Originally Posted by
dazza
...'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...?
A great achievment but not great architecture or architecture of power - more like architecture of accommodation (Hartley was an Engineer)
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.
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Originally Posted by
dazza
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.
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.
Originally Posted by
dazza
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.
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?
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