Museum of London new galleries – C20th Society visit
July 24th, 2010
The comments below do not reflect the views of the C20th Society.
Here are a few photographs from our trip yesterday to the Museum of London new galleries. I hope they are sufficient to whet your appetite to go yourself.
New café downstairs at the Museum of London
Monitoring blogs – RSS feeds
July 20th, 2010
If you regularly follow several blogs and want to know if they have changed lately or updated their posts, there is a much easier way than viewing them from bookmarks. In your email client there will be a section for “News & Blogs” and this will enable you to add what are called RSS feeds which are marked on most blogs with an icon like this:-
Click the image above for a “howto” on RSS
All you have to do to monitor or follow a blog is to click the icon in the address bar and then copy the link to which you are taken into the appropriate place on your mail reader and you will then be automatically advised each time the blog changes.
Or do it the easy way and sign up with https://www.bloglines.com/
DKH – Dog Kennel Hill Apartments – C20th Society walk
July 17th, 2010
Summary: Do I like the flats? No. Would I live there? No. Why not? It’s the general flimsiness of the thing as if it’s been built like an aircraft for a safety factor of 120%, i.e. just strong enough for the job but with very little redundant support.
Go and see for yourself and then write to me and let me know what you think. It’s just my opinion.
‘DKH’ is a new build, private housing development with 19 apartments creating a beacon housing scheme utilising timber louvres, mesh panelling and stone gabions, RIBA Award Winner 2008, John Smart Architects 2007.
From Open House Brochure 2009 p.54 Southwark
SSE elevation from Dog Kennel Hill
All fur coat . . . . .
Dawson’s Heights Estate – C20th Society walk
July 17th, 2010
What follows are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the C20th society
Dawson Heights. Architect Kate Macintosh here seen revisiting the building she designed in the 1960s.
Great lady, great building, . . . today the C20th Society went on a tour of buildings in South London culminating with Dawson Heights
Maria Bethania – Royal Festival Hall
July 17th, 2010
Cathy Come Home – reviewed
July 16th, 2010
“Now I was pregnant again, some would say it was wrong to have another kiddy when you’re overcrowded as it is. But I don’t think so, I think kiddies are God’s gift, you don’t do right to deprive anyone of the chance of life, love’s what’s important in a child’s life, love is more important to a child than nice surroundings, I know, because I lived in what they call a respectable home, and I didn’t have it”.
The New Jerusalem – A home of your own – 1995
July 13th, 2010
UPDATE: Watch it on YouTube -> New Jerusalem
“And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” – Revelation 21:2 – King James Bible
This fifty minute documentary covering the period from the end of the Second World War in 1945 until the arrival of Thatcherism in 1979 provides a comprehensive look at both the motives and the actions of the major players in the field of slum clearance and post war reconstruction with a particular emphasis on Birmingham and its problems.
Title shot – click above for larger image – original VHS
So begins this wonderful evocation of the feelings at the time that here was a new world to build.
Homes for Heroes – documentary review
July 12th, 2010
This documentary first broadcast by the BBC in 2005 is a compilation of film clips linked together by a commentary from architectural critics and is an attempt to put together a coherent account of the events following the Second World War when the country was in great need of new housing.
The film lasts one hour and what follows is a list of the main subject headings with reference to the films from which the clips are taken. The film shares many of its clips with High Rise Dreams reviewed earlier in this blog, though that film being half the length.
Homes for heroes opens with a jaunty jazz tune and Oliver Cox, one of the LCC architects of the 1950s saying that “there was a very heady feeling at the time, that we were building a new Britain”.
High Rise Dreams 2003 – documentary review
July 9th, 2010
This film made in 2003 is a potted history of the LCC architects’ department at County Hall and their designs and achievements in post-war housing, concentrating on the landmark estates and new towns, in addition to projects by others in Sheffield and Newcastle:-
- Harlow new town
- Alton East Roehampton
- Alton West Roehampton
- Keeling House Bethnal Green – Denys Lasdun
- Park Hill Sheffield
- Tower blocks and system building
- Alexandra Road Housing – Neve Brown
- Byker Estate Newcastle – Ralph Erskine
- Trellick and Balfron Towers – Erno Goldfinger
Maiden Lane Estate – Camden
July 6th, 2010
November 8th 2018 UPDATE: I went round Maiden Lane with a resident and two friends earlier this year to see what had been done. The new blocks are out of scale with the older blocks while mimicking them architecturally; and the sunken gardens are badly shaded.
The estate has had a coat of paint and some repairs from the profits derived from sale of private flats in the new tower.
UPDATE: Film of the estate at 12:38 Architecture_at_the_Crossroads
THE GOOD NEWS . . .
When I walked onto the Maiden Lane Estate (“by the great Scottish Corbusian architects Benson and Forsyth” – Douglas Murphy) I hated it, run down and flaking paint. When I left an hour later I loved it, a strong Art Deco feel and the knowledge that there’s nothing wrong with it structurally, it just needs badly tidying up and painting. Why won’t Camden Council do it up?
Click photo for larger image
I love the Art Deco towers, I don’t know what is inside them but they are reminiscent of a 1930s Odeon cinema.