January 2024 – Where is Phil now?

Sunday 14 January 2024 – Bloomsbury, London.

I’m going to claim all the credit for this most excellent Brutal Day Out photography walk. I posted on the group Instagram chat that I was going to go to Bloomsbury in central London to photograph the University College London’s two brutalist buildings; the School of Oriental and African Studies library and the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. I said that if people wanted to join me that would be great, the group organisers then turned into an ‘official’ walk and it was given the number 7. This is not a paid group or walk so I wasn’t put out by this at all, though they did drop the Royal College of Physicians from my list to add three other buildings that made more geographic sense. This was no bad thing as I wouldn’t have visited the Standard and it was great.

However, I chose to do a side trip to the Royal College of Physicians before we met at Kings Cross station as it was only a 20 minute walk away on the edge of Regents Park. I’m glad I did as it’s quite a cool building.

A quick note for anyone stumbling across this post looking for useful information on the buildings I photographed. There isn’t any; useful information that is, there are photos though.

Royal College of Physicians, opened in 1964, designed by Denys Lasdun.

I’ve been meaning to come here to photograph this building for a while and visited it briefly a couple of evenings ago before meeting friends for a drink nearby. I rarely come to this part of London. On that visit I was hoping for some interesting external lighting, but it was too dark and the rain was heavy and the light was poor so a daytime visit seemed like the right thing to do, so I just went to the pub.

Back at Kings Cross I grabbed a coffee and met the rest of the 13 strong group, surprisingly most were on time and we didn’t have to wait long for the last straggler to turn up. Having people join from all over the shop, including two from Manchester, and with increasingly unreliable public transport, means patience is sometimes required.

Our first building was almost directly over the road, the lovely ex-Camden Council head office building, now the Standard Hotel. I really like this building, though have to actually go inside. If I did I would want to be able to use the lift.

The Standard Hotel, originally built in 1974 for Camden Council, fully remodelled as a hotel, opening again in 2019.

The Brunswick Centre, opened in 1972.

Mixed use residential and retail this estate was supposed to be bigger than it is but the developers couldn’t get all the land they wanted, which (familiar story) means they had to change the original plan of building a private estate and bring the council (Camden at the time) in to help out. It was subsequently opened as part private and part council housing, and remains that way now, which I think is a good thing, though it needs a lot of money spending on it by the look of it.

I was very lucky to be invited into the residential block by a resident who saw me walking around with my camera and told me there was a great view of London from the top floor. There was, but I was more interested in the lovely concrete angles.

Some of my walk mates got invited in to look at someone’s flat which I remain a bit jealous of, though apparently it wasn’t that interesting. I have visions of residents maintaining a flat like a museum of 1970s interiors, though of course reality isn’t like that. I’m going to back one quiet Sunday morning and take some photos of the street level window boxes outside some of the flats.

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Imperial Hotel, under renovation.
I found some fabulous old phones in the carpark. Always check the carpark is my policy.

University College London.
These buildings were quite difficult to photograph, or at least I found them to be. I took a few images but wasn’t really happy with the most of them. The buildings are big, and there isn’t a vast amount of space to get a decent angle to shoot that doesn’t end up making the building look really weird, and fixing in Lightroom wouldn’t really work either.

Charles Clore House, (Institute of Advanced Legal Studies), Denys Lasdun, 1976.

The Philips Building (SOAS Library), Denys Lasdun, 1973.

Denys Lasdun featured a lot today, amongst other things he also designed the fabulous brutalist parts of the University of East Anglia in Norwich and the National Theatre on London’s Southbank. He is my favourite of the English based ‘brutalist’ architects.

It was starting to get a bit cold and we had been on our feet for 4 half hours so it was time to nip to the pub for a refreshing pint or two. It was another very enjoyable day out. One of the photographers who has been on all the walks had brought along a child’s camera, which uses till receipt thermal paper for instant black and white printing. I subsequently bought this one for next time and I’m really looking forward to trying it out on some lovely concrete.

Toy Camera

Saturday 6 January 2024 – Barbican, London

Happy New Year!

Another year has ended and a fresh one has begun; maybe this one will be better than the last, or maybe it will be worse, who knows? Not me. There’s an extra day this year so that could be the impetus for something positive happening; like an election in May for instance, and after 14 years we can have a more caring government in the UK.

Anyway, to be more positive; I’ve booked or planned quite a few activities for 2024 and already had two booked for January (A brutal day out and a first visit to Glasgow) before I last minute booked a two hour guided tour of the Barbican for Eleanor and I. I love the Barbican. It’s close to, if not the, top of the list of my favourite places in London. I love the architecture, the design and the build of the theatre and art centre, that its clean and tidy, that the cafes and bars are decent, albeit not cheap, and that there is no hassle from security for photographers. The last point being the most important.

The tour started at 3:00pm and there were about a dozen ‘tourists’, our guide was the best I’ve ever experienced. Knowledgeable, interesting and engaging; but not over the top, if you know what I mean. I really enjoyed the walk and learned a few things, most of which I’ve already forgotten. To be fair this isn’t supposed to be an architecture blog, though I guess it must feel like that sometimes; and yes the next post is also going to be loaded with photos of buildings made of concrete. I seem to have turned into a city-scape photographer. Roll on more travel in 2024.

We started the tour with a brief history of the estate and an introduction to the architects who designed the complex, a lot more of its interesting history was shared as we walked and the guide had some great photos from the past. The most interesting part of the introduction was the choice of materials used to surface the buildings. The original design called for white marble tiles, but the architects managed to dissuade the council who own the estate that concrete was the way to go; in polluted rainy 1950/60s London marble was not going to stay white and unstained for very long.

In a short passage behind a locked door was a concrete ‘sample board’; a long wall of different styles of concrete panels. This was used to influence the chosen ‘skin’ for all the buildings. We also learned that the concrete panels were cast on site then hand battered and drilled to provide the textured surface we see today. It was horrifically expensive in man hours and extremely damaging to the health of the men that did the battering and drilling.

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As the tour was quite late in the day, and it’s winter in London, daylight disappeared quite soon after we started. I took a few photos as we went, but ended up shooting so slowly it was hard to retain any focus. Having said that I have taken loads of photos here in the past, and am sure I will do so again so I wasn’t too concerned. I would quite like to come back for a night shoot, but suspect those friendly security folk will take a different view if tripods were involved. I’m going to add it to the list of possible shoots to do with my brutalist photography buddies.

So here are a small number of Barbican photos. The first camera outing of the year; there will be a few I hope. I’m planning on replacing my camera this year as I’m sick of lugging an old Canon 5d around with me. I love it as a camera, but it’s heavy and big and it’s time to downsize.