JO UNDERHILL / STRUCTURALEYE

    During the first lockdown in March 2020, the 20th Century Society started a small project on Instagram asking people to pick their favourite C20 detail. I was thrilled to be asked to contribute and after much thought I decided to pick the iconic precast concrete 'diamonds' of Welbeck Street Car Park as my favourite detail from a twentieth century building. It soon picked up momentum and at the end of the year the project was published in this wonderful book celebrating details from all kinds of architecture and design from all over the world. Being one of the fifty contributors is fantastic. I'm hoping it introduces more people to the wonderful Welbeck design which is sadly now gone and other fabulous designs from this great era of architecture. For more details please visit here .

Unfortunately Welbeck Street Car Park has been completely covered so demolition can start. After 2 years photographing this stunning building my project has sadly come to an end. So it's lovely to see the project featured on Dezeen . The whole article can be seen here .

The Latest issue of Parking Review (September 2017) has published a lovely feature on my Ode to Welbeck photography project. Welbeck also made the front cover which is great to see! I'm so glad the demolition of this beautiful car park is getting so much coverage and to see how much love it has. Still can't believe it can't be saved, disgraceful. You can view a snippet of the article here . Or to view the whole photography project please visit my website .

I'm really pleased that my new photography project Ode to Welbeck has been featured on the brilliant online design and architectural magazine The Spaces. Earlier in the year they wrote an article on my ongoing Beautiful Brutalism project and have been great champions of my photography. To read the article and find out a bit more about my thoughts behind the project and my photography please visit The Spaces .

"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...

Great to see my photographs of Welbeck Street Car Park, part of my Beautiful Brutalism project featured on Divisare Journal this week. To view the project please go to Journal 160 .

Last year Welbeck Street Car Park designed by Michael Blampied & Partners in 1970 was sold to developers Shiva Hotels and since the sale it's future has been uncertain. In February this year I was asked by students of Goldsmith University to help them on a project they were making about this amazing car park. I was glad to help so on a cold winter's day we spent a few hours exploring the car park and I talked about why I loved this building so much and what draws me to photograph brutalist architecture. While at the car park we saw signs saying the car park would be closing on the 13th March. So with only a month left of having access to the car park I started to plan a project to photograph it's last few days. On my first visit for this project I was then told it wasn't closing and might potential be open for another year! I'm not sure if it will be open for that long, without the building being listed the Welbeck will be demolished at some point,...

After a few months away from my Beautiful Brutalism project it was lovely to have a few days to work on it again and set up two more shoots. The first building I photographed was the Royal College of Physicians, London designed by Denys Lasdun in 1959. The building has a more classical feel then his most notable design, The National Theatre on the Southbank but still has those lovely angles and simple lines which I enjoy photographing. The next building I wanted to add to my project is a smaller and less well known brutalist structure, Welbeck Street Car Park in Central London. Built in 1970 by Michael Blampied it is a real gem. With it's interlocking diamond-shaped concrete panels it definitely makes a statement, in an era when even a simple car park was well designed and didn't just blend into the urban landscape it still looks amazing. To view the rest of the images and my project so far please visit my website.