Monday, October 29, 2012

Jonathan Meades on extraordinary buildings

(c) The Guardian
Jonathan Meades may be an acquired taste, certainly on screen, but he does have trenchant views and often compelling arguments for them. Here, in the Daily Telegraph,  he chooses his five favourite buildings, and they are an unusual mix.

The article doesn't have links to the photos for each choice, so here they are:



David Murray John Tower, Swindon
Cothay Manor, Somerset
Walhalla Temple, Bavaria
Stewart’s Melville College, Edinburgh
Marseille Cathedral

These and other architectural pieces are from ‘Museum Without Walls’, by Jonathan Meades, available from Amazon here.


Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Looking at Buildings

I've just added a link in Resources to the Looking at Buildings website which is based on the Pevsner Buildings of England series, now being splendidly updated by Yale University Press. Well worth a browse, with a Glossary, timeline and links to other major architectural sites. Some parts of the site are incomplete, with little sign of any updating going on, but what there is is useful.

The Stirling Prize, again

The Observer ran a piece by Rowan Moore, their Architecture editor, on the winner of the Stirling Prize, The Sainsbury Laboratory in Cambridge by Stanton Williams. Although I suggested that the short list was full of not very interesting buildings, Rowan Moore, through talking to Alan Stanton and Paul Williams, makes a case for a more condiered view. I particularly liked their comment about architecture and the senses:
(c) Brian Rosen
 "Touch and sense are fundamental. They are the ways in which architecture engages with people." Stanton and Williams's projects have got bigger since the 1980s, but they say they're still pursuing the same qualities. Their design of the Sainsbury Laboratory in Cambridge – which last week won this year's Stirling prize – is, among other things, about the effects of the stone, timber and concrete of which it is made, and the way in which it responds to the "path of the sun" and the "colour of the light".
Moore makes a good case for the winner, and I stand corrected.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Listed Buildings

While looking for a list of Listed Buildings in Cumbria (Ulverston Listed Buildings) in the panel on the right) I saw this list of some interesting  building types, and couldn't resist repeating it:

There are about 360,000 listed buildings in England, and alongside 197 palaces, 425 castles, 14,393 churches and 3,369 country houses, there are many unusual listed buildings/structures throughout England, including:

    52 garden sheds
    35 fishponds
    1 racing pigeon loft
    3,800 mile posts and stones
    11 army camps
    9 skating rinks
    2,195 telephone boxes
    489 pigsties
    663 lavatories
    192 post boxes
    982 lamp posts
          (From the Visit Cumbria Listed Buildings website)

I wonder how many of each of these there are in Cumbria?

Stirling Architecture Prize

The short-list for the RIBA Stirling Architecture prize for 2012 has just been published:

RIBA Stirling Architecture shortlist 2012


It's a rather boring selection. The long list contained more interesting  buildings, in my view. The Guardian has a slide show of the long list:

Guardian Stirling prize long-list slideshow