So sad when Yoguslavia fell apart. I went there as a kid on a European driving holiday. I learnt to swim and to avoid sea urchins in now Croatia. I drove a minibus to Greece through Yoguslavia aged 22 then the lovely places that I’d visited became a war zone.
Whilst Tito was a dictator the fiction that he built helped keep the lid on.
Cardross seminary. I’ve a wee guilty admission that I think it looks better derelict than it ever did in use, it’s even more concretey.
Thats nothing to be guilty about – It does look great derelict – seems to defy gravity. Its a shame NVA’s plans to stabilise it as a ruin – a sort of semi open-air pavilion – and make it accessible again have been torpedoed.
I got to spend a couple of days clambering about the place as part of a film project recently and its strange floating quality was really disconcerting – it really doesn’t seam to want to touch the ground
I bought my brother a book of soviet era Russian bus stops recently
Cardross seminary. I’ve a wee guilty admission that I think it looks better derelict than it ever did in use, it’s even more concretey.
Thats nothing to be guilty about – It does look great derelict – seems to defy gravity. Its a shame NVA’s plans to stabilise it as a ruin – a sort of semi open-air pavilion – and make it accessible again have been torpedoed.
I got to spend a couple of days clambering about the place as part of a film project recently and its strange floating quality was really disconcerting – it really doesn’t seam to want to touch the ground
I got the Russian Bus Stops book for my birthday, love it.
Is Cardross still there? I’m staying not far from there next summer and I’ve always fancied a wander around.
I got the Russian Bus Stops book for my birthday, love it.
Rik? is that you?
Is Cardross still there? I’m staying not far from there next summer and I’ve always fancied a wander around.
Yes its still there but what the access arrangements are at present I’m not sure – NVA acquired the building a few years ago and did a lot of cleanup/make safe work (in the sense of dealing with quite a lot of asbestos that was littering the site). That meant the site was then secured and had 24 hr security so you couldn’t just rock up and wander about is as you could in the past.
They secured funding to renovate/make safe as sort of pavilion /perfomance venue but having secured the funding for the work they then had the funding for themselves as an organisation pulled and they’ve gone under as a result. So I don’t currently know where that leaves ownership of the site and whether its still being kept secure.
I also don’t know what the status of the funds that we’re committed to the renovation – whether another organisation could step in and continue the project or whether that has all evaporated now
Really, yes. It comes from the french “brut” meaning raw, referencing the raw concrete that Le Corbusier used to create his buildings. It’s not really about “brutal” architecture
My old Uni… always seems to get forgotten, I guess unless you’ve been there it just doesn’t appear on the radar..
It’s pretty well-known, but it’s Modernist, not Brutalist.
Edit: I stand corrected (by Wikipedia). It has a lot of glass by what I think of as Brutalist standards. A google tells me that Brutalism doesn’t even have to involved concrete but generally does.
Actually it doesn’t need to be concrete – the first reference was by Hans Asplund as a name for a style related to a domestic scaled masonry building around 1950, it was only really in the mid 50 then mid 60s when Reyner Banham named the school of architecture led by (amongst others) the Alison and Peter Smithson as “The New Brutalists” and leading on from le Corbusier’s <i>béton brut</i> after the war, based on pre-war buildings by Perret amongst others.
Berkshire “Shire Hall”, a monument to local government stupidity. They spent a fortune building huge out of town offices, then split the council up into smaller districts, couldn’t then sell it as it’s not in the town, so sold it to Foster Wheeler at a massive loss. Foster Wheeler’s USA arm then almost went bankrupt and was bailed out by the UK operations selling the office building to an investment company with themselves as a sitting tenant, apparently that “project” made more money than any other actual work done in the building!
From this angle it just looks horrible, from the roadside it looks like a Bond villains lair with multiple levels of underground car parks and ventilation ducts missile silo’s.
From a distance though it kinda makes sense, it’s on the top of a hill with a further artificial slope on two sides, so it sort of looks like a Brutalist reimagining of Windsor castle!
And like all good cold war buildings, there’s a nuclear bunker in the basement.
My brother works in that building for Foster Wheeler. Judging by their layoffs over the last few years they’ll be rattling round in there with a floor for each of them.
Rapha have a “brutalist” tour map of London on thier website if anyone fancies a poodle around town..
I went on one about 2yrs ago and it was surprising to see so many buildings still standing.. the Court House on Euston Rd is especially interesting as it’s hardly visiable from the main road, but behind it is fabulous.