Elfin's Tuesday A+A= Architectural Appreciation! This week- Housing.

Well last week’s pilot was quite successful I thought, and many people enjoyed it. And it’s a change from all the usual grumbling and bickering ion here all too often, so I thought I’d continue with it, for those who have a love and fascination with architecture of all kinds.

And what better place to start, than the home? After all, they say that that’s where the heart is.

So come on, let’s see what yer’ve got! Can be any home or house which has caught your attention or imagination, good, bad or just downright ugly. Could be your own home, or something you’ve seen while abroad.

I grew up on the nineteenth floor of this one, Sandall house in East London. The ’15th floor’ thing indicates where a little girl fell out of the window to her death recently. 🙁 Very isolating, tower blocks. Very little sense of community. Bad design really, speshly for families.

Stayed in an apartment in this monstrosity, Trump Tower in NY. Eric Clapton’s son died after falling through a narrow window of a skyscraper apartment building, so no windows can be opened and it’s all horrible artificial air con. Takes ages to get to street level, and you never get to see your neighbours. Simply the worst type of environment for kids 🙁 No, tower blocks just aren’t right as ‘homes’, imo.

Keeling House in Bethnal Green, with some older terraced cottages in the foreground. Modernism doesn’t really seem to have worked well in terms of housing, with the cottages now far more desirable as homes. If they’re still there. Lots of terraces have been bulldozed to make way for new developments, sadly.

If money were no object, I’d really quite like to have a flat in this place!

Come on, show us yer homes and houses!

This is a local apartment block here in Darmstadt.

Wow! 🙂

Trellick Tower. Best described as a captivating monstrosity. It is ghastly on many levels, but somehow wonderous to look at too. A right old enigma

High & Over – the first modernist house in the UK. 1930ish IIRC.

Here’s my old tower block Fred. Grim aren’t they.

I remember sitting in the kitchen window at night watching the police chases round the precinct. It was very educational. Did you know, for example, that a Renault 5 GT Turbo will fit through a subway entrance but a police Sierra Cosworth won’t?

When it comes to where I’d love to live. Anything Art Deco inspired is fine by me

I particularly like the use of colours and modern building materials. It’s also nice to see the use of outdoor living space and a concession for bicycle parking:

Cheesy; I’ve got the sister building to Trellick just yards from me, Balfron Tower. Nasty ‘orrible thing. A proper carbuncle.

Of course, the lack of availability of space in a city like London means that dense residency housing must be carefully thought out, and the needs of the dwellers carefully considered. sadly, this is all too rare, as architects themselves will never live in such places. Le Corbusier had visions of huge great monolithic structures under his Unité d’Habitation concept, but the bugger never had to bloody live on a council estate, did he? Granted, the socio-economic problems suffered by many residents of such places don’t help, but they are further exacerbated by the brutality of the architecture which is often totally unsympathetic to Humanity, quite frankly.

Robin Hood Gardens; load of fuss kicked up by a bunch of Middle Class do-gooders wanting to preserve such an ‘excellent example of Modernist architecture’. Ponces. They don’t have to live in the crumbling, sub-standard shoddily built behemoth, do they? One resident offered to swap his flat for the home of one of the campaigners. With predictable response.

Trellick Tower? I think Mick Jones used to live there..

This in San Francisco.

No one mentioned the Byker Wall yet?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byker_Wall

Leith’s very own Banana Flats

Bit of a juxtaposition of the shore 200m away

this place was nice to live in

as was this

Helps if people mention where the places are, or the names of the buildings. Makes research easier. 🙂

Oh, and try to avoid posting massive pics, thousands by thousands of pixels, as they take longer to load and slow the thread down. Ta.

Knew Binners was Council Estate Scum…. 😉

How about Le Corbusier’s Unite D’Habitation – the one that kicked it all off.

Or on something of a different tack – Ken Shuttleworth’s Crescent House, which I have been studying recently. It’s sort of interesting, but probably a bit crap to live in;

Gorbals, Glasgow.

As happened elsewhere the tower blocks didn’t quite live up to the architects intended vision…

more pictures and information here[/url]

OK the picture I posted is of the waldspirale. It is owned and run by the German equivalent of a housing association, which just shows that social housing doesn’t have to mean social deprivation.

Think Binners’ pic of the towers was of some of the Halls for Salford Uni? Certainly looked like the place I stayed in at least.

This was on Grand designs, perfect in every way IMO:

The Vele of Scampia

Bit of background here

warton +1

portlyone – It is indeed John Lester Court.

Here’s the infamous Crescents in Hulme, just down the road from me

At least Manchester City Council had the good sense not to tinker around the edges. They levelled the whole place and started from scratch again. Its transformed the area to the extent that it now has a huge metropolitan gay population, affectionately referred too as Hulme-osexuals

This is starting to become a more of a “Elfin’s Tuesday A+A= Housing policy Appreciation – or lack of!” thing. Come on Fred! Get us back on track. Inspire me! 😀

EDIT: and this is my final moan. About middle class do-gooders. This monstrosity:

is a listed building. Go figure! Yet they were happily able to demolish this:

straightforward cultural vandalism IMHO. Notonly was it of huge cultural significance, but a lovely building. And it was interesting historically as it was built as a yacht warehouse. A yacht warehouse? In the city centre of Manchester.

All to build yet more flats. Yip. We’re short of a few of those in town

🙄

the lovely city of Portsmouth again. Last week I posted the Tricorn Centre, an interesting building, which they decided was “ugly” and flattened. However any visitor to Portsmouth is greeted by a half mile row of this:

“How can we make the Estella Street flats look nice?”
“Paint the balconies orange?”
“Great!”

I really, really can’t stand Hundertwasser, but this:

Philip Johnson, New Canaan 1949
or this:

Stephen Holl, Y-House, 2000
or this:

Frank Gehry, Venice Beach House, 1986
are more like it for me.
Not forgetting:

Pierre Koenig, Case Study House 21, 1956-58

That detail of the concrete support in debaser’s pic (great link btw) sort of sums up why Brutalism, whilst perhaps not being the best design solution for housing, certainly does merit appreciation for it’s immense solidity and illusion of strength and power. I can see why it was so popular in Eastern Yerp and the USSR.

Thing about 60s/70s council estates as pictured here, is that whilst they can often be nasty, frightening places harbouring decay, deprivation, fear and despair, there is something almost sexy about them. Dunno, maybe that’s just some sub-concious association of mine perhaps, based on my own experience of such places. but they’re a hell of a lot more exciting and adrenalising than some naff soulless Barrat cul-de-sac, you know? Hmm. Would be interested to hear others’ views on this.

The Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury has gone through periods of change, but I kind of like the overall concept. Certainly, efforts were made to try to bring about some sense of community, maybe society just wasn’t ready for it. And it’s a bit hemmed in I spose. But shops, a library and cinema (albeit a bit of a ‘high-brow’ joint) incorporated into a housing complex? That’s quite nice I think. It’s just a pity that the architects forgot to give people who actually lived there any real space; the flats are still quite ‘compact’, and you’re very cheek-by-jowl with your neighbours, when you might not really want to be. But as an exercise in cramming everything into a small space, it’s reasonably successful given that such concepts were very new and experimental back when it was designed and built, certainly in the UK, where conservatism really was the bane of many an enthusiastic aspiring young architect.

Going off the housing thing, but I like this:

Wythenshawe Park Pavillion. I imagine it looked great when it was built. Still could

This is a new estate in Milton Keynes…the guy opposite me lives here, its a totally characterless place that to me looks like something we draw on Google sketch up at work and has some how been dragged off the drawing board and developed…bloody awful IMO

Salford?

hulme was trully shocking ans the knocked dwon the Hacienda that is proper cultural vandalism of the highest order.
Many ha[ppy nights spent there and that curved corner was beautiful especially the blind spot from the cameras and the bouncers
Scottish council estate/tenament scum here.

Junkyard.

Those houses in that pic are pretty standard stuff. I travel a lot around the UK and they are everywhere. Must have come in kit form.

something a bit more positive then… interesting:

Yakisugi House by Terunobu Fujimori

The Toilet House by Sim Jae-duck

This is starting to become a more of a “Elfin’s Tuesday A+A= Housing policy Appreciation – or lack of!” thing. Come on Fred! Get us back on track. Inspire me!

Sorry! 😳 I do get a bit carried away when it comes to nasty ‘orrible council estates. Thing is, they do excite me somewhat, and I’ve lived on the bloody things for most of my life.

EDIT: and this is my final moan. About middle class do-gooders. This monstrosity is a listed building. Go figure! Yet they were happily able to demolish this:

I feel you pain. The same thing has happened here. Loads of old brick dock buildings and streets of houses were torn down, and replaced with concrete boxes. Which are now being torn down. 😕

“How can we make the Estella Street flats look nice?”
“Paint the balconies orange?”
“Great!”

They’ve done a fair bit of ‘cosmetic enhancement’ to buildings here. Painted the outsides of them, yet the same problems exist inside. Spose it brightens up the place a bit though, many estates seemed to improve greatly during the last government. I expect to see a gradual decline once more now though.

I really, really can’t stand Hundertwasser

That’s because you’re an architect, and only like to draw straight lines and perpendicular corners on things. Why is it that architects design the most spectacularly boring homes for themselves??

I do like Falling Water though, I must say.

Why hasnt this been posted yet?

Damn didnt refresh thread..

where is that falling water house?

I find this place interesting – Chimney Pot Park in Salford

I don’t particularly like fallingwater its a bit medallion man type house, I expect its all carpeted walls and waterbeds inside. It neither fits in with its surroundings or contrasts with them, its just rather dull and of its time.

Ms Pendleton, just for TJ.

I’d have gladly laid her foundations 8)

EDIT – sorry RB but you’re guilty by association, your current persona doesn’t fool me laddy

I used to live in Keeling House! In about 2002 I think after it had been refurbished. Quite nice building but we’d still get mugged for our mobile phones in the surrounding streets.

My in-law’s house: