Thursday 27 February 2014

FW: SCOT-BRUT



From: steve cox [mailto:steve@coxarchitecture.co.uk]
Sent: 26 February 2014 23:25
To: 'Stevecox3.peachy@blogger.com'
Subject: SCOT-BRUT

Just got totally side-tracked for two hours by this fascinating compendium of Scottish Brutalism.  Have cherry picked some favourite images but there’s a lot more than just images to go back for.


Tuesday 25 February 2014

Keybridge House

Although I couldn’t find details on their website, this Lambeth Council press release confirms that they have given permission for demolition of the existing building and the construction of 419 flats and a primary school in its place.


We objected to the demolition (see earlier post) and were backed up by the 20th Century society.  English Heritage were less forthcoming although they did think it was important that someone make a record of the building before it was destroyed...

Lambeth Planning Department’s view was that the building had no policy protection, appeared on no ‘list’ and thus could not be saved.

The information that BT uploaded for us to show that they had performed due diligence on the ‘re-use’ option certainly highlighted the limitations of the existing structure but ultimately was more convincing as a demonstration of how much less profitable this might have been for the developer rather than how impossible.

There were of course a lot of objections to the proposals which looked like they could have given the council pause, most notably that the proposed primary school, which provides the ‘planning gain’, is too close to an existing primary school and that, of the 419 new flats, only 19 are affordable.


Archinect #2

Here’s the reason I got into Archinect in the first place:


A very very very long thread in which contributors post a picture of a building and everyone has to guess who the architect is.  I never got a single one but enjoyed the commentary and the buildings.

Seems to have quite a few broken image links now but keep scrolling down and you’ll find some.

Archinect

Just seen that our ‘structural integrity’ post on Archinect was chosen as one of the 13 ‘editor’s picks’ of 2013.

Monday 24 February 2014

Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness - Concrete Poetry with Jonathan Meades

Three rousing cheers for Jonathan Meades' bravura exploration and championing of Brutalism in particular and ballsy architecture in general .  Both episodes availalbe for six more days here - BBC4

Sensing Spaces - Royal Academy, London

There seemed to be a certain buzz of customer satisfaction at this architecture installation show although the only really successful, really architectural work, for me, was this by Pezo von Ellrichshausen




 ..having the kind allusive, fairy-tale quality (you can climb up or down spiral stairs in the legs or the enclosed ramps behind) that certain other installations aspired too but with more originality and architectural punch.

Souto De Moura and Siza's contributions were disappointingly underpowered whilst Grafton Architects did a perplexing inversion of what you might have expected... by way of massive but clearly fake slabs of 'concrete' floating a couple of metres above the gallery floor...


Above - Grafton Architects. Below - Li Xiaodon's stick-y laberynth



Below - Kengo Kuma
below - Alvaro Siza pulls out all the stops...