The Modernist

«a quarterly magazine about twentieth century design»

Issue No. 2 brilliant

£3.75

9772046290004

02

Foreword by Phil Griffin Stirling in Runcorn Brilliant Light Light, More Light An Arndale for Living Holidays in Utopia Hard Brilliance Conran Before Habitat Stella Maris William Mitchell Book Reviews Diary

Colophon «the modernist» Issue No. 2 brilliant September 2011 ISSN 2046-2905 Editors Jack Hale & Maureen Ward Editorial & Marketing Assistant Emily Gee Design Des Lloyd Behari Manchester Municipal Design Corporation Contributing Writers Natalie Bradbury / Richard Brook / Laura Gaither / Phil Griffin / Stephen Hale / Eddy Rhead / Benjamin Tallis / Aidan Turner-Bishop / Matthew Whitfield Contributing Illustrations for «An Arndale for Living» Dan Russell Manchester Municipal Design Corporation Publisher «manchester modernist society» Office «the modernist» 142 Chapel Street Salford / M3 6AF UK +44 (0)161 839 5460 modernist@manchestermodernistsociety.org Print Evolutionprint Advertising & Enquiries modernist@manchestermodernistsociety.org Subscriptions & Stockists www.the-modernist-mag.co.uk The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the respective authors and should not necessarily be considered to represent the opinion of the publisher or its employees.

© 2011 artists / writers / photographers & «the modernist»

was was never much of a one for modernism. As a keen beer-drinking smoker, it was never going to be the ism for me, what with all that fresh air, cold water and Indian clubs. However, I warmed up as the exercise regime relaxed, and I can now show unrestrained enthusiasm for a late cluster of flats and maisonettes on top of the Manchester Arndale Centre, in the name of modernism.

Cromford Court, Northern Counties Housing Association flats (rightly lauded here by Eddy Rhead) is named after the alley (as seen in Val Guest ’s fine film, Hell is a City) off Corporation Street, at the bottom of which was the Cromford Club, famously owned by Paddy McGrath, a St Pat ’s lad from Collyhurst, an ex-boxer, who went on to manage the Playboy Club on Canal Street. The flats housed a lively community of urban pioneers, a million miles from Unité d’Habitation, Wells Coates, Hampstead and Isokon.

The Isokon building used to be home to Walter Gropius and Agatha Christie. The flats had a large communal kitchen that morphed into a fashionable restaurant. Cromford Court was home to Steve Caton of legendary Geese clothes shops, Luke Bainbridge, last great editor of City Life, and the residents association was chaired by Dimitri Griliopoulos, of Dimitris on Deansgate. Manchester royalty all.

Isokon has been wonderfully restored by Avanti Architects, an outfit that specialises in conservation and restoration of 1930s buildings (they had a hand in Oliver Hill’s Midland Hotel, Morecambe). Avanti has, since the late 1980s, had a role in the long fight to fully restore and up-grade Finsbury Health Centre by Lubetkin and Tecton, completed in 1938. Clean air, abundant light, logic, function, modernity.

And then there was the 1960s, war torn Europe ’s ‘ time-shifted new century decade,’ when a different modernism emerged, of pink high tab-collared shirts, chisel-toed, Cuban-heeled Chelsea boots in every shop on New Brown Street, round the corner from Cromford Court. Mods on a Saturday night in New Century Hall, the Co-op ’s Miesian Pavilion, down Corporation Street, up the steps, past the William Mitchell mural.

On July 5 1948 a man said to a thirteen year old girl, lying in her hospital bed: “This is a milestone in history, the most civilised step any country has ever taken. ” She was called Sylvia Diggory and he was Aneurin Bevan.

He was officially launching the world ’s first National Health Service and she was its first patient. They were in Park Hospital Manchester, now Trafford General. I would argue that marks Britain’s greatest contribution to modernism.

And that is brilliant.

Foreword Phil Griffin

Phil Griffin is a freelance writer and curator with a special interest in architecture and urban issues

Stirling in Runcorn Matthew Whitfield

ames Stirling is seemingly everywhere in 2011, nineteen years after his death and at the centre of a critical re-evaluation that has seen major exhibitions and publications in the UK and North America seek to confirm his position as one of the world ’s most important post-war architects. Usually viewed as a post-modernist, Stirling always rejected the label as he sought continually through his career to explore new directions in modernism whilst undoubtedly intending to forge a relationship with older design paradigms. This is the puzzle and the joy of Stirling’s work—always, there are a set of references to consider, followed quickly by the pleasure gained from seeing just how they have been integrated into a novel design concept.

The northwest of England contains just one surviving Stirling project, the conversion of one corner of Jesse Hartley ’s Albert Dock warehouse in Liverpool for the Tate Gallery of the North in 1984, radically remodelled in 1998 as Tate Liverpool, with only vestigial remains of the original design. An early social housing scheme of 1957–59 in Preston, designed with James Gowan, is now demolished, whilst the winning 1992 design for Salford ’s Lowry arts centre by Stirling and his partner Michael Wilford involved exten-sive revisions after his death that created what is a largely Wilford building.

One further northwestern project was demolished in stages between 1990 and 1992, the Southgate housing scheme in Runcorn New Town, developed from a design concept in 1967 to a final phase completed in 1976. Here was an apparent failure from the Stirling canon, lapsing quickly into a state of disrepair and disregard to be demolished within fifteen years of completion and never enjoying full approbation from architectural critics even when new, at least in Britain. In typical Stirling fashion, however, the scheme was actually a triumphant concoction of success and failure that still tells us something useful about the experimentation that was possible in public housing before 1979 and about the particular talents of a man who was more concerned with setting an agenda for everyone else to follow than in creating failsafe designs unworthy of controversy.

In historicist terms at least, Stirling’s inspiration at Southgate was the urbanity of Georgian Britain with the estate structured around a sequence of squares and recurring design elements on the elevations used rhythmically as in the formal 18th-century terraces of Bath or Edinburgh, underlining an entirely civic approach. This was a natural design response to the brief by the Runcorn Development Corporation that this should be a high density housing development, immediately adjacent (and physically linked

by highwalks) to the hub of the new town ’ s services, Runcorn Shopping City. As an inner residential district, Southgate was intended to make a contribution to the idea that the new Runcorn could be a town in the fullest, noblest sense, and not just a patchwork of undistinguished suburban fragments.

With this ideological framework in place, and a commitment to classical planning devices and elevations superficially apparent, Stirling devised a scheme that in fact subverted these historic precedents as well as some contemporary architectural norms. Behind the regular façades of phase one were a mixture of maisonettes and flats over and under-sailing one another across five storeys, the sort of arrangement seen in numerous post-war slab block developments. A system of open deck access was stitched into an estate-wide network of highwalks between blocks, the circulation model established at Sheffield ’s Park Hill in the late ’ 50s that still had currency in second generation new towns like Runcorn and which Stirling interpreted in a grand manner, providing generously splayed concrete posts which lent the walkways a solid grandeur and, by turns, civic legitimacy. The first phase of the development saw the employment of a system-building approach as demanded by the development corporation in order to minimize costs. Concrete frames cast in-situ were filled with pre-cast concrete panels whilst multi-coloured coloured glass-reinforced plastic (GRP) cladding was used extensively to enliven elevations and introduce a hi-tech note to the scheme, one of the earliest uses of such a material in the UK. The second phase of Southgate acted firstly to correct the perceived planning failings of the first, with a single unit type—larger houses—built in terraces, each with ground floor access and private gardens. These new units were now built entirely with GRP over timber frames, creating uncompromisingly modern forms—colourful, smooth and rectilinear—giving rise to the local sobriquet of ‘ legoland.’

Other than the neophile use of GRP and the overall impression that this might be housing for new planetary exploration as much as for a new town in the north, Southgate gained distinctiveness from its emphatic, legible geometries, not least in the large circular windows used across both phases. Multiple references are called to mind by this inventive elevational device, from the nautical (not to say cosmonautical) inspiration of the nearby Mersey and the imagined seafaring blood of the new town’s overspill population, to a spirited exploration of classical Vitruvian geometrical theory spliced with some Kandinski and the interplay of colour and form.

Failure is too often the focus of our analysis of post-war public housing, but in the case of Southgate the rapidity of its decline is an unavoidable subject. There were a limited number of original design failings, not least the unpopular maisonettes in phase one sandwiched in the middle storeys of the blocks without any private outdoor space, but largely the estate was the victim of an original budget that was far too low to create sufficient quality for such a high-density scheme—poor insulation and a disastrous district heating system being particular issues—and, more significantly, a wrong-headed lettings and management policy that quickly translated limited maintenance problems into vertiginous social decay. Demolition was, by 1989, thought more cost effective than refurbishment, in the context of the New Town Corporation being wound up and seeking to draw a line under its liabilities.

It might also be noted that truly innovative mass housing from its 1970s pomp consistently struggles to find cheerleaders for conservation when even solvable problems arise. Aesthetic timidity is translated very easily to political cowardice, and what remains as a result, effectively, is architecture that is published and analysed rather than built and lived, like far too much of James Stirling’s work.

The loss of Southgate was a loss not just for Runcorn but for the entire second generation of new towns and to British architecture as a whole. Whilst Milton Keynes contains more surviving (though often very altered) 1970s housing schemes of note and has enjoyed some recent conservation success with its exquisite shopping centre, Runcorn has now become a footnote in this wider story of innovation, little visited or written about. Academic exploration of this period in architectural history is gathering momentum and all 1970s housing has now been eligible for listing for two years—the survival of Southgate would surely have made it one of the major monuments to this significant period and a key site of architectural pilgrimage in northwest England. As James Stirling’s reputation has grown rather than diminished in the short period since his death, meanwhile, the loss of one of his key mid-period works is felt all the more keenly, especially in Runcorn where a landmark bridge and the sublimely exciting chemical works are still not sufficient to give the town a solid architectural reputation. The sense of loss over Southgate is one that is sure to swell further over time, contributing much to the conservation debate on public housing from a still under-researched period.

Brilliant Light The Short Life of Kit Wood (1902–1930) From Huyton to St. Ives via Cocteau’s Paris Stephen Hale

uyton, 1902: A gritty suburb of Liverpool now famous for its 1960s tower blocks, Huyton was a relatively prosperous area when painter Christopher ‘ Kit ’ Wood was born there, the son of an eminently respectable General Practitioner. To young Kit, the northwestern skies of Huyton were low and menacing, its light murky and pewter-grey. There was, however, another kind of luminescence in his childhood—the doting love of his mother Clare and her tales of Cornwall, which had been passed down from her own sea-faring family. Kit Wood believed that Cornish sea and sunlight were in his artistic blood.

The provincial, bourgeois England represented by Wood ’s father, who worked on Lord Derby ’s estate at Knowsley, was rather eager to keep the modern world at bay. Dr Lucius Wood, who had served in the Boer War, believed that England’s future lay in splendid isolation from continental Europe and her dangerous modern painting and modern ideas. His son’s homosexuality was, perforce, a taboo subject.

After schooling at Marlborough, Kit planned to study Architecture at Liverpool University; this conventional approach would please Lucius whilst keeping Kit at home with mother. He lasted a year. Wood’s attitude to academic study is summed up by a surviving visual scrap—a solitary architectural drawing, on the back of which lies a vividly coloured portrait of a young woman. Kit ’s mind was on Paris and on art, perhaps spurred by a meeting with Augustus John after a lecture given at the University ’s Sandon Club. Thus it was that, at the age of 19, the daring and ambitious Christopher Wood took the boat-train for France…

Paris, 1921: Living initially with wealthy ‘connois’ seur Alphonse Kahn, Wood soon formed useful social attachments and came under the heady influence of modern French painters, particularly bold colourists such as Cézanne, Matisse and Derain. Compared to Huyton, the sexually ambiguous, déclassé demi-monde of Paris was entrancing. Wood soon met, and fell in love with, another rich older man, Chilean diplomat and émigré Antonio de Gandarillas, a notorious Bohemian figure who adopted Kit ‘ as curio, protégé and lover.’ Imagine Wood ’s ruthless artist ’s disdain when, at the end of 1921, he had to return for Christmas to the now detested Huyton.

On his lavish travels in the company of Antonio, Wood started to explore the effects of colour and light which would infuse his later work. In Taormina, Sicily, he painted a plate of brilliant yellow lemons from above. At the apartment the couple now shared on the Avenue Montaigne, Wood was introduced to Picasso, who made himself charming to the young, gauche Englishman. Cocteau became a fervent admirer of Kit ’s drawings and suggested an exhibition. Diaghilev even commissioned Wood to design stage back-drops for the Ballet Russe.

As well as these famous artistic companions, the sometimes lonely young man made another close friend at this time-a lifelong and ultimately murderous companion.

In Paris, Kit Wood discovered the dark joys of opium…

St Ives, 1926: In August with Gandarillas, Wood stayed at St Ives, then a small and undistinguished artists ’ colony. For six weeks, under Cornish light, Wood painted feverishly. Kit had the feeling of an inner illumination. In returning to his ancestral land, it was as if he had found himself; as if St Ives, detached as it was from his father ’s lineage, represented another England, an England belonging to his mother. (The point had been underlined in an earlier vacation—returning from Inverness by car, Kit and Antonio had driven past Huyton without calling in!) Later that year he was introduced to Ben and Winifred Nicholson, who became ardent supporters and a counter-example of austerity, country living and dedication to work. Paris had been too decadent, Huyton too dead. In Cornwall, Wood was on the edge of something new: an English representational modernism, a blend of simplicity and sophistication, an exhilarating Cornish luminosity suffused with something dark and menacing, something from the night-time world

of Kit’s opium reveries. It was a turning point—the first of a succession of summers in which Kit would produce the body of his œuvre.

Staying in a rented house on Porthmeor Beach, Wood and Nicholson were out walking one morning when, famously, they passed the cottage of a retired fisherman and rag-and-bone merchant—Alfred Wallis. The cottage walls were covered by Wallis ’s startlingly naïve paintings —on old cardboard boxes, on bits of wood, on bus timetables—of the sea and of ships and of fisher-folk. Tired of the Parisian beau-monde, these pictures were to have a stunning impact on Wood. Though not a true naïve like Wallis, these paintings inspired Kit to use house paint and board and offered him a new childlike directness.

Wood stayed on alone that winter and produced a series of dark, primitive, strange pictures. Rejecting conventional modernism ’s dogmatic idea of non-representation, Wood believed that modern art could deal with the lives of people, with human figures and with human landscapes. Meanwhile, in the absence of his human friends, the opium-pipe was ever present…

Salisbury, 1930: In August again, after four years of exhausting artistic and social activity, Wood set off from Paris to London where a major exhibition of his recent pictures was about to open. Still unwilling to travel North and arranging instead to meet Clare in Salisbury, Wood was observed by the locals acting strangely in a hotel. He reported voices in his head and mysterious ‘pursuers.’ After lunch with his mother, he was driven to Salisbury Station and made his farewells. As the Waterloo express came in, the paranoid and mentally confused Wood, sitting by the bookstall on the platform, jumped, screamed and threw himself under the train’s wheels.

Christopher Wood’s physical beauty, his awful and premature death, a lifestyle of wild partying interspersed with frenzied artistic activity made of him a 1930s minor cult hero. The Manchester Guardian, however, urged at the time that the myth-making ought not to get in the way of the work: ‘His work was good enough to have no need of it.’ In his last few years as an artist, Wood can be compared to no other.

Back in Huyton, after the brief inquest, Clare and Lucius Wood gathered their sorrows as damp Northern England moved inexorably towards another dreary Autumn.

The brilliant light had been fleeting.

The Harbour–Christopher Wood, 1926 By kind permission of the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate Borough Council

Light, More Light —

I

magine: a closed door into a darkened room. You turn the handle and enter. The walls are dancing with coloured window lights: brilliant, abstract, dazzling in vermillion, emerald, gold, aquamarine and lilac coloured glass. Welcome to dalle de verre modern glass window art.

Dalle de verre was a popular technique of the late 1950s and ’60s, employed mainly in Britain by James Powell & Sons, later Whitefriars Glass. Dalle is French for slab or tile. Windows are made by the glass maker assembling small pieces of glass, about one inch ( 22mm) thick, which have been carefully chipped and shaped with a tungsten hammer, and setting them in concrete. Traditional stained glass is set in lead.

The concrete was reinforced, vibrated and cured to make a resilient and secure frame for the glass.

Sometimes this is called ‘faceted’ glass. The effect is to create window panels of extraordinary brilliance and colour.

The leading Whitefriars designer was Francois Pierre Fourmaintraux (always called Pierre) from Metz in northern France. He was born in 1896 and he moved to Powell’s, as their chief designer of slab glass and abstract windows, from 1956. His father Gabriel was a well known ceramicist. He married an English wife and settled in Harrow. He left Whitefriars in 1969 and he died in 1974, age 78. Whitefriars sadly closed in 1980.

Abstract stained glass, including dalle de verre, was pioneered in France notably by Jean Gaudin in 1927 and by Marguerite Huré (1895–1967), the pipe smoking ‘ jeune fille à la pipe,’ who designed the wonderful windows in the concrete tower of Perret’s 1957 church of St Joseph in Le Havre: a 110m tube of intense dazzling colour.

The abstract glass windows became prominent in Britain during the construction of Basil Spence’s Coventry Cathedral. Spence commissioned John Piper, Patrick Reyntiens, Geoffrey Clarke and Keith Now, with Lawrence Lee, to design the cathedral’s windows. The building’s 1962 consecration was a

Aidan Turner-Bishop

revelation to many of the beauty of abstract modern glass. Gibberd’s 1967 Roman Catholic cathedral in Liverpool also employed Piper and Reyntiens, with Margaret Traherne and Ceri Richards, to produce an impressive symphony of modern abstract glass. The style, with the the dalle de verre technique, was increasingly in demand for newly built churches and other commissions.

symbolising the eleven good apostles of Christ, are mainly in shades of yellow using the rough textures of the glass dalles to reflect and refract light.

Luckily for us, the industrial towns of south Lancashire and its thriving coalfield were prosperous.

New churches and other public buildings were being built in the suburbs. Pierre Fourmaintraux, Whitefriars and other designers were increasingly fashionable.

Much of this survives although it has to be truffled out from some unexpected places.

Pilkington Brothers commissioned the Indian-born artist Avinash Chandra (1931–1991) to design a strikingly fiery glass piece for Alexandra Park, their 1965 office tower in St Helens. It’s on the first floor of the entrance reception area and is illuminated from behind by an electric light. It faces a mirror so that the glittering image, representing the inside of a furnace, can be seen as a reflection by visitors.

Chandra was quite famous in the 1960s. He and his artist wife Prem Lata moved from Delhi to Britain in 1956 when Lata was awarded a scholarship at the Central School of Art, London. He was the first Indian artist to be exhibited at the Tate in 1965. His vibrant glass works were installed in the Indian High Commission in Lagos and in St Helens.

So where is it? St Raphael’s in Millbrook, Stalybridge, which some of us visited on the Alan Boyson tour, has a wall of very fine Fourmaintraux dalle de verre glass.

Worryingly it closed on July 14 2011, so what will become of the glass? There’s more by Fourmaintraux in six superb windows, created in 1963, at St Barnabas’s in Lovely Lane, Pewsey, Warrington.

They illustrate scenes from the life of St Barnabas.

Richard Pollard, in the recent Pevsner, admires the ‘ wonderful palettes’ of Fourmaintraux’s Primitivism.

The walls of St Jude’s, Poolstock Lane, Wigan (1963– 64) seem to consist of nothing but twelve staggered panels of swirling abstract dalle de verre by Robin Riley. There’s more Riley glass in the clerestory of the drum-like baptistery.

Not all commissions were for churches. The crematorium in St Helens, where they make and know about good glass at Pilkington’s, has an excellent set of dalle de verre windows by Whitefriars.

They were installed in 1960. They show two opposing trees: the north one is bare and wintry, the south tree is summery and in full bloom. This symbolises the movement of the coffin in the building, arriving on the north side, with the congregation departing into light on the south side. The eleven west windows,

Other Fourmaintraux secular commissions include windows in New Zealand’s 1964 Hall of Memory in Wellington. This commemorates New Zealand servicemen and women.

In the 1960s Leyland, Lancashire, was the home of the world’s leading truck and bus manufacturer. It was a thriving town attracting workers to Leyland Motors and other industries. The new Catholic church of St Mary’s (Weightman & Bullen, 1962–64) is a treasure box of modernist sacred art. It was built in the round and the job architect, Jerzy Faczynski, brought in Patrick Reyntiens to create a moving and very beautiful dalle de verre circular band of windows celebrating the first day of Creation. Adam Kossowski did the ceramic tympanum over the main door. Arthur Dooley sculpted the Stations of the Cross and the Edinburgh Tapestry Company wove Faczynski’s Holy Trinity piece. All are illuminated by Reyntiens’s glass.

When Goethe was dying someone pulled together the bedroom curtains. His last words are said to have been «Licht, mehr Licht» (Light, more light). We know what he meant when we encounter dalle de verre glass.

An Arndale for Living — Eddy Rhead

M

uch has been made of the recent increases of the amount of people choosing to live in Manchester city centre, often used as a signifier of its renaissance from a dreary down at heel post industrial city to a thriving and desirable one.

Throughout the 20th century working class people had left to live in edge of city or overspill estates such as Hulme or Wythenshawe, the middle class and affluent having long fled to the suburbs and beyond.

This flight was reversed by the end of the century —in 1990 the population was a mere 1,000 people compared to today’s 20,000—and Manchester’s city centre housing is now a varied mix of new build or buildings converted from former industrial use such as the warehouse conversions of Whitworth Street and Ancoats. There are, however, a few examples of city centre housing purpose built in a period when most people had already left the city, including a small pocket of town houses off Deansgate near Granada studios—built in 1979 by Wimpey Homes, aimed at affluent professionals from the law practices and private surgeries on St John Street and, due to its proximity to Granada, a few Coronation Street stars, one even featuring as the fictional home of Mike Baldwin in the series—the perfect location for the archetypal playboy ‘pad,’ complete with string of dolly birds and obligatory Jag in the driveway. Then there’s a small estate of council built maisonettes behind Tib Street that has survived the bleak 1980s, resisted the developers greedy land grab of the 2000s, and now sits happily bobbing away in the heart of trendy Northern Quarter.

But perhaps the most interesting was the small enclave of 60 flats and maisonettes called Cromford Court built right on top of the great heaving leviathan

that was the Arndale Centre. What inspired the developers to include housing there at a time when city centre living was insignificant and to many unimaginable remains unclear—apart from a few pubs still hanging on, there was little attraction or amenities. In the 1970s and 1980s the streets would invariably become deserted after dark—especially around the Arndale Centre, an impenetrable fortress providing no activity once its doors had shut at 5.30pm.

And the location could not have been more bizarre, on top of Cannon Street bus station and in the shadow of its multi storey car park. Architecturally the flats now look to be quite contemporary in design, albeit hardly pretty, but the dark engineering brick, the black mono pitched roof, simple elevations and layout give an air of almost Scandinavian rationalism and the design could still pass muster today. Any idea that these were luxury city centre apartments can also quickly be forgotten—this was public housing for tenants of the North Country Housing Association and the accommodation was basic. The attraction was the unique location.

Although at first the tenants were mainly elderly people, its central location drew the attention of some new, younger tenants. Haçienda DJ Mike Pickering lived in Cromford Court in the late 1980s and early ’90s, and from 1999 until 2003 it was the home of Luke Bainbridge, former associate editor of the Observer Music Monthly. He says, «In 1999 there was still a slight novelty value to living in the northern quarter, and anyone who came back to Cromford could not believe this little oasis we had on top of the Arndale. It was really quiet up there, considering the location, and the communal gardens

An Arndale for Living — Eddy Rhead

An Arndale for Living — Eddy Rhead

An Arndale for Living — Eddy Rhead

were much larger than any other city centre development since built. I don’t think the general public knew it existed. Even though you could see it from the top floors of the Arndale car park. Whenever anyone came back to my flat for the first time, they generally had no idea that it existed.»

Asked if having such a unique address made him anymore popular Bainbridge conceded, «No, but everyone loved its novelty value and uniqueness when they came back.» In fact, the location had some drawbacks: «the main way to get back was through the multi-storey car park, so if you were taking a girl back for the first time, you could see them thinking er, hang on a minute…»

Yet Cromford Court’s isolation did contribute to its atmosphere; «We didn’t sit out much, but there was a community spirit. I knew half of the people personally, and the rest to nod to. You wouldn’t get that in any of the Fisher Price flats that have been built in the last 10 years.» says Bainbridge.

Another tenant was Steve Caton, owner of uber-cool boutique Geese, from 1994 until 2003; «We never had break-ins or disruptive idiots living there in my time.

My immediate neighbours were quite old, 60-ish, not party people at all, so it was a nice mix.» Despite being home to a couple of Haçienda DJs and various other Manchester movers and shakers, Caton dispels any idea that it was party central. «The flats were too small for parties—they certainly were not luxury apartments, just a 20' sq room separate bathroom and nice sized bedroom. The luxury was the location.»

It wasn’t to last. On Saturday 15th June 1996 a huge bomb exploded 200 yards away from Cromford Court.

The flats were evacuated; all except a wartime veteran who had taken to his bed earlier in the day with flu.

He didn’t respond to calls to evacuate and emergency services just presumed he had left. He was still in his bed before, during and after the huge explosion, oblivious to the devastation around him. He had served as a rear gunner in Lancaster bombers in World War II and wasn’t going to let a small matter of a terrorist attack daunt him. Afterwards, Cromford Court was cordoned off leaving tenants homeless for months. Steve Caton remembers; «Everyone was turfed out, but most went back after three months.

In fact I was the first to return, back to a flat full of battered venetian blinds.»

It wasn’t the bomb, however, that signalled the end but the then owners of the Arndale, P&O, who took advantage of the huge rebuilding programme to extend the shopping centre. The plan entailed enveloping Cannon Street to create a new mall— Cromford Court stood in the way and the residents were gradually moved out. Luke Bainbridge says «There was a real collective spirit when we were being forced out and P&O tried to play hard ball.»

Residents meetings were held in the Hare and Hounds on Shudehill, but protests were in vain and by 2003 the flats were demolished.

A decade on, it seems ironic that whilst around them there was a huge expansion of city centre living with swathes of bland apartment blocks going up, the Arndale’s owners removed some of Manchester’s most characterful and unique housing. But it endures in the rose tinted memories of those pioneer residents —Luke Bainbridge left to find his fortunes in London but fondly remembers «I still miss Cromford Court.

It was an amazing place to live.»

Holidays in Utopia — Benjamin Tallis

Orford Ness

O

rford Ness, on the Suffolk coast, is Europe’s largest vegetated shingle spit and a major nature reserve. It is also the place where Britain weapons-tested the nuclear bomb. An unlikely, yet emblematic site of the 20th century, Orford Ness was an RAF aerial targeting base and the birthplace of RADAR. At the height of the cold war, this was where the Blue Danube and WE177a Nuclear bombs were exposed to extremes of temperature, vibration and impact to ensure they could still deliver their deadly payload.

Abandoned by the MoD at the end of the cold war, the site is now run by the National Trust who pursues a policy of managed neglect. We can still see the relics and remnants that have been left behind— unexploded ordinance, banks of switches in squat bunkers and oddly elegant concrete ‘pagodas’ resembling roman temples. These structures of another time, shaped by a bomb that never went off, are rapidly becoming modern ruins, reclaimed by nature amidst the shifting shingle.

It is no wonder that WG Sebald felt as if he were walking amidst the ruins of our civilisation in Orford Ness. This place was remade in a time of Mutually Assured Destruction; a deadly embrace in which we haunted each other’s waking dreams and nightmares, trusting that they were mad too.

The monumental scale and decaying, detached repose of these set pieces eerily echoes a time before we became liquid, when history was written in mass. As Zizek and Tarkovsky tell us in their different ways, we should treasure these places, these wasted memoryscapes, which, in their ruination elude both nature and culture. These are material ghosts, haunting reminders of the lost second world and its time. The rooms inside are revealed only by our presence and as we remember, we do so tactically as well as with tactility, knowing that each memory hastens their destruction.

Benjamin Tallis is a freelance critic and curator who writes on art and politics for a variety of European publications. He is a former diplomat who worked on EU security missions in the Balkans and former Soviet Union and is currently researching a PhD on Borders in Central and Easter Europe.

Former Banking Hall, District Bank 55 King Street, Manchester Casson & Conder, 1964–70

Richard Brook

Photographs reproduced by kind permission of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group ©

Hard Brilliance

ing Street is fast approaching the end of its typologically distinct function as the financial centre of the city of Manchester. As Lloyds, the last of the great Victorian banking halls, clings precariously to its original programme in the age of self-service, telephone and internet transactions and Edwin Lutyens ’ former Midland Bank is transformed into Jamie Oliver ’s northern gastronomic outpost, it is perhaps pertinent to consider the most distinctly modern of these spaces, vanished without much noise in the early 1990s.

The head office building for District Bank (later NatWest) was proposed under the auspices of a limited competition in 1963. Invited entrants included Manchester stalwarts Cruickshank and Seward and H S Fairhurst & Sons, though neither of these local practices actually submitted a design. The jury of two was undoubtedly of the old order; the recently retired Manchester City Architect, Leonard Cecil Howitt, who designed in the civilised ‘Festival ’ style and Sir Basil Spence, former RIBA President, often criticised for his picturesque approach to architectural composition. It could be argued that these two were not necessarily ideologically aligned with the rapidly shifting cultural context of the 1960s, but that their collective experience and gravitas was prerequisite to judging the scheme to be sited opposite Cockerell ’s Bank of England and adjacent Heathcote ’s Lloyds.

The notion of ‘grandeur ’ in Mancunian architecture had been prevalent since the 1860s and Casson and Conder cited ‘grandeur, discipline, toughness and dignity ’ as of Manchester and as the qualities that should be sought for this, the winning, scheme. The incised and tapering form had been generated by a study of rights of light in adjacent streets and buildings and likened by Casson himself to a ‘ lump of coal,’ whilst referred to by others as ‘chrysalid.’

This formal justification was rudely subverted when, postcompetition, the client acquired additional land that facil itated the repositioning of the building. Nonetheless, its siting was still critical to the planners at the time who insisted that the gap between this and the adjacent Pall Mall Court (Brett & Pollen, 1969) was maintained, to preserve a view of the Town Hall clock tower from Chapel Walks. This vista was eventually closed as the Bank of England building was remodelled to act as a foyer for the new office tower appended to it (Holford Associates, 1995). Lining the external façade is a hand-tooled, vertically ribbed, dark cladding of Swedish granite, reminiscent of their more celebrated work, the Elephant House at London Zoo. It was deliberately specified to absorb the soot that still clung to the city ’s buildings. It was also felt that the dark material brought an appropriate austerity to the bank’s northern HQ and formed an intense counterpoint to the ‘hard brilliance ’ of the glowing white interior which was designed to promote the sensation of being carved from the ‘solid.’

The banking hall was intended as the focus of the whole building and is positioned as such, not simply in its enclosure within the centre of the plan, but in the very deliberate sectional treatment in which the space was treated as a ‘ stage ’ and raised to provide ‘dignity and drama ’; the principal actors were the public. The celebration

of this central theatrical space was aptly exposed during the opening ceremony when, instead of the usual ribbon or unveiling, the invited dignitary, Lady Summers, simply switched on the lights to ‘reveal ’ the space. The entrance and approach was a controlled exercise in compression and release which began at street level as one was invited to walk beneath the hulking, faceted solid, within an arcade space before being drawn into the building by the tapered plan of the gently rising stair. From the foyer it was possible to read all of the ground floor functions, its formal elements and their relationships. This is perhaps a product of the architect ’s early suggestion that the banking hall be open plan, which was met with an emphatic ‘no’ from the client, but astutely predicted contemporary banking processes and environments.

Whilst the glass security barricades were criticised for their obstructive presence, they did not detract from the regal landscape of the interior of the hall; the walls were lined with white Pentelicon marble and polished plaster and where the floor was not white marble its opulence was only intensified by the introduction of gold carpet inserts. The fixtures and fittings were a mixture of teak and high-grade mirror polished stainless steel, though the use of these as decorative elements was fastidiously designed out. The light fittings were all flush to the ceiling and incorporated air inlets and extracts so that the services may rescind into the fabric of the building and allow the served spaces to achieve an air of exclusivity akin to that of a luxury hotel where the frenetic energies that offer tranquility are hidden from public sight. Photographs contemporary to the building ’s completion afford the space a certain Kubrick-esque aesthetic, the gleaming white finishes and asymmetric hammerhead plans have an air of Space Odyssey and the spherical three-faced clock a slight nod toward the dystopian world of A Clockwork Orange. Perhaps the latter further reinforced by the iconography of the bowler hat and its association with banking.

The competition assessors were of the opinion that the scale and material choices applied by Casson and Conder would take their ‘place with dignity and restraint in the Manchester scene…without resorting to any of the current fashionable clichés.’ This statement perhaps signifies an implicit trust in Casson who had been appointed Director of Architecture for the Festival of Britain at the age of 38 and was undoubtedly of the establishment and thus a safe bet for the conservative jury panel. It also belies the spaceage effects employed and delivered in the principal internal space and it is this stark contrast between the controlled and serious monolithic envelope and the ethereal reflective translucency of the interior that makes this scheme cause for belated celebration and appreciation. Lost to time, the ghost of the banking hall lives on in small areas of visible marble that were not subsumed during reconfiguration, most prominently in the male executive bathroom: by appointment only.

Conran Before Habitat Laura Gaither

had been living in England for only a few weeks when I found myself snooping around a charity shop in Didsbury. I have been collecting Mid Century modern pieces since 1990, and was curious to see what Britain had to offer for this period. In the course of my searching I came across a strange item. It was a large platter with a 1950s style pattern on it, full of dynamic and colourful vegetables arranged artfully across its front and it was signed Terence Conran on the back. Of course, I knew who Terence Conran was— hadn’ t I lusted after various items in his NYC Conran Shop (the one that was underneath the 59th Street Bridge arches)?

I also knew of the Habitat store, which had been a British style setter since the 1960s and ’70s. So what was this piece?

Surely this wasn’t a 1970s piece? So, could it be a recent reissue for Habitat in a faux retro style?

We had so little space in our tiny flat, and we were so short of cash, having just moved to the UK from the US that I couldn’t even bring myself to spend 50p on the platter.

So I left it among the plates and chipped cups convinced it was a recent Conran design.

Only a few weeks passed before I realised my mistake as I was being introduced to a whole new world of mid century British design. Rummaging through a used bookstore I came across a book that included 1950s designs as a collectable category. And there was Terence Conran’s platter: the Salad Ware pattern for Midwinter. I ’ve regretted that mistake ever since! Clearly Conran had a story before the Habitat shop with which I was not familiar.

I moved to Manchester for my husband’s job at the University of Manchester. One of the joys of this experience has been to learn about Britain’s rich design history and material culture. I knew of Kathie Winkle and Clarence Cliff, but not about Poole or Portmeirion. I knew that Dior ’s New Look dress style of the 1950s was a response to wartime fabric rations, but not that Britain experienced rationing until 1954. So here was new information for me to gobble up: Terence Conran had been an influential designer well before the opening of the first Habitat shop in Chelsea in 1964 and the publication of House Book in 1974.

As a young designer Conran looked to the Continent for design influences. His interpretation of European modernism was palatable to British high street shoppers. This was a softer minimalism—simple, but accessible. Not avantgarde, but comfortable. His design was a strong visual contrast to dark and fussy pre-war interiors or severe wartime designs of the Utility Scheme.

Conran freelanced for Midwinter as a recent graduate from art college in the early 1950s and contributed to their fresh and optimistic palette of the post-war era. Some people might say that his designs at Midwinter do not represent his best work. It could be argued that some of his Midwinter work was too kitsch, like Salad Ware, or too staid, like Plant Life. Certainly the strong visual patterning of Conran’s Chequers (1951 as a fabric, 1957 as dinnerware) shares similar influences to his contemporary Jessie Tait ’s

work at Midwinter such as her Mosaic pattern. Yet, many Conran pieces from this period have become design classics. For example, my favourite of the period, Nature Study, combines whimsy with simplicity in a way not found in these other designers work. It is less “ cutesy” than Hugh Casson’s representational work, like Riviera, and less busy than Jessie Tait ’s Primavera or Homespun. In later years, Conran himself often downplayed his work at Midwinter.

When a six setting dinner service of Nature Study sold for £1,200 at auction in 1997, Independent journalist John Windsor relayed the news to Conran, “When I told Sir Terence, he thought for a bit, then said: ‘In my opinion that ’s considerably more than it ’s worth.’”

In spite of Conran ’s assessment of his design at Midwinter, his 1950s work successfully combined form, colour and nature in a way previously not seen in high street British design. This combination was a breath of fresh air after the restrictions of rationing and the constraints of the utility era. The cheerful, but not fussy, pottery designs at Midwinter most certainly evoke the optimism and clarity of the post-war period. Importantly, this aesthetic would later be reflected in the Habitat years of the 1960s and ’ 70s.

In 2011, we observe the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain, which celebrated a new design direction

for the country. Ironically, we will also mark the closure of Habitat stores on the high street, as the company went into administration. I have to confess I never bought anything from Habitat in recent years. Once my husband and I got settled in Manchester and were finally earning a modest salary, the furniture seemed too expensive for what you got. The design felt less like cutting edge Conran and more like an upscale IKEA (its former owners). Good, but not great design, and considerably more expensive than IKEA. The quality wasn’ t there for the price, and the designs no longer felt innovative. Conran’s Habitat was in some ways a victim of its own success, being reproduced for cheaper in other high street stores, and no longer leading the way.

But no matter what happens to Habitat, Conran’s early work is still highly collectible. And a few months ago I came across some chipped pieces of Nature Study at a car boot. You can bet, this time, I snatched them up!

Laura Gaither has been collecting modern design for over 20 years.

She is the owner of Planet Vintage Girl in Manchester which specialises in mid century modern furniture and home accessories.

Stella Maris — Salford’s Star of the Sea — Jack Hale

I

s a piece of Salford’s maritime heritage about to be scuppered or can we find a new use for our brilliant ‘Star of the Sea’? Whilst London swung and Bobby Moore polished his boots, Harold Wilson won the general election and Britain launched its first Polaris submarine, Salford and her docks were still more likely to be associated with the kitchen sink drama of ‘A Taste of Honey,’ in which the schoolgirl played by Rita Tushingham, becomes pregnant by a young black sailor. The slums are grim, the rent is unpaid and the children are manky.

Yet, in the 1960s, to be modern was cool, Apollo was fab, the Post Office Tower was a groovy place to hang out and, odd as it might seem, the Catholic Church was hip to this modernist vibe. Liverpool’s new Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King is a supreme example of the Church’s approval of the architecturally new. Also, in 1966 the final touches were being added to one of Salford’s most unique and yet discrete modern building, the Stella Maris, a pristine new Seaman’s Mission, built by the Diocese of Salford, to serve the sailors who came and went through the mighty Salford Docks. In June 1966 Father Keegan proudly opened the Stella Maris as a residential and recreational club for seamen, situated at the corner of Oldfield Road and Chapel Street.

Built to replace a decrepit older building in Ordsall, and so unlike the shabby world of A Taste of Honey, this new Mission was, in the spirit of the times, a modern, bright social centre with a bar and a heated swimming pool, topped by 24 new individual residential rooms to accommodate the transient seafarers. So modern and well equipped was it, that soon after opening, it boasted colour television, something for which most of us waited until the mid ‘70s or longer. The Stella Maris offered a library, dancing and cabaret; the amenities were «at the disposal of all seafarers without distinction,» and it was advertised that the «hostesses will do their best to make the seafarer’s stay in the Port of Manchester a happy one.» It was an unusually international centre for an inland port in the south east of Lancashire.

The architect appointed was Desmond Williams.

Desmond was no stranger to the Catholic Church and many of our schools and churches have come to life off Desmond’s drawing board, not least the Grade II listed St. Augustine’s Church at All Saints in Manchester.

The Stella Maris took inspiration from the occupation of its ocean going residents and is designed to resemble the bridge of a ship, an inspiration also taken up by the Manchester Liners’ HQ, on Trafford Road.

With the decline and eventual closure of the Salford’s Docks in the 1980s, the need for the Stella Maris centre disappeared and in June 1981 the mission was closed. Thankfully, a new use was found, with the building being recycled into the St. James Street Salvation Army Centre, offering a support and a home for another itinerant group of men. However, 20 years on, times have changed and the Salvation Army has moved on from the provision of ‘hostels’ in favour of a more independent mode of living, and once again the building’s future is threatened, as the Salvation Army prepare to move to new premises.

Much of the heritage of Salford Docks is now history, the ships, sailors and dockers are long gone, the dock buildings have been flattened and only the dock gates and Dock Office remain. Yet, out on the corner of Oldfield Road, there is a half forgotten piece of Salford’s Maritime heritage—if the Stella Maris had been built closer to the docks, it too might have already been demolished.

In 2009 with £700,000 provided by the now defunct North West Development Agency, Salford City Council bought the Salvation Army Centre with a view to the redevelopment of the site—that is to say, to demolish the building.

Not only is it ecologically bonkers to tear down a perfectly sound building, it is economic madness to use public money to pay for the demolition of this rare piece of Salford’s seafaring heritage, built by a ‘listed’ architect. The Urban Regeneration Company and Council have ‘retained’ other local buildings that are burned out, roofless and derelict, yet the structurally sound Stella Maris has been declared ‘unfit for purpose,’ despite not considering any future alternative use.

A local collective of artists, community groups, tenants association and architects have suggested an creative future for the Centre, as an artists’ ‘hostel’ —a cultural home from home, in which international and local artists can live, work and experiment.

However, the council states that it is ‘locked in’ to a financial agreement, in which the only possible outcome is the building’s demise.

The Stella Maris is located within minutes of a dynamic local neighbourhood, a major university and a vibrant creative arts community yet by the end of March 2012 Salford City Council intend to demolish the building.

In an area already saturated with vacant lots, and with no definite proposals to redevelop this site, can there instead be a serious re-consideration to re-launch our Star of the Sea?

William Mitchell Artist, Designer, Inventor Natalie Bradbury

William Mitchell Artist, Designer, Inventor Natalie Bradbury

man, armed with a tube, is doodling giant-scale on a concrete wall. Dressed in white overalls he explains, from behind a protective helmet, that he is blasting the wall with grit, enthusiastically advocating the technique ’s potential for widespread decorative use.

The man is William Mitchell, artist, designer, innovator, inventor—and sometime television personality. Mitchell made an entertaining presenter and the programme demonstrating sandblasting was just one of the episodes of Tomorrow ’s World he was asked to present because ’ “ I could talk at the same time and didn t confuse people with art.” He remembers, “ I got lots of letters from doctors saying I would die at a very young age as my lungs would be filled with dust and to stop what I was doing ” —although at 86 he is still very much alive and opinionated.

In the 1960s and ’ 70s Mitchell, who had studied Industrial Design at the Royal College of Art, pioneered new techniques and materials, working with other professions, such as architects, engineers and builders. In another edition of Tomorrow ’s World, Mitchell balances on a plank of wood above a building site in Croydon, where he is installing a textured concrete wall in an office block. The most remarkable episode, though, is that in which he demonstrates a new technique he has come up with for advertising—an unrealised plan that would have illuminated Manchester ’s

Piccadilly Gardens with a 350ft by 65ft sign comprising thousands of light bulbs triggered by films and photoelectric cells. You can still see the holes on Piccadilly Plaza where the bulbs would have gone.

Planners across the UK—and as far afield as America and Hawaii—wanted a piece of Mitchell for their developments, and he undertook hundreds of public and private commissions. These range from the small, functional and unobtrusive—clocks in schools, motorway detailing—to the grand; the massive doors to Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral (the design for which had to be signed off by the Pope) and later, the Egyptian Room at Harrods. Mitchell was so prolific he can’ t remember the exact location and details of each artwork, but there are several in some of Manchester ’s most striking and iconic buildings—a bold fibreglass mural in the entrance to the CIS Tower, panels around the lift shaft in the snaking Gateway House on Piccadilly Approach, and sculptured decoration covering the Humanities Building at the University of Manchester.

Mitchell ’s most publicly visible work in the city is his Minut Men, three giant concrete monsters outside the University of Salford. Mitchell had to set them on fire to get the plastic moulds off * (something he notes would never be allowed today, especially so close to the main road!), and the figures are extraordinarily detailed, covered with

Photographs by kind permission of William and Joy Mitchell

patterns and inlaid with mosaic. He explains: “ I wanted to do something with the material which was not indicative of trying to be something else. As it was new, let it be new.

It had as much to do with the practicality and being outside.

I also had to take into account, was it waterproof and was it vandal proof?”

Often, says Mitchell, his artworks used a “very, very involved process, ” a challenge to himself to prove they were possible. He remembers: “ It was almost an exercise in character building the artworks were so hard to get to the finish off!” Another unusual use of materials can be seen in the epic mosaic, gleaming with objects such as bottle tops and textured by the addition of gravel, which climbs the full height of the staircase in the Piccadilly Hotel in Piccadilly Gardens. Made of bits of furniture and pianos set in resin, Mitchell wanted to show “there was still the possibility of doing hand craftwork” and says “there ’s a richness to it.”

Mitchell finds public art to be a problematic concept: “ One of the troubles of public art is the public are not asked whether or not they want it. ” Yet you can tell Mitchell is proud of the artworks which people have taken to heart: he was pleased to hear of a fashion show being held in front of the Minut Men in Salford, and recounts that Salford students defended the figures from attack by rivals from

Manchester University. He even tells a story of tenants taking it upon themselves to clean one of his artworks in a council block. Mitchell also considers his fantastical creatures for the water gardens in Harlow, Essex—modern day gargoyles for a new town—to be a success. Too often, he says, artworks of the period were “thought of as brooches to stick on the building, ” whereas art needs to “ give a sense of the international, community and place.” Harlow was different as “they were starting to put an infrastructure in, an environment.”

Some of Mitchell ’s works have already been demolished, whereas others are in buildings that have fallen out of favour and face uncertain futures. He ’s stoical about artworks being lost when buildings are knocked down, although he thinks it ’s important that “ some are kept to give an idea of what the time was like and the type of things you could do. ” The social and historical significance of these remarkable artworks is now being reassessed. In Islington, London in 2008, one of Mitchell ’s works for a school was the first mural of its kind to be listed in its own right, not in the context of the listing of the building to which it was attached. In a library in Kirkby near Liverpool too, a mural has recently been restored and reinstalled. It had languished in storage after the library, ironically, “took it down to be modern.” Those trying (unsuccessfully so far) to get the Turnpike Centre in Leigh listed, which, when it was opened in 1971 featured a new, open-plan library design, also highlight Mitchell ’s distinctive concrete frieze on the front.

Mitchell still receives requests for commissions and is currently working on a book, which will be “ part instruction book” (“ always paint the concrete, ” he insists) and “ part adventure book.” There couldn’ t be anything more appropriate for this brilliant artist. As he sums up his long career, “ It has been an adventure!” * The Allerton Building which ‘encloses ’ the Minut Men is by Halliday Meecham and the project architect was John Parkinson-Whittle. It was JPW who commissioned Mitchell to make the sculptures. At least two, maybe three of the fibreglass moulds survived and today hang happily on the wall of a bungalow built by JPW in Didsbury!

Book Review #1 — Direction-Space!

Once upon a time ‘Space’ was the future.

— For a generation reared on Thunderbirds and hyped up on flying saucer sherbets, the year 2000 was on course to see everyone nipping to work on a jetpack, the final frontier well and truly conquered. With team Gagarin in space and the Americans hot on their vapour trail, the future was looking intergalactic and space age motifs were firmly embedded into everyday design, with televisions mimicking astronauts’ helmets, rocket launchers for lamps and milky-way shaped clocks.

— 50 years on the mood couldn’t be more different— a belle époque world of Steampunks and Retronauts, handlebar moustaches on fashionable young men and the bluestocking an unlikely icon for the discerning female. The future is dead and what remains is a smorgasbord of nostalgia hued presents.

— Where did it all go so retrograde?

— The Space Craze probably started with the launch of the Soviet Sputnik in 1957, going stratospheric when Gagarin became the world’s first spaceman in 1961. The race had begun and at its heart was the technology being advanced behind the Iron Curtain, where the future, we imagined, was an everyday reality; whilst we played with die cast ray guns, Soviet kids were being trained for life on Mars.

— Direction-Space! reveals the cloistered community of medics, technicians and cosmonauts behind the myths, an ‘access all areas’ portrait of the highly classified locations of the Soviet Space programme —a real life top secret Futurama or rather, given some fantastic shots of assorted cosmonautic outfits, Wallace and Gromit’s basement complete with Techno Trousers. Shrouded in secrecy even in the Soviet Union and long inaccessible to the west, Gruzdeva exposes the inner workings of the research facilities, gadgets and machinery that propelled the Russians into space, tucked away in the cosmically named Star City (somewhere outside Moscow) and

Direction-Space! by Maria Gruzdeva is published by Dewi Lewis, priced £30.00

its space launch facility at remote Baikonur. Finally we can scrutinize the minutiae of the intensive training regime; its laboratories, offices, canteens; glimpse workers’ housing and overgrown playgrounds with delapidated rocket slides. But what is most remarkable—even poignant—is how archaic and unequal to the task it all looks to contemporary eyes—we probably have more technology on our mobiles than those brave space pioneers had in their entire city!

— Yet despite the inevitable quaintness there remains the sheer elegance of the enterprise in its modernist detailing—the monumental artworks and bold mosaics, marbled starry firmaments lining walls, floors and hallways; the futuristic motifs and consistency of design extending even to medals, postage stamps and stationery. It all received the Sputnik treatment. And everywhere Gagarin himself smiles down—from the Alley of Cosmonauts or Gagarin Way, along corridors and hallways: a cult of personality, of cosmonaut as God, inspiring our real life Jetsons in their daily toils. By the end of the decade Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon and the Apollo missions had grabbed the limelight, eclipsing the valiant efforts and achievements of Gagarin and the Soviets, but here his place is forever secure.

— Direction-Space! is a book for everyone—graphics fanatics, design heads, photographers, urban explorers, cultural historians, architects and contemporary archaeologists. In the 21st century, with the collapse of the USSR, and the Challenger and Columbia disasters hardly forgotten, such optimism seems part of another time, a remote past, Gruzdeva’s images every bit as evocative as strolling around Pompeii or Herculaneum. If on the surface Direction-Space! is the history of cosmonautics, in truth it is as much the story of a generation’s lost future and how we fell spectacularly to earth.

— Maureen Ward

Book Review #2 — John Madin

This monograph is the sixth in a series focusing on Twentieth Century architects—a collaboration between English Heritage, The Twentieth Century Society and RIBA Publishing. The series seems to be moving away from the south east to look at architectural practices which, whilst being significant in their own geographical area, are perhaps not so well know in a national context.

John Madin is one such example, having a huge architectural impact on his home city of Birmingham in the post war years but, having not built significantly in the south east, does not have the reputation of other lesser architects who are based in London.

— Setting up his own practise in 1950 after studying at Birmingham School of Architecture, it could be argued that Madin was fortuitous to be embarking on a career in a city that was fully embracing modernity and in need of post war reconstruction. It was the perfect environment for this young, enthusiastic architect, whose trips to Scandinavia and the USA had convinced him that he would nail his colours to the modernist mast and who was, unlike many, unburdened by any interwar legacy.

— His work throughout the 1950s, typified by private houses and work for the city council, soon brought the young Madin to the attention of Brigadier Sir Richard Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, who was keen to develop land on his estate in the Birmingham suburb of Edgbaston. What Madin managed to do was not only build a significant, varied mix of residential and commercial buildings but did in it such a way that, through thoughtful design and respect for good planning principles, the character and attraction of suburb was retained. The book makes clear that much of Madin’s work throughout the late 1950s and ‘60s maintained a high level of craftsmanship and detailing that is contrary to the general perception of this period in British architecture. There was always a humanity to his work and he was never shy of drawing on the talents of artists such as John Piper and William Mitchell to embellish his buildings.

John Madin by Alan Clawley, is published by RIBA Publishing, priced £20.00

Such was the prolificacy of Madin and his firm that the book rarely spends too much time on one project, only devoting one or two paragraphs to potentially worthy subjects. This is unfortunate because greater analysis of some the buildings is justified. Madin clearly played a central role in Birmingham’s post war redevelopment and his relationships in the city would make for interesting reading. One building that does come in for wider coverage is his Central Library, a building which, on the brink of demolition, has become the poster boy of those keen to protect the best of British Brutalist architecture. This is a building Prince Charles has publicly condemned so it’s probably safe to say that readers of «the modernist» will find this building exciting.

— The long running debacle surrounding Central Library sadly epitomises the current regard the city of Birmingham holds Madin’s work in. In just one generation his fine, high quality work has gone from well regarded to seemingly disposable. Too many of Madin’s buildings have already been demolished or face demolition so let us hope this book goes some way in widening the appreciation of Birmingham’s finest post war architect.

— Eddy Rhead

Diary; our brilliant line up for September–December 2011…

Eduardo Paolozzi: General Dynamic F.U.N. now touring. Revered for his mechanistic sculptures and kaleidoscope print projects, we love him for his mosaics on Tottenham Court Road station, making this Southbank tour right up our underpass, so to speak. This collection of prints created between 1965 and 1970, celebrating pop culture, consumerism and technologies of mass production, was described by his friend and sometime collaborator J.G. Ballard, as a ‘unique guidebook to the electric garden of our minds.’ Catch it at Barton on Humber’s Ropewalk (10 September–9 October 2011) and Aberystwyth Arts Centre (15 October 2011–8 January 2012) with more dates on the Southbank Centre website.

— Rise up and Build at the Chapel Gallery, Ormskirk, 24 September–12 November 2011, contemplates the British modernist utopian dream using archive film footage, rediscovered architect models and original paintings that were commissioned in the early and euphoric days of Skelmersdale Development Corporation. Famed for its roundabouts and a hard-to-find centre, Skelmersdale began life in 1964 at the end of the new town movement. 20 years later, its development corporation was wound up, with the job half done and the town’s population having reached barely half of the 80,000 envisaged.

— The Indiscipline of Painting: International abstraction from the 1960s to now at Tate, St Ives, 8 October 2011–3 January 2012. Often seen as synonymous with a modernist moment that has long passed and an ideology which led the medium to stagnate in self-reflexivity and ideas of historical progression, the contemporary position of abstract painting is problematic. The Indiscipline of Painting challenges such assumptions, revealing how painting’s modernist histories, languages and positions have continued to provoke ongoing dialogues with contemporary practitioners.

— Introduction to Contemporary Visual Arts: Modernism. From Monday 10 October 2011 for 6 weeks, plus special screening Monday 31 October.

Join the «manchester modernist society» on our very own idiosyncratic guide to modernism, from Lubetkin’s Penguin Pool and post-war reconstruction, to Sheffield’s Park Hill, the Pompidou Centre and the pop aesthetic of Verner Panton. For more details visit the Cornerhouse website.

Visit Tacita Dean at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall from 11 October 2011–11 March 2012. Graduating at the height of the YBA years, Dean works in a variety of media, including drawing, photography and sound.

Only the third British artist invited to produce work for The Unilever Series, she will be ‘making a new commission especially designed to respond to the architecture of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.’

We can’t wait!

— 61/11 Continuous Collective: BDP at 50 at CUBE Gallery, Portland Street, Manchester, 12 October– 5 November 2011. This exhibition traces the ethos and work of Preston’s most famous architectural firm, from its founding in 1961 as part of the emerging cultural change of the North West of England, to present day leading international design practice operating from studios worldwide. First showing at RIBA in May the exhibition is accompanied by a celebratory book and film.

— Goldfinger Masterpiece by night, 27 and 28 October.

2 Willow Road will open late for two evenings this October, giving the public a rare opportunity to experience Ernö Goldinger’s modernist masterpiece by night. Enjoy a glass of wine whilst drooling over works of art by Marcel Duchamp, Bridget Riley, Henry Moore and Max Ernst from the Goldfingers’ own collection, plus the last chance to see the special exhibition Design for a Modernist Childhood.

Both nights are from 17.00–20.00, admission £5.80.

— Finally, 16 brilliant reasons to use the London underground this autumn! 16 London Underground stations have recently been listed, including several

by Leslie Green whose ‘ox-blood’ red tile façades pioneered the use of a strong and consistent corporate image recognised around the world, whilst modernist classics Arnos Grove, Oakwood and Sudbury Town, designed by Bolton born distinguished architect Charles Holden, have been upgraded from Grade II to Grade II*.

— «the modernist»

Endword

«The expectation of failure is connected with the very name of a magazine.»

This anguished cry was written not last year but over 200 years ago by Noah Webster, dictionary compiler and magazine editor. Today the zine flourishes, a desire to create an alternative, accessible community passed on to each successive enterprise, fuelled by naïve enthusiasm and boundless passion. However ephemeral and transient their impact and legacy invariably outlives their meagre print run and lifespan.

Giddy with the unexpected success of our first issue, we are proud and excited to have become a tiny part of this noble, precarious and yes, foolhardy endeavour —and hope our second brilliant adventure in print makes a modest contribution to the genre. www.the-modernist-mag.co.uk Twitter: @modernistmag