Links tagged with “architecture”
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The day the music died? Welcome to Denmark Street and Tottenham Court Road’s new ‘digitally enabled streetscape’ | Architecture | The Guardian
Roman Moore on more dollops of massive-but-shallow private glitz replacing the unique, interesting and characterful bits of London.
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‘The council tenants weren’t going to be allowed back’: how Britain’s ‘ugliest building’ was gentrified | Architecture | The Guardian
Two weeks on, still a bit glum about this article about the redevelopment of Balfron a tower by Oliver Wainright.
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Robert Elms + Christina Wilson (@high_in_the_sky_2021) • Instagram photos and videos
Chronicling their (now finished) reconfiguring and rebuilding of a Barbican tower flat.
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“Democratic Architecture” — GS
I like these small Donald MacDonald houses in San Francisco.
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Frinton Park Estate Mini Guide | Modernism in Metroland
“The 48 page guide includes 37 colour images of the surviving houses, plus a history of the estate and a map.” (via Things Magazine)
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Model Barbican : r/london
“It’s not on display per se but if you go to the Barbican and ask to see the model room they’ll let you.” !!
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Barbican centre construction 1970s | Flickr
91 colour photos! Beech street before it was covered! Cut-away below-podium views! Gardens without plants! Views across London from the towers! Donkey jackets! Brilliant.
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MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies | The MIT Press
A free “digital collection of classic and previously out-of-print architecture and urban studies books”. (via Things Magazine)
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Coronagrifting: A Design Phenomenon | McMansion Hell
On Dezeen, Designboom, etc. showing endless “designs” that are nothing more than a publicity-hungry Photoshop job. If only this was only a problem during Coronavirus. (via Pluralistic)
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The Barbican Estate: An Architectural Masterpiece Under Threat
The “A History of Continual Expansion” document is fascinating, to see how the school has incrementally expanded over decades.
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The Barbican - ProBE - University of Westminster, London
Download the case study PDFs for some great stuff about building the Barbican, M1, Sizewell, South Bank, and Stevenage. Includes labour conditions, disputes, interviews with workers etc.
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Design is part of the furniture | RIBAJ
Lovely wooden factory for Vitsoe. (via @cityofsound)
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Walkways in the sky: the return of London’s forgotten ‘pedways’ | Cities | The Guardian
Oliver Wainwright on the City of London’s highwalks. Some nice old photos.
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Joel Simon - Evolving Floorplans
I really like this idea, and the results, as a first experiment with something. (via Kottke)
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Vintage Home Plans
A tumblr of artists’ impressions and floor plans for “20th century houses from around the world”.
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Van der Home – Bryan Boyer – Medium
Lovely post about looking closely at the origins and details of a Mies van der Rohe apartment in order to renovate it.
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A Year in the Metabolist Future of 1972 — Failed Architecture
Mostly good because it’s so nice to read architecture writing based on having spent a year living in the building. More of this kind of thing.
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McMansions 101: What Makes a McMansion Bad…
A nice summary of some architectural principles using McMansions as examples of how not to do it. The rest of the site’s great too. (via Kottke)
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High Paddington - Sergei Kadleigh, 1952 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
A brochure about a plan to house 8,000 people in 30-storey towers over Paddington Goods Yard in London.
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The Real Review: a bi-monthly architecture magazine by Jack Self — Kickstarter
Sounds good: backed. I might have pledged more if the guy could have managed a smile. (via @cityofsound)
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The Round House Frinton-on-Sea, Essex | The Modern House
Of all Frinton’s Art Deco houses, this is the one whose floor is a mosaic map of the estate.
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New York: Conspicuous Construction by Martin Filler | The New York Review of Books
Interesting to read something about all the new, huge, expensive, foreign-investor-owned, residential buildings going up in New York, rather than London for a change.
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English Buildings
A blog about interesting buildings around England. (via Wowhaus)
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Municipal Dreams
A blog with long posts about the history of UK social housing, planning, etc. (via Wowhaus)
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The New Euston Station 1968 (PDF)
It looks so modern and clean and spacious and pleasant. Unlike today’s reality.
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2015-03-18 Bernard Morgan House Brochure.pdf - Google Drive
On Golden Lane. I really like this understated post-war police section house. I may be pessimistic, but I assume it will be replaced with something much bulkier, less human-feeling. We’ll see. (via The Ben Jonson House Blog)
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zupamarket_en
Brutalist tower block paper cut-out models, with a set of London buildings. (via @cityofsound)
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Barbican: A Unique Walled City Within The City | gail borthwick - Academia.edu (PDF)
A dissertation (no idea what for) about the Barbican. Some good history and old plans, photos, etc.
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Owen Hatherley reviews ‘Guide to the Architecture of London’ by Edward Jones and Christopher Woodward · LRB 21 August 2014
I’m not sure this makes me want to read the book under review, but the review itself is a good read if you’re into London and/or architecture.
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The Modern House Blog | Modern Architecture, Design & Property
I somehow missed that the estate agents for modernists properties have a really good blog: architects, exhibitions, books, properties, etc.
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Jack Nicholson+The Brunswick Centre=V. cool. From… | Modernist Estates
A snippet from ‘The Passenger’ (1981), with Jack Nicholson walking through the Brunswick Centre.
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WowHaus
A blog of modernist etc houses for sale in the UK (see also ‘Modernist Estates’ for the apartment equivalent).
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Terrorist or Martyr? by Christopher Benfey | The New York Review of Books
Solely for this incidental quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne, after commenting on the “gloom” of Harper’s Ferry: “Yet there would be a less striking contrast between Southern and New-England villages, if the former were as much in the habit of using white paint as we are. It is prodigiously efficacious in putting a bright face on a bad matter.” (Subscribers only)
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Modernist Estates
A blog collecting modernist homes in the UK that are for sale. Nice stuff.
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Welcome to Toytown: what life is like in new-build Britain | Society | The Guardian
‘“It’s referred to as a village, but it’s an estate,” Terri insists. “The fact that it was all built at the same time means it’s an estate. Villages evolve, don’t they?”’
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Owen Hatherley reviews ‘Museum without Walls’ by Jonathan Meades · LRB 7 March 2013
Exactly what it says. Praise and criticism.
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The Last Places
Henry VIII’s wine cellar, once part of Whitehall Palace, still exists under the Ministry of Defence. Although the entire cellar was moved, in one piece, when the MoD was being built. (via ?)
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Barbican, 1969 - YouTube
Documentary about the Barbican, including footage of the then nearly-completed buildings, and (at 15:40) a look inside one of the show flats.
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At Hyde Park Corner (London Review of Books)
Jonathan Meades on fine form, on the newish Bomber Command Memorial. “The failure of British modernism and of today’s synthetic modernism to devise a memorious idiom provides an ample justification for the mongers of easy-viewin’ classicism to dump their stuff indiscriminately.”
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How a high-rise craze is ruining London’s skyline | Art and design | The Observer
“Strata waddles into the background from stage left, like SpongeBob SquarePants in a production of Hamlet.” Yes, all this. (via @cityofsound)
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Jonathan Meades: Architects are the last people who should shape our cities | Art and design | The Guardian
In fine form. “It is the business of attempting to create places that defeats architects. Architects cannot devise analogues for what has developed over centuries, for generation upon generation of amendments. They cannot understand the appeal of untidiness and randomness, and even if they could they wouldn’t know how to replicate it.”
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D’Blog of ‘Israeli: Lowlife: Creation Part Five: All The Joy I See Through These Architect’s Eyes
Brief looks at many of the ways different artists have drawn Judge Dredd’s Mega City One. (via Haddock)
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Building workers stories
Free PDFs containing oral histories from the men who built the Barbican, the M1, Sizewell A, the South Bank and Stevenage.
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Another Studio - MONUmini Barbican Tower
10cm tall stainless steel sheet model of a Barbican tower.
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Writing About Music is Like Dancing About Architecture | Quote Investigator
Quite lengthy investigation of the elusive origins of that quote. (via @alanconnor)
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New Plan To Redevelop Centre Point
Interesting in itself but also for the developer saying that in the long term, Centre Point will only be sustainable if turned into flats. Nice!
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Chamberlin, Powell and Bon Twentieth-Century Architects: Amazon.co.uk: Elain Harwood: Books
Due out end of 2011, 160 pages, about the Barbican and Golden Lane Estate architects.
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The Living City (1970) - YouTube
I haven’t watched it all yet, but looks interesting: a 1970 half hour film about the post-war rebuilding of the City of London, from the London Metropolitan Archives.
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Scaffoldage
A great Tumblr blog of photos of very impressive scaffolding. Better than that sounds. (Thanks @blech)
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Post-War Buildings
Don’t think I’ve seen this before. A collection of photos, details and sometimes long descriptions of mostly London post-war modern buildings. Good. (Shame the photos are all Flash though.)