GR's Camera Travels, Photographs of Architectural Interest

Note the centre of the clock, the face is reputed to be that of Winston Churchill.

A nice soft touch here.

A more detailed view.

Likewise.

So what happened to this remarkable building?

This!!! Yes, the heart of the building was demolished and replaced with something quite unremarkable - it seems that person that is Ian Narn's building has been scooped bunged into a skip and carted away. Gone is Sir Albert's eccentricity in comes dreadful property developed convention!

More Architecture

Some examples of Bracken House, the former Financial Times building in the City of London. Sadly, this building became the recent subject of refurbishment, redesign and redevelopment that the entire integrity of the building was completely ruined, but there are plenty happy reminders of its former glory.

The building was so remarkable that it got a write up in Private Eye "Nooks and Corners" column some twenty years ago, long before its redevelopment.

It was built in 1959, designed by Sir Albert Richardson, for the The Financial Times. The other remarkable feature of the building is that it is based on the design of Palazzo Carignano built in Turin in 1679.

Ian Nairn in his book Nairn's London commented:

What a funny business. From a distance it looks like one more city hulk. From the equivalent distance of my own preconceptions it seems unbelievable that Sir Albert Richardson could have turned up trumps with a modern office block. Yet the conviction grows with every visit that Bracken House is a friendly is a friendly, logical, personality - and there is plenty of faceless stuff to check by. The classical details are reduced to classical essences such as pier and lintel, as they might be in a Victorian warehouse. The wholly alien combination of red sandstone and brown brick is effortlessly mellow; and the indentations of the bays are the kind of handle the ordinary passer or user needs to convert the building into a person. Sir Albert's genial eccentricity is breathing all over it; but if you track down his firm's other :London buildings on the strength of this one, you will be in for a terrible disappointment

70 Farringdon Street, telephone exchange - a sixties building adorned by these fantastic ceramic tiles, signed D.Annan - they appear to be abstract representations of telecommunications. Unfortunately, I am unable to find any information on the artist or the panels. Many 60's buildings had such artistic adornments, as we shall see later.

The Queen Elizabeth Hall, like the Hayward Gallery is an adventure in concrete design. Stark and sharp-edged; built in the 60's, it has everything that concrete could offer. Cubes and nothing but. The interior is, nevertheless, remarkable, big windows and very comfy chairs that it is almost like a university refectory. I've idled many an hour in this building. (Unfortunately it was closed on the day that I took this photo)

This is a photograph of an underground walkway on the South Bank

The Hayward Gallery. Superb sci-fi building. Note the antenna like structure, it was put up in the early 70's; it used to whizz around in the wind; likewise, the lights used to be turned on and off by the wind. It no longer whizzes around, but the lights go on and off according to how the wind blows.

The Christ Church and Upton Chapel. Kennington. London.

n his book on English Buildings, Nicholas Pevsner noted:

"Only the fine tower survives of the original excellent church by Paul and Bickerdike, 1873 - 6. Standing at a commanding position at the fork of two main roads. The spire is decorated with stars and stripes (as the building funds came from america). The tower now adjoins an office block, with the church on the ground floor marked out by a large window behind a pierced concrete screen made up of a repeating pattern of three curving interwoven forms in high relief. The church dates from 1958 - 60"

What is so fascinating about this facade is the symmetry. The design has a flesh-like / muscular quality to it - as if muscles are stretched. Almost an symbolic-anatomical representation of Christ on the Cross.

Another close up of the façade

A vista view of the same detail.

The facade to this church is amazing. I remember first seeing this building around 1964, and although a child, I was always impressed with the pattern of it.

The interior has some fairly good examples of modern stained glass.

This photograph gives you a sense of the high relief of the sculpture