the rapid arrival of the new centuary”.

So, the show opens in pitch black. You walk in in small groups of four or five and, once the door closes, you can’t see a thing. The darkness lasts long enough to become unsettling before Firs appears, lit by a single lantern, and begins muttering in Russian, complaining about the people who keep coming in and waking him up. It becomes apparent you are in his room and he’d like to go to sleep. Suddenly, the lights go on and you realise his room looks out onto the frozen food aisle of a modern convenience store. Cheesy muzaq plays and customers walk the aisle, looking at various Russian frozen products. Inevitably, they peer into Fir’s room, thinking it’s part of the store, and notice Firs and you, the audience. The manager is called and he ticks you off (in Russian), opens the freezer door and ushers you out of the room into a dark snow-scape.

Wind is blowing and the first thing you come across is a model of the Russian House in the Cherry Orchard. Tiny footsteps lead from the house, across your path and to a model of a Russian convenience store. A model of Firs can be seen, holding a cup and saucer, collapsed in the snow on his way to the store.

We move on, into a new room. We are now in the house we saw in the snow-scape. Repetition of themes continues throughout the show, using increasingly imaginative set-pieces to remind us of where we’ve been…

“In the basement areas, where we have deconstructed some of the interiors of a re-imagined Cherry Orchard house, we have been influenced by local, rather than Russian architecture…. We have also been influenced by the interior of the Co-Op itself, with many of the partitions erected in the basement following the lines of the previous partitions apparent in the original floor plans of the building. Areas of the basement that stubbornly refuse to be hidden, we have simply left in view, as if a more recent world has already crashed into the past”.

And so, we enter studies, ballrooms, dining rooms and nurseries from the Cherry Orchard house, ducts, pipework and light fittings of the former department store crash through the ceiling.

In one corridor we see a fishtank, dressed as a ballroom inhabited by a couple, in vintage dress, with deep-sea diver helmets on. In the next room we see the same couple sitting out on the porch, behind closed windows, tapping on them and trying to figure out why we are walking around in their house. In the ballroom, amidst rolling piano music, we see a deep sea diver behind a window and then we move into the nursery. The piano music is replaced by the same song, played on a music box where a model of the couple we’ve already seen twice, waltz. In the room a doll’s house sits, and as we look at it more closely we realise it’s the house we are in now, the house we saw the model of earlier.

It’s worth noting at this point that all the architectural models in the show are incredibly detailed and really well made.

In one room a table is laid out, covered in a forest of formerly lit candles. With all the melted wax, models of the couple from earlier sit drinking tea and a Firs figurine is searching for them, holding a cup and saucer.

We continue our journey into another snow-scape, that un-mistakenly shows signs of the former department store. All the services, grand staircases and security systems remain. Also left in are the signs of the crumbling walls that look like set pieces, but were there beforehand and will be there afterwards. The basement of the Co-Op used to feature some beautiful leaded windows around the circulation areas and these have been re-used with elaborate models of show apartments and odd and surreal rooms placed behind the glass. Closer inspection shows that these surreal rooms are models of the rooms we’ve already passed through and (we’ll soon learn) rooms to come. Included in all the models are figurines of Firs, wandering through the rooms holding a cup and saucer.

Up the stairs we go.

The ground floor is dominated by a huge Russian department store – Millennium Retail. The staff approach you and present their departments (fashion, home-ware, kitchens) to you in various languages. The window displays (visible from the street) show items for sale in the store, with odd twists. Mannequins occasionally have deep-sea diver helmets on and the walls of the windows displays show images of dense woodland with the solitary Firs lost in the woods. Signage points people towards the Millennium Retails website.

In the fashion department there are images of models on the walls. In the background of the models, in the distance, is Firs again, in his butler outfit, holding a cup and saucer in front of a house looking suspiciously like the Cherry Orchard house (in fact, it’s Preston Manor).

In the home-wares department a video plays on loop with a Millennium Retail staff member taking us on a tour of show-apartments. Part of a new development. Architectural models of the development are nearby, lent to the show by the architects Conran & Partners (so, interestingly, these models are for actual redevelopments that may someday be built).

Also in home-wares is a table of brand new candles, unlit, complete with models of Firs lost in the candle forest.

The CCTV screens in the store show footage on a loop of a security guard discovering Firs in the bedroom department, under the sheets, falling asleep. Firs is now lost and confused in his new world, echoing back to the very start of the show. Open the right cupboard in the furniture department and you’ll find Firs in his nightgown, he’ll mutter some words at you, push past, and crawl into bed.

In the kitchen showroom, you can open a cabinet door, go through it and discover a secret room that looks out over a snow-scape and the full-size shop front of the convenience store we saw in the first snow-scape. Firs appears, struggles towards the store entrance in the snow, before collapsing.

Finally the children’s departments features a huge Wendy-house, a larger model of the dollhouse we saw in the nursery and the model we saw in the first snow-scape. Inside the Wendy-house is a copy of the dollhouse. Details are everywhere. The children’s department wall is painted with an under-the-sea scene including the waltzing deep-sea divers from the fishtank.

Up the stairs again. Constantly we see pieces of the original crumbling Co-Op store let on view.

Once up the stairs, we are faced with the same video of the show-apartments again, before entering the apartment itself. The same rooms are shown, the same amenities and the same tea sets and furniture, although everything has now decayed and dust covers all. These rooms have been left almost as the original Co-Op was, with big damp spots and loose wallpaper.

Across the hall another video plays; across a huge screen we see the couple from the Cherry Orchard House in the dense woodland from the window display ordering Firs to go and fetch something for them. By the time he returns, they are gone, and he is left to wander the woods looking for them.

I should say that at this point the order of the rooms becomes a bit hazy! You are free to walk around as you wish, and even after spending days and days in the space, I was still getting lost…

We walk past a room filled with security monitor screens, playing the same video of the show-apartment on loop. Another video in the next room shows Firs in the woods again, wandering around lost. The camera pans back and up and out of the woodland canopy. As it pans further out, we see that Firs is on a small island and is surrounded by water – his world is being inundated not only by progress (evident from the department store we’ve already been through) but literally, by water, as well.

We walk over an underwater city, a replica of the area of Brighton the Co-Op is in, before approaching a long, black corridor, the end of which is a small room, too small to hold the single Cherry tree and it’s branches are breaking through the architecture.

The final space is a huge room, almost an entire floor of the Co-Op, filled with the remains of a former orchard. A deforestation scene, with woodchips all over the floor and tree stumps left.

What really got me about this show was the use of architecture – incorporating the existing shop into the elaborate architectural sets. The way the existing shop services crash through the set-pieces. The architectural models that litter the show. The way in which the architecture is not just a shell for the show, but completely and utterly necessary and an incredibly important member of the cast. I really think this is how all architecture should strive to be – not just incidental spaces we use for convenience sake, but structures that are complicit and active in our lives. Certainly of all the buildings I photograph, my favourites are the ones that accomplish this (they’re also the most photogenic). Given that I’m now off to watch Inception at the pictures, I’ll say I also think more films should be using architecture like this – as a cast member and not a passive set piece.

Some links for you – dreamthinkspeak put all this together. If you Google “dreamthinkspeak” or “before I sleep” I’m you’ll get plenty better reviews than mine of it.

All the images were taken by me, Jim Stephenson – Architectural Photographer (clickclickjim). More images can be seen on my website as well.