Oh yes! forgot about that.
But the one I’m on about is another Manz Meanwhile I photo!
Forgot about this today, I’ll post it tomorrow. It really is great.
Back on track with the architecture theme of this thread I remembered that on a few of my trips out to the old Uxbridge mini whenever that was my mates and I had a scoot round the Brunel campus looking for stuff to skate. Here’s the lecture theatre block.
It might look familiar as it was the location for Alex’s re-education in A Clockwork Orange. Hopefully daily lectures aren’t carried out like this…
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I was always told it was this Leeds uni building from clockwork. I think you’re right.
In any case. Awesome building and also curvy bench spot.
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On the overhead walkway, there’s an opening (concreted over) for a door to another walkway that was never built. One of the many confusing things about that building.
Yeah, Clockwork was definitely Brunel.
But that Leeds uni building is sick.
Man destroyed that curvy bench.
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I want to go here at some point:
Never been further north than Glasgow.
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That’s amazing. Especially when you get down to the human scale photo. Fascinating, both for the building itself and also the story behind it.
That’s awesome. It looks like it’s grown out of the rock
It was from that day, but not from his 86,400 Seconds. It ran later. @anonymity?
Had this footage of Meanwhile 1 just sitting here, so thought I’d upload it, Bingo borrowed the camcorder for one of the many trips down to London (he would of dislocated his shoulder pretty badly around this time, so must of wanted it to piss about with it, while everyone skated, nothing serious). Danny Calow, Nick Zorlac, Singhy, Paul Hutch, Stu Cantellow, Matt Anderson and others.
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Matt Anderson always had a great style.
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I was having a look to see why it’s called meanwhile gardens as I’ve never known. There’s a website with the history about the place History apparently it was an act of defiance to the powers that be. I assume meanwhile 2 just followed the name on as they’re nearby?
Also, I don’t think it’s been posted (apols if it has), but there’s a doc about the gardens from '81 linked from that site. I’ve only skimmed through it but the skatepark is featured at 22.58 with a bunch of BMXers killing it
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Could be interesting…
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Some good photos of the spots here.
The ‘r u a virgin’ graffiti makes me think it might not be that hard to get into after all.
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The book is really good, think I posted it in here before, we get a lot of brutalist stuff in at work and they’re all super samey but this one has so many gems that don’t appear in other collections!
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I can appreciate this stuff from an aesthetic perspective but Brutalism isn’t really something to celebrate beyond that, for me anyway.
The thinking behind it, the disdain for those who lived there, the hubris, the aftermath.
I mean I like crazy banks as much as the next guy but Le Corbusier was still fundamentally a paternalistic snob at best.
EDIT: Not sure exactly where I’m going with the above - I guess I just wanted to stick a flag in the ‘there are real life consequences beyond appreciating concrete’ fairway.
Plus, I’m self-isolating again so there’s that too.
Maybe it’s like saying you like a few Burzum songs but Kristian Vikernes is still a foul, amoral, racist piece of shit?
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Oh yeah for sure, it’s kinda similar to the way in which things like the Quarry Hill flats in Leeds were made like a reverse panopticon, the council pretty much created a small utopia for council housing and it backfired massively. I can totally see why brutalist is a symbol of misery for a lot of communities. The Sunderland civic centre which I posted in this thread earlier is such an ugly building, defo the opposite of a Leeds university style blade runner piece. Or somewhere like Thamesmead which is fetishised by people like us for its aesthetics and film like qualities but would be such a drag for the communities within it.
As a Wakey resident what do you think of the Hepworth building @anonymity ? I know that’s split opinion in the area!
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I like it to be honest, although I understand why a lot of people didn’t/don’t.
That one you need to look at in context - the space where the Hepworth gallery was built was previously derelict, disused and grim really. The gallery kickstarted a rebirth of that end of the city (it’s across the road from where Rehab skatepark was for those old enough). Also, the gallery funders invested in green space/garden too to offset the starkness of the architecture and, most importantly, it’s a musuem, not a housing project or such where the authoritarianism of that kind of building can have negative connotations.
The other thing is that the Hepworth was always planned to sit in amongst a wider regeneration of an area that has laid half derelict since the 1950s. That was supposed to happen alongside the construction of the Hepworth but the 2007 financial crash intervened.
That is finally happening now with all the old beautiful but decrepit mill buildings being redeveloped. Fingers crossed it doesn’t just turn into a bunch of shitty flats.
(Plans say otherwise).
Rutland Mills currently
Artist’s impression of what it might look like.
In short - I like the Hepworth/Rutland Mills development because in context it brings a ton to a city which needs revitalising.
What do you think of it @42069666
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