christmas medley

First off, many thanks to Simon & Tina who hosted us so generously on the 2nd Dec at Montpelier Row - the house was an absolute gem, skillfully restored to it's full '70s glory, and the post-match pub wasn't bad either.  Will add a selection of our best photos to the blog in the new year.

Became hooked into Professional Masterchef in the weeks leading up to Christmas and couldn't help but notice some parallels between Heston Blumental's 'Fat Duck' (to which the finalists were seconded as part of their battle-royale) and the post industrial architectural paradigm....insomuch as the kitchen was almost completely de-skilled in any traditional sense - squeezing,tweezing and freezing being it's core activities - with all the fun creative stuff happening behind Heston's big desk in the R&D department. 

Whilst I'm still prepared to swallow this as the charicature of an architectural modus operandi, I didn't really like to see it happening to my dinner plus there was the irony, in this presentation obsessed world, of a dining room that looked like it might have had a former life as the Bray Mandalay Oriental.


Leo's been to Margate to see Chipperfield...which she coined 'brutal in its way'.  I'm not so sure, but would like to hear more.

She also brought me this rather delicate-yet-brutish facade...for which we salute her!

bloody architects

The light is good; the reading lamps, long-necked;
All doors have keys.  Your modern architect
Is in collusion with psychanalysts:
When planning parents' bedrooms, he insists
On lockless doors so that, when looking back,
The future patient of the future quack
May find, all set for him, the Primal Scene.

Vladimir Nabokov p73 of 'Pale Fire'.

On the subject of Pale Fire, have been enjoying this from El Perro del Mar.

Building visit : 25 Montpelier Row, Twickenham

Please note the next B&B building visit is going to take place on Sunday 2nd December 2012, meeting outside no.25 Montpelier Row, Twickenham, London TW1 2NQ at 2.30pm.

We've kindly been offered a tour of this house, built by Geoffrey Darke for his family in 1969, by the current owner - Simon Callender - who's been working hard restoring it to its original glory over the past year.  Some more photos here.

Anyone who can't make the tour can catch up with us for a drink at the White Swan in Twickenham from about 3.30pm.

If you are planning to come please let me know by sending an email to ...brutalismandbooze@gmail.com

Archbishop Sumner C of E Primary School, Kennington, London

This is a really nice, simple building whose qualities I've pretty much failed to capture in these photos, but each time I walk by I want to have another go...

London SW4

Ai Wei Wei Studio

I'd always thought that the Chinese government had demolished Ai Wei Wei's own studio but, if I understood correctly from the 'So Sorry' hagio-mentary... the building was a sort of government commissioned art centre.

 all photos from triplefivechina on Flickr

Shame it had to go - hope they don't bull-dose his house.

if you pour concrete i will find you

battersea rise, london SW11

wonderwall

would love to have a wall like this at the end of my garden

Cotton Gardens Estate, Kennington

Here's the map...

Although i'm not making any kind of exhaustive study this is the first estate I've come across since the Bungalows in Southwark's Brandon Estate which has a similar combination of very high and very low residential units...

from the estate plan above you can see how it includes 20 or so of these little corral-like houses with (i think) no outward facing windows apart from those related to the entrance

Kennington

Complexity and Contradiction is obviously on my mind just now...

an end wall to end all end walls

22b

B&B building visit photos

Thanks to Richard for these hallucinatory photos taken on our rainy journey across the Thames cable car two weeks ago...

 

  Stirling's No.1 Poultry in the City, where we started out

below...north side cable car station

above.. the Siemens 'Crystal' by Wilkinson Eyre.

 

 Roger's Dome

 Venturi designed* interior mallscape

*not really

White Cube, Bermondsey

Thanks to Gabriel for these photos-of-superior-quality of the building we visited a few weeks ago...

REMINDER...

Anyone still wishing to join us this evening, here are the details:

Trip on the Thames Cable Car from Royal Victoria/Emirates Victoria Dock next friday (5th October).

The meet-up will be 6.45pm outside Jim Sterling's po-mo masterpiece/minor work No.1 Poultry EC2R and, because it's just possible it might be raining, we'll congregate beneath the Queen Victoria Street exit to the building.  Then it's a ride on the DLR from Bank to Royal Victoria, and thence to the cable car.

Afterwards the idea is to head for the Dean Swift pub in Bermondsey.

Hope to see you there!

(Anyone wanting to email us direct to confirm attendance, shoot the breeze etc, can use brutalismandbooze@gmail.com).

Ward Roberts

see more...

Rushcroft Road, Lambeth

Last time I wanted to photograph this building I was discouraged by some camera shy gentlemen on Coldharbour Lane...but this morning on the way back from getting my hair cut (Tidy Hair, Brixton) I got another opportunity...

Won a civic trust award in 1991 but don't know who for....