Month: September 2024

Saturday 14 September 2024 – Leeds

This was my first Brutal Day Out group trip outside of London and I‘d been looking forward to it for weeks. The group has made a few visits to other cities and towns but I’ve always been busy with other things and not been able to attend. With group members from across the UK it’s important to share the cost of transport and not be so London focused, plus there’s a lot to see outside of the capital and it’s a good reason to visit places I would otherwise have no need to go to.

Also… I’ve wanted to visit Leeds and this was a very good reason to do so. It’s the spiritual home of 80s ‘goth’. The mid to late 80s saw Leeds deliver some fantastic goth bands like The Rose of Avalanche, March Violets, Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry and the kings of the genre – The Sisters of Mercy.

Heartland is an early (and favourite) song from Sisters of Mercy, the B side of the magnificent ‘Temple of Love’ 12 inch single and it popped up on my playlist as the train passed through England’s (semi) rural heartland. I gratefully accepted this as a sign that it was going to be a good day. The weather was certainly playing its part.

Ten of us met outside Leeds station, five made it up from London, returning the favour to those who frequently travel down from Yorkshire. I’d met most of the group before and it was, as always, good to catch up with this likeable bunch.

Our first stop was Bank House, this and the next building I photographed are brutalist in design, but both had been clad in something other than lovely grey concrete, textured or not, so didn’t particularly wow me. I do like things raw.

The Ex-Yorkshire Bank Building, vacant and soon to be demolished so more student flats can be built. It’s an Ok building, I hate the glossy cladding, but like the design and the lovely harsh angles. It’s a shame it has to be knocked down for more flats. I mean, the centre of Leeds is hardly attractive, with a weird hodge-podge of building styles from the last three of four centuries. Design planning doesn’t seem to have been a priority for the council, not that there is any unusual in that.

I love a good car park and Woodhouse Lane on second look is very much a good one. It was all a bit ‘meh’ from the main road, but once round the side and discovering the ramp down from the upper parking decks it was much more exciting. 

I (we) loved the overhanging beams that appeared to have no purpose other than being in some way decorative. One of the group, Kasia, snapped a great picture of me taking the photo below. I seemed to have spent a lot of the day getting in the way of others photos. I guess it was my turn.

Kasia, has been to India and Berlin and gave me some interesting tips on brutalist and modernist buildings; she is extremely well travelled and I had a little travel envy. I also spoke to Britta about Berlin and she had some good ideas too. They both knew the LP Café Exil, which I listened to a lot leading up to and when we were in Berlin in July. The bonkers brutalist building on the sleeve still stands in Berlin and is on my list of places to visit when we return in a couple of weeks, something I’m looking forward to immensely. A second trip to India is planned for April 2025 and I’m well into thinking about that trip already, in fact it dominates the late night non-sleeping hours at the moment.

The School of Engineering building and a couple of brutalist day outers

I stupidly didn’t note the name of this completely mad, but interesting stairwell to a rather bland student accommodation block. We had no idea what the top bit is for.

Then we were onto the main campus of the University of Leeds and a couple of very cool buildings, starting with the huge and imposing Worsley Building.

I love this reflection from the roadside turning mirror, also capturing a couple of fellow concrete geeks.

Britta, who was the main organiser and guide for this walk, had clearly saved the best to last, and man was it good. At first glance the Roger Stevens Building looks like it’s more modern than its 60s construction, maybe it’s the paint, maybe it’s the ‘piping’ up the side, either or it looks so futuristic, but under that paint it’s just lovely 60s solid concrete.

I was a little unexcited when it first came into view, and I wandered away from the group to have a look round the side and found the long and wide staircase, with these fantastic curved cut-outs, one side allowing light to pass across the stairs and through the windows on the other, I loved them. They were the architectural highlight of the day.

The rest of the building is equally interesting. I’m a huge fan of elevated walkways, and they’re one of the reasons I love London’s Barbican. Designing places specifically for humans rather than vehicles was such a key component of mid-century future design thinking in my view, countering the argument that these concrete monoliths were sterile and void of humanity. Anyway, this is a lovely building and together with Worsley make for a very interesting part of the university campus.

The walk drew to a close with that most dramatic of buildings so some of us went off for a couple of pints before heading back to the station and, for me, the return to London. It was a good day.