In the middle of Sackville Place, a surprisingly quiet little street, the Hollywood Academy’s eye-bleedingly vivid cerise front stands out. It’s not architecturally interesting, but it’s quite mesmerising.
The colour makes the biggest initial impact, painted on the bricks and taking in the ivy-like tendrils of cabling too. The windows are the most interesting part, though – thin sheets have been cut in silhouettes of plate tracery. (Tracery is the stonework supporting the glass in windows of Gothic architecture, and plate tracery was an early form where the masonry looks like a flat plate with openings cut in it.) If there’s anywhere it might make sense to add temporary, circusy Gothic ornament, it’s a shopfront for performing arts classes.
