[Closed] Elfin's Tuesday Architectural Appreciation thread!! This week- Public Buildings

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Manchester Central Library

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beautiful building. Though i loath the place having spent what seemed like every waking hour in there doing my dissertation 🙁

I like this one down your neck of the woods Fred

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Bet you can't guess where this is!

Bolton town hall is quite nice too

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Are we allowed museums or is that a whole separate topic?

Barrow Town Hall?

yossarian - is that Durham?

How about Scotlandshire town hall?

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IMHO the detailing is fantastic but the concept doesn't work as a whole.

Museums, hmm, not sure, I spose so, as long as they're 'publicly' owned. Many are 'owned' and run by charities rather than local authorities/the State.

Peckham Library is mental. It's got little pods inside.

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Manchester Town Hall

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Looks a bit weird from the outside but there's a lovely stained glass window and its all bean bags and light and airy inside

Ramsbottom Library by the way.....

pps: The Rake race goes up past if it any of you do that or is that Roadies and I've just said a swear word..... 😯

I know its modern but we have electricity and everything now in Bury.... real carriages that move without horses

The Civic Centre; Baltic and The Sage in Newcastle...

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IMHO the detailing is fantastic but the concept doesn't work as a whole.

I had fun spinning that out to 3000 words recently...

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I've never been, but the Geisel Library always looks like an exciting bit of brutalism to me.

This one will be a 'marmite' one I'm sure..Manchester Civil Justice Building

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I like it because i think it looks like a court should look. A bit imposing

The old County Council offices for Suffolk, now sadly awaiting destruction or redevelopment. Horrible inside, imposing on the outside.

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Also, Shire Hall, Woodbridge. I liked it so much I got married there.

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Will Self's favourite, apparently.

Casa del Fascio, Como, Italy:

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I think that the Manchester Civil Justice building looks like a chest of drawers after a robbery.

We done stations a couple of weeks ago, Woppit. Nice example though.

I'm assuming this falls under the 'publicly owned' remit:

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I have never been tried there. 🙂

Or here:

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Madrid Barajas

I don't think you're quite getting this, Woppit. Stations is a different subsection. Although I'm not sure, are Spanish railways state owned? That would make the buildings publicly owned I pose. But this is more about yer town halls, libraries and that. Another stunning example mind, i'll give you that.

Edit: Just learned it's an airport. Even more innapropriate! 😀

I'll be doing a 'Ports' edition soon, then you can post it up there. Good to see the appreciation for architecture though.

Wythenshaw Pavilion

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Its fallen into the state a lot of municipal buildings are in. A travesty really. I'd love to buy it and do something nice with it. Only trouble is, its in Wythenshaw. Still... there's room for a machine gun turret on top. And you could have boiling oil next to the window ready to pour on the hordes of marauding scallies

An increasingly rare publicly owned architectural sight, but one which I often deeply appreciate

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Good call there Ernie; public loos are disappearing from our high streets. Some of them really are little gems though.

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These are in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, wherever that is:

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It would surely be a privilege, to urinate in such an ornate setting.

I think this one's got goldfish in the cisterns......which should give you something interesting to look at whilst having a slash

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You can get a beer in these ones Fred 😀

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And you can get all sorts of things in the ones Hora frequents

I wandered around manchester library with a friend a couple of years back, enthusing about how nice it was compared to brum's. he thought i was exaggerating, so i took him for a look. you know that look someone has when they can taste sick?
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the brutalism style doesn't really work with what's around it, and doesn't help brum's image of being a concrete horror show. but the real bad points are the dreadful little precinct underneath it, and the way the facilities seem to just have been thrown in there at random.

i'm undecided on the new one - looks a bit like someone had some fancy trellis they wanted shot of, though the skylight in the pavement so's you can watch someone play the piano down there's a nice grandiose touch.
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Ceausescu's Palace of Parliament - as public buildings go, they don't get much bigger or more controversial.

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A building from my childhood

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If I am ever fabulously wealthy, I am going to have a proper marble urinal installed in my house.

But I digress.

Come on Ernie, you live in an area of Great Architectural Significance...

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[img] http://www.dekb.co.uk/home/images/abp2.jp g" target="_blank">http://www.dekb.co.uk/home/images/abp2.jp g"/> &sa=X&ei=HW5_Tb3CFoK14gbbhtDYBw&ved=0CAQQ8wc4AQ&usg=AFQjCNFryIdunSj6pVHlVUJDR0codAZr_g[/img]
Southampton Geothermal Energy Plant, using the architectural equivalent of blitzkrieg to highlight its environmental contribution situated slap bang in the middle of a shopping mall car park. Southampton's Town Planners should be merited for their forward thinking with this contribution to the City's skyline.

40mpg - I thought the law clearly stated that all environmental buildings HAVE to be painted green. Now i know why 😕

And you can get all sorts of things in the ones Hora frequents

Most unsavoury. 🙁

We've got a bierkeller like that here too, Binners:

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Über, über trendy.

And a few from adulthood

Leeds
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Shrewsbury

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Manchester
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That brings back memories Bregante, I did 8 Months at Leeds (Armley) Prison back in 1995.
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Doing a refurb of A Wing, not a prisoner!

I think I confused "publicly owned" with "publicly used". Or should that be "yer" publicly used "innit"?

Hadn't considered prisons, nice work Bregante! 🙂

The Scrubs:

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Some listed 60's concrete - well i like it.

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Haven't got any pictures,but Inverness Town House is worth a google. Like Willard earlier, I liked it so much I gor married there!

If I ever marry, it shall be here:

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Not strictly a public building - Manchester University, Fallowfield Campus. "The Toast Rack"

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The much maligned Birmingham Central library.

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Always loved the library building, especially as a youngster skateboarding around the hollow interior. The fact that jug eared twunt Prince Charles hates the place for not conforming to his neo classical ideals makes it all the more special.

Birmingham University, which I'm sure jug ears would love.

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This is the art deco swimming baths at the bottom of the road where I grew up

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And this is the interior. The pool used to get boarded up during the winter and the baths were used as a venue for music ( The Beatles played there ) and as a venue for the local 5 a side league - Monday nights, 20 minute games, packed to the rafters, great stuff.

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Not really 'public' but when i did my degree there you could just walk in and have a go on the paternoster lifts (which they turn the speed down on every september 😆 ). View from floor 18 would be great if it didn't look over such a crap town.
[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attenborough_Building ]Attenborough Building, Leicester University.[/url]
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So ugly they listed it as a reminder of 'how not to', which unfortunately means we're stuck with it. In fact, I think it may have been the architects only bit of work, built, not surprising really.

New County Hall, Cornwall btw.

"Binners - Member
This one will be a 'marmite' one I'm sure..Manchester Civil Justice Building"

Binners, agree on the Marmite comment. I worked on the MCJC during construction and it is an awesome piece of engineering. The Beetham Tower (Hilton) was going up at the same time and stole the limelight, but there's some impressive stuff in the Civil Justice Centre.

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London Road Fire Station (Manchester). Empty and future in the balance. Edwardian quality.

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Sorry not a public building (deco Express building). Another manchester favourite

Jeeze, I never knew Manchester had so many great buildings! I might even have to visit the place one of these days.

There. I've said it. 😳

Fire stations? This place meant a lot to me as a very small child. In fact, I wanted to be a fire engine when I grew up.

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Bethnal Green.

I spose hospitals count as 'public/civic' buildings:

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Paddington.

I was born in this one:

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Now turned into flats. 🙁

This is St. Clements in Mile End, originally a workhouse, then a mental health centre.

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Will also soon be flats.

FFS Elfie, Bethnal Green fire station is just a fire station - it isn't a piece of wondrous architecture which ranks in the appreciation stakes.

Here, I give you Chelsea fire station .........it needs a bit of a clean, but I'm sure that you'll agree that it's a, well, fire station.

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And my training tower's bigger than yours btw

It's my thread so I can do what I want with it. It's about architecture that is significant to you personally. The good, the bad, the ugly. Whatever you find interesting.

Not that you'd understand what 'appreciation' means, coming from Croydon...

Guy's Hospital Tower; a truly ugly building scarring London's skyline.

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Apparently the tallest hospital building in the World. Wouldn't look out of place in, or spoil Croydon, tbh. Cracking view from't top though.

It's about architecture that is significant to you personally.

Is that why you chose a fire station with a freakishly small training tower ?

My home town:

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Leeds Civic Hall

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Leeds Town Hall

Is that why you chose a fire station with a freakishly small training tower ?

Yes it is Ernie.

And you can go and tell that to the firefighters what work and train there, and I will sit and eat a pastie as they batter you with their hoses.

Always mocking and cruel, never nice. Why can't you be more like me?

Go and find an interesting public building in Croydon please.

as they batter you with their hoses

Yeah right, firefighters are a right bunch of soft pussies. They're probably well pleased that they've only got a little titchy training tower.....and not one of them big scary ones with them nasty mobile phone masts on top of it.

[url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1411687.stm ]Fire officers in Suffolk are refusing to use their drill tower because of fears the mobile phone masts on top are a health risk.[/url]

Jeeze, I never knew Manchester had so many great buildings! I might even have to visit the place one of these days.

Let us know when. I'm sure we could arrange for you to be met (not in a sinister way!).

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Habitat in Manchester. Not much of a building but during WW2 my gran worked there. A bomb got dropped down the lift shaft and didn't go off but the rush of air blew the contents on the ground floor out through the windows. My gran had to pick it all up.

Bit late posting it, but I didn't have a photo available to put up, so I took this one this afternoon:
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Pretty new, and built after a lot of complaining by some people, it's the Records Office for Swindon and Wiltshire. I really like the design, although it's pretty rectilinear, it has a touch of Frank Lloyd Wright about it.

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Senate House, London.

The recently opened Hehir Building in Ipswich, it's a science block for UCS (public cos it's got a cafe on the ground floor.
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And the admin block/lecture rooms around the corner. It has a sedum covered roof which is red every spring and green later. Gallery on ground floor is open to the public.
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