What's your favourite bit of brutalist architecture?

[green1]

Visiting Anglia Square is like visiting a zombie film.

So is the rest of Norfolk.

 

[TVC]

Delighted to say that two of the ugliest, most depressing, badly functioning, concrete monstrosities have been despatched this morning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-31568894

As well as being absolutely hideous they also funnelled air in a way that ensured that even on the calmest summer day a hurricsne blew between them.

Good riddence!

 

[slowmotion]

Delighted to say that two of the ugliest, most depressing, badly functioning, concrete monstrosities have been despatched this morning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-31568894

As well as being absolutely hideous they also funnelled air in a way that ensured that even on the calmest summer day a hurricsne blew between them.

Good riddence!

I went to a lecture by a wind effects expert from the Building Reseach Establishment in about 1975. He was studying how well pedestrians coped with wind being funnelled round tall buildings. He showed a film of a series of old ladies trying to walk down a ramp in the BRE wind tunnel. The students thought it was straight out of Monty Python. The lecturer was unamused.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

another one bit the dust today

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-31889521

 

[PeteXXX]

I rode past the remains of this today, just to check that it's actually gone..

This was the closest I could get due to the 'crowd control' barriers and road closures.

 

[RedRider]

Camberwell College of Arts, not sure if it qualifies as Brutalist and I've not been inside but it keeps me looking from the cafe opposite.

Not sure why I like it.

 

[Fnaar]

"Brutalist" Northampton bus station bit the dust this weekend

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-31889521


[edit: I think @GrumpyGregry and @PeteXXX beat me to it]

 

[PeteXXX]

"Brutalist" Northampton bus station bit the dust this weekend

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-31889521


[edit: I think @PeteXXX beat me to it]

And @GrumpyGregry beat me, so you are in 3rd place...

 

[PeteXXX]

Meanwhile... The actual dust blowing through the streets of Northampton..

 

[vernon]

The Roger Stevens Building at Leeds Uni

That building used to have paternoster lifts when I was an undergraduate there. Basically it was like a dumb waiter - holes in the wall with cubicles that continually moved upwards on one side and downwards on the other. It terrified me and I refused to use it and always used the stairs. There were all sorts of horror stories about students going over the top and getting crushed because the cubicles folded into 'flatpacks' when they went over the top.

My friends eventually got me into it by throwing my bag into one of the cubicles and I jumped in after it - the bag had fifty quid's worth of text books in it.

Once I had become a confident user, a couple of my friends persuaded me to go over the top having convinced me that the cubicles didn't 'flat pack' but they did invert. All you had to do is brace yourself with your back against one wall and your feet against the opposite wall and 'walk around the wall and onto the ceiling as it became the floor. The day of the inverting adventure came and two of us jumped in at the bottom floor and immediately braced ourselves for the invert. Beads of sweat broke free on my brow as we approached the top and I was close to panic as the last exit passed by.

The bastards!

The cubicles didn't invert. They maintained their vertical position as they went over the top. I was a hot sweaty stressed out but mightily relieved bunny as I exited at the first opportunity.

Another paternoster myth busted.

The paternoster is no more. I called in at the Roger Stevens' Lecture Theatre several years ago and the entrances are now blanked off.

This is the view of the building that I am more familiar with.

It's the 'I'm here to work' approach from the Engineering Departments where I was based.

@Berk on a Bike's picture is the "I'm here to sleep off the beer' approach from The Faversham, erswile haunt of The Gang of Four and Marc Almond.

 

[slowmotion]

Cumbernauld Town Centre , I think it is a very interesting building if a bit Fugly .

That's fantastic! I once worked at The Polytechnic of Central London ( "rebranded" as The University of Westminster ), a faintly Brutalist structure , but the Marylebone Road facade is quite good in the scheme of things. Anyway, it had three levels of gigantic basements below ground and many troglodytic service entrances, lifts, access panels and passageways, all lit with harsh lighting, usually empty apart from the odd distant grunting sound from building services. They all smelled quite strongly of sewage....and there was always a dead pigeon in some dark corner...

All large buildings have those strange, hidden places.

 

[vernon]

Anyway, it had three levels of gigantic basements below ground and many troglodytic service entrances, lifts, access panels and passageways, all lit with harsh lighting, usually empty apart from the odd grunt from building services. They all smelled quite strongly of sewage....and there was always a dead pigeon in some dark corner...

All large buildings have those strange, hidden places.

Leeds University certainly did. Some of my course mates and I found an underground route that ran the length of the entire frontage of the campus from fuel engineering, through, materials science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, chemistry and the Parkinson Building before exiting to the left of the archway under the clock tower. We were never challenged.

 

[slowmotion]

@vernon, they didn't do "Security" in those days. Half the lavatory stalls at The Polytechnic of Cental London seemed to be occupied by junkies who just wandered in off the street looking for a faintly warm space to take off from. Nobody got too fussed about it.

 

[Gravity Aided]

Southern Illinois University, had most services running through underground tunnels. There were so many that they had signs as to direction and distance. This makes a lot of sense in the northern part of the Southern United States, as they get a lot of ice storms, which would play havoc with power poles and lines above ground.
Here's a story by a fellow that went there some years after myself.
http://www.infiltration.org/siu/

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Gotta love them crazy Ruskies...

View attachment 78461

Yebbut why is that girl fighting with what looks like an orange tent?

View attachment 78624

Basil Spence's tuning fork.

I saw that and imediately thought 'Rugby!!'

Just remembered this 1950s beauty in Milan, saw it when we were on hols last year, it's called Torre Velasca and it's kinda cool.

That could almost be the headquarters/offices of some brutal regime or villain in a Sci Fi/Superhero film.

Seriously, imagine it is night, rain is falling heavily, and there is dramatic music playing in the background!

Camberwell College of Arts, not sure if it qualifies as Brutalist and I've not been inside but it keeps me looking from the cafe opposite.

Not sure why I like it.

View attachment 82636

Flick the picture up and down quickly whilst looking at all those holes.

I like it too!!