Originally Posted by
petromax
[Albert Dock] 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.
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.
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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?
Originally Posted by
petromax
Not at all. 'Artibus. Legibus. Coniliis'. This is an elitist building if ever there was one, yet people love it.
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.
Originally Posted by
petromax
[of St George's Hall] 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?
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.
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.
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