The New A+A: It's Elfin's Tuesday Architectural Appreciation thread!!!

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.

Some gems close to me:

Canary Wharf Tube Station:

Abbey Mills Pumping Station:

Kereling house, Bethnal Green; Architect Denys Lasdun, famous for the Royal National Theatre on the South Bank”:

Go!

Can’t do piccy posting but a big fan of the various Guggenheims. Esp the one in New York although Bilbao is an upstart pretender.

Local and impossing.




NOt a lot else inspring up north as it is grim

sorry in order
Darwen Tower
LE mans Crescent , Bolton
Liverpool museum + liver building – you must like that one ?
Manchester library

The very cradle of League Football.

Vandalised and destroyed by Doug Ellis with the help of B’ham city council.

NOt a lot else inspring up north as it is grim

and of course

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Soup Kitchen from underpass[/url] by Lee Collis[/url], on Flickr

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Soup Kitchen[/url] by Lee Collis[/url], on Flickr

and

nice to see this hasn’t turned into an elitist, neo-classical love in.

keep it up guys. 8)

The Ark at Hammersmith fascinates in a strange way, can never figure out if it is genius or not.

Abbey Mills is even more impressive when you are in side it, the victorians really did go overboard with that one.

Natural History Museum.

I cant do piccies

yunki –

is that the place overlooking Lustleigh Cleave – pre facelift ?

Local and impossing.

more like “impossible” as the top has blown off it 🙂

What an excellent start! 😀

Some brilliant examples too. Gives me a few ideas for future themes.

Oh well, if you can’t beat them…

I know they’re obvious but these are two of my favourite recent additions

Just stands out – Interesting up close too with it’s double skin.

Simple shapes just look great and you can’t beat a circle for that. Looks amazing from water level directly beneath it too.

Trailmonkey – No.. the one in the pic is in Pembrokeshire.. I wasn’t aware that there was a similar one above the Cleave..

that’s interesting.. I’d like to see it.. I’m up that way tomorrow and Saturday.. can you be more accurate about the location..?

The bestest architecture is the stuff we can ride.

C’mon, piccies is easy!

Balancing Barn:
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Velodrome:

Ocrider where is that?

yunki – follow the BW/Rupp ( not quite sure) from Manaton to Water. Look on the OS.

Fabulous trail too 8)

I like the building, but surprised they got planning permission for this at Craiglockhart campus in Edinurgh…

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& a place more interesting than I realised when visiting it as a nipper, the Italian chapel in Orkney –

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Paint work inside is amazing

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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..

Now a big flat car park 🙁

nice to see some appreciation for my profession! 🙂 Ill be back to post some of my favs later…

Loddrik Cirque de l’Infernet,Saint Guilhem le Desert

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.

Something subterranean. The tunnels underneath Manchester:

and the Beatham tower at night from the town hall

All photo’s by Andrew Brooks for the Hidden Manchester exhibition at Urbis last year. Stunning!!!

A surprisingly random choice of “lol cat” there.

I was trying to go architectural but could not find anything, however that gave me a LOL so I thought I should post it.

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.

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Work.

Always thought it was a bit interesting – definitely not to everyone’s taste, as all good architecture should be.

Rachel

can’t find any decent pics of it, but my son’s school is pretty kool (for a skool)

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).

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Lloyds Building reflected in Willis Building5[/url] by gary_foulger[/url], on Flickr