essay prompt: 'discuss the "wide variety of retail and cultural experiences" imagined by Ebenezer Howard'
Love that little curved balcony above the entrance. I'm imagining proclamations of interest rates and such things!
End of week reading. @samwetherell.bsky.social's excellent new urban history of post-war Liverpool.
Yesterday - teaching @edincollegeofart.bsky.social Architectural History students in the archive. Drawings of Coventry Cathedral from the Basil Spence archive, as well as many other items that showed the collaborative process by which the cathedral was designed and built.
I'd long wondered if Clarence was an acronym (because Strathclyde had a wee dog called RALF - Road & Light Faults). I thought it might be 'Central and Lothian something'; it was Customer Lighting And Roads ENquiry CEntre.
First day of the new academic year @edincollegeofart.bsky.social. This semester's teaching includes my course on architecture in Britain 1919-56.
There's a lot to be said for 1970s houses and flats - at their best, they can be really well planned. Many congratulations!
New towns stuff! It was very good to talk to @charlielynch.bsky.social for this feature. The book is still available - in print but also as an open access (free!) e-book at www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?do...
I have to say that I quite like the Reader title even though it often needs explaining! But then I have always been a bit contrary.
Recently @vawright10.bsky.social and I were interviewed for a podcast about the Scottish new towns book which we recently co-wrote (and which is available Open Access for free download via bloomsburycollections, though you can also buy a copy in print if you wish!)
Reposted by: Alistair Fair
🔉 Listen in! Dr @alistairfair.bsky.social & Dr @vawright10.bsky.social: Building Modern Scotland - The Social Histories of New Towns. Ep3, s2 of Artful Inquiry, the ECA research podcast.
Listen in on Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/1qDQ...
More about the series: www.eca.ed.ac.uk/eca-research...
Listen in on Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/1qDQ...
More about the series: www.eca.ed.ac.uk/eca-research...
Spotify – Web Player
open.spotify.com
Northampton Guildhall extension - 1991 by Stimpson Walton Bond. Contextual Gothic to echo the adjacent Victorian Gothic.
Malcolm Inglis building, Northampton (1900). Built for a leather and hide factor. A piece of Glasgow especially in the carving above the entrance, where we have St Mungo and the two salmon from the city's coat of arms.
I was in Digbeth for the first time in years recently for a new towns thing and was astonished by the changes as the HS2-related wave of housing sweeps in
Working on Northampton new town. Today's discovery is that a promotional record about the town was issued as a single in 1980. It had a version of the song with lyrics about aliens on the A-side with the promotional version, '60 Miles by Road or Rail', on the B-side. www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7ZQ...
Linda Jardim - (60 Miles by Road or Rail) Northampton
YouTube video by EvenThisNameTaken
www.youtube.com
Former Debenhams/Bon Marché store, Gloucester: the early 1960s part of the building very like the Festival Hall's original 1951 elevations, especially the small windows to the left which echo those which originally illuminated the RFH's side fire escape stairs.
Reposted by: Alistair Fair
Things you can do with a former Debenhams store. #Gloucester #refurbishment #repurpose #architecture #university
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
📷 flic.kr/p/2pMdKcQ
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
📷 flic.kr/p/2pMdKcQ
Watch this space for an Essex Design Guide article...on my list of things to write up this autumn.
A morning of course admin and intranet stuff for next semester. Luna has appeared to offer moral support.
Good to see this chapter in print, perfectly timed to go on the reading list for my course on interwar architecture next semester!
Didn't know about the Lock plan - must look it up. In the early 1970s, there was a plan to put a theatre on the riverside and designs were made by Rod Ham (who'd done the Leatherhead Thorndike). The idea must trace its roots back to the Lock plan.
There is some older stuff (definitely 70s/80s) in there though you're right that coverage is patchy.
Changed trains at Birmingham New St y/day. This is part of the station's Navigation Street entrance and footbridge, built in the early 1990s and now looking a little grubby. I do like this era of railway architecture.
Box of Broadcasts (can't remember if it includes ITV though). We have an institutional subscription to it.
You say that but the garage associated with our old Edinburgh flat had been lined and fitted out as a workshop/darkroom, with a polished pine floor over the concrete. As we wanted to use it as an actual garage, the Mini we had in those days was parked on said floor. It did creak a bit...
Sad news overnight of serious damage by fire to St Mungo's church, Cumbernauld - designed by Alan Reiach 1963-64. Its dedication echoed Glasgow cathedral & recognised the Glaswegian roots of many early residents in the new town, which had been begun a few years before
Excellent news that the Bernat Klein studio has been bought by a coalition of heritage groups. The hard work starts here. Photo by me in 2016.
