Tag Archives: concrete

Oct 29 2024
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Art and architecture, Daily Post, Interior

Deep in the Barbican

Monday 28th October 2024, 1.30pm (day 4,813)

Deep in the Barbican, 28/10/24

In the brilliant 1980s TV series Edge of Darkness (which I really must watch again some time), there is a scene in which the hero evades his pursuers by deliberately running into the Barbican Centre. It’s an in-joke, but it works: forty years on this is still a rather difficult building complex to find one’s way around. Even as I took this shot there were two young American tourist types stood to my right, debating just which of the concrete ramps and overpasses and underpasses they needed to try next. But what the hell — I still like the place, both to visit and to photograph, and it does give good statuary.

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Sep 20 2024
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Der Mäusebunker

Friday 20th September 2024, 4.40pm (day 4,775)

Formally this used to be the “Research Institute for Experimental Medicine”, which I am sure is quite as sinister as it sounds, so its being more popularly known as “The Mouse Bunker” does show that Germans indeed possess a sense of irony. It’s a masterpiece of brutalism, anyway, of which no one picture can do justice but you’ll get a better impression looking it up online. It’d be nice if the white ball of the street lamp wasn’t there, but otherwise, the light will certainly do.

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Mar 04 2024
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Daily Post, Transport

The new bridge and the old

Sunday 3rd March 2024, 12.55pm (day 4,574)

Halifax bridges, 3/3/24

This is Halifax, again. Where the Hebble Brook comes through town it was first bridged by the Victorians who liked putting decorations on their stanchions and, hence, the towers seen to the right. The 1960s road engineers who decided the original bridge was no longer manly enough didn’t bother when constructing the larger version. This is taken from inside a bus, and quite how I managed the transition effect down the left-hand side I do not know, but it works for me.

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Dec 24 2023
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Coatbridge: a ‘most dismal’ town?

Saturday 23rd December 2023, 1.25pm (day 4,503)

Coatbridge tower block, 23/12/23

After a month where I felt I’d barely left the house, time to go a-travelling again, and this is Scotland’s first appearance on here since we came back from our holiday in July. Coatbridge, a few miles east of Glasgow, has had a bad rep down the years; notoriously polluted and run-down in the early 20th century, and arguably, in decline ever since, in 2007 it was apparently voted ‘Scotland’s Most Dismal Town’. But we passed through today and I thought it was OK. The Stalinist apartment-block architecture doesn’t give it glamour but it at least gives the photography some interest. Not to mention the stadium of Albion Rovers FC just down the road, but that’s another story, for a different social medium.

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Aug 04 2021
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Maid Marian Way

Wednesday 4th August 2021, 8.55am (day 3,632)

Maid Marian Way, 4/8/21

Here’s 1960s town planning for you. Build a concrete monstrosity of a street in the centre of your city, with a car park on top of it, and name it after a female character from that city’s history who was alluring enough to appeal to its most dashing hero. Maid Marian’s appeal is at least hinted at by whomever decorated the wall, but that’s scant consolation.

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Dec 15 2013
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Subway under Brook Street, Manchester

Friday 13th December 2013, 8.50am (day 841)

Subway, 13/12/13

There is often beauty in unexpected places. This is all done with concrete, graffiti and strips of fluorescent light.

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