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....

c'mere cutie!

Architectural Design

Thanks to Leo for lending me several issues of Architectural Design from the early 1960s.

The tone of the commentary is slightly grating and there are acres of mind numbing building description (an unbroken tradition in architectural journalism to this day), but there are also some nuggets, such as this chastening intro' to a (favorable) review of Gillespie Kidd & Coia's St Brides Church in East Midlothian;

'The fortifications wave in the UK has not at all spent itself.  We have probably, many years in front of us of castellated parapets, slit windows, battered bases and doubtless even a moat or two before we are through.  It is true that the farther north one goes, the more tolerant one becomes of this quaint insular taste of ours.'

Coia won the Riba Bronze Medal for this church, by the way, and the bell tower was pulled down not all that long ago because, allegedly, this was two hundred quid cheaper than re-pointing it.

Elsewhere we are informed that the new Crown Office building at Ruislip represents...

'...a good rhythmical background type of architecture which unrecognized maestros might contemplate as an alternative to ego-building, eye catching (and damaging) architectural eruptions which now pustulate too many sites.'


whilst Riverwalk House (pictured below)  is ' ...another addition to the Thames and to that school of thought which finds horizontal emphasis too horizontal and vertical too vertical.'

Ouch.