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Showing posts from January, 2015

Prada meets Brutalism

I had a fantastic end to last year when I heard that one of my images of The National Theatre from my Beautiful Brutalism project had been sold through the RIBA Photolibrary and was used by New York based designers 2x4 to produce a wallpaper for the Prada epicenter store in NY and Dover Street Market. The wallpaper is called Brutalista and is a photo collage of fragments from notable mid-20th century buildings composed in such a way as to contradict the real geometries and perspectives of the space. The omnipresent concrete creates a uniform backdrop against which the collection stand out in vivid points of intense color. It's amazing to know that my image is on the wall of a Prada store in New York and brutalist architecture is gaining a few more fans. Now I just have to see if I can find a way of visiting NY and seeing it for myself! Part of my image can be seen on the right of the above photo and the rest of the Brutalista project can be seen here .

Goodbye Birmingham Central Library

Unfortunately work has started today on demolishing John Madin's iconic 1974 brutalist gem, Birmingham Central Library . Although there have been many trying to oppose the demolition and give new life to this amazing building ultimately the developers and council have won. Aware that the old library was due for demolition I visited Birmingham in October last year to add it to my Beautiful Brutalism project. Having only seen it in photographs it was a joy to see in real life and to photograph it myself. It is a really impress building with great use of concrete, I spent about 3hours exploring and photographing the site. I was drawn in by the bold geometry and of course the famous inverted ziggurat, which I believe is/was the only example left in the world. The scale of the building is amazing and inside the open atrium, with the cantilevered floors of the library, was beautiful. After just 40 years to demolish this building is very narrow minded, it could have been re-use