Bruitalist Architecture and Towerblocks.

Scottie_uk · March 2016

I don't mind saying I am a fan of brutalist architecture. I love the look of sprawling concrete , particularly some of the cubist concrete mega structures or places like Thamesmede which are sadly now being pulled down.

I appreciate I've never lived in any of these brutalist places primarily because of the undesirables councils tended to cram in to them. However, from an aesthetic and Utopian perspective I think they are very interesting. The utopian dream for me is being young, single, living in one and having close friends and lots of promiscuity.

This is cool:
http://assets.dwell.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_photo/public/2014/02/19/habitat67.jpg?itok=Lmc81O4B

So it this:

Fascinating:
14878994363_7f233dcf74_b.0.jpg

Strangely Magestic:
http://img02.deviantart.net/c1ab/i/2014/361/f/5/southmere_lake_by_offering-d8belrv.jpg

Anyone else a fan? Anyone else lived in such places and have stories?

guesser · March 2016

Me too. It's a shame that the tower blocks turned out to be so hopeless. I love the newsreels of them when they were gleaming white towers of utopian promise. Surrounded by green telly tubby land grass rather than weeds, patches of dirt, and burnt out cars.

dm_boozefreek · March 2016

Lived in terraces most of my life, had lots of friends and family who have lived in high rises, and sh*tty areas, so no not really a fan. Tenements aren't really nice at all no matter how much of a "Dystopian Chic" they have....

Infact I think they should do a reverse engineering on all the crappy old tower blocks, knock them all down and replace them with the trees, and fields they took to build them in the first place, and use wasteland and abandoned buildings to replace them, instead of ignoring them for decades.

Scottie_uk · March 2016

If they took a Brutalist towerblock and filled it with hipsters. I wonder if that'd work?

dm_boozefreek · March 2016

Only if it's packed with depth charges...

redballoon · March 2016

Oh man, I love the whole urban concrete architecture. So much so, that I produced prints of my photography in the past. Here's a couple of the photos I'd taken for the prints..

I've been escorted off places a couple of times by security taking some.

dm_boozefreek · March 2016

That's because it's illegal to take pictures of anything these days, if you're not looking for structural weaknesses so you can blow the buildings up, they may let you have 1 or 2 pics if you pay them royalties for it...

Oh and don't let the police see you taking pics, and if they do and they get irate don't point the camera at them, apparently cameras are dangerous weapons, and you may find yourself on the wrong end of a pork flavoured bullet...

guesser · March 2016

dm_boozefreek wrote: »

Oh and don't let the police see you taking pics, and if they do and they get irate don't point the camera at them, apparently cameras are dangerous weapons, and you may find yourself on the wrong end of a pork flavoured bullet...

You've been in Murderland too long, it's not quite that bad here yet. Quite...

dm_boozefreek · March 2016

I'd like to say that's a generalization, and there's been no murders anywhere near where I live, but unfortunately in the last year or so there's been quite few :-S

Actually somebody got shot in the face less than 10 minutes drive away from where I live a week or so back, infact I know somebody who went to the funeral :O

Luny · March 2016

Make the s*dding 'architects' from the sixties live in them for 10 years. They wouldn't design them ever again.
Designs are one thing, making something that works for people live comfortably and safely is another.

1024MAK · March 2016

I had a work mate who lived in a tower block once. They were dead handy for getting rid of unwanted stuff. He came in to work one day and told us that someone had pushed a washing machine off of one of the higher floors...

Mark

mel the bell · March 2016

dont get me started on Sheffield and its "old" sets of flats lol

Park Hill anybody?
Park-Hill-Brutalism-RIBA-Library-Photographs-Collection_dezeen_468_6.jpg

Park-Hill-Brutalism-RIBA-Library-Photographs-Collection_dezeen_468_6.jpg

Hyde park

one with Park Hill in the foreground

Kelvin flats

Members of the band Artery outside Kelvin

Norfolk park

etc etc

guesser · March 2016

Luny wrote: »

Make the s*dding 'architects' from the sixties live in them for 10 years. They wouldn't design them ever again.
Designs are one thing, making something that works for people live comfortably and safely is another.

Well that's how you develop an idea that's never been tried before isn't it, you do it once, find that there are various reasons it doesn't quite work, and then you never ever do it ever again ;)

I'm not sure why architects is in sarcasm quotes. Designing impractical buildings without a firm grasp on how the inhabitants will use them is what architects are for ;)

The Lone Magpie · March 2016

The entire Cumbernauld Town Centre was picked to be demolished on that Channel 4 series a few years ago. It's just a long the road from me, and it's known for being a "rabbit warren on stilts". It's horrendous.

Instead of demolishing it, the council added a new section onto it, "The Antonine Centre", joined onto the old section by an escalator. They also moved the big clock that featured in the film "Gregory's Girl" to the mid-section escalator, which adds to the bizarre effect of starting the escalator in the 2010's, passing the clock, and decanting from the escalator in the 1970's, met by the sight of a fruit and veg stall, and rummaging through your pockets looking to see if you've got any half crowns or shillings on you.

Maroc's Other Projection · March 2016

I'm not a big fan of concrete, regular shaped, sharp monstrosities, huge buildings or blocky dwellings (massive cathedrals, minsters etc are cool though).

I generally like low (one to two storey) stuff that doesn't block out the horizon. I live just outside of York, in the relative bucolic countryside. There's a bit of York (Stonebow) that is a bit too brutal for me :(

Scottie_uk · March 2016

The Lone Magpie wrote: »

The entire Cumbernauld Town Centre was picked to be demolished on that Channel 4 series a few years ago. It's just a long the road from me, and it's known for being a "rabbit warren on stilts". It's horrendous.

Oh my that is quite shocking. Even the pictures of it new show it to be the most horrendous design. What were they thinking, its a total eyesore. Probably only ever looked half decent from the inside. I love brutalsm but not that.

ccowley · March 2016

The problem with towerblocks, and flats in general, is the psychological thing of not owning or controlling the tiny section of the ground they sit on. My house and land is mine -- I can look at a map or google earth, and draw a line round a bit of area (granted, quite a heavily zoomed-in, tiny, bit of area) that is psychologically *mine*. It's even better when the mortgage is paid off and that bit is actually, legally, yours and not the property of some building society or bank.

Flats just aren't in the same league from that point of view. Even a ground floor flat with a garden means you may have some awful c**t living some height above you, being terrible and annoying. I am glad I don't have to live in a flat, brualist or otherwise. It's easy to say they look cool, less easy to have to live in one, IMHO.

fog · March 2016

I have always lived near / around tellick tower , like thamesmead it's been used in films etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trellick_Tower

over the years I've been various tower blocks across london, including thamesmead, greenwich and hackney because of work, visiting relatives etc.. they were only good for boosting radio reception from what it seems . not actually living in em.

where I am in London is going under a lot of regeneration.. translation , social cleansing and very small "flatlets" with the smallest size they can get away with, suitable for hobbits to live in.. and all pre-bought by foreigners who aren't gonna live in them. Also pricing loads of born Londoners out. so dirty money from abroad is getting cleaned thru property here.

interestingly a "neighbour" aka property developer is trying to get permission to max out the space on the house they bought. not seen the plans yet, but I'm guessing if they could get away with it , they'd build up to the garden fence, to maximise profit.

with regard to owning land... no one truly does in England anyway (as frakking recently showed).. it's scary like spain, they can just bulldoze where you live and put a road thru it or things like compulsory purchase orders.

http://www.urban75.org/blog/the-fake-houses-at-23-and-24-leinster-gardens-bayswater-london-w2/
is one thats local also, always find it funny someone tried to auction it.

out of london, I been to equally bad concrete jungles up north like toxteth and a few in manc.. always found it funny glasgow was "house, then flat number"

the m4 flyover in hammersmith is a worrying thing, if thats how the concrete is reacting to weather etc. so doesn't seem as good as material as it was made out to be.

Scottie_uk · March 2016

Most of those schemes were designed from the outset to be cheaper than building the equivalent number of houses, so I would not surprise me that shortcuts were taken as funds were squeezed. #ronan_point.

Grunaki · March 2016

Preston Bus Station got listed a couple of years back as a classic example of brutalist architecture. It was formerly the largest bus station in Europe, but Turkey built a bigger one that was just on the European side of their territory, so they nicked that title. It's still bloody massive though..

The local council were rabidly after tearing it down and building a John Lewis or House Of Fraser there or something and had already done the deal, but then it got listed and stuck a spanner in the works.. It was actually a part of this larger thing called 'The Tithebarn Project', which was going to knock down the bus station, a couple of older shopping centres and a few pubs and flats in the vicinity and build something akin to the Manchester Arndale centre for multi-millions / a couple of billion.

That took the better part of 10 years to get its arse in gear and then they decided that it wasn't worth it in the end as town centre shopping has declined with more people opting to buy stuff on-line and stores like Wal-Mart opening up in the suburbs, so they knocked it on the head.

fog · March 2016

funny you mention about listing, this is another local one.. a friend lived in the flats next door.. the Tel Aviv based owners rocked up / knocked it down with NO permission.. now are forced to rebuild it

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/carlton-tavern-demolition-public-inquiry-to-end-row-over-illegal-levelling-of-historic-pub-a2926881.html

Grunaki · March 2016

fog wrote: »

with regard to owning land... no one truly does in England anyway (as frakking recently showed).. it's scary like spain, they can just bulldoze where you live and put a road thru it or things like compulsory purchase orders.

Like this? ;)

vanpeebles · March 2016

I made one on minecraft :D

Scottie_uk · March 2016

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/30109412/PrestonBusStation1.jpg

I like that Preston bus station, but this is better. :p

beanz · March 2016

My house and land is mine

That's also a psychological thing..it's yours until they want to build a bypass and then invoke the "imminent domain" law. :))

joefish · March 2016

The Lone Magpie wrote: »

The entire Cumbernauld Town Centre was picked to be demolished on that Channel 4 series a few years ago. It's just a long the road from me, and it's known for being a "rabbit warren on stilts". It's horrendous.

That's pretty awful. Looks like something for dumping gravel into grotty old train wagons.

I like Scotty's first picture. The second one (UEA) looks quite nice there, but those accommodation cubes can be cold and damp, and constantly dirty from the concrete dust. The rest of the campus is like a grotty 60s shopping centre - everything is on separate elevated concrete walkways. You never go down to the ground as the lower levels of the buildings are only used for heating, power and vehicle deliveries. But then Salford's just as nasty, with student accommodation built underneath the huge flyovers leading out of Manchester city centre.

I'm not sure if they've demolished the hideous concrete car park and bus station in Corby. It used to have flats and a cinema on the top. They may have just hidden it behind new shops and facades as Willow Place. It had a lot of that awful corrugated 'Concrete Corduroy' shaping on the outisde of the stair blocks and was generally pretty vile.

Northampton's Greyfriars Bus Station was a brick-clad concrete structure, known as 'The Mouth of Hell' - just an absolutely huge dank cavern full of diesel fumes and blackened dessicated pigeon carcasses. The adjoining car park wasn't quite as bad as the one in Corby, at least letting more light in and having a bit of brick detail, and it had some quite fun ramps in and out (assuming you had a clear run at them), but that went some time ago. Here's what eventually became of the bus depot: Kaboom!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-31889521

AndyC · March 2016

Well I lived in the UEA Ziggurats (the second picture) as a student and spent many a year working on campus. That's a guaranteed way to take any idea of your utopian dream away. Once you see such buildings following a rainstorm, looking utterly depressing and ugly, they kind of lose their appeal.

joefish wrote: »

The second one (UEA) looks quite nice there, but those accommodation cubes can be cold and damp, and constantly dirty from the concrete dust. The rest of the campus is like a grotty 60s shopping centre - everything is on separate elevated concrete walkways. You never go down to the ground as the lower levels of the buildings are only used for heating, power and vehicle deliveries.

The lower levels were originally supposed to be the "servants quarters" bit, keeping all the uneducated maintenance and administration types away from the high brow academics, but it hasn't been used like that for decades and plenty of students spend time down there. A lot of UEA has moved away from the concrete style though, both because it's nicer to look at and less likely to fall down. Had much of it not been listed, chances are it'd have been pulled down years ago. These days they're constantly attempting to stop the Ziggurats from collapsing.

Luny · March 2016

ccowley wrote: »

The problem with towerblocks, and flats in general, is the psychological thing of not owning or controlling the tiny section of the ground they sit on. My house and land is mine -- I can look at a map or google earth, and draw a line round a bit of area (granted, quite a heavily zoomed-in, tiny, bit of area) that is psychologically *mine*. It's even better when the mortgage is paid off and that bit is actually, legally, yours and not the property of some building society or bank.

Flats just aren't in the same league from that point of view. Even a ground floor flat with a garden means you may have some awful c**t living some height above you, being terrible and annoying. I am glad I don't have to live in a flat, brualist or otherwise. It's easy to say they look cool, less easy to have to live in one, IMHO.

Not forgetting the dark corners, or hallways where lights aren't fixed (rape city), broken lifts that have been pissed in. the need for an entry phone.... etc etc ;)

Scottie_uk · March 2016

So I suppose its a paradox, those that appreciate britalist architecture are not those who had to live with it.

It's interesting that some of you folks lived in the Ziggurats, and the whole concrete dust thing is intriguing. 1) is all that dust bad for you? i.e. a carcinogen. 2) wont the buildings eventually wear away if all that dust is generated, will there be a time when sustaining the building just is not possible?

guesser · March 2016

Scottie_uk wrote: »

2) wont the buildings eventually wear away if all that dust is generated, will there be a time when sustaining the building just is not possible?

The facetious answer is Yes. Eventually every trace of Human existence will be scoured from the surface of the earth, it's just a question of timescales... :p

Just bear in mind that the Romans used concrete extensively and there's large amounts of it all over Europe ;)

ccowley · March 2016

beanz wrote: »

That's also a psychological thing..it's yours until they want to build a bypass and then invoke the "imminent domain" law. :))

Well... that's true... but my point was that it's a bit of the planet's surface I don't have to share with anyone else (granted "until a bigger boy comes along and legally chucks me off it" is valid). In a flat you don't get a bit of the Earth to call your own, however temporarily.

Lucky I bought my house when I did though, because there's no way I could afford to buy or rent here at today's prices. There's an unimpressive 2 bed flat just gone on the market down the road from me for half a million quid. The housing situation in the UK is pretty depressing.

Bruitalist Architecture and Towerblocks.

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