Tag: brutalism

#365daysofbiking Here, there and everywhere


February 27th – The Peter Saville thing. It’s everywhere of late.

Later the same day. The rain didn’t stop, it doubled down and rained harder and more fiercely.

Stood, dripping, waiting for a late train at Telford, the rain shimmering on the glass of the new bridge, catching the lights. The angles and patterns of metalwork.

It felt brutal, if not actually truly Brutalist.

Find out more about why I’m in love with Peter Saville’s work here.

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#365daysofbiking Things that happen when you’re not looking

February 14th – I haven’t been to Birmingham much this winter, and the first time passing though overground since Christmas in daylight made me stop in surprise at a building growing in the Colmore Row business area.

This office block has grown on the site of John Madin’s now demolished brutalist gem 103 Colmore Row: The former Birmingham Natwest Tower.

103 had passed its time and it is right, I guess that it has gone and change is happening. But I do miss it, it was a startlingly beautiful bit of brutalist design – a priapic monument to mammon.

The building replacing it is so far unknown to me: But it seems huge. In my head 103 fitted perfectly, in a forest of towers, but it clearly never was so, and the rising of a replacement is somehow shocking in size and imposition.

This is what change looks like. I’ll be interested to see this develop.

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#365daysofbiking Purposefully brutal

 

 

 

 

 

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November 21st – The cycleway between Wellington and Hortonwood was a bit hard to follow and convoluted, but as it happened, quite fun. It took me through variously playing fields for a private school, along a goods rail line, along a major highway (safely on the pavement adjacent) over a huge, bizarre double roundabout system, and also over a complex bridge arrangement at Hadley, which was most interesting of all.

This brutalist, utilitarian construction of tiered walkways, curling ramps and single span bridges reminded me very much of the Joy Division publicity shots from the late 70s in Manchester, or of the Great Charles Street crossing in Birmingham.

The bridges twanged gently as I crossed them, or when HGVs went under. They felt safe, and wide, and the views and design interesting, if stark. I was particularly interested in the nearby towerblock of Brookdale, which seemed to be made from the same Wimpety system build technique as the flats in Brownhills, but with some peculiar twists in the design.

It certainly looks to have been well refurbished.

All in all an interesting ride.

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#365daysofbiking Subterranean sunny station blue

March 28th – Always nice to get a glimpse of blue, sunny sky from the dark platforms at New Street Station in Birmingham.

Today I was waiting for a connection early, and although there were loads of trains, there weren’t seemingly too many people around. I killed time with a snack, and peered up out of the tangle of steel, concrete, wires and machinery to the surrounding architecture – always fascinating, always in transition.

And then beyond that to a blue sky – and even in this urban morass devoid of anything natural – the promise of a beautiful, sun-dappled spring.

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#365daysofbiking Brutally wet in Cannock

March 6th – I had an important hospital appointment in Cannock, a place I rarely go. Cannock Hospital is actually lovely, and a model of the best of the NHS, but Cannock itself, I find a bit otherworldly. It’s nice enough, suffering like all post industrial town centres, with odd, lingering pointers to a more prosperous, or at least busy past.

The brutalist concrete relief mural featuring local industrial icons – pit heads, Caterpillar vehicles, Rugeley Power Station and GEC seems to have been transplanted from an earlier building or situation. It’s almost soviet.

Everyone seems to know of Walsall’s hippo, but who ever dares mention Cannock’s concrete elephant? How did that come to be? There’s a story there.

On this wet, grey and unpleasant day, I found Cannock solemn, but pleasant, and I shall come back – mainly to see if it wears it’s cloak of quiet melancholy on nice days, too.

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#365daysofbiking Stationary traveller:

November 28th – Birmingham New Street, not long after dawn on a grey, wet, miserable winter morning.

Despite it’s faults, despite it’s awful turd-polishing in the Grand Central fiasco, despite it’s continual propensity to be host to disappointment and frustration, this subterranean station is in my heart and soul, and feels like home.

The lights, the people, even, no – especially the steel horse.

I love this city. I love this place. With all my heart. But often, it feels unrequited.

August 16th – Thankfully New Street is a rare delight these days, but on this grey and wet Thursday morning I wallowed in the damp brutalism of the concrete and metal, and the sounds of the people and traffic.

I spend many years now passing through this place, waiting or anticipating. It’s by turns grim, ugly, wonderful, fascinating and homely.

A real love-hate relationship.

December 29th – Winter is a normalisation process for me. I enter it, kicking and screaming and resistant, headlong into the darkness; I fight my way through the suck, the suck that is the autumn commute, and by the time I emerge blinking and dazed from Christmas, I’m sort of used to it. 

I’ve got used to the absence of light – which is OK now as it’s returning; I’ve acclimatised to the cold; and I’ve learned once more to look for oddities and interesting images in low-light urbanity.

Silver Court in Brownhills does Architecture and Morality. Peter Saville has nothing to fear.

Meanwhile, I trundle towards new year still nursing a bad shoulder and dreaming of warmer days…

June 5th – An awful day that found me running around the Black Country on errands. A strong wind, threatening rain and late for a meeting caused me to hop on a train at Wolverhampton.

Wolverhampton station is functional, but I dislike it – it always feels harsh, inhuman and exposed. With threatening skies today it was almost dystopian.

January 9th – Waiting at New Street early in the day it seemed people were not yet about – I saw very few as I loafed idly, waiting for my train. Despite continual work here, little has changed in the last 12 months – the grim 80s exit bridge has had one end tarted up but it remains ugly and badly conceived; likewise the shiny tinfoil covering to the upper floors, covering only the bits that can be seen from outside the station. 

Despite the continual aesthetic tweaks – panelling here, lights there, the odd new bench or seating area – little really changes in this urban, brutalist bunker. It’s a fleeting place, transitory for most. But stand here for any length of time and you’ll realise how little;e has been done to actually improve it.

New Street Station is not new. It’s just now got a retail opportunity on top. The station itself remains as dysfunctional as ever.