Welbeck Street Car Park due for demolition

"In summary the existing car park building has no particular aesthetic or historic value, and detracts from the setting of nearby heritage assets by virtue of it's bland and uninspired elevational treatment"
KM Heritage Consultant 2017

The inevitable has happened and yesterday, Thursday 10th August, Westminster Council approved the demolition of Welbeck Street Car Park. Although it has been on the table for a long time it's such a shame that yet another stunning piece of brutalist architecture will be destroyed to make room for a bland, non-descript hotel with no particular aesthetic value. I still can't understand how Historic England and the heritage consultants used can't see it's aesthetic quality or structural ingenuity and therefore listing it so it might survive just a bit longer. It will be a great loss!

I have been shooting the last few months of it's life since March and hope to undertake a few more shoots before it finally closes. Once the project is finished I will be putting the photographs onto my website so please come back to see the full project soon...

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New Work - Brutalist Playgounds

I have wanted to visit and add some brutalist playgrounds to my Beautiful Brutalism project for a long time. I remember playing on a concrete tube we called 'the saddle' at my old primary school and loved it. So have fond memories of these concrete playgrounds. Unfortunately not many have survived but last November I researched and visited a playground that was still standing down in South Clapham beneath Belgravia House tower block. This was a fantastic playground with a spiral slide and tunnels to run through the hill that housed the slide. It was great to see the playground was well maintained and looked like it was still used. I couldn't resist and have to say the slide was fantastic! The whole project can be seen here. Then earlier this year I visited the Aintree Estate playground in Fulham. The two tower blocks, Hartopp Point and Lannoy Point are due to be demolished this year so wanted to visit before access was difficult and the area the playground is sit...

Brutalism in Photos Feature

Oracle Time Magazine featured a lovely positive article about brutalist architecture in London in their June issue of the magazine and online. Along with photographs from my ongoing personal project Beautiful Brutalism they also featured the work of photographers Simon Phipps and Hayley Goodwin. The online article can be read here .

Prince Street Car Park - Bristol

Over the weekend I was in the beautiful city of Bristol catching up with friends and photographing the stunning Prince Street Car Park to add to my ongoing Beautiful Brutalism project. The car park was designed by Kenneth, Wakeford, Jarram & Harris in 1966 and is very similar to the design of Welbeck St Car Park in London. It was a great building to photograph and I look forward to uploading all the images to my Beautiful Brutalism project over the next few weeks.

JO UNDERHILL / STRUCTURALEYE

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