Well, it seems a fair few of you lot are fayns of architectural design, so why not have a new-type intellectually stimulating regular thread? Weekly? Monthly?
‘But what’s it got to do with bikes??’ I hear the Philistines cry. Simple really; our wonderful sport allows us to get out an explore, whether in rural places, or urban environments. And a lot of us do live in towns and cities. Having a bike is one of the best ways to get out and actually explore the World around us, and see all sorts of interesting stuff.
We could have weekly themes, bit like the photography thread. For this inaugural thread, let’s just have a celebration of architecture of all sorts. Can be fave buildings of yours, quirky interesting places on your regular routes, or just stuff you like from around the World. Don’t have to be big, or grand, just something that speaks to you.
I’ll have to start off with a bit of London, of course, but feel free to post pics, yer own if you’ve got ’em, of buildings and structures, and a bit about why you like them/find them interesting, if you want to.
The Tricorn Centre, Portsmouth. They said it was ugly. But there was a nightclub at the top where we went every weekend. I played gigs there.
And I also met my lovely wife there in 1986..
I’ve spent quite a lot of time working in both of these places
The sheer level of detail is fantastic, and all cast in Terracotta. Every time I visit I end up spotting some thing new.
Utter poohole to work in, but sooo iconic. The guy responsible for stripping the roof off needs standing against a wall and shooting. I would love to have seen it in it’s heyday. What’s left of the interiors of the turbine halls is beautiful, and the control rooms are simply gobsmacking.
Binners that second (and third) pic looks like a screenshot from some scary FPS.
I wanna look round these manchester tunnels, quite a few about I beleive.
Donk. You can get tours of them. They were built as underground canals in the industrial revolution. They’re HUUUUUUUUGE!! Masterpieces of victorian engineering that were never used. Apart froma brief life as air raid shelters during the second world war. You wouldn’t even know they’re there
Taking the whole tunnels thing a stage further – especially with ref. to one of Elfin’s original post – I reckon the whole London tube network could count. So many of the stations are architecturally interesting and great examples “of their era”, once you strip away the grime and all the extraneous tat that’s been bolted on top.
I’m going to go a bit european… Berlin to be exact, a city that became a semi-blank canvas to people’s ideas of modern, nestled closely with some stunning pre-war buildings.
Firstly the Mary-Elisabeth-Lueders Haus:
Next up, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche between Zoo Station and the old East Berlin border (you may remember seeing it briefly in Octopussy).