#architects in coventry

[theforbiddeneden]

Metal Hammer Magazine December 2023 Enter The World Of Sleep Token - Revista Metal Hammer Dezembro 2023 Entre no mundo do Sleep Token

"We'll never see the band at this level again" Sleep Token fan Benji Purdy

A deep, distorted voice is coming through the PA of Los Angeles’ El Rey Theatre.

“Do you think they want you to cry?” it’s saying. “Do you think they like it?”

A second voice, lighter in tone but still distorted and oddly inhuman, replies.

“Not as such,” this one says.

“I think they just want to know that I am feeling something, feeling what they are feeling, perhaps.”

The audience in this ornate, 800-capacity venue stands silent, entranced by the voices. The band onstage are masked metal sensations Sleep Token, tonight playing their first headlining show in the City of Angels as part of their month-long North American Rituals tour.

The dialogue that is playing out around us is hugely significant to everyone in this sold-out crowd. It marks the first time crowned frontman Vessel – the lighter voice – has broken his silence in public. The deeper voice he’s communing with belongs to Sleep, the god-like entity at the heart of the band’s lore. As the conversation continues, you could hear a pin drop.

“Do you think that this amount of crying is healthy for you?” Sleep asks.

“I don’t know,” comes Vessel’s response. “But at least I feel something. If I don’t feel anything then why would I even do this?”

At this, the crowd lose their minds and a wave of mania ripples across the floor. That the voices are pre-recorded doesn’t matter. Nor does the fact that this isn’t, strictly, the first time it’s happened – Sleep Token have been doing throughout this tour. But modern metal’s most enigmatic band have done something they’ve never done before: they’ve cracked open the door and given us a tantalising glimpse into their inner world.

This show isn’t the biggest Sleep Token will play this year. In December, they will headline London’s Wembley Arena. But Los Angeles, together with New York, is one of the epicentres of the US music business, and the buzz that’s surrounding the anonymous band suggests that America is paying attention to them.

More than that, La La Land has always had a thing for cults, from the Manson Family to Scientology, as well as the countless smaller ‘spiritualist’ groups that operate in the city today. An anonymous, masked British band with their own mysterious, quasi-religious mythology? LA never stood a chance.

“There is a new atmosphere at these live shows, an electricity,” says Benji Purdy, an American fan who also acts as moderator on the band’s official Discord server. He first saw Sleep Token when they supported metalcore act Issues on a 2019 US tour. After witnessing their headlined show in Portland, Oregon a few days ago, he says they’re an entirely different beast this time around.

“We’ll never see this band at this level ever again,” says Benji. “They are catapulting themselves.”

2023 has been the year Sleep Token’s cult success went fully overground. On January 5, the band released Chokehold, the first single from then-upcoming third album Take Me Back To Eden. Twenty-four hours later, they chucked in another new song, The Summoning. By the time the track hit TikTok, videos of listeners reacting to the genre-defying sound were reaching users around the world, with some even hitting a million-plus views.

Their social media profile was helped by celebrity boosts from Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor, Architects singer Sam Carter and Lorna Shore’s Will Ramos. And in May, they announced that Wembley date. All 12,500 tickets sold out in just 10 minutes. Sleep Token had officially become a arena band.

Chris Lody, a Sleep Token fan based in Coventry, set up a subreddit for the band back in 2018 after discovering they won their nomination for Best New Band at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods. The same year, he saw their first headline performance at St Pancras Old Church in front of 150 people. He’s had a front row seat to their dizzying rise.

“To go from that to Wembley in December, it’s incredible,” says Chris. “Creating the subreddit was a bit opportunistic really. Nothing like it really existed and I wanted to see what other people were saying about the band.”

It took a while, but fans eventually began to head to Chris’s Reddit page to share their own interpretations of Sleep Token’s music, art and lore. After the release of Chokehold and The Summoning, the page exploded with new users.

“The volume of people posting day-to-day is massive now,” says Chris, adding that it has grown from around 6,000 users to 34,500 at the time of writing. “We’ve had to take on more moderators just to maintain a bit of order.”

Much as the fandom has expanded, so too have the opportunities afforded Sleep Token. This summer, they stepped up to festival headliner status in the UK, with appearances at Portsmouth’s Takedown in April and Manchester’s Radar in July. Radar organiser Joe James admits they lucked out with the timing of the band’s booking.

“We got them at that sweet spot that every promoter dreams of,” he tells Hammer. “We’re a festival that wants to book progressive, contemporary music. Sleep Token tick all those boxes: they’re doing something fresh and are at the top of their game at the moment.”

Headlining the first day of the festival gave the band a full “limitless” rehearsal time, which in turn resulted in a truly headline-worthy performance.

“It looked and sounded amazing,” Joe enthuses. “They are so massive now, but they don’t behave like they’re blowing up just yet. I truly think they’re the next Download headliners of the new breed.”

It’s 4pm in Los Angeles when Hammer arrives at the El Rey Theatre, and queues are already stretching around the block in both directions. Some fans have brought chairs and blankets to sit on, while others are propping themselves up against the walls of the venue, clinging to the scant shade to avoid the glare of the Californian sun.

Amy McLaurin and her friend Sarah Hibbert are standing at the venue barrier. They’re from Virginia, and arrived at the El Rey at 9am, despite having fast-track passes that guarantee them priority entry.

“I found them on TikTok,” she says of how she discovered Sleep Token, with a nervous smile that suggests she’s worried any gatekeepers will leap out and chase her away at any second.

The pair saw Sleep Token for the first time a couple of weeks earlier in Baltimore, but couldn’t risk booking flights to come more than 2,000 miles to repeat the experience. It’s doubly impressive because Baltimore was Amy’s first ever gig, full-stop.

“I’d never really found an artist I loved enough,” she says. “Right now they’re everything I want in music. I listened to rock before Sleep Token, but not much metal – I’ve actually discovered more metal through them. I also met Sarah at the Baltimore show and we both decided to fly here.”

“They make you think about things you otherwise wouldn’t want to talk or be open about,” adds Sarah. “These songs can mean something different to everyone, a universal pain we all feel but some might be less able to express that.”

Vessel famously doesn’t do interviews – the only one he has given was to Hammer in the band’s early days – but their fans have been more than happy to pick up the slack. Sleep Token’s official and unofficial social media channels are full of running narratives, memes and jokes.

It hasn’t all been deadly serious, either. In April, a fan-filmed clip of an audience member at a gig in Sydney letting loose a “sinister” fart during the quiet part of the song Atlantic went viral. Similarly, after the release of The Summoning, a section of their fanbase dubbed Sleep Token “metal’s sexiest band,” largely thanks to lyrics such as

"THEIR MUSIC TRANSCENDS THEIR PERSONALITIES" SLEEP TOKEN FAN CASSIE KNOX

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“THERE ARE SECRETS LEFT TO BE UNCOVERED”

Daniel Owen is the man behind the artwork of Sleep Token’s first two albums, 2019’s Sundowning and 2021’s This Place Will Become Your Tomb.

WHEN DID YOU FIRST COME INTO CONTACT WITH SLEEP TOKEN?

“Around early 2018. I ended up becoming one of their lead visual creatives from [that year’s single] Jaws through to This Place Will Become Your Tomb, and some initial development on Take Me Back To Eden.”

HOW MUCH OF A BRIEF WERE YOU GIVEN IN EACH CASE?

“The briefs behind each project have varied greatly in scope, but usually only restricted to a few lines – in the case of Sundowning per song - or a paragraph to explore the central idea of This Place Will Become Your Tomb. Symbolism throughout history has always been a communication method that encapsulates a sense of power and reverence; my work for the project has always aimed to champion atmosphere while masking a considerable amount of intention below the surface. “One example would be the Sundowning sigils as a whole: being informed by the passing of time and mirroring the positions of a clock face, referencing the namesake of the album. Individually, each sigil was a cipher I'd developed that represented a hidden selection of elements relating to the singles that later served as artwork – eventually all would be removed from streaming services and become an intentionally forgotten to reflect one of the central themes of Sundowning and its primary cover. A beautiful part of working with a band is that there's an unparalleled level of bravery involved with taking the kinds of creative choices that many are too hesitant to pursue.”

SLEEP TOKEN PUT HIDDEN ‘CODES’ IN THEIR SONGS AND IMAGES. ARE THERE ANY SECRETS IN YOUR ARTWORK THAT FANS STILL HAVEN’T DISCOVERED?

“There’s certainly some things I’ve left seeded within my work that’s ready to be pulled from the future if I’m called upon. There are still some secrets left to be uncovered.”

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‘Or are you really here to cut me off? Or maybe just to turn me on’ and ‘I would be lying if I told you that I didn’t think that I could be your man / Or maybe make a good girl bad,’ combined with a raunchy bass drop in the song’s second half. This sexiness is something the band have leaned into on this US tour. During The Offering, members have been seemingly kissing through the masks, reportedly prompting a suitably ecstatic reaction from the crowd each time.

There are other, more wholesome displays of fandom, from fluffy crochet plushies to homemade necklaces. A video of guitarist IV putting on a cowboy hat given to him by an audience member at a gig in Dallas has yielded close to two million views on TikTok. Back at the barrier at the El Rey stands Cassie Knox, who has come to LA from Houston, Texas. Cassie has now seen the band eight times, including at Radar in the UK.

“Sleep Token have a big thing about community,” she says matter-of-factly, when we ask whether it gets lonely following the band on tour. “I met two girls last night in San Diego, they’re here with me and we’re also going to Anaheim [the next gig on the tour].”

While every fan has a personal answer for what Sleep Token mean to them, Cassie’s response seems to be shared by many. “They taught me self-love,” she says, holding a sign stating as much.

In May, shortly before the release of Take Me Back To Eden, several select fans were invited to an exclusive listening session for the album in London. Chris Lloyd, who runs the Sleep Token subreddit, was one of them. He won’t divulge too many details of the event, but offers an anecdote that highlights the band’s dedication to keeping their enigma intact.

“We got there and there was just this stage with curtains,” he says. “They opened at the start of the album and we thought there was a Vessel mannequin just in a chair. It was really dark and there were loads of smoke, but it was really exciting. Then right at the very end of the session, the ‘mannequin’ stood up and it was actually Vessel – he’d just sat perfectly still the whole time! It was insane.”

The band show no sign of changing their minds when it comes to preserving their mystique. Hammer’s request for an interview with Vessel is, predictably, turned down. But this anonymity is something that their devotees embrace. The golden rule of Sleep Token fandom is to never, under any circumstances, divulge or speculate on the members’ real-life identities. Still, that hasn’t stopped some people trying.

“The mystery surrounding the band will always be a key element that draws people in,” says Discord mod Benji Purdy. “It’s a rabbit hole and people love diving into them. But I have found that since [2021 album] This Place Will Become Your Tomb, there has been a culture shift within the fanbase between those who want to respect the band’s wishes to stay anonymous, and those who have a general lack of respect and think the band don’t care.”

This ring of secrecy is intact today. Before the show, Hammer is sitting at a table in the taco restaurant adjacent to the El Rey. We can hear and see the security manager briefing in front of the venue.

“Tonight’s show is Sleep Token,” the security manager says, marching along his ranks like a general on the eve of battle. “Their whole deal is that they are anonymous. If anybody – anybody – tries to go where they shouldn’t, you MUST. STOP. THEM.”

In reality, transgression seems to be the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. The people queuing outside the El Rey are here to Worship, after all.

“Their music transcends their personalities as individuals,” Cassie Knox tells us. “Everybody has a part in this music, and from the messages that the band have put out, it seems like that’s exactly what he [Vessel] wanted.”

By the time the doors open, the excitement is palpable. Airport-style security gates mean everyone is thoroughly searched before entry and it seems half the audience has brought along trinkets, gifts and signs in their own expression of Worship. One fan has turned up with a bouquet of roses so big it is seen engulfed her head. They all make it through security without issue.

While some fans have been dressing up in full Vessel cosplay elsewhere on the tour, there’s no such regalia tonight, although many have covered their faces with painted Sleep Token sigils. Equally, it’s striking just how youthful the crowd is as a whole.

“It’s been like this the whole tour,” reveals Matt de Burgh Daly, guitarist/keyboardsist with support A.A. Williams, as he sits down next to Hammer to grab a bite pre-show. Williams and her band previously supported Sleep Token on their 2021 UK tour, and now they’re on these US dates, suggesting they’re within the headliners’ circle of trust.

“It’s funny actually,” Matt says between taco bites. “This is actually one of the smaller shows on the tour, I think. But we’re pretty nervous.”

Oh?

“Yeah, our drummer’s broken his arm – he’s having to play Def Leppard style!”

With its art deco exterior, crystal light fixtures, chandeliers and blood red decor, the El Rey Theatre feels more like it should be hosting a seance than a metal show. It’s not your typical dive venue. But where Sleep Token aren’t your typical metal band, sonically or visually.

From Hammer’s vantage point, a dark balcony overlooking the main floor, it looks like nearly everyone is adorned in some kind of Sleep Token memorabilia, be it t-shirts, hoodies, or even smaller items like necklaces or homemade earrings. A queue stretches from the merch stand to the barrier throughout the entirety of A.A. Williams’ set and right up until Sleep Token themselves appear.

Sure enough, the headliners’ arrival elicits a frenzy of activity. An extended shriek of pure ecstasy greets the band as they march onto the stage, and it’s not long before the audience is singing along ardently, tears literally streaming from some fans’ eyes.

Detractors may point to the prevalence of piano ballads in Sleep Token’s sound, but there’s no shortage of heft in tonight’s set. Chokehold is explosive, its pendulum riffs cutting through the air like a buzzsaw. Hypnosis has the booming, almost floating menace of a great Deftones track, fans waving their arms wildly throughout.

Even in terms of physical presence, there’s a marked difference from the band that toured in support of 2021’s This Place Will Become Your Tomb. Back then, Vessel seemed like a solid, rooted entity, his movements stiff and minimal, clinging to the mic-stand like he was tethered to it. This time out, he’s a ball of kinetic energy, bouncing, dancing and stalking his way backwards and forwards across the stage, even dropping to do push-ups during The Summoning. Bassist III and guitarist IV are similarly lively, headbanging furiously and commanding circle pits and walls of death with finger gestures and head nods.

The Take Me Back To Eden songs are especially visceral live. Vessel skitters across the stage during Vore like someone having an ancient entity, switching between howls and soulful melodies before intoning the song’s key lyric: ‘I want to give you all, but nobody else will ever go?’

For all the excitement, background chatter falls away completely when segments of conversation between Vessel and Sleep play out. The distorted voices discuss everything from the fandom to the role the masks play in their mythology.

“In order for all of this to work there has to be a certain boundary in place,” Vessel says, his unearthly, pre-recorded voice spilling from the speakers. “They need to be able to project themselves onto this, without anyone else’s identity getting in the way. In turn, I need to be able to show my true self to them in a way that does not compromise their ability to connect.”

There’s certainly no shortage of connection as fans roar along to the likes of The Summoning, The Love You Want and Alkaline, some moved to tears as the music takes on new dimensions, the closing rave-metal thrust of The Offering ending the night on an exultant and triumphant note, before Vessel clasps his hands in thanks as Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me) plays incongruously over the PA.

So where next for Sleep Token? In a year where they have notched up a Top 10 album in the UK – Take Me Back To Eden peaked at No 3 – and sold out venues around the world, it’s hard to say exactly where the ceiling could be for them.

“I could easily see them playing arenas here in the States within two years,” Benji states. “The demand here is insane – as seen by the number of people who’ve lined up at every almost every show of this tour.”

For a British metal band to break into the US market is no mean feat, and the buzz and excitement Sleep Token are generating here is starting to catch up with the noise that surrounds them back home.

Equally, their pop sensibilities enable them to serve as a gateway, their success on TikTok showing they don’t just appeal within the metal sphere, but to wider audiences whom then tumble further down the metal rabbit-hole after discovering them.

Uniting newcomers and dyed-in-the-wool metalheads alike, Sleep Token are a new breed of band, transcending genre boundaries by simply refusing to stay in one, and backed up by a mystery and spectacle all their own. They are as at home supporting Slipknot and Architects as they are appearing at festivals like Reading and Leeds – testament to just how influential and breakout they’ve become.

Crazy as it may seem, 2024 will likely be an even bigger year for Sleep Token, and they’ve already booked some of the world’s most iconic venues in that period. With Wembley Arena and Alexandra Palace shows in the diary for next April, Sleep Token will be looking to cement their place at the top of the mountain. How long before the Worship of Sleep Token becomes a religion?

SLEEP TOKEN PLAY WEMBLEY ARENA ON DECEMBER 16. TAKE ME BACK TO EDEN IS OUT NOW VIA SPINEFARM

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MASKS REVEAL THE ARTIST’S VISION

Mario Garvera and Beatrice Rebondi are MysteryStar, an art studio specialising in masks, costumes and accessories. They also created the Vessel mask

WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND IN MASK-MAKING?

“We’ve always been drawn to the dramatic and theatrical aspects of expression, along with our shared love of music. We have produced thousands of pieces together over the decades. We never make replicas of our masks; they are, and always will be, one-off characters, created especially and never to be repeated.”

HOW DID YOU BECOME INVOLVED WITH SLEEP TOKEN?

“In early 2019 they were looking for a workable mask, as they hadn’t found anything wearable that could work onstage yet. We provided [Vessel and Sleep Token’s management] with several sketches and worked out together how to keep Vessel’s character essence and vision, while creating something that could work on a human head and be practical onstage.”

WHAT WERE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES?

“It took several modifications, especially around the shape of the head. We had to accommodate certain parts of Vessel was adamant were integral parts of the full-face mask for the photoshoots and a mouth - less one for tge stage perfomances. These were the first two masks that we made for Vessel.”

WHY DO YOU THINK WE FIND MASKED BANDS SO FASCINATING?

“Masks have always been important to humans since perhaps the beginnings of civilisation. Ancient tribes created masks, for recounting their history and transmitting knowledge of their young; for healings and for warding off their enemies. In addition, it could be because masks are a created expression of the artist – the one - who created it, as well as the one who wears it – and as such reveal something of the artist’s mind and their vision.”

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CR:

Transcription English Version from theforbiddeneden

[girlactionfigure]

"Ask me about Lidice."

That phrase is a promise I made after researching the events I'm about to tell you, to keep the name of Lidice alive and meaningful.

Here is the story.

In the summer and fall of 1942, a strange phenomenon began springing up in distant corners of the world, in which streets, towns, even children, were being given the same name.

It all began with the killing of a monster.

At the end of December in 1941, two Czech soldiers living in exile in England parachuted back into Czechoslovakia on a mission to assassinate the ruthless and brutal German SS officer Reinhard Heydrich, who was then working as the Reich-Protector over much of that occupied country.

During his reign of terror, Heydrich - one of the main architects of the Final Solution, and nicknamed "The Butcher of Prague" - kept the "peace" through racial suppression, forced labor, executions, and sending "undesirables" off to death camps.

In May of 1942, a team led by the two parachutists, named Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík, planned and carried out an ambush against Heydrich as he drove in his open-topped car through Prague.

Wounded by an explosive hurled at the car, Heydrich died a week later.

In the aftermath of the attack, Kubiš and Gabčík, along with most of their co-conspirators, were killed.

When he learned of Heydrich's death, Adolf Hitler flew into a rage and ordered massive reprisals against the Czech people.

Because of spurious intelligence reports, the full force of Hitler's anger fell chiefly upon two small villages: Lidice (pronounced "Li-dí-tsay") and Ležáky (pronounced "Le-zyah-ke").

Two days after Heydrich's funeral, German SS and SD troops descended upon the two towns.

In Ležáky, no adult was left alive, the children were seized, and the houses and buildings were burned to the ground.

In Lidice, the population was dragged from their homes, and every male over the age of fourteen was shot and killed - at first five at a time, but when this was found to be taking too long, they killed them in groups of ten.

The women were deported to concentration camps for forced labor or extermination.

Those few children who met specified "racial purity" criteria were sent to Germany for indoctrination and adoption by the families of members of the SS.

Most of the rest of the children were killed in the backs of special enclosed trucks by carbon monoxide, the precursors to the gas chambers later installed at places such as Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Then Lidice suffered an additional horror. Believed (erroneously) to be the town where some of the conspirators had been hiding before the assassination, the town was burned, and stone structures were dynamited.

Slave labor was brought in to dismantle the ruins brick by brick and haul everything away, so that, as Hitler ordered, every trace of the town was wiped from the face of the earth so that the memory of Lidice would die.

But it didn't.

The Nazis allowed reports of the massacre to be released as a warning to other occupied countries, but as the news began spreading around the world, it had quite the opposite effect....

In Mexico, the village of San Jerónimo Aculo changed its name to San Jerónimo Lídice....

In Coventry, England, a shopping market was renamed Lidice Place....

In the American state of Illinois, a new town being laid out was named Lidice....

Also in Illinois, the American lawyer and politician Wendell Wilkie eulogized the destruction of the town to a silent, stunned audience, using the news reports from the Nazis themselves to condemn their barbarity....

In the United Kingdom, the Lidice Shall Live! drive - run mostly by British miners - raised money to help rebuild the town following the war....

In places all over the free world the name Lidice began appearing, and hundreds of children born that year were named Lidice by their parents, and the name continues to be given even to this day.

What the Nazis hoped would be a warning to their enemies turned into a rallying cry, and helped show a world still mostly ignorant of Nazi brutality why the fight against the Third Reich was so necessary.

When the war ended, a handful of women and children who survived the concentration camps returned to the site where Lidice had been, and, with international help, began rebuilding the town on a site nearby.

Today there is a memorial near the town dedicated to the children who suffered and were lost during the Nazi occupation. There also is a larger memorial to the annihilation of the town and the murder of its people. And there's even another memorial placed in gratitude to the British miners who helped the town rebuild.

In 1942, with so many major events grabbing headlines, that the world took notice of the destruction of one tiny town that nobody had ever heard of was a miracle. Yet after the war, what happened in Lidice largely dissolved from the world's memory as Czechoslovakia fell behind the Iron Curtain.

But now that's changing.

As part of the Unearthed Project, people all over the world are being asked to spread the memory of what happened to Lidice in 1942, and of the kindness and generosity through which the town was rebuilt, by promising to tell at least two people the story....

When I first heard about this project and what they were asking, I knew I could do better than just telling two people - this page reaches around 7 million people each month, so by writing this post I am fulfilling my promise to share, and then some. It's my honor to be able to do so.

Now I'm asking you to make and fulfill that same promise, as well, to tell at least two people this story, so we can honor the memory of the victims of Lidice and Ležáky: the men and teens who were shot, the children who were gassed, the women who perished in death camps, and the caring hearts of all those around the world who vowed never to let them be forgotten.

~*~

All told, around 1,300 people were killed by the Nazis in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.

His grave in Berlin has been unmarked since the Soviet occupation.

Historia Obscurum

[scotianostra]

On November 19th 1976 Sir Basil Spence, Scottish architect, died.

Basil Spence is arguably the most internationally renowned 20th-century architects, known principally for his breathtaking work rebuilding Coventry Cathedral. Born in India, he was the son of an Orcadian and was sent home to have his schooling at George Watson’s College in Edinburgh.

Spence was an eclectic architect whose work ranged from vernacular-styled fisherman’s dwellings in Dunbar to opulent traditional country houses to ultra-modern pieces like the Edinburgh University library. He has been compared to Robert Adam by some for his detailed attention to interiors.

Some of his work might have been criticised but my favourite of his in Edinburgh has stood the test of time as other buildings of the 60’s and 70’s have been pulled down. His modern work,isn’t to everyone’s liking some of his designs are more classical, like Murrayfield Golf Clubhouse as seen in the second pics I like the Scottish Widows Building at Dalkeith Roads on the south side of Edinburgh it is in my opinion beautiful, it’s hexagonal bronze-tinted glassy exterior with the water reflecting the sun onto it at times and of course the backdrop of Arthur’s seat helps. The views out to Arthur’s seat and Edinburgh on the upper floors must be great, unfortunately Scottish Widows moved out of the building in 2020 and moves are afoot to demolish part of the building and build 195 flats and offices.

[crimre]

Here is my theory on how they decided on the renovation of Birmingham airport:

Picture this:

A Board Room somewhere in Birmingham. 6 men age 38 - 52 sitting around it. Smoke in the air from all the hard thinking.

Harold, who is the leader of the pack clears his throat, makes eye contact with every single one of them and says: “Okay lads, here is the deal. Our airport, which my grandfather and all of your grandfathers build with their own hands, and the labour of people way less privileged than us, is not up to standard anymore. Other airports are pulling ahead of us, people do not want to come to Birmingham anymore. We now have to advertise Coventry across our airport instead of our own city!!! COVENTRY!” Outraged murmurs fill the room.

“We need to do something, come up something, something new and innovative! Any ideas?”

Loads of discussions. Suggestions of integrating a Hooters or adding an indoor football field are added to a whiteboard. Finally, the youngest member of the group Todd suggests the unthinkable. “How about we make the security process easier? People hate taking all their things out of their bag packs and suitcases for security. We could get new scanners so they do not have to do that anymore. I am sure that would save passengers a lot of time. Time they could spend in the shops maybe? Possibly…”. Todd’s voice weavers and trails off. Everyone is starring at him. Todd has an MBA from London, and that is enough to just be an annoying twerp. Most of his suggestions get dismissed out of hand. Todd is an idiot. Everyone secretly agrees on that. He does not see the bigger picture.

“Capital, Todd old chap! Really a capital idea! So what happens then?” asks Arthur, the oldest of the group. Arthur says he is 52 but everyone is pretty sure he has been on the board since WW2. Or maybe even longer.

Todd is flustered. What is coming next? What should he say. He can feel his heart racing. “We.. we advertise our new.. new scanners” he stammered, “and then…” all eyes are on him. He can feel sweat running down his neck. “and then we restructure the airport so that there is only one security point, everyone no matter which terminal has to walk to, we create only one function elevator and force people to wait in endless cues, sometimes stopping them from walking into security for no reason just so they still get the full airport experience.”

Stunned silence. Todd’s hands are shaking but he keeps eye contact with Harold at all times. “Is this even possible” whispers Harold. “Oh I got you bro” Chad says unironically. Chad is an architect (by nepotism). “Holy shit Todd, you did it!” ,shouts Harold. “Well done son” says Arthur and pats Todd on the back! This is the best day in Todd’s life. The meeting is closed. Drinks are poured. Birmingham airport is saved.

End Scene!

[bablake]

Celebrating Creativity

It was good to see many of you at Wednesday’s A level and GCSE Art and Design Technology Exhibition and also at the Scholars’ Concert at St John’s or the Junior School production of Matilda. As always, I was very impressed by the creative talent on show and I am sure this will be the case next Tuesday at our Summer Music Concert, when pupils will have the opportunity to perform in front of the new Bishop of Coventry, who will be visiting Bablake that day. We also have our two Prize Giving ceremonies taking place on Wednesday, so there is much to look forward to as we approach the end of the academic year.

As well as being intellectual pursuits, subjects such as art, DT, music and drama allow pupils to express themselves in different ways. We believe they are hugely important for our pupils’ development and they provide balance to the more theoretical subjects. I might have been fairly hopeless at art when at school; indeed, I am still traumatised by my negative score (out of 10) for a piece of homework in Year 8! However, I love seeing art, both inside or outside school, and appreciating the ways in which it helps us to interpret our lives and wonder at our world. We had a week of lesson observations last week and I particularly enjoyed a Shell history lesson looking at what Renaissance art could tell us about some of the wider changes in society.

In between the numerous school events this week, I managed to attend ‘Science on the Hill’ at the University of Warwick, which I had advertised a few times in the Parent Bulletin. This is a regular set of events held in the Department of Life Sciences and consists of a series of short presentations based on an overarching topic. This week’s theme was embryology and it was good to see many Bablake pupils in attendance, making up a significant part of the audience; however, I am sure many more would benefit from events such as these, especially pupils considering studying medicine or science when they leave school. The presentations were fascinating and demonstrated the high level of creativity that is required in science. There was even a worm art show! https://genetics-gsa.org/celegans2023/worm-art-show/

One of our key learning characteristics is creativity, which is defined as making connections and approaching problems in new ways, using knowledge to explain how one feature links to another, thinking ‘outside the box’ and working with other people to develop fresh solutions and new ideas. I think that it is impossible to do all of this without an inquiring mind. Walter Isaacson, author of a biography of Leonardo da Vinci, was asked by National Geographic what made Leonardo a genius. While he identified his broad skillset as an artist, architect, engineer, and theatrical producer as being vital to his incredible achievements, he said that his standout quality was his curiosity. "Being curious about everything�� It's how he pushed himself and taught himself to be a genius.”

Based on what I have observed this week, I am pleased to report that creativity is thriving here at Bablake and remains a key part of our educational experience. Best wishes for a creative and happy weekend.

(Bulletin No 112 – Friday 21 June 2024)

[theknitpotato]

**The Grand Staircase of the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel, London.**

In May 1865, the Midland Railway Company (MRC) initiated a competition to build a 150-bed hotel adjacent to St. Pancras Station.

The hotel opened in stages between 1873 and 1876.

The Grand Staircase is perhaps the most famous of the hotel’s features. A dividing staircase was nothing new in Victorian gothic architecture; town halls and museums contained similar staircases. But the size and beauty of the Grand Staircase set it apart from others of the time. By today’s standards the staircase is wide indeed; by contemporary standards it was designed to be wide enough to allow two ladies in bustles to pass each other. Rather than its size, however, what really sets the Grand Staircase apart are its decorative features. To take just one example, nineteenth-century architects usually concealed wrought iron balusters from view. However, Scott hired one of his favourite suppliers, Skidmore of Coventry, to install prominent details into wrought iron balusters so that the railings can be seen from any of the three stories which lead to the celestial vaulted ceiling.

[paulrennie]

Corb in the Corner • Living with Le Corbusier...

Le Corbusier’s ideas are usually viewed separately; but they are all the same thing 

Marc Perelman 2005

Introduction

My father knew, and I grew up with, the Swiss-French architect, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, and identified in familiar form as, Corb. I don’t mean that Dad knew Le Corbusier personally, of course he didn’t. But he had learnt about his work as providing the foundations of modern 20C architecture. For architects of his generation, and involved with the great rebuild g after WW2, Corb was recognised as the patriarch and guiding genius of the profession. 

Corb was a familiar presence at home, and amongst my father’s colleagues and friends, and also from the pages of various architectural and design journals that came home. We had books about Le Corbusier on our shelves at home.

My parents were artistic without being completely bohemian. My father was a very practical kind of architect. As a young designer, and in the context of post-WW2 austerity, he had made his own furniture in the style of Robin Day and Ernest Race. Dad also built a kit-car and a radiogram. The radiogram comprised a valve ampifier with VHF tuner, and with a deck for playing records arranged in a cabinet with a hinged lid. The amp and radio took a few moments to warm up before working…

The various strands of Dad’s practicality were evidenced in his choice to repurpose a cast-concrete white-painted drainpipe, from Coventry, as the speaker cabinet for the radiogram. The drainpipe stood vertically with the loudspeaker resting, and fitting exactly, into the top opening. The pipe stood on a disc of polished wood (teak maybe) that was cut so as to allow the speaker cable to emerge neatly from within the pipe. This whole thing stood, about four-foot high, in the corner of the living room until, as a teenager, the radiogram and speaker were moved to my bedroom. The radiogram was about twenty-five years old when I took it over.

The drainpipe-speaker did several things for me. It gave me an early taste of concrete as a material that combined economy and heft, and that could also be enjoyed in the context of domestic comfort. The drainpipe also introduced me to ideas about the sculptural potential of ordinary objects, and the appeal of material integrity. It took many years for me to unpack the connections, implicit within this object, to design-reform, Le Corbusier, and to Duchamp’s Fountain, and to the found-object artworks of  Picasso, and to all the rest of art and philosophy, and to my own engagement with and experience of things.

Nowadays, I recognise our drainpipe-speaker as a totem object in our household…exemplifying and celebrating a world in which cultural sophistication and material economy combined…as an art-brut style expression of the exquisite everyday. Most importantly, the drainpipe showed me that every object, however prosaic, could be enjoyed through a combination of imagination, feeling and creativity, and understood in terms of ideas, emotions and personalities; so as to provide a world of art, experience and wonder…on the doorstep and in plain sight. As I got older, I began to discover the same possibilities in the shops, galleries, museums and houses that we visited.

Machines for Living (and being)

Quite a few off the houses we visited were lived-in by architect colleagues of my father, and with their families. These houses, mostly in the south-east of England, were identifiable by their open-plan living, white-painted walls, maxed-out gazing, asymmetric lighting and outsize Japanese paper-lantern shades. Later these houses were further modernised and extended so that the kitchens became larger multi-purpose spaces with fold-away glass walls that blurred the interface between indoor and outdoor space. Now, I recognise these houses as iterations of Le Corbusier’s concept of the house as a machine for living, In the UK context, few of these houses were new-builds; mostly, the machines were enclosed within historical structures of English domestic building; whether Georgian, Victorian or suburban.

The machines-for-living concept is often misrepresented by reference to FW Taylor's Scientific Management, and the claim to labour saving efficiency, rationality and convenience. The Frankfurt Kitchen (1926) is the exemplar for this. Le Corbusier's machines incorporate some elements of this convenient practicality, but the spatial machine is very much more expansive in what is potentialises.

I work at Central Saint Martins, part of the University of the Arts London. The school moved to Kings Cross/St Pancras in 2012. The new building, designed by Stanton Williams, sits within 19C railway buildings that formed an historic freight terminal for the supply of grain to London. The original station platforms have been removed and their site now defines a three-storey block of studios and workshops, arranged around a floor-to-roof height and full-length-of-the-building atrium space. This modern structure is all interior space and large glazed openings expressed through the combination of glass, steel and concrete. In contrast, the original front-facing Granary building, designed by Lewis Cubitt, is built of stone, brick, cast-iron and timber. 

The old building is lovely example of the functional 19C warehouse type. The structure and shape of the building is entirely derived from the specification of its materials. By modern standards, the whole appears relatively small-scale. Inside, its five storeys appear low-ceilinged and with floor-spans interrupted, at regular intervals, by cast-iron columns that provide internal support. Notwithstanding these limitations, the building is comfortably Vitruvian in scale and popular with students.

There’s a really exciting spatial transition associated with the experience of moving from one scale of building and materials, circa 1840, and into another, bigger open structure (2012). The effect is literally mind-blowing; which is just right for creative thinking. That TARDIS effect of spatial expansion, expressed through structure and materials is entirely derived from Corb, and described as shifting from Vetruvian to Modular scales. There's also an implied accelerating effect. The Granary building is the smallest of new-builds across the KX campus development.

My own interest in communication design developed as a consequence of my own experience of the open-plan associations facilitated in the department store and museum developments of the 1960s and 1970s. 

The scale and scope of open-plan living proposed by these structures, whatever their external form, provided for a reaction against the tyranny of small-spaces evident in the separate-rooms-for-separate activities evident in the organisation of the traditional home. This spatial organisation implied a separation of functions and concepts that tended toward compartmentalisation, hierarchy and isolation. The dynamic and connected space of Corbusier suggested a wider range of positive interactions, and established modern architecture as a form of social practice in expanding space.

In the 1960′s and the 1970′s, modern engineering combined with ideas of a different kind of cultural experience and produced the fun-palace concept. In Britain, the architect and theorist, Cedric Price, used the potential of the mega-scaled space-frame to conceptualise a multi-function structure. The legacy of this idea may be seen in the present-day scale and design of airport terminals, shopping malls and so on. 

Part of what Cedric Price had imagined was an architecture that was structural and systemic; but also social and cultural. Co-incidentally, the social potential of civic space had been described and promoted by Ernesto Rogers (Richard's uncle) in Italy.

The big idea of the Pompidou Centre, entirely derived from Le Corbusier and Price, and designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, and with engineering by Peter Rice, was that this big building should have a completely open floor plates. This would allow for maximum versatility and visibility. Accordingly, the supporting structure of the building had to be externalised.

The external structure of the Pompidou Centre is all about lightening-the-load and keeping everything stable. The building is pretty big and there’s are some substantial compression loads from within the main structure. All those traditional internal columns, that would have kept the roof on, had to be pushed onto the outside and dissipated through a triangulated lattice of ties.

The crucial part of the structure is a pivoted lever element called a gerberette. This is a cantilever that balances the internal compression of the structure and transfers it to the external lattice of tensioned metal ties. The gerberette parts are cast steel and weigh 11 tons each…but they have lovely sculptural quality. That’s Corb and Mies combined, and with Brancusi etc.

I love the way that the Beaubourg building combines a number of ideas from the history of architecture 

Gothic flying buttresses…

Sail boat rigging (Frei Otto)

The architecture of infinite-extension (Joseph Paxton)

The space frame and the geodesic lattice (Buckminster-Fuller)

The open-plan (Le Corbusier)

So, although the form of the building is expressed using 20C materials, the ideas that those forms express are much older. Crucially, the spaces opened up by Beaubourg were beyond the existing budgets and resources attaching to institutional colleagues. This provided a break-out space from the siloed thinking of longer established museums and galleries.

The new spaces of Beaubourg encouraged curators to develop new ways of showing things and created an environment in which the connections between things became more clearly evident. In curatorial terms the spaces undermined the usual ownership of culture by effectively by-passing the gate-keepers of  compartmentalised objects and culture. Thus high and low were brought together, and everything became more visibly connected. This was the beginning of an inter-textual hyper-reality. The galleries provide a space in which objects, images and texts seem to float in space…I love that. In the UK, this model was perhaps most clearly realised in the retail environment of the Biba store.

Looking back, I now understand that I internalised these structures and, as far as I was able, these systems of thinking. I did that thanks to family and friends who took me around palaces, and shops, and showed me how life could be lived and how things could be arranged. 

When I began to build my own mind-palace it was quite architecturally specific. It was a high-tech structure derived from the Eames House (kit of parts) and at the scale of Piano and Rogers, and with the open-plan space of Le Corbusier. There's also a bit of Jean Prouvé, and Cedric Price, and Malevich. I want my big buildings to have big spaces that connect people and things.

There are no corridors in my mind-palace, and the rooms are configured by the artful arrangement of objects, people and moving images…The whole thing is a cross between how I imagine Biba (I never went there) and what I got from Beaubourg and Versailles.

From the 1980s and onwards, I worked in the art world. This helped me develop my visual memory so that I have really good recall of the spatial arrangements of objects in room-settings - furniture, pictures, objects, people and books etc.

As I’ve got older, the whole thing has become a bit more 18C looking. That’s slightly  weird; but I’ve definitely developed a taste for parquet floors. I also like the patina you get on old-fashioned linoleum after about twenty years. 

Dom-ino (1914)

Le Corbusier had previously worked in the studio of Auguste Perret where he had been introduced to the structural potential and economy of reinforced concrete. The advent of WW1 unexpectedly provided Le Corbusier with the opportunity to conceptualise an inexpensive and simple domestic-scaled concrete frame, or platform, that could be mass-produced and combined, like dominos. Le Corbusier hoped to address, through this concept, the unfolding humanitarian crisis of housing shortage and displacements attaching to conflict, disaster and progress.

Le Corbusier’s schematic proposed three slabs, raised on six concrete posts and with a cast-concrete staircase elements connecting ground to first-floor, and roof. The practical economy of the concept belies the exciting potential of separating the structural function of walls from their space and activity-defining roles. The open-plan floor system was understood as multi-function and flexible, and the exterior walls transformed so as to afford larger apertures to provide transparency and greater in-and-out movement. The Dom-ino prototype suggests a set of guiding, abstract and idealised principles to direct modern architecture.

Corbusier’s concept combined a number of important ideas in relation to modern building: economy, mass-production, pre-fabrication, modularity, system assembly, functionality, co-design and scalability. Nevertheless, this potential remained largely ignored within the context of house-building until after WW2.

Le Corbusier explored the potential of the dom-in concept through a series of iterations in various forms, and optimisations of space and function. The most famous of this variants are 

The Citrohan Concept House (1920)

The Pavillion de L’esprit Nouveau (1924)

The Villa Savoye (1927)

These experiments allowed Le Corbusier to more clearly define the basic architectural principles that had shaped the development of the original concept. These were

Free design of the ground plan – commonly considered the focal point of the Five Points, with its construction dictating new architectural frameworks. The absence of load-bearing partition walls affords greater flexibility in design and use of living spaces; the house is unrestrained in its internal use

Pilotis – a grid of slim reinforced concrete pylons that assume the structural weight of a building. They are the foundations for aesthetic agility, allowing for free ground floor circulation to prevent surface dampness, as well as enabling the garden to extend beneath the residence

Free design of the façade – separated exterior of the building is free from conventional structural restriction, allowing the façade to be unrestrained, lighter, more open

Horizontal window – ribboned windows run alongside the façade’s length, lighting rooms equally, while increasing sense of space and seclusion. As well as providing interior spaces with better light and view of the surroundings

Roof garden – flat roofs with garden terraces serve both harmonic and domestic utility, providing natural layers of insulation to the concrete roof and creating space 

Economy + Scale  Flexibility + Possibility

The machine for living, as evidenced by these examples and characteristics, is not a thing of mere convenience; it is a space of dynamic and transcendent possibility, that can expand and shape-shift as required. The Corbusian machine is conceptualised as a mechanism of association and aggregation as much as one of functional productivity. The model is less straightforwardly instrumental or deterministic than the Fordist models to which the concept is usually attached. 

Accordingly, the spatial characteristics of architecture became the primary focus of Le Corbusier’s thinking, with materials, scale, structure and specification each serving the spatial priority of experience and practicality. These principles and logic have continued to inform the development of 20C architecture in terms of scale, materials, economy and possibility.

The consideration of architecture as a cultural form is nearly always concerned, with the outward appearance of buildings. Le Corbusier shows us that this is misguided. The outward appearance of buildings is very nearly their least interesting characteristic. The consideration of space, structure, scale and specification in relation to buildings is helpful to understanding how form, function and experience are related. This arrangements of ideas is also suggestive of an architecture without buildings and a focus of interactions and outcomes as an expression of architectural practice.

By a happy co-incidence, the three master architects of the modern movement each focussed their efforts on one of these characteristics; Le Corbusier on space, Water Gropius of structure, and Mies on the elegant details and alignment of specification.

Each of these masters, and the architectural profession generally, have often been identified as megalomaniacal egomaniacs. The dom-ino concept provides a significant and alternative example to this narrative. Le Corbusier idea has become the template for grand-designs, but also for non-architect designed housing across the suburbs and the global south. The dom-ino has become the default structure across Africa, Asia and Latin-America.

Architecture without Buildings...

The eccentric and non-planned combination of simple structural dom-ino elements provides the frame for a wider social ecology that reminds us of John Conway’s Game of Life and of the combinational potential in Deleuzian desiring-machines as exemplars of co-design.

The modern world shapes identity through perception and cognition in relation to the systems and structures of machine philosophy. This is experienced through social relations and by the objects that surround us and in which we invest meaning and memory...

My own interests are in the the expression of the modern world as floating (dynamic) signs in space. I'm mostly interested in the historical and material iteration of these signs in relation to the acceleration of modern life. I love the idea of digital, but I'm skeptical of the emotional potential of the digital realm; at least compared with the memory and feeling that we attach to print culture.

Actual buildings are almost the least of it.

[ultraheydudemestuff]

Euclid Golf Allotment

Fairmount Boulevard

Cleveland Heights, OH

     The Euclid Golf Allotment, also known as the Euclid Golf Historic District, is a historic district located in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.  Roughly bounded by Cedar Road, Coventry Road, Scarborough Rd., West St. James Parkway, and Ardleigh Drive, the 142-acre site contains primarily residential homes built between 1913 and 1929. The historic district is built on land formerly owned by John D. Rockefeller and at one time leased to the Euclid Golf Club for its back nine holes, and it takes its name from this historic fact. The Euclid Golf Allotment is a largely undisturbed example of an early 20th century planned community containing American Craftsman, Colonial Revival, French Renaissance Revival, Italian Renaissance Revival, Prairie School, Shingle Style, and Tudor Revival architecture.  The Euclid Golf Allotment was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 23, 2002.

     The historic district contains 141 acres, all of which are residential except for St. Paul's Episcopal Church (intersection of Coventry Road and Fairmount Blvd.) and Heights Medical Building (intersection of Fairmount Blvd. and Cedar Road).  The Euclid Golf Allotment Historic District continues to be laid out in accordance with "garden city" principles. The main road running through historic district is Fairmount Boulevard.  Parcels on Fairmount Boulevard typically are 90 feet wide and 200-to-250-foot  deep. Secondary roads running through the historic district include Ardleigh Drive, Chatfield Drive, Delamere Drive, Demington Drive, North St. James Parkway, Roxboro Road, Scarborough Road, Tudor Drive, West St. James Parkway, and Woodmere Drive.

     There are 432 structures in the Euclid Golf Allotment Historic District. Most of the homes in the Euclid Golf Allotment Historic District were designed by leading Cleveland-area architects, including Charles Sumner Schneider, Maxwell Norcross, Mead and Hamilton, Howell and Thomas, and Walker and Weeks.  The Euclid Golf Allotment Historic District retains much of its original character.  The facades of few homes had been significantly altered, and about two-thirds of slate roofs had been replaced with asphalt or composite shingle roofs. Other changes, such as modern windows instead of leaded glass and enclosure of porches, were also made, but these tended to be minimal. Additions to homes tend to be very uncommon, and generally in the same architectural style as the original structure.

[cullinanconstructionconsultants]

Expert House Builders & Reliable New Build Contractors Shropshire

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[juancarloscarlos861]

3D Modelling Coventry

Castle Surveys Limited are one of the fastest growing multi-disciplinary surveying practices in the UK. We provide specialist surveying services Best 3D Modelling West Midlands. We provide specialist surveying services to architects, planning consultants, utility companies, government agencies, engineers, ecologists and various other construction related professionals.

[scotianostra]

On 13th August 1907 Scottish architect, Sir Basil Spence, was born.

Spence was born in Bombay, India, his education began at the John Connon School, operated by the Bombay Scottish Education Society, he was then sent back to Scotland to attend George Watson's College in Edinburgh from 1919–1925. He enrolled at Edinburgh College of Art in 1925, studying architecture.

In 1929–1930 Spence spent a year as an assistant, along with William Kininmonth, in the London office of Sir Edwin Lutyens, whose work was to have a profound influence on his style, where he worked on designs for the Viceroy's House in New Delhi, India.

While in London he attended evening classes at the Bartlett School of Architecture under A. E. Richardson. Returning to Edinburgh College of Art in 1930 for his final year of studies, he was appointed a junior lecturer, despite the fact that he was still a student. He continued to teach there until 1939.

Basil Spence is arguably the most internationally renowned 20th-century architects, known principally for his breath-taking work rebuilding Coventry Cathedral. Spence was an eclectic architect whose work ranged from vernacular-styled fisherman’s dwellings in Dunbar to opulent traditional country houses to ultra-modern pieces like the Edinburgh University library. He has been compared to Robert Adam by some for his detailed attention to interiors. Some of his work might have been criticized but my favourite of his in Edinburgh has stood the test of time as other buildings of the 60’s and 70’s have been pulled down. The Scottish Widows Building at Dalkeith Roads on the south side of Edinburgh is in my opinion beautiful, it’s hexagonal bronze-tinted glassy exterior with the water reflecting the sun onto it at times and of course the backdrop of Arthur’s seat helps. The views out to Arthur’s seat and Edinburgh on the upper floors must be a joy for those that work there.

Although known for his modern work, which isn’t to everyone's liking some of his designs are more classical, like Glenwood at Glenlockhart Road, Edinburgh as seen in pic three, and Murrayfield Golf Clubhouse in the next photo. The other photos are of the man himself and Coventry Cathedral.

Pics are of Bsil Spence, Morton Hall Crematorium, New Zealands Government Building, "The Beehive". Sussex University Meeting Room and Coventry Cathedral.

[germanpostwarmodern]

Calling his legacy disputed might be an understatement: Sir Basil Spence (1907-76), in the 1950s and 1960s one of Britain’s most widely known architects. With his win of the Coventry Cathedral competition Spence shortly after WWII hit the limelight and designed a well-received icon of postwar architecture in Britain. But while Coventry Cathedral won him almost unanimous praise his housing projects very much ruined his reputation: the Hyde Park Cavalry Barracks (1959-70) or the Queen Anne’s Gate (1976) office building were fiercely criticized for their lack of sensibility and regard for its residents. That this 1970s criticism is less than half the story of Spence’s career demonstrates the present monograph: „Basil Spence: Buildings and Projects“, edited by Louise Campbell, Miles Glendinning & Jane Thomas and published by RIBA Publishing in 2012. The book, as its title indicates, offers a complete overview of Spence’s career from his beginnings as student at Edinburgh College of Art, his assistance to Edwin Lutyens in 1929/30, his first modernist works in the 1930s up until his disputed late work. In between one can find numerous examples of Spence also being a sensible designer who was well able to respect context: his Rome Embassy (1961-71) e.g. reacted very sensibly to the adjacent Porta Pia and it is this ambivalence between sensibility and brutality, large and small scale as well as Arts and Crafts and high-tech that rings throughout the book. Drawing on Spence’s entire archive the authors gather drawings, plans and photos of buildings and projects that underline the immense variety of the architect’s practice but also its paradoxes. Spence never fully embraced just one „style“, instead regionalism, high-tech, brutalism and hints of Arts and Crafts coexist and surely contributed to his „in-between“ position in British architecture.

Through its rich material base „Basil Spence: Buildings and Projects“ not only provides an all-encompassing account of the architect’s work but also a starting point for further ventures into his complex career. Warmly recommended! 

[frenchcurious]

Cathédrale de Coventry (officiellement cathédrale Saint-Michel) Coventry, Royaume-Uni. Construit de 1956 à 1962 - Architecte Basil Spence - source Architectonic Travels.

[shakespearenews]

"...what Stratford really wanted – and probably still does – is suggested by the exhibition held in London at Earl’s Court in 1912 on ‘Shakespeare’s England’. The organiser was Mrs George Cornwallis-West, Winston Churchill’s mother; the architect was Edwin Lutyens, who confessed that ‘I feel rather sorry I have anything to do with it…’ It contained replicas of such familiar Merrie England icons as Ford’s Hospital at Coventry as well as the stern of Francis Drake’s flagship, the Revenge. But most of it consisted of half-timbered picturesque streets, one – significantly – leading to a replica of the long-lost Globe Theatre in which Shakespeare’s plays were originally performed." Source.

More: "Mrs. Cornwallis West's 'Shakespeare's England' a Failure Financially"

HIGGINS [to Pickering as they go out together] Let's take her to the Shakespear exhibition at Earls Court. -Pygmalion

[nem0c]

Aten (Sun disk) and Ankh on column, Broadgate House, Coventry.

“[Post-War City Architect Donald] Gibson asked [Sculptor John] Skelton to carve there the symbol of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, who had became something of a cult figure after archaeological excavations resumed at Tel-al-Amana in the inter-war period. During the 1920s, Tel-al-Amana came to be viewed in terms of a lost utopia, an ideal city dedicated to the worship of the sun...According to Gibson, his intention was ‘to signify a belief in the more spiritual values of human advance, and of civic design. ...the sign on the Broadgate column was used on many of the important buildings [of Tel-al-Amana] and its meaning of a relationship between heaven and earth, shown by the solar disc and the outstretched arms with the hand leading down to earth holding a symbol of eternity, makes a worthy target, and is intended as an act of dedication of all those concerned in City building, in the service of the City’s people.’”

Sources: The Mystery of the Egyptian God and the Precinct, Coventry Society News, 2019: https://news.coventrysociety.org.uk/2019/04/04/the-mystery-of-the-egyptian-god-and-the-precinct/

Paper Dream City/Modern Monument: Donald Gibson and Coventry, Man-Made Future: Planning, Education, and Design in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain, 2007: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/9846671.pdf

[uwmspeccoll]

The Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century, Items from the Great Exhibition of 1851

Today we present decorative plates from The Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century, a series of illustrations of works produced by many nations for the first world trade fair, The Great Exhibition took place in Hyde Park, London in 1851. The book was produced by the architect and art historian, Matthew Digby Wyatt, and published by Day and Son, Lithographers to the Queen from 1851-1853. The two large volumes feature 160 chromolithographed plates produced by a team of artists and lithographers, many by Francis Bedford.

In the introduction, Matthew Digby Wyatt explains the importance of creating such a work that will communicate with future generations the “triumphs of industry” by illustrating the the “choicest specimens” of the Great Exhibition. He compares such an endeavor to the way that art and architecture acts as a representative for its time in history.

List of plates in order:

1. Book Cover by French of Bolton-le Moors, Lancashire.

2. A Group of Church Plate by Skidmore of Coventry.

3. Indian Elephant Trapping.

4. Specimens of Russian Embroidery.

5. Fountain and Ornamental Gates (in cast iron) by the CoalBrookDale Company.

6. Window Ornament from Tunis.

7. White Wood Cabinet by Michel L. Wettli of Berne.

8. Pianofortes by Collard & Collard of London.

9. Ornamental Gun Stand from Tunis.

10. Decoration of an Apartment by Thomas of London.

View more from the The Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century here.

View more posts about decorative arts and pattern books.

–Sarah, Special Collections Graduate Intern