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I quite like 50s/60s buildings and particularly Brutalist ones - but then I know why they're called Brutalist... 😉
For a rather more in depth study of crap buildings feast your eyes at Owen Hatherley's sublime [url= http://badbritisharchitecture.blogspot.com/ ]Bad British Architecture blog[/url]
The Florey Building, Oxford. I had the "pleasure" of living in this for a year...
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Ooh, talking of shopping centres (like Salford ^^)
This place:
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Elephant and Castle, London. A truly awful abomination of 1950's concrete, a huge shopping centre containing not a lot, god-awful tenement flats, railway arches, 2 massive roundabouts, underpass systems and a Tube station that smell of piss and last time they attempted to make the place look nice they painted it bright pink, just to make the eyesore really stand out. It's in the process of being completely redone although I suspect the only way of improving it is with a large amount of high explosive...
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😉
Good thread this week, agree on Salford (the shopping "city" is a dump, why do they need to advertise it with massive red letters?) and GMP police stations. Oh and the Arndale.
I'd like to propose the complete and utter distruction of Leigh please. Most of the nicer buildings have already gone, so we might as well just flatten the place. Preferably with the inhabitants still inside.
Starting with the library..
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Then moving onto Market Street, home of various pound shops, a bookies and a cash generator.
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Don't break wind near this sign, it's only bluetacked on.. Pig Ugly town, pig ugly sign..
&
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European Architect draws inspiration from other pig ugly buildings.. We're not the only ones to fall foul of the blind Etcha Sketch weilding skool of design.. There all over Europe these things..
This ones in Cologne.
Another place that needs nuking from orbit? Stockport
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What an armpit of a place. The only decent piece of architecture is the huge railway viaduct leading to Manchester
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Right next to Liverpools Famous waterfront... awful
While Leigh's being cleared, any spare TNT for Farnworth?
i want to post a pic of Beijing... its all gross
I'm loving the Bile..
LOL
timc - I'm always staggered that they were able to build that abomination next to such architectural majesty. But they haven't learnt their lesson. They're on about encroaching on the Graces with another set of modernist abominations
Looks great. I'm sure it'll improve things for the better. It all looks perfectly in keeping:
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🙄
Stockport Town centre is a lot nicer than you think. Admittedly the motorway bit is a hell hole, as is the shopping centre bit, but the old streets and Market Place are Victorian gems, as is the Robbie's brewery - it looks like Willy Wonka's factory, right in the centre of town. No doubt there are loads of Oompa Loompas making the beer. Well, I'd suspect they would be if they weren't all hanging around Piccadilly Gardens.
To be honest, the majority of Manchester city centre is horrendous. Apart from the Town Hall and Court it looks like a bigger version of Peterlee.
😆
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Can we just flatten some of Stockport and make the A6 dual carriageway then? Worst thing about going to the Castleton and Hope bits of the Peak are having to drive through Stockport to get there..
My one and only (to date) film role is in Threads
Wow... [i]still[/i] one of the most terrifying films ever made.
Back OT: Bristol's harbourside flats - an object lesson in how to ruin an interesting location.
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It's brand spanking new and looked better with the scaffolding on. Ladies and gentlemen I give you the Hepworth in Wakefield. Will they never learn.
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just awful
Back OT: Bristol's harbourside flats - an object lesson in how to ruin an interesting location.
So true - how they thought what looks like a cheap Benidorm rat warren hotel could be a good thing to put there is beyond me and what a suprise, it's still largely empty...
Colston Tower in Bristol is fugly too
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this thread is useless without pictures (of Milton Keynes)
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@binners, yes i have seen the designs!
I actually live in one of the new build high rise apartments in Princes dock, town, basically its the best flat you can get city centre on my budget & i actually have a view of the desertered docks to the North. The building actually has great views & is lovely inside but as a piece of architecture, its pretty crap!
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Apart from that big x60 storey building, I would welcome investment in the area, I think its far enough away from the 3 graces not to cause to much of an intrusion, plus the Sand castle & new L1 buildings already surround the 3 Graces with Horrid modern Architecture
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Bristol Royal Infirmary - its as grim inside as well. Amazing anyone gets better there.
I'm pleased you put up the Bristol docks - they're destined to become the social housing of 2020 I reckon. And just opposite are some hideous flats that started falling down after ooh, at most 5 years. I must find a photo.
Come on people, that's it; let the hatred course through your veins....
News International plant, Wapping. No need to say any more:
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Sun Alliance brought the land around this church:
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knocked down the church, left the spire and built this around it:
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(There was an issue with the church needing tonnes of money for restoration, but I know which view I prefer!)
Yer average new house:
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Apex Plaza nr Reading Station. Someones first attempt with an out of date CAD package. Drag and drop a few semi-circle windows and then render in pink to complete the look.
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Some pretty foul stuff going on there in Newcastle.
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Pretty much every single one of Stewart Milne's identikit monstrocities with which Aberdeen is so generously endowed.
Pictured is one of the less hideous.
I actually like Birmingham Library. As a kid we used to skateboard around the hollow interior and as an adult I always found the interior pretty cool as well as a treasure trove of books, newspapers and information of all kinds. The fact that it got up Prince Charles's elitist hooter makes it all the more appealing.
Elitism seems to run deep through this thread though. Don't see much hatred for the vast canon of neo classical ostentation, built largely on the back of exploitation. I could post some up but it would be quicker that everyone just googles the National Trust and fills their own boots.
It's pretty shallow to knock most of the stuff that's been blasted on here. Most of it was built in a hurry, at a time of economic hardship after the Luftwaffe had decided that we needed to re-plan our cities. Those buildings represent a new world and a people determined to get back to normal as quickly as possible after 6 years of trauma, heartache and deprevation.
Any one of those buildings says far more about the good of the human condition and of our heritage than any revolting stately home.
The University of Bristol's Stundent's Union. A more hateful, bland concrete monstrosity I have yet to find. That's pretty much the only picture of it on Google Images, perhaps the Uni knows how terrible it is and has attempted to censor it. Made worse by the fact that the University owns many fanstastic buildings and grounds.
I had my bike nicked from the underground carpark, though it did have a nice basement swimming pool when I was there.
corby bus station
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It's pretty shallow to knock most of the stuff that's been blasted on here. Most of it was built in a hurry, at a time of economic hardship after the Luftwaffe had decided that we needed to re-plan our cities. Those buildings represent a new world and a people determined to get back to normal as quickly as possible after 6 years of trauma, heartache and deprevation.
There's plenty of stuff posted here that was built during periods of great prosperity. I don't mind all Brutalist architecture, frinstance, but a building should be designed to be fit for purpose, and many of these really aren't. Poor design, shoddy workmanship, poor quality materials all combine to produce monstrous carbuncles we could well do without.
Any one of those buildings says far more about the good of the human condition and of our heritage than any revolting stately home.
OK then, go and live in one of them then. Go and live in something like Robin Hood Gardens then see how much you like that kind of architecture. Then come and talk to me about the 'Human Condition'.
Vulgar neoclassical stately homes, eh? Well, I've never found this lump at all architecturally interesting, in fact it's a proper eyesore tbh. And I'm not a fayn of what it represents either. I for one would be quite pleased to see it gone:
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It wasn't just the Germans that carpet bombed cities during the war you know.. We did a fair bit of that too.. Dusseldorf anyone?? Yet somehow European tower blocks seem to just fit better in larger open spaces in thier far better planned out cities than our carbuncles stuck in between teeny city/town centers.
As for stately homes etc. well some are rather pretty places, shame you have to pay to get in most of them, but at least they're open to the public these days..well some are unless you got through the back door that is.
Beacon Tower, Fishponds, Bristol. It's astonishing. I can't actually find a photo of it, I assume most cameras commit suicide if you try.
You know the magic ratio of proportions used to create a graceful, balanced structure? There is an opposite, and that figure is hidden somewhere in the measurements of this building. It's too short to actually be a tower for a start, but too regular to be a turd. It really does deserve some sort of a prize for unfeasibly bad design. It's not ugly as such, just.. just [i]wrong[/i].
Skelmersdale new town from end to end we start with this
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linked bty the bridge of sighs to this
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exiting to this Italian plaza with this
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That is literally the town centre nuking it from orbit is not enough
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One of the most beautiful buildings in Britain. No, the world.
Now, stand in the wrong place and in the same view you can also see this
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Good bars and promotions in the late 80's though.....
Lol at Kingsgate above (durham) - that building was award winning when built. Good drinks promos however even in the late 90's.
I really agree with the slating of Southampton in particular but the more general issue I have is that while I understand post-war austerity led to poor/stopgap buildings successive council planning departments and developers have continued the abuse - the attitude seems to be that the town already looks like sh**e so let anyone build any old rubbish they want.
I'd rather see a slightly more picky approach that forces architects to consider creating 'new' uses for the space than simply building another box with some wood stuck on the front and an asymetric window halfway up. The current recession isn't going to help this either.
I don't know if this stuff exists elsewhere int eh UK but there is a huge amount of new building in edinburgh in this style. This is a [particularly shit example - won an awrd an all and only put up a few years back
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Casa Cultura, Alcobendas.
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Both horrible and highly visible. 😥
I kinda like the brutalist style of architecture.. Reminds us of the time when concrete was the go to material of the future.. It all looks ugly to us now but at the time it was the stuff of Buck Rodgers et al..
So.. Let's see.. Here in scotchland, anything by Messrs Gillespie, Kidd and Coia would prob work.. Cardross Seminary perhaps? Now sitting ruined, crumbling and on the endangered list. Once a stunning building inside and out, have wandered round it recently and you can still imagine how it would have been so exciting to look at when new..
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Thank you Frank Lloyd Wright!
Sorry, that "after" pic of the seminary is prob a bit optimistic, was prob taken 10 or 15 years ago.
Place is much worse now.. Deteriorating quite badly, would be surprised if, in the current financial climate, it'll be restored/saved..
Managed to have a "cheeky" look at the place.. The collapsed suspended wooden lecture theatre ceiling almost made me cry!!
Sigh.
Ps, props to elfin for these threads.. Love my buildings, history etc..
How about this most lazy of "architecture"? It's a box with cladding glued to the outside. You know, similar to what you used to do in arts & crafts when you were 6.
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In the same vein, St Paul's Carpark/Tower:
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The new Civil Justice Building in Manchester.
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Designed by a kid with a messy bedroom.