Gargoyle

" I should never have eaten that beetroot"

One of the lovely gargoyles on Sutherland Building, Northumbria University.....they make you glad to be alive!

Today's also ran...

....on the Blipfoto journal....light wasn't right, nor the angle, but I still like it. Magnet and Andrews Houses, Gallowgate. Built in the 1930's for the General Electric Company as company offices with shops on the ground floor. Made special by a series of terracotta panels depicting heroic scenes of (scantily-clad, iron-jawed) men working in the power industry. Click on the image for the bigger version.

Concrete evidence.....

....of what was seen as cutting edge in UK architecture the year I was born. Yours too for that matter.....probably. The complete archives of Concrete Quarterly from 1947 available for download here in pdf format

German gargoyle

So this specimen (looks like he's got a bit of a cold!) was the nearest I got to a germanic gargoyle...in the main they tend towards heroic/religious figures or the empty helmet motif, but maybe that's just Berlin.

Cold War Classic

Jested Telecommunications Tower and Hotel - Cold War Modern from Victoria & Albert Museum on Vimeo.

"Designed in 1963, the hotel and telecommunications tower on top of Ještěd mountain are one of the most extraordinary architectural achievements of the entire Eastern Bloc. A piece of bravura engineering on a very difficult site, the cone-shaped tower continues the profile of the mountain to a perfect vertical point. The theme of space travel is reinforced by decorative meteorites set into theconcrete core inside."

I've added this to my list of 'places to visit before I die'!

Jesmond Picture House

After standing empty for 15 years, the Jesmond Picture House is earmarked for demolition and replacement with a, no doubt faceless, office/shopping complex sometime soon (if the process hasn't already started....it's a while since I went 'the posh way round' on the Metro to town!) Seeing that there's a bit of a family connection (Uncle Elwood was the manager there at least until the early 70's and was always good for a free seat on a quiet night when my grant cheque didn't quite stretch) I thought a memorial post was in order to mark its passing.

From Wikipedia...."This suburban cinema opened in 1921 and survived well into the multiplex age. Made in America was the last film to be screened there when it finally closed its doors in October 1993."

The Jesmond didn't just do films, I remember seeing Alexi Sayle there in the mid 80's....it was described as "a memorably bawdy and raucous night", and I can vouch for the fact that it was!

In 2007 28DaysLater, the UK urban exporation group, 'gained access' (no names, no pack drill!) and took some pictures of the decayed interior....see them here together with scans of the Chronicle write-up

When concrete was king

I found this set of 35mm teaching slides at work today and scanned them in....they date from 1973.


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