RETAILING THE FUTURE | ELDON SQUARE SHOPPING CENTRE

Eldon Square in Newcastle opened in 1976 in a blaze of sci fi design...

 

With the help of the brilliant staff at Newcastle Libraries' Local Archive I looked through the original photos they've amassed from 1976/77 & into the 80s & 90s - various shots below, a lot of these I'd not seen before...

[ From the Eldon Square Wiki ] 

The redevelopment of Old Eldon Square, which was carried out in the mid 1970s, was controversial with Christopher Booker writing in 1978 that it was "perhaps the greatest single example of architectural vandalism in Britain since the war. Until ten years ago this most handsome piece of old Newcastle, with its blackened, post-classical frontages survived intact. 

Today only one side remains, the rest dominated by the astonishingly brutal shopping centre put up by Capital and Counties, turning its brick backside on the world in the most aggressive way, in order to lure Novocastrians into the softly-lit womb of the air-conditioned shopping malls within."^[3]

These aerial shots illustrate the scale of the site:

& some more interior, 1976 - 1979....

For more images of Eldon Square, check out this section on NCL Uni's 'Co-Curate' website. 

Last few pics of 70s Eldon Square...

It was all going so well.

Then in 1994...

Nowadays the future is here but Eldon Square is now out of time. A sad, bland place

:-( 

:-( 

KANTOROWICH BUILDING | MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY 1970

The Kantorowich / Hanson-designed Humanities bunker, built in 1970 for Manchester University, is now a bit hidden on the campus - set far back from Wilmslow Road & obscured by a car park on the other side. Worth seeking out though, not sure what to describe it as, other than a monolith. 

For background, here's the overview from the excellent Mainstream Modern site:

"This late addition to the University of Manchester campus has been variously described as both dull and pleasing. Designed by the chair of the School of Town and Country Planning (Kantorowich) and the head of the School of Architecture (Hanson) as a bespoke scheme to house the staff and students from each. Both parties were South African, Hanson taking his post in 1963, two years after Kantorowich

[ FROM MAINSTREAM MODERN ] 

The building has carried the name of the latter, but it is the work of the former that may be examined as precedent for this building; the Geology and Mining Engineering building at the University of the Witwatersrand is similarly a long bunker type construct with a repetitive concrete panel. It is the bunker like qualities of the Kantorowich building that polarises opinion concerning its appearance.

[ FROM MAINSTREAM MODERN ] 

The only clues to the internal arrangements come from the apparent mutations of the rough concrete cladding, sometimes spanning a single storey and punctuated, others, blank panels spanning two floors. Internally the spacious foyer provides for gathering and is largely finished as it was built; bush hammered concrete columns, ceramic tiles, hardwoods and flint lime masonry. An enclosed courtyard with spiral geometries that play against the rigidity of the façade is accessed from the foyer, this used to contain a sculpture by Hepworth, now only koi carp reside in the stepped ponds"

Note: the ponds have now gone :-(

  

BRISTOL CONCRETE | 6AM WALK ROUND

Various photos from an early morning walk round Bristol  

[ Also, Plimsoll Swingbridge photos here ] 

Obvs this is worth a watch...

& these too..