Wimps!
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Wimps!
We got a gas fire instead.Quote:
Originally Posted by Samp
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Originally Posted by Ged
Mounted on a helmet?????
:PDT_Aliboronz_24:
The sense of continuity is clear but why are these particular stories attractive? There are lots of other stories that have a continuity with the past that are less appreciated - modernism for example. Surely, it's not enough to say it's nostalgia and leave it at that?Quote:
Originally Posted by dazza
Are you asking why are these stories are particlarly attractive, and others are not? Your question seems a little confusing to me?Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
'Attractive', in the sense of their historic importance - that grouping also includes projects of modernity. Some buildings, or even fragments of buildings, capture the zeitgeist of the day, and so, are important historic markers to be protected and preserved.
I don't think I've answered your question, can you give me another example?
Sorry; Yes, I am asking why stories rooted at a particular time are so attractive ie., what is so good about their particular stories and hence what's so good about old buildings.Quote:
Originally Posted by dazza
There are modern buildings that have stories to tell too but there are not that many willing to listen.
I have come to the conclusion that you are an uneducated, unknowledgeable sycophantic oaf. I don't know why. Maybe it because you actually think you are bright.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
Sad but true.
Behave yourself!
Forget it Steve. I reckon it's one guy using two names arguing with himself.Quote:
Originally Posted by wsteve55
Ha,Ha,:DQuote:
Originally Posted by pablo42
I could never think of petromax as a name. The name Petromax give the game away.Quote:
Originally Posted by pablo42
Quote:
Originally Posted by Waterways
I am sorry you can't rise to the challenge and prefer hurling abuse.
So we see you for what you are. As the man said; behave yourself.
Thanks for re-phrasing.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
Interesting point. It's almost like there's a moment when an ordinary object ceases to be just a useful utensil; it's no longer just a fork, or a cart, or a foot-scraper, it transends it's original function, and somehow becomes art - and is raised to the level of artefact - an object worthy of special care, consideration and study. And yes, the value that we'd originally assigned to something like, a six-storey Victorian warehouse, has now changed. Although in recent history 'no value' [in the case of Liverpool City Council] was assigned to these things, and were casually erased from the city's memory.
The value that we assign to these places now, is very different. There's a statue of an eagle on the side of one of the buildings in Paradise Street. Why isn't it removed? What purpose does it now serve? Some objects in the city, [whether it's buildings or fragments] anchor the spirit of the times, the zeitgeist of the day, and express a different value to what they held in their useful life.
Whatever the answer is - identity, learning, memory, welbeing, understanding, community, society, continuity has something to do with it?
:)
Yes indeed all those things are admired and that's to be expected but there are some for whom these things mean nothing. So maybe it's only grumpy old fogeys who like old buildings because of what they see in them, despite the fact they often represent the architecture of autocracy, power and 'oppression'.Quote:
Originally Posted by dazza
Whereas more democratic but modern buildings are roundly reviled.
Take the Shell Centre on the South Bank; voted worst building in London about a million years ago but I'm starting to like it...
I now see where you're coming from. Your main objection, is a criticism of the totalitarian structures that errected them in the first place? How could we hold so much affection for say, the pyramids - after so many innocents had been enslaved, toiled and died following the whims a tyrannical ruler?Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
What about the athenian Parthenon, completed in 432BC [a fairly old building] and is based around democractic principles of high Greek society?
Do you have a merit system, based on who built them?
BTW The Shell Centre may have been democratically built, but I feel it was done by committee. It's hideous to look at, and functions like a turd. And whoever thought about placing a 23 storey tower, on a 'corridor in the sky' wants their head examined! I used to walk through this space from Waterloo station and around Feb/ March [the windy months], you can't move, in fact it's dangerous. Bad design, the pedestrian links are a joke, and very little thought was give about the impact that the building would have on the surrounding area. Yes, architect's do fcuk up at times. And you haven't got to walk too far down the South Bank to find another crappy example.
I guess you can say that this building is on my Shiit-list.http://freesmileys.org/custom/image/...ks!%5E_%5E.gif
Perhaps all this vitriol will forgotten by generations to come? Wow, what a perfect example of 60's architecture!
No, not really. The buildings (that last) almost all have their strengths. It's their appreciation that is question. It's strange that lovers of old buildings are so vehemently opposed to their often prehistoric politics and how can someone hate a building with a passion one minute and several million minutes later think, well it's ok... :)Quote:
Originally Posted by dazza
If you're talking about the NT, I like Denys Lasdun's work; there's an honesty and strength. Royal Festival Hall? Yes, beautiful manners. Grimshaw at Waterloo? I felt it must have looked like a grand steam hall on the drawing board but sadly underscale in truth. I wonder what's happening to it....
As for the Shell Centre, it can be windy but so can a storm-tossed beach! In neither case does the wind make them ugly (as voted; not 'worst' as quoted)
Well, this has often been the criticism with Liverpool's stock of 18th & 19th century buildings, and it's involvement in the slave trade. 'The joints cemented with the blood of Africans...' is often cited. I sometimes wonder whether the fillling in of the Old Dock was an act of forgetting, or a way of erasing earlier memories of the trade? Burying the dead? Even if the reason was entirely commercial, it would have carried with it some psychological benefit in this regard, acknowledged, or otherwise. Perhaps the growth Liverpool's theatre also played an important role in masking, or escaping from these realities? A papering of cracks, eager to present a new and acceptable facade to it's citizens, and visitors alike. In Liverpool today, appreciation of any public building of that age, still carries with it a tang of unpleasantness, which can be traced back to the city's involvement in the trade. I guess this appreciation would undoubtedly be different for a visitor stepping off at Lime Street and breathing in the city at first glance, with fresh eyes, and knowing nothing of the city's past?Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
It's not an easy question to answer, so I'll leave off for now...
Whatever the wrongs of history, applying the morals and ethics of today anachronistically to the past is unhelpful. If you were unburdened with all that you know today, and were forced to live in any period in history, would you behave, and think differently to your peers? I think not, or not that much.
More recently - I hated the politics behind the dome, and didn't visit it on principle. I think the lottery and taxpayer's ?789,000 could have been put to better use? Now the mother of all white elephants has been reborn as the O2 - a successful gig and entertainment complex. I have a different appreciation of it these days, and it's all happened in recent living memory. So, to borrow a phase from Obama, believe in change.
There's 'honesty and strengh' in Volvo's - doesn't mean I'm going to run out and buy one though! Royal Festival Hall I agree with you. and esp. since it's recent refurb. Grimshaw's Waterloo looks even sader now Eurostar has left.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
You like Dungerness then?Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
Can?t feel any regrets for the slave trade - another time another ethic, and I don?t think people know or think much of the horrors of the past when they say how wonderful ?old? buildings are.Quote:
Originally Posted by dazza
Liverpool?s bloody history had been well-buried until relatively recently. Manchester?s oppressive working conditions are quietly glossed over and London?s ?despotism of Empire? has been glorified and sanitised. The bad stuff has become somewhat invisible at best and irrelevant at worst.
It?s the appreciation of the architecture of power (ie., building in the language of the ?bosses?) particularly in an egalitarian culture like Liverpool, that I find most surprising.
Politics of the dome??? Richard Rogers? contribution to Architecture of the People?? A temporary ?tent? of the masses. It was never meant to last - like Ally Pally and Crystal Palace. It simply outstayed it?s meaning.
oh dear; I own a Volvo...
Dungeness? depends on which way you?re looking, but Ainsdale?s quite attractive which ever way you face!
I agree. I don't like a building just because so and so designed it, more often than not i've learned who designed or built a building well after I decided I liked it or not. It mattered not to me whether Waterhouse was a slave trader or not or if the money of Walker was gained through the misery that drinking brings. I like a building for its architectural merits, it's grandness or design rather than who built it and with money from what.
The prime trade of Liverpool was never slavery. Well the shipment of slaves. It was a sideline. Many leading Liverpool merchants were campaigning against slavery. If the prime trade was slavery, then that would be cutting off your own nose.Quote:
Originally Posted by dazza
For a time it was. As irrelevant as it is to this discussion and, as I really can't be bothered to spell out the history of the importance of slave trading to Liverpool, this little quote will have to suffice:Quote:
Originally Posted by Waterways
"Liverpool was late in entering the slave trade but she quickly surpassed London and Bristol to become the number one slave port in the whole of Europe by the 1740s."
There is little point in this denial in the face of overwhelming evidence and contemporaneous reports but if you're keen to dig further, you will find this quote and a further useful introduction at http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/local...ry/intro.shtml and leave us in peace to talk about architecture
This was my point about about applying today's values to events in history, and tut tutting.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
Very true...couldn't have put it better myself :handclap:Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
'The language of the bosses' is the Albert Dock. Yet now in the last twenty years it's been transformed into one of the most egalitarian spaces in the city. Your thoughts...?Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
Conversely, would you consider St George's Hall to be a true egalitarian building? It has all the right credentials, in passing more than a few nods of appreciation to the Parthenon, in embodying democratic city ideals. Yet is was anything but egalitarian in it's conception. It was an institution for the city fathers, as much as the town hall was. But the building's architecture transcends this, as John Soane's Bank of England, in London, never could.
Like the Eiffel tower?Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
Ha ha - sorry, can't help you there.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
Well, a bit further down the coast Gormley's men all seem to agree on the same view.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
We shouldn't feel guilty about buildings in the city, yet it sometimes feels like we're on the defensive. I know I've felt like this. I like your attitude better Ged, and funny, I've never put two and two together to connect the 'Walker', with all those Wallker pubs. Beer into Art. You learn something new every day here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ged
It was not. The slave triangle was three sided, with slaves being only one. Then there was the all the other non-African/American trade as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
We also shouldn't deny that it's been proven that Liverpool made more income as a city out of trade with Ireland and the Isle of Man during slave trading times. Slave trading might have made the few rich.
Who cares about slavery. It happened. My generation had nowt to do with it. I don't apologise for it. I couldn't care less. The slaves taken to America should say thank you to us. They are far better off than if they'd stayed in Africa. Slavery is very much alive even today. I don't hear too many complaints about that. What we got in Liverpool is great architecture, that's all it is. It's not a statement to slavery.
You don't think absolutely everyone knows that? Do you think it absolved those involved because slaves didn't come into Liverpool, although they were transported in Liverpool ships to work in southern states, to produce cheap cotton to be ship back to Liverpool? Grow up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Waterways
Anyway...
The slave trade ended with the abolition of 1807. Liverpool's 'great buildings' are largely 19th or even 20th century, so if we could just move on...
Slavery is very much alike the War. Terrible things happened. We don't blame old people for what happened then. I certainly aint ashamed.
A great achievment but not great architecture or architecture of power - more like architecture of accommodation (Hartley was an Engineer)Quote:
Originally Posted by dazza
It's more of a monument to graft and effort, so-called 'full employmen't and a kind of prosperity despite the working conditions. Maybe see this from Boys from the Black Stuff http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY_pgqX8qyo
The last twenty years have been a metaphor for 'saving the city' and the subsequent reclamation by the people.
Not at all. 'Artibus. Legibus. Coniliis'. This is an elitist building if ever there was one, yet people love it. Does it remind us of the certainty of childhood - parental authority even? Maybe the paternalism of the victorian philanthropists - the Walkers, the Pictons? or the 'proper and respectable' humanist values of (the abolitionist) Roscoe or of Gladstone? besides Ancient Greek democracy was hardly universal suffrage.Quote:
Originally Posted by dazza
I don't think it ever transcended it roots but it is certainly thought of differently now. It's been taken over by the people. Is it as 'great' as it ever was?Quote:
Originally Posted by dazza
For it's type, I think it is great architecture. Vitruvius's classical benchmark for architecture of 'firmitas, utilitas, venustas' [Commodity, Firmness and Delight] - although, I prefer [Firmness, Utility and Venus-like] which seems to be closer to the original. The word 'Delight', as translated, often wrong-foots most scholars to think that works of architecture need to be 'elegant', 'refined', 'proportioned', 'harmonious' when 'Venustas' simply means qualities possessed by the goddess Venus, ie: beauty. Our ideal of beauty is never constant. What's beautiful to us, would not be to our ancestor's, and vice versa. There's beauty in honesty; in structures laid bare, in monumentalism, in the palette of materials used, even beauty in industry. I would would be happy to class the Albert Dock, as a work of architecture, without adding, or taking anything away. Jesse Hartley will do fine as an engineer, just as Calatrava will do do today.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
You may not think it is beautiful, that's fine. Most people [I think] would agree with you. I think A.D. is beautiful, in it's own special way. So, let's agree to differ?
So what? What's that got to do with whether people love it or not? It's a beautiful building - whether it started life as a Mecanno factory, a posh den of Victorian iniquity, an Abattoir, or a holding pen for the poor, matter's not a jot.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
Well, they had an existing paternalism already established with the church, and monarchy [as 'role' model], if you're going down that road? St.George's Hall was inspired by a temple; the original pediment had sculptures of Britannia with Commerce and the Arts that looked down on Lime Street, as the new city gods. Often in public buildings it was the royal coat of arms of the sovereign, that was displayed.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
Who really cares about this anyway? If I took a group of school kids to see the Pyramids, in Egypt, I'm fairly certain they'd all say it was pretty cool. Architecture of Power, is it not? Sir, I don't like this building, due to the anti-egalitarian threat is poses.
Jesse Hartley is no Calatrava. Firmness and Commodity maybe... but then Vitruvius is no model either. There are hotels in Mozambique re-built after the floods every year. Ice hotels in Scandinavia. Firmness? no. Commodity? just about. Delight? oh yes
I think it's important to question why buildings are liked, even if you then choose to do otherwise.
Pyramids are the architecture of immortality - permanence without decay [sic]; nothing else, despite the millions of words on the subject - razor blades, star gates... so much moonshine.
I take your point about transitory forms of architecture, and agree - it's almost as though they rise up and become whole for a brief, harmonious moment, and then fall back down again, separate, like an ice crystals, or snow flakes. Very nice.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
On Vitruvius and others scholars. I've never really been satisfied with any definition of architecture that I've heard of, or read. I think the problem lies with attempting a definition in the first place, rather than just experiencing the moment, or the building directly itself.
Often, we don't know why we like certain buildings, it's as if we've harmonising to the frequency struck by a tuning fork. I'm not saying it's as simplistic as that. But it does have something of that quality. The questioning [of why we like something], is a response to the experience.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
Whatever the Pyramid's original purpose, or function was for, ie: a tomb for 'immortality' is incidental to what the building [or structure] actually communicates to us. In this sense, it has a very great sense of power, regardless of it's original purpose, be it a house, a palace, or an exchange.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax