A flying visit to Hebburn
October 18th, 2017
Newcastle – Tyne & Wear – reading and walks
October 17th, 2017
If you are able to start with this book, read every page and use the buildings you like as stops on your tour. Some of the better known buildings have been demolished such as the Dunston Rocket and the Gateshead car park. The Elswick Swimming pool is out of use through lack of funding.
I haven’t been paid to say this it’s just that having found it in Byker library I wish I had read it before coming to Newcastle because I missed some good buildings and I don’t want you to repeat my mistake.
Otherwise continue below where I have provided all the information I could find from the libraries for interesting walks.
Newcastle – NLS maps
October 9th, 2017
I started here Side by side Wingrove and Elswick and changed to the transparency slider when I realised it was more useful.
Newcastle – map tiling and planning a visit
October 6th, 2017
The original intention – click image for full picture
To date I have walked Elswick, Jesmond, Heaton and Byker from the above and in addition Hebburn, Tynemouth, and North Shields from the larger image (click above).
It remains my intention to walk all the areas in blue excluding the city centre. The idea is to get a view of the city as a whole and not just Grainger Town and the bridges.
BRE Watford Innovation Park visit – a summary
July 18th, 2017
Click photo above for plan of site from Google Earth
This is a quick fly by of what Tom Cordell and myself saw yesterday and what we thought of the houses.
“I like rooms” says Christine in their £100k house
April 14th, 2017
Christine stands her ground
“Despite retiring, Derek and Christine have no intention of slowing down. They want to move from Huddersfield to the south east of England but simply can’t afford the house prices. Their radical solution? At 71-years-old, Derek is attempting to build his first house from scratch.” from the BBC page.
“It’s actually a kitchen by itself” – revisited
February 23rd, 2017
The answer to the housing crisis? – Colin Wiles
January 18th, 2017
“I think Grant Shapps is on to something with his latest plan to encourage people to live on boats.
Here in Cambridge we have hundreds of people living on boats along the river. Some of them are a bit ramshackle and lack decent sanitation but the occupants seem to like them and they are affordable and close to the centre of town.”
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/home/home/bring-back-the-slums-28505
Old link
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/ihstory.aspx?storycode=6517514
In case you missed this, tongue in cheek clearly.
The human mole – zero aspect hotel rooms
December 9th, 2016
“I think a decision like this lets down the whole of the West End. We are supposed to be a world-class city, which means showing the lead to others.” She added that visitors would be treated, “like a bunch of troglodytes in an underground cave”.
This is a joke right? I’ve parked in that car park, way underground back in the 1970s. Not in a million years would I have imagined somebody planning to park people underground and make them pay for the privilege. Is it April 1st yet?
Zeilenbau orientation
December 8th, 2016
Churchill Gardens Pimlico – Powell and Moya
On reading Lewisham, the Notopian future of London by Owen Hatherley the other day, I was struck by this sentence.
“This particular part of the development is darkened by the canyon-like effect of tall blocks looming over a narrow service road, something avoided by postwar council estates, what with their green space and carefully arranged orientation to the sun.”
[…]
“Third, the new vernacular, so long as it coexists with a developer-driven urbanism which sees spaciousness as so much wasted, unrentable space, means little more than politesse curtain-walled over plutocracy.” [Owen !!!]
Moving on, the estate that comes most quickly to mind and probably to any member of the C20th Society or DocomomoUK is Churchill Gardens by Powell and Moya.