Originally Posted by
Doris Mousdale
Good photo that illustrates a point perfectly.
Now that's what you call a soul-destroying building. Yes it serves a purpose but there is absolutely no architectural merit in the design/facade, it's never going to improve with age and yet these are the everyday buildings that we have to live with. when will architects re-discover that functionality doesn't have to be boring- or cost more than poor design.
The architects for Wellington Business Park were DLA from Manchester. DLA have completed many buildings with much design merit.
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Industrial/Commercial buildings of this type have been honed and refined for decades. The brief would have been very tight indeed without much room, or call for, architectural expression.
It's a light industrial park offering cost-effective space to get business going in the area. Architecture with a capital A here just wouldn't work - in fact, would put some tenants off.
Buildings must do a job. Sometimes part of that job is to look exceptional or even just good. Sometimes not. This building has a good BREEAM rating (is energy efficient) and no doubt performs on many other levels.
I'm sure DLA did a good job to meet the brief - anything else and they may have been called for messing about instead of getting the job done.
Sometimes you can't win. Other times you must lose.
---------- Post added at 02:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:44 PM ----------
Originally Posted by
Ged
So true Doris. Look at the Victoriana residences demolished on Edge lane - many more before them - only to be replaced with small red brick characterless lego builds, thrown up in next to no time and i've lived in one. Likewise so much splendid commercial properties bulldozed to be replaced by the likes of this. I'm just following a thread about the city's lost warehouses which in this day and age would have made fantastic apartment conversions.
Very little modern housing has an architect within a hundred miles of them. More's the pity.
As construction prices have increased, so houses have got ever smaller to stay even vaguely affordable. The Parker Morris standards were meant to be a minimum not a guide. Now they've been dropped, they're an aspiration.
On the plus side they're warmer and cost less to run but in the old days you'd just put a jumper on, so...
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