Jonathan Meades – films
November 12th, 2016
Abroad Again – part 4 of 5 – Heaven – Folkwoven In England.avi – Letchworth
Bunkers Brutalism and Bloodymindedness Concrete Poetry_pt1.mp4
Bunkers Brutalism and Bloodymindedness Concrete Poetry_pt1.srt (subtitle file)
Bunkers Brutalism and Bloodymindedness Concrete Poetry_pt2.mp4
Bunkers Brutalism and Bloodymindedness Concrete Poetry_pt2.srt (subtitle file)
City of Towers and other documentaries
November 9th, 2016
“Back in 1979, I made a BBC documentary called City of Towers, charting how the futuristic dreams crystallised in the Twenties by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier had led to the high-rise nightmare that blighted Britain’s cities in the Sixties. The film won some acclaim – not least, surprisingly, from some of the modern architects whose work it had featured, from Maxwell Fry to Richard Seifert, creator of the Centre Point tower.”
“But when, some years later, there were calls for the programme to be repeated, Mr Yentob startled a BBC meeting by expostulating that the film would only ever be shown again “over my dead body”.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11833042/A-fitting-end-for-Alan-Yentob.html
Now this in the Guardian
Alan Yentob: the last impresario
City of Towers – Christopher Booker / Christopher Martin
Click here to play or download
In reply to The Five Estates, Peckham, Part III: Back to the Future
November 4th, 2016
Firstly I was struck by a hypothetical question:-
“Would the regeneration have been necessary had the Thatcher cuts in maintenance been avoided and the inflation proofed money still been available?”
I suspect yes, owing to the change in residential makeup of the estates owing to the effects of right to buy (in subsequent decades companies and individuals bought onto council estates and let the flats to unemployed people on the then DSS thus further weakening the estate demographic) and the 1977 Housing Act – priority needs based lettings.
In my personal opinion the estates and council housing in general were damaged by those two pieces of legislation, the second of which was enacted under a Labour Government albeit with unintended consequences.