Is it a book is it a show?
It’s both – well it was a show and it’s still a book.
I went along and looked at the art and looked at the people looking at the art.
Postwar Modern – The Barbican 2022
Octel Amlwch – Exteriors
Amlwch has been the centre of the world’s copper industry, a coastal town on Anglesey with a long history of trade, the coming and going of goods.
Once the site of a processing plant extracting bromine from sea water.
The Associated Octel factory was built to extract bromine from seawater and turn it into an additive for petrol engines. At the time, petrol used in road vehicles contained lead. Engine knocking was a common problem, when the mixture of air and fuel didn’t burn efficiently with each detonation. This could damage engine cylinders over time. The additive produced here reduced knocking and improved engine efficiency.
As the health effects of lead in vehicle exhaust gases became better understood, unleaded petrol was developed. It was introduced to UK filling stations in the 1980s, and leaded petrol was later phased out. As demand for anti-knock additive reduced, the Octel factory diversified into other bromine products and was taken over by Great Lakes Chemical Corporation. In 2003, the corporation decided to close the works with the loss of more than 100 jobs.
A detailed history of the site can be found here at Octel Amlwch.
The site has been subject to arson attacks and partial demolition, the extant buildings tagged, tattered and torn.
Slowly but surely nature breaks through the tarmac and concrete.
The gate is open, the lights are out, there’s nobody home.
BT Building – Warrington
Wilson Patten street Warrington Cheshire WA1
A forgotten part of Warrington town centre could be turned into plush new affordable flats.
Developers are looking to put an eight-storey apartment block off Wilson Patten Street close to the former BT telephone exchange building – described in the planning application as an:
ugly concrete monolith
It would be home to a mix of forty one, two and three bed flats on the spare land which is currently used as a car park.
Typically the architecture of Twentieth Century infrastructure is reviled and ridiculed – simply swept away by contemporary, anonymous design and construction.
At least in this instance the developers intend to retain the ugly concrete monolith.
For me it is an essay in confident construction and decoration, the marriage of 1955’s brick utilitarianism, with a later concrete structure.
Poised on massive grey piloti, rising elegantly above the town.
Adorned with a simple articulation of surface.
East Park Gates Hull – Concrete Walls
Holderness Rd Hull HU8 8JU
At the entrance to the park on Holderness Road are eight concrete walls.
They are covered in square, cast concrete modular panels.
Said to be the work of the City Architect in 1964.
Municipal Dreams lists the City Architect at that time to be JV Wall, having replaced David Jenkin in that same year.
My money’s on Wall – well it makes sense don’t it?
I had taken the bus from Hull Interchange on a chill April morning.
The driver obligingly giving me a shout at the appropriate stop – right outside the gates.
They are not universally loved:
A further testament to the concrete pourer’s art is to be found adorning the entrance to East Park. They are so horrible that I could find nothing on the net to indicate who designed them, shame is a powerful motive for reticence. So here they stand to welcome the visitor; after this the actual park couldn’t be any worse.
I can only assume that the actual park is held in much higher regard, listed and adored by all.
To my mind they are a bold addition to the park’s entrance, very much of their time, yet at the same time, ever so very now!
The has been a gentle patination to the raw surfaces and limited external intervention from the local Tyke taggers.
Take a look make up your mind – yay or nay?
It looks like they’re here to stay.
If you like this then you’ll like this and possibly this.
Holloway Wall – 2020
Of course I’ve been here before – and you may have as well.
And I’ve been to Huyton too.
Tony Holloway’s work also illuminates the windows of Manchester Cathedral.
As well as the panels of the Faraday Tower, just the other side of UMIST.
The wall is listed, fenced and obscured by the gradual incursion of assorted greenery.
It’s beginning to attract moss, amongst other things – just not like a rolling stone.
Like nearly everything else, it looks different each time you pass by, more or less light, new tags and signs – so here it is as of Saturday 13th June 2020.
Locked in during the lockdown.
Merseyway – Alan Boyson Screen Wall
Deep in the heart of Stockport at the centre of our very own shopping centre – Merseyway.
A pierced concrete relief screen wall surrounds the former Co-op, currently Primark, car park.
The work of Alan Boyson – today the 16th of March 2020 would have been his ninetieth birthday.
I’ve even gone so far as to analyse its structure:
So I went for a walk this morning, as I have on several previous occasions, to take a look around the site – inside and out.
Tony Holloway Sculptural Wall – Manchester
Sculptural wall and sound buffer – 1968 by Antony Holloway in collaboration with architect Harry M Fairhurst.
Concrete approximately 68 metres long and between 4.5 and 6 metres high – Brutalist style.
Grade II Listed June 10th 2011 – Historic England
The only structure on the former UMIST site, now part of the extensive University of Manchester estate.
Regularly visited on our Manchester Modernist walks, along with his nearby architectural panels.
I have even ventured as far afield as Huyton in search of other exemplars.
This is work of the highest order and importance.
It sits by a busy London Road, behind an intrusive green steel fence, slowly acquiring a green patina – as moss and lichen attach themselves to the well weathered concrete.
Receiving occasional visits from the errant urban tagger.
It deserves much better – a lush grassed apron, discrete public seating, regular tree maintenance – respect.
We do not suffer from a surfeit of significant mid-century public art – its guardians should straighten up and fly right.
Right?
modernmooch.com 