This building is the reason we started this blog. Absolute drivel, posing as contextual housing. The inexplicable symmetry, accentuated by black plastic extracts and downpipes; timber cladding that is varnished so hideously that it no longer looks like wood; 'balconies' that are not balconies (the three bonsai shrubs behind the top balcony in the middle are a heartbreaking expression of what the residents really wanted); regulation beige brick; the mud borders showing how money ran out before the landscaping was finished.The building replaces a pub called the Venture Inn, which faced this square in West Knowle. Housing developers and local authorities care not a toss for social spaces like pubs and corner shops. They'd rather have flats full of junior management consultants than communities.
The inn's replacement is the architectural equivalent of porridge. Bland, formless, cloying, does nothing more than fill a hole.
Posts
Doubtless every flat will be occupied by a junior manager who sits at night in front of his widescreen home theatre system, wearing his football team's shirt and drinking tinned lager.
ReplyDeleteAt least it doesn't have the foul lurid orange brick popular around here. And why, why do they have silly toy balconies?
ReplyDeletePenny
Shame, I happen to like Porridge though*.
ReplyDelete*nb: Just to confirm, I am referring to *actual* porridge, and not the 'building'.
Knowle West is an actual hell-hole however, so this building may well have been burned to ground by now. All is well.
ReplyDeleteThe word "contextual" should be burned on the same bonfire as "psychosomatic". Where to file that red stripe on new buildings that says “Look, we’re in keeping with the surrounding architecture!” Under FUTILE TOKEN GESTURE?
ReplyDeleteIt looks like one of the facade facelifts they give to Communist-era concrete panel buildings in E Europe.
ReplyDeleteWell funnily enough I happen to live there! Inside the flats are light, airy and reasonably priced for Bristol. If you are lucky enough to be top floor the spit and eggs can't reach your windows.
ReplyDeleteI would like to add I'm not a junior management consultants. If you continue to find the look of this building not superficially pleasing, could you refrain from burning it down as women and children do live inside.
Cheers