Tag: architecture

July 1st – New Street Station is still a mess, still barely functional, and mostly, I think, now beyond reclamation. But on an early summer sunny morning, there’s something about the concrete, steel and surrounding architecture that renders it if not impressive, then rather fascinating. Architectural styles and textures clash. Machinery grinds and rumbles. Rails screech and clatter. Overhead wires buzz and crackle.

In the midst of this, the most unnatural, built environment that one would consider utterly hostile – signs of life. Shrubs and weeds, their seeds deposited by birds or wind, by luck find a little moisture, a sheltered fissure and just a little nutrition.

If only human design had such bare-faced tenacity, audacity and beauty.

January 27th – I was stood on platform 5 waiting for a train at New Street Station. I looked up at the odd, tube-like access bridge hastily added as a second access system here in the early 1990s, in the wake of the Kings Cross Fire; because New Street was classed as a subterranean station, it had to have separate access. So cranes added this monstrosity, now out of use. 

Looking up in my early morning fug, I noted the arrangement of walkways, barriers, rails and safety harness mounting points spanning the top of the structure.

The only purpose to be up there is to clear the skylight windows.

If you design something, and most of the complex steelwork is to ensure the safety of a window cleaner whose job is to clear less than 15 square meters of glass, you’ve failed as a designer.

Sadly this monstrosity looks set to survive the renovations.

August 18th – I passed through West Hill in Cannock on the way to Pye Green. I always come this way if I’m heading to the west of the Chase, but the hills are punishing. Today, I stopped to take a drink and noticed West Hill Primary School. What a fine bit of Victorian, municipal architecture it is. Huge windows, fantastically detailed in execution, the brickwork around the gables and eaves is a joy to behold, as are the decorative ironwork – just look at the floral finials. Good job they chose regular numbers and not Roman for the date inscription, that gable would have to have been a lot wider…

Then, as I moved on a little, I spotted what must have been the original school house; plainer, simpler, but again with lovely arched end windows and imposing chimneys. 

This is a fine school indeed. 

March 30th – Off to work early, and a return via Slowloaf in Mellish Road. Rushall Parish Chuch – that of St. Michael the Archangel – is fittingly made from local limestone, and is a handsome, Francophile church with an imposing, tall broach spire. It has a long history, although this incarnation is Victorian. History hereabouts of the village, the hall and environs go back to the Domesday book. All of which are somewhat impressive.

Reflecting on this, whatever aberrant demon possessed the architect of the modern hall, bizarrely erected in the churchyard really needs to be expunged. Sadly, the exorcism wasn’t undertaken quickly enough and similar architectural defecations occurred at many Lichfield Diocese churches in the 80s and 90s; Brownhills, Pelsall, Walsall Wood, Canwell. 

They make me think distinctly unholy thoughts.

November 9th – I’m fascinated by this bit of structural joinery at Blake Street Station. It’s nothing more than the wooden frame supporting the access steps to the Birmingham bound platform, but the way they’re erected is a work of art. At the base, they’re chocked level with two pairs  of perfectly cut reverse acting wedges. You don’t see that very often these days. I’d be interested to know how old this assembly is – had it been crated today, it would be a steel framework with jacking bolts, so it must be at least 2 or 3 decades old. The precision of the wedges makes me smile every time I see them. That was a joiner who understood his art.

October 13th – As if to hammer home my point, Town Wharf, across the basin from the New Art Gallery. This is a new hotel. It looks like something thrown up in Tito’s Yugoslavia. It’s hideous, cheap and nasty. It opens in a couple of weeks – why not come and stay? Affording excellent views of the derelict and burnt out factory over the water, it’s sure to be a big tourist draw…

Walsall deserves so much better than this shit.

October 10th – I’ve been studying the detail of buildings lately. Small things. Architraves, chimneys, corbels, pediments, lintels. Airbricks, panels and frescos. Sills, doorways and sashes. There’s a huge variety of stuff in the everyday. In a quiet Tyseley backstreet, my gaze was caught by this ornate ventilation brick made from pressed terracotta in an otherwise plain factory wall. As I stopped to take a better look, I noticed the Ordnance Survey benchmark carved into the wall. A fixed datum at a measured height, these may not be used so much now, but they’re a real signal of permanence. 
The things you see with your eyes open… 

September 7th – It had been a gruelling week. In Leicester for most of it, I’d had enough. The weather had been great, and I’d missed it by being holed up indoors all week. I escaped early on Friday afternoon, and endured a sleepy commute home on hot, sweaty trains. At Shenstone, I emerged in fresh air and sunshine, and immediately headed up Church Hill to the churchyard. I love Shenstone Churchyard, it’s overgrown air of neglect and nature’s reclamation softens a church whose dark, Victorian gothic I’ve never been fond of. It’s a peaceful place, and although I don’t like the church, I admire it and it’s bold architectural ambition, replete with vulgar gargoyles. I felt relaxed, already.

August 17th – Some development decisions baffle me totally. Out again at dawn to Four Oaks station, I found myself early and hanging around. I studied the apartment blocks that had been built on the former builder’s yard next to the station. The yard was originally railway sidings last used to serve MotorRail, and is cut into the hill back towards Mere Green. That means a very narrow strip of land with an oblique retaining wall one side, and a view over a commuter railway station at the other. Into this narrow dog-leg, builders have squeezed bland, characterless boxes. 

Presumably, the Mere Green/Four Oaks adress sells them, and the commuter links. I find them utterly hideous, with a dreadful outlook.