The Telegraph embarrasses itself. Anything that’s not square box is defined as ugly. Really? Most are just different.
Are these the ugliest buildings in the world? – Telegraph.
Want my definition of ugly?
Imagine going everyday here…
http://www.terrapin-ltd.co.uk/hillingdon-schools-development-2012-february.php
This is a school! A place of wonder and learning!!!
Robin Hood Gardens to be Demolished | ArchDaily.
This is very sad.
I refuse to believe that there was nothing that could be saved of this building.
You might not like the style but surely you can see that it’s a downgrade in quality.
“Your final paragraph is full of noble sentiments about houses for people, Jonathan, yet you have spent the previous 15 years lauding architecture that is about the egos of over-funded architects and their corporate sponsors.
Frankly, shame on you!
It’s very hard to think of how Britain has been enriched by the architecture of the last 15 years – the London skyline is blighted, even by the Gherkin, which looks cute but is ergonomically awful. You spend your last column with your tongue drooling for projects that have been built overseas.
At the grass roots level – where architecture writers don’t seem to live – we have been given more concrete, more CCTV open space, less eco friendly designs, less human friendly dimensions, and less art – which is why Banksy is so necessary..”
Jonathan Glancey’s passport to the planet | Art and design | The Guardian.
No Milton Keynes or Cergy Pontoise. I think I vote for Chandigarh or Almere.
I love the idea of a hidden bridge like this. One to remember…
Is it part of the student experience it seems.
“The architecture of Hulme was a strange mix of 60s sci-fi futurism and bleak eastern European uniformity, the kind of place JG Ballard had nightmares about. It was grimly cinematic, so much so that the photographer Kevin Cummins had used it as the background for his iconic photographs of Joy Division, the most existentially miserable band of the 70s. At nights, as the sun went down and the lights came up around the McEwans beer factory, which wafted noxious fumes across the entire misbegotten district, it seemed more like a scene from Blade Runner than the landscape of a thriving northern town. At regular intervals gangs of straggle-haired youths, who appeared to have escaped from the set of Mad Max 2, would drift across the overpass that traversed the Mancunian Way, shopping trolleys of worthless loot pushed religiously before them and umpteen dogs on various bits of string prowling behind them picking off survivors. Occasionally, an incongruous ice-cream van would creep its lonely way from one hideously uninviting tower block to another, its broken chimes turned up to maximum volume, creating a hellish racket that was somewhere between a nursery rhyme and a death rattle. As far as anyone could tell, it was selling drugs. We called it “The Ice Cream Van of the Apocalypse”.
Mugging was a fairly common occurrence in Hulme, as was burglary and the occasional assault by packs of wild dogs. When I first moved into Otterburn Close, my third-floor flat had a pathetically inadequate H-frame door that was one part rotten wood to 10 parts flimsy “security glass”. The first time I got burgled, the door was broken so badly that the council were unable to fix it, so they replaced it with a newfangled “security door”. Unlike their predecessors these were largely made of wood, with three tiny window slats allowing the people inside to look out without allowing everyone outside to come in. These new doors were such a whizzo idea that everyone wanted one and the council just couldnt keep up with demand.”
Mark Kermode: How to make an intelligent blockbuster and not alienate people | Books | The Observer.
I’m going to have to buy this book.
the Pruitt-Igoe Myth « The Pruitt-Igoe Myth – a Documentary.
Another film that I’d love to see but never will unless it finds it way onto YouTube.
Argh!
