Best concrete buildings in London???

[Cid]

The Brunswick is really cool. When you're inside the promenade, it feels like you're in a 60s vision of what the future will look like.

The problem with concrete buildings is that they tend to look like complete shit because it's such a cold and soulless building material. But they look fantastic when they're all done up with flowers and greenery. I was walking through Barbican the other day and I couldn't help to be impressed by the architecture and neighbourhood, purely because of all of the hanging flower baskets from everyone's balconies. I imagine that area would be depressing as hell in the winter.

Well this is part of the problem, a lot of concrete buildings look great in the sun, unfortunately we don't get much...

 

[wtfftw]

I'm quite attached to the pimlico school building.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

The Thistle Hotel by Tower Bridge is so fuck off ugly it's impossible to find a decent photograph of it on the web. It is so fuck ugly in it's concreteness that it is actually quite appealing. A huge blot on the landscape these days. I like it.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

I'm quite attached to the pimlico school building.

ever been in it during summer.....

or winter

or when it rained?

 

[scifisam]

Like you said, you wouldn't want to live in Thamesmead; what's the point of residential buildings that nobody would choose to live in? They leak like fuck too, unsurprisingly.

The Pimlico school building is astonishing just for being a hideous paean to poverty in amongst great wealth. You stroll past Tate Britain and the white town houses of Belgrave Rd, past the small, perfectly-kept green squares, then suddenly you see a fifty-foot drop to a place that you're sure must be a moated prison, going on the concrete and the bars and the lack of thought to the idea that anyone's going to see it from the outside. But no, that's where they keep children.

You could laud it for its brave difference, its rebelliousness, I guess, if you were in a contrary state of mind - if it weren't that the building is functionally unsound.

Cold or hot, never in-between; sucks up sounds in its drama departments and transmits sounds everywhere else; prone to insect infestations and floods; butt-ugly; practically no ventilation; sometimes has to be closed in especially hot or cold weather, because it goes beyong legal temperatures - an honour otherwise bestowed only on PFI buildings unless there's an extreme heatwave or cold snap.

All in all, a fine venue for a school that has Performing Arts status in one of the richest areas of the country. A fine place to send the poor kids of the borough while their much richer next-door neighbours run away from the place screaming.

I think that for architects, concrete blocks pose a wonderful challenge, because it's so much harder to construct a happy and functional environment from them. Unfortunately, very few architects were up to the challenge.

 

[paolo]

I used to live round the corner from Pimlico School... someone once told me it was up for demo... any truth in that scifisam, do yer know?

 

[wtfftw]

ever been in it during summer.....

or winter

or when it rained?

Yes. I'm not saying it was good functionally weather wise (or width of corridor).

 

[HackneyE9]

Balfron Tower.

 

[lang rabbie]

Balfron Tower.

Will they ever reinstate the concrete balustrade (or was it actually a sneaky cornice )at the top?

The whole building has looked lopsided since it was removed twenty(?) years ago, which is probably one reason why people don't recognise what a well designed bit of architecture it is.

 

[HackneyE9]

Will they ever reinstate the concrete balustrade (or was it actually a sneaky cornice )at the top?

The whole building has looked lopsided since it was removed twenty(?) years ago, which is probably one reason why people don't recognise what a well designed bit of architecture it is.

You got any before-after piccies?

It's bloody amazing inside. Top quality maisonettes and corridors. Incredible views. Shame that corner of Tower Hamlets is such a cul-de-sac dump.

 

[laptop]

I like this:

http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/s/stockwell/stockwell_north.jpg

and from some angles the Hayward Gallery - can't find a pic from those angles though.

 

[lang rabbie]

You got any before-after piccies?

Before:

Image on RIBApix

After:

Picture on husk.org

 

[lang rabbie]

I like this:

Sorry, you can't have that one. It's not concrete (apart from the lift shaft frame)

 

[Reno]

The Alexandra Road Housing Estate:

I like it enough to have bought a flat there:

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=144054&highlight=alexandra+road

 

[zenie]

The Alexandra Road Housing Estate:

I like it enough to have bought a flat there:

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=144054&highlight=alexandra+road

yeh I do love that place actually.