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From towers to Toast Rack: the brutalists with concrete plans for Britain From towers to Toast Rack: the brutalists with concrete plans for Britain
(7 months later)
On a bitingly cold Thursday morning, Jack Hale and I are standing next to a stretch of the Sheffield inner ring road, and staring, awestruck, at an electricity substation.On a bitingly cold Thursday morning, Jack Hale and I are standing next to a stretch of the Sheffield inner ring road, and staring, awestruck, at an electricity substation.
On the face of it, those last two words might suggest some anonymous brick box. But the Moore Street substation is nothing like that. Completed in 1968 and granted Grade II-listed status in 2013, it suggests a futuristic version of a castle, complete with ramparts, and its overall dimensions are stunning. “It’s the same feeling some people get from mountains or waterfalls,” Hale says. “This is man-made, but it’s powerful. It seems … what’s the word?”On the face of it, those last two words might suggest some anonymous brick box. But the Moore Street substation is nothing like that. Completed in 1968 and granted Grade II-listed status in 2013, it suggests a futuristic version of a castle, complete with ramparts, and its overall dimensions are stunning. “It’s the same feeling some people get from mountains or waterfalls,” Hale says. “This is man-made, but it’s powerful. It seems … what’s the word?”
He thinks for a moment. “Sublime,” he says. “It’s sublime.”He thinks for a moment. “Sublime,” he says. “It’s sublime.”
Hale is one of the founders of the Manchester Modernist Society – a six-year-old enterprise that celebrates the kind of design and architecture that the substation embodies. Its official patrons are the writer and broadcaster Jonathan Meades and the former Smiths guitarist and cultural omnivore Johnny Marr. In addition to putting on film screenings, lectures, exhibitions and city walks, the society regularly organises art projects, as well as publishing a quarterly magazine titled The Modernist (strap-lined “a magazine about 20th-century design”, and now on to its 18th issue), and beautifully turned maps, pamphlets and guidebooks.Hale is one of the founders of the Manchester Modernist Society – a six-year-old enterprise that celebrates the kind of design and architecture that the substation embodies. Its official patrons are the writer and broadcaster Jonathan Meades and the former Smiths guitarist and cultural omnivore Johnny Marr. In addition to putting on film screenings, lectures, exhibitions and city walks, the society regularly organises art projects, as well as publishing a quarterly magazine titled The Modernist (strap-lined “a magazine about 20th-century design”, and now on to its 18th issue), and beautifully turned maps, pamphlets and guidebooks.
Related: The concrete beauty of brutalist architecture – in pictures
Via these publications and social media, its members, followers and academic advisers carry on a constant conversation, not just about buildings, but elements of 20th-century vernacular design, from teapots to electricity pylons. Running through all this is a deep fondness for a particular phase of history, as well as for an overarching philosophy that is difficult to pin down. Perhaps the crispest definition of modernism I have found is in the opening pages of the sumptuous book that accompanied the V&A’s 2006 exhibition Modernism: Defining A New World. It roots the term in “a rejection of applied ornament and decoration”; “an espousal of the new”; and, perhaps most crucially, “a utopian desire to create a better world”. Great architecture and design can convey such ideals as a matter of almost mystical implication: the most important point, perhaps, is that you know modernism when you see it.Via these publications and social media, its members, followers and academic advisers carry on a constant conversation, not just about buildings, but elements of 20th-century vernacular design, from teapots to electricity pylons. Running through all this is a deep fondness for a particular phase of history, as well as for an overarching philosophy that is difficult to pin down. Perhaps the crispest definition of modernism I have found is in the opening pages of the sumptuous book that accompanied the V&A’s 2006 exhibition Modernism: Defining A New World. It roots the term in “a rejection of applied ornament and decoration”; “an espousal of the new”; and, perhaps most crucially, “a utopian desire to create a better world”. Great architecture and design can convey such ideals as a matter of almost mystical implication: the most important point, perhaps, is that you know modernism when you see it.
The society’s work puts it at the vanguard of a clear upsurge of interest in the modernist ethos and its everyday manifestations. All over the UK, there are now regular battles over the granting of listed status to modernist buildings, as they are pulled by their devotees out of the disgrace into which they fell back in the 1980s. Late 2015 saw the publication by Yale University Press of Elain Harwood’s Space, Hope and Brutalism, a comprehensive guide to English architecture between 1945 and 1975; earlier this month, it was succeeded by Christopher Beanland’s book Concrete Concept, which celebrates so-called brutalist buildings across the world. In his just-published polemic, The Ministry of Nostalgia, Owen Hatherley warns against a wave of kitsch embodied by “prints of modernist buildings ready for you to frame and place in your ex-council flat in zone 2 or 3”. But running alongside it are ever‑louder expressions of modernist passion that are much more sincere, and thoroughgoing – as evidenced by Hatherley’s own Militant Modernism (2009), and the influential paeans-cum-laments to 20th-century buildings in A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (2010) and A New Kind of Bleak (2012).The society’s work puts it at the vanguard of a clear upsurge of interest in the modernist ethos and its everyday manifestations. All over the UK, there are now regular battles over the granting of listed status to modernist buildings, as they are pulled by their devotees out of the disgrace into which they fell back in the 1980s. Late 2015 saw the publication by Yale University Press of Elain Harwood’s Space, Hope and Brutalism, a comprehensive guide to English architecture between 1945 and 1975; earlier this month, it was succeeded by Christopher Beanland’s book Concrete Concept, which celebrates so-called brutalist buildings across the world. In his just-published polemic, The Ministry of Nostalgia, Owen Hatherley warns against a wave of kitsch embodied by “prints of modernist buildings ready for you to frame and place in your ex-council flat in zone 2 or 3”. But running alongside it are ever‑louder expressions of modernist passion that are much more sincere, and thoroughgoing – as evidenced by Hatherley’s own Militant Modernism (2009), and the influential paeans-cum-laments to 20th-century buildings in A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (2010) and A New Kind of Bleak (2012).
The roots of the Manchester Modernist Society go back to 2008. “We were just kind of whingeing about what we felt was the state of 20th-century architecture in Manchester,” Hale says. “We felt that people didn’t like it enough.” As 21st-century Manchester was endlessly redeveloped and regenerated they felt that a whole phase of its modern history was being pushed aside. What the society is most interested in, it transpires, is a phase of the city’s development that lasted from the early 1960s to the Opec oil shock of 1973. During that time, the lifting of postwar building restrictions and a last burst of British faith in science and technology – Harold Wilson’s white heat of new technology, and all that – led to a burst of forward-thinking architecture and dizzyingly ambitious urban planning, innovations at the University of Manchester, from the invention of the first programmable computer, to breakthroughs in nuclear engineering.The roots of the Manchester Modernist Society go back to 2008. “We were just kind of whingeing about what we felt was the state of 20th-century architecture in Manchester,” Hale says. “We felt that people didn’t like it enough.” As 21st-century Manchester was endlessly redeveloped and regenerated they felt that a whole phase of its modern history was being pushed aside. What the society is most interested in, it transpires, is a phase of the city’s development that lasted from the early 1960s to the Opec oil shock of 1973. During that time, the lifting of postwar building restrictions and a last burst of British faith in science and technology – Harold Wilson’s white heat of new technology, and all that – led to a burst of forward-thinking architecture and dizzyingly ambitious urban planning, innovations at the University of Manchester, from the invention of the first programmable computer, to breakthroughs in nuclear engineering.
Among the Modernist Society’s first public creations was a sound installation at Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry, situated in a phone box (“the red K6 Gilbert Scott phone box,” Hale specifies), for which they secured a £5,000 grant from the Arts Council. A little later, after a series of organised urban “rambles”, they then discovered a documentary in the North West Film Archive about the construction of the Mancunian Way, the two-mile long stretch of inner ring road that the society cites as the city’s biggest 20th-century construction, opened by Wilson in 1967. They decided to show it in a bar in the city’s Northern Quarter, not knowing who on earth was going to turn up.Among the Modernist Society’s first public creations was a sound installation at Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry, situated in a phone box (“the red K6 Gilbert Scott phone box,” Hale specifies), for which they secured a £5,000 grant from the Arts Council. A little later, after a series of organised urban “rambles”, they then discovered a documentary in the North West Film Archive about the construction of the Mancunian Way, the two-mile long stretch of inner ring road that the society cites as the city’s biggest 20th-century construction, opened by Wilson in 1967. They decided to show it in a bar in the city’s Northern Quarter, not knowing who on earth was going to turn up.
“It’s pretty boring, to be honest with you,” says society co-founder Eddy Rhead. “It was made by the Concrete Association, and it’s half an hour long. Five minutes of it is quite nice, but it starts talking about pre‑stressing and grouting.”“It’s pretty boring, to be honest with you,” says society co-founder Eddy Rhead. “It was made by the Concrete Association, and it’s half an hour long. Five minutes of it is quite nice, but it starts talking about pre‑stressing and grouting.”
“But it was packed,” says Hale. “A full house. And as it went on, I was wondering what everything else was thinking, and whether people would start leaving. But no: it was well received. And they all stayed, chatting.” Soon after, they arrived at a watershed point. “We started to get young people arriving on our walks,” says Rhead. “It was unheard of. When I was in the 20th-Century Society, I was in my 30s, and I was the youngest person there. But then students started coming along to our events.”“But it was packed,” says Hale. “A full house. And as it went on, I was wondering what everything else was thinking, and whether people would start leaving. But no: it was well received. And they all stayed, chatting.” Soon after, they arrived at a watershed point. “We started to get young people arriving on our walks,” says Rhead. “It was unheard of. When I was in the 20th-Century Society, I was in my 30s, and I was the youngest person there. But then students started coming along to our events.”
Just as the dismissive view of Victorian buildings that held sway in the mid-20th century was eventually overturned, here was new interest in the kind of architectural aesthetics that, from the 1980s onwards, had been dogmatically maligned as an offence not just to good taste, but to human values. (It’s a political article of faith that still lingers: witness David Cameron’s recent announcement of his housing crusade against “concrete slabs” and “brutal high-rise towers.”) Part of this change could perhaps be traced to such feted literary urban explorers as Iain Sinclair and, Will Self – and, latterly, the avowed modernist and Hatherley. If anything embodied what the society wanted to play its part in avenging, it was the redefinition of the term “brutalism” – from a description for buildings largely made from unadorned concrete taken from Le Corbusier’s term “beton brut” (French for “raw concrete”), to a byword for something deemed literally brutal. The society now sells enamel badges featuring the word “brutalist”; against Rhead and Hale’s expectations, they have proved hugely popular.Just as the dismissive view of Victorian buildings that held sway in the mid-20th century was eventually overturned, here was new interest in the kind of architectural aesthetics that, from the 1980s onwards, had been dogmatically maligned as an offence not just to good taste, but to human values. (It’s a political article of faith that still lingers: witness David Cameron’s recent announcement of his housing crusade against “concrete slabs” and “brutal high-rise towers.”) Part of this change could perhaps be traced to such feted literary urban explorers as Iain Sinclair and, Will Self – and, latterly, the avowed modernist and Hatherley. If anything embodied what the society wanted to play its part in avenging, it was the redefinition of the term “brutalism” – from a description for buildings largely made from unadorned concrete taken from Le Corbusier’s term “beton brut” (French for “raw concrete”), to a byword for something deemed literally brutal. The society now sells enamel badges featuring the word “brutalist”; against Rhead and Hale’s expectations, they have proved hugely popular.
Related: Concrete plans: brutalist buildings to be celebrated in National Trust tours
Though the two of them are at pains to emphasise that they leave the formal business of preserving particular buildings to others, they have their favourites. One is the incredible construction known locally as the Toast Rack, a now empty educational building in south Manchester whose combination of almost avant-garde aesthetics and inspired functionality was opened in 1960. But perhaps the best example is the former city centre campus of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). The long-term future of some of these buildings has become uncertain, so in June 2012, a handful of the society’s devotees appointed themselves “uninvited artists in residence”. They produced a map of the campus that folded down to the size of a small matchbox and planted wooden representations of the buildings in the gardens, surrounding the place with fake crime-scene tape featuring the slogan “Attention: Modernist”, and handing out spoof certificates to people who had paid between £10 (for a degree) and £200 (for a mock doctorate). “There is a nice picture somewhere of 30 or 40 people throwing their scrolls in the air,” says Hale; the basic intention, he says, was to somehow create “an unofficial conservation area”.Though the two of them are at pains to emphasise that they leave the formal business of preserving particular buildings to others, they have their favourites. One is the incredible construction known locally as the Toast Rack, a now empty educational building in south Manchester whose combination of almost avant-garde aesthetics and inspired functionality was opened in 1960. But perhaps the best example is the former city centre campus of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). The long-term future of some of these buildings has become uncertain, so in June 2012, a handful of the society’s devotees appointed themselves “uninvited artists in residence”. They produced a map of the campus that folded down to the size of a small matchbox and planted wooden representations of the buildings in the gardens, surrounding the place with fake crime-scene tape featuring the slogan “Attention: Modernist”, and handing out spoof certificates to people who had paid between £10 (for a degree) and £200 (for a mock doctorate). “There is a nice picture somewhere of 30 or 40 people throwing their scrolls in the air,” says Hale; the basic intention, he says, was to somehow create “an unofficial conservation area”.
More than any English city outside London, cranes are a constant presence on the Mancunian skyline, and at the end of every major city street, it now feels like there is a new building. Some, such as the 47-storey Beetham Tower, an almost terrifyingly tall structure at the foot of Deansgate, are undeniably spectacular; others look blankly functional. But given our passage from the era of collectivism to the age of free markets and corporate power, nearly all of them are devoid of the kind of civic values for which the Modernist Society somewhat nostalgically yearns.More than any English city outside London, cranes are a constant presence on the Mancunian skyline, and at the end of every major city street, it now feels like there is a new building. Some, such as the 47-storey Beetham Tower, an almost terrifyingly tall structure at the foot of Deansgate, are undeniably spectacular; others look blankly functional. But given our passage from the era of collectivism to the age of free markets and corporate power, nearly all of them are devoid of the kind of civic values for which the Modernist Society somewhat nostalgically yearns.
To be fair, Rhead and Hale’s view of all this is not quite as rose-tinted as that might suggest: the most recent issue of The Modernist, for example, includes an unflinching account of the infamous Crescents, appallingly built residential behemoths in the inner-city neighbourhood of Hulme that became a byword for the chasm between showy modernist designs and life as it was actually lived (“Flats ran with condensation and water seeped in through the ill-fitting joins”). But at the same time, they think there was something at the core of the modernist ethos whose neglect has left us all the poorer.To be fair, Rhead and Hale’s view of all this is not quite as rose-tinted as that might suggest: the most recent issue of The Modernist, for example, includes an unflinching account of the infamous Crescents, appallingly built residential behemoths in the inner-city neighbourhood of Hulme that became a byword for the chasm between showy modernist designs and life as it was actually lived (“Flats ran with condensation and water seeped in through the ill-fitting joins”). But at the same time, they think there was something at the core of the modernist ethos whose neglect has left us all the poorer.
Concrete is emancipatory in terms of form – there are things you can do with it that are sort of heroicConcrete is emancipatory in terms of form – there are things you can do with it that are sort of heroic
“I certainly feel, and it’s generally accepted to be true, that the Modernists were sort of socially minded,” He pauses.“There seems to be a social kind of ethos behind the Modernist movement, which doesn’t seem to exist in the post-Thatcher era,” says Hale. Passing by an array of 21st-century buildings, we set out on an hour-long tour of the city centre. We start in the foyer of a Manchester Metropolitan University building, where there is a model of a largely unrealised 1960s plan that would have connected new buildings in his area of town via raised skyways. From there, we go on to St Augustine’s, a compact church centred around a huge modernist sculpture of the crucifix, with narrow windows that let in affecting shafts of light. We then arrive at the imposing Mancunian Way, and an underpass adorned with a plaque that simply reads “Concrete Society 1968 Award”.“I certainly feel, and it’s generally accepted to be true, that the Modernists were sort of socially minded,” He pauses.“There seems to be a social kind of ethos behind the Modernist movement, which doesn’t seem to exist in the post-Thatcher era,” says Hale. Passing by an array of 21st-century buildings, we set out on an hour-long tour of the city centre. We start in the foyer of a Manchester Metropolitan University building, where there is a model of a largely unrealised 1960s plan that would have connected new buildings in his area of town via raised skyways. From there, we go on to St Augustine’s, a compact church centred around a huge modernist sculpture of the crucifix, with narrow windows that let in affecting shafts of light. We then arrive at the imposing Mancunian Way, and an underpass adorned with a plaque that simply reads “Concrete Society 1968 Award”.
UMIST is close by, where we spend half an hour wandering in and out of the Renold Building, a concrete, podium-and-tower structure with an exterior that includes one wall of striking, zig-zag panels. Completed in 1962, its expansive, mood-lifting foyer features a huge mural painted by the abstract art pioneer Victor Passmore. On the outside edge of the campus, there is another impressive creation all too easy to miss: the so-called Hollaway Wall, a concrete edifice co-designed as a sound buffer by the artist and sculptor Anthony Hollaway, also responsible for a series of stained glass windows in Manchester Cathedral. The scene that confronts us there seems to speak volumes about parts of the modern city that are being crowded out: the wall is in a state of obvious neglect, and now the backdrop for one of the clumps of tents used by Manchester’s increasing numbers of homeless people.UMIST is close by, where we spend half an hour wandering in and out of the Renold Building, a concrete, podium-and-tower structure with an exterior that includes one wall of striking, zig-zag panels. Completed in 1962, its expansive, mood-lifting foyer features a huge mural painted by the abstract art pioneer Victor Passmore. On the outside edge of the campus, there is another impressive creation all too easy to miss: the so-called Hollaway Wall, a concrete edifice co-designed as a sound buffer by the artist and sculptor Anthony Hollaway, also responsible for a series of stained glass windows in Manchester Cathedral. The scene that confronts us there seems to speak volumes about parts of the modern city that are being crowded out: the wall is in a state of obvious neglect, and now the backdrop for one of the clumps of tents used by Manchester’s increasing numbers of homeless people.
The wall was listed in 2012, thanks chiefly to Richard Brook, an architect and academic at the Manchester School of Architecture, who is one of the Modernist Society’s informal advisers and collaborators. His interest in the period partly originates from a “perverse” interest in concrete. “I think it’s sort of emancipatory in terms of form,” he says, and cites “things you can do with it that are sort of heroic.” He goes on: “As a material, it’s ancient, isn’t it? The Romans invented it. But it was really what drove that postwar construction boom.”The wall was listed in 2012, thanks chiefly to Richard Brook, an architect and academic at the Manchester School of Architecture, who is one of the Modernist Society’s informal advisers and collaborators. His interest in the period partly originates from a “perverse” interest in concrete. “I think it’s sort of emancipatory in terms of form,” he says, and cites “things you can do with it that are sort of heroic.” He goes on: “As a material, it’s ancient, isn’t it? The Romans invented it. But it was really what drove that postwar construction boom.”
Brook maintains an online photographic archive called Mainstream Modern, which is brimming with examples of modernist architecture from Manchester and the north-west, including houses, factories, bus depots and hospital wings. “I’m interested in this mass-ness,” he says. “You’ve got the avant garde in architecture, which people write about like art history. But that only covers a fraction of what was built, particularly in the postwar period. I’m interested in all the rest of it: the 98% that you can’t really talk about in critical terms, from an art-historical perspective. It’s mainstream.”Brook maintains an online photographic archive called Mainstream Modern, which is brimming with examples of modernist architecture from Manchester and the north-west, including houses, factories, bus depots and hospital wings. “I’m interested in this mass-ness,” he says. “You’ve got the avant garde in architecture, which people write about like art history. But that only covers a fraction of what was built, particularly in the postwar period. I’m interested in all the rest of it: the 98% that you can’t really talk about in critical terms, from an art-historical perspective. It’s mainstream.”
One of Brook’s specialist interests is a range of unrealised plans for central Manchester, hatched from 1945 onwards, which even included proposals for heliports. Almost as futuristically, next to the city-centre fulcrum that is Piccadilly Gardens, there were plans for a dual carriageway which would take cars through the middle of Manchester, while directly above it would be a raised road allowing drop-offs at the upper levels of some of the city’s new buildings. In partnership with the Modernist Society, some of Brook’s students are now going to construct digital versions of these cityscapes tied into gaming technology: the idea is to allow people to walk and drive around a city that never was.One of Brook’s specialist interests is a range of unrealised plans for central Manchester, hatched from 1945 onwards, which even included proposals for heliports. Almost as futuristically, next to the city-centre fulcrum that is Piccadilly Gardens, there were plans for a dual carriageway which would take cars through the middle of Manchester, while directly above it would be a raised road allowing drop-offs at the upper levels of some of the city’s new buildings. In partnership with the Modernist Society, some of Brook’s students are now going to construct digital versions of these cityscapes tied into gaming technology: the idea is to allow people to walk and drive around a city that never was.
I then meet Rhead and Hale in Sheffield, where the Modernist Society recently established an offshoot (there are the beginnings of a branch in Birmingham, but it has yet to go public). The Sheffield society’s cofounder is Andrew Jackson, the proprietor of a food and interiors business, who studied architecture and urban planning at Liverpool University. It was the latter element of his course, he says, that hooked him on the postwar period, when “city architects and town planners got to live their dreams. There’s a romance about it: a harsh romance, but it’s about pure visions.” He takes us on 90-minute city ramble to prove his point, and starts by reminding me that we are about to sample the legacy of a different period from the Mancunian golden age that the Modernist Society celebrates in a city so heavily bombed that its reinvention happened as a matter of urgency during the 1950s, as against the technocratic 60s.I then meet Rhead and Hale in Sheffield, where the Modernist Society recently established an offshoot (there are the beginnings of a branch in Birmingham, but it has yet to go public). The Sheffield society’s cofounder is Andrew Jackson, the proprietor of a food and interiors business, who studied architecture and urban planning at Liverpool University. It was the latter element of his course, he says, that hooked him on the postwar period, when “city architects and town planners got to live their dreams. There’s a romance about it: a harsh romance, but it’s about pure visions.” He takes us on 90-minute city ramble to prove his point, and starts by reminding me that we are about to sample the legacy of a different period from the Mancunian golden age that the Modernist Society celebrates in a city so heavily bombed that its reinvention happened as a matter of urgency during the 1950s, as against the technocratic 60s.
We start at Park Hill, the famous housing development built between 1957 and 1961, which is now Europe’s largest listed building: an expanse of blocks built into the city’s up-and-down topography, and based around “streets in the sky”, so that a milk float could enter one end of the development at ground level, and pass long a horizontal route that eventually ended high up in another building (and be transported back down in a lift). Some of the estate has been comprehensively renovated by the Mancunian developers Urban Splash, complete with new panels finished in shades of orange and yellow, and there is more work to come – but around most of the still-empty buildings, there is a ghostly silence. “This is Westmorland slate,” says Rhead, admiringly thumping a ground‑floor exterior. “It’s good stuff.”We start at Park Hill, the famous housing development built between 1957 and 1961, which is now Europe’s largest listed building: an expanse of blocks built into the city’s up-and-down topography, and based around “streets in the sky”, so that a milk float could enter one end of the development at ground level, and pass long a horizontal route that eventually ended high up in another building (and be transported back down in a lift). Some of the estate has been comprehensively renovated by the Mancunian developers Urban Splash, complete with new panels finished in shades of orange and yellow, and there is more work to come – but around most of the still-empty buildings, there is a ghostly silence. “This is Westmorland slate,” says Rhead, admiringly thumping a ground‑floor exterior. “It’s good stuff.”
In the heart of the city, we head into Castle House, a listed building that now hosts an indoor secondhand market, but until recently was a Co-op department store, centred around a self‑supporting staircase – which, Jackson enthuses, “floats between floors”. We are walking, he later tells me, amid what remains of the legacy of J Lewis Womersley, the city architect whose postwar plans still define some of Sheffield’s centre, and who eventually left for Manchester, where he came up with the plans for the Arndale shopping centre and the aforementioned Crescents.In the heart of the city, we head into Castle House, a listed building that now hosts an indoor secondhand market, but until recently was a Co-op department store, centred around a self‑supporting staircase – which, Jackson enthuses, “floats between floors”. We are walking, he later tells me, amid what remains of the legacy of J Lewis Womersley, the city architect whose postwar plans still define some of Sheffield’s centre, and who eventually left for Manchester, where he came up with the plans for the Arndale shopping centre and the aforementioned Crescents.
Why can’t people love a big dirty concrete building that’s not meant to be elegant and beautiful, necessarilyWhy can’t people love a big dirty concrete building that’s not meant to be elegant and beautiful, necessarily
Much of the city of Womersley’s era, though, is disappearing, something that hits home as we stare into the rubble that used to be Castle Market – a classically brutalist city institution that devotees of 20th-century architecture tried to get listed, to no avail. Once, it hosted a multitude of stallholders – who, said one Sheffield native, combined to create something “straight out of Hieronymus Bosch … the bustle, the mess, the noise”. Now, the remains of a white-walled staircase jut out of a chewed-up mess of metal and concrete, surrounded by hoardings. What will happen here, Jackson says, is unclear. The city council apparently wants to create a visitor attraction centred on the remains of the castle that give the site its name, but an application for help from the Heritage Lottery Fund was recently were turned down.Much of the city of Womersley’s era, though, is disappearing, something that hits home as we stare into the rubble that used to be Castle Market – a classically brutalist city institution that devotees of 20th-century architecture tried to get listed, to no avail. Once, it hosted a multitude of stallholders – who, said one Sheffield native, combined to create something “straight out of Hieronymus Bosch … the bustle, the mess, the noise”. Now, the remains of a white-walled staircase jut out of a chewed-up mess of metal and concrete, surrounded by hoardings. What will happen here, Jackson says, is unclear. The city council apparently wants to create a visitor attraction centred on the remains of the castle that give the site its name, but an application for help from the Heritage Lottery Fund was recently were turned down.
A great deal of the city’s other postwar structures seem to be quickly disappearing. “David Bowie would only stay in Sheffield if he stayed in the Hallam Tower hotel, I’ve been told,” says Jackson. “That building could be fantastic apartments, with an amazing view across the valley. I’d live in it. But it’ll be demolished in the next few months.”A great deal of the city’s other postwar structures seem to be quickly disappearing. “David Bowie would only stay in Sheffield if he stayed in the Hallam Tower hotel, I’ve been told,” says Jackson. “That building could be fantastic apartments, with an amazing view across the valley. I’d live in it. But it’ll be demolished in the next few months.”
In the coming year, the Sheffield branch has plans for work on 20th-century churches to sit alongside similar research already done in Manchester, and a series of city walks. We end up 10 minutes out of the city centre, across the road from the Moore Street substation. Before I fall under its spell, I ask Hale one question that the critics of modernism would think obligatory. Some people would say the buildings he so admires leave other people cold, that their imposing, confrontational aspects are simply too much, and it is this, more than anything, that often seals their fate. What does he think of that?In the coming year, the Sheffield branch has plans for work on 20th-century churches to sit alongside similar research already done in Manchester, and a series of city walks. We end up 10 minutes out of the city centre, across the road from the Moore Street substation. Before I fall under its spell, I ask Hale one question that the critics of modernism would think obligatory. Some people would say the buildings he so admires leave other people cold, that their imposing, confrontational aspects are simply too much, and it is this, more than anything, that often seals their fate. What does he think of that?
“As Jonathan Meades has said, you could make the same criticisms of castles, or Stonehenge – but it doesn’t apply,” he says. “A lot of castles are big buildings, there for one purpose only. They’re often dirty and slightly derelict, but people love them. Why can’t people love a big dirty concrete building that’s not meant to be elegant and beautiful, necessarily?”“As Jonathan Meades has said, you could make the same criticisms of castles, or Stonehenge – but it doesn’t apply,” he says. “A lot of castles are big buildings, there for one purpose only. They’re often dirty and slightly derelict, but people love them. Why can’t people love a big dirty concrete building that’s not meant to be elegant and beautiful, necessarily?”
He looks up at the concrete walls and ramparts, and the modernist ideal frozen in concrete. “It’s meant to be powerful and strong,” he says.He looks up at the concrete walls and ramparts, and the modernist ideal frozen in concrete. “It’s meant to be powerful and strong,” he says.