This building is part of a broader masterplan for Derby College, made up of buildings of bad-to-mediocre quality by Midlands-based Maber Architects. But this one is utterly shit. The strategy was to make a really big box, based on the form of a cereal packet, and then 'break down its scale' (this is me putting words in their mouths, by the way) by using a shitty modularised cladding system in grey and black. They had one good idea - the canopy - but that emphasises just how much this building belongs on a business park.
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look at the state of the landscape - they may as well have just done nothing.
ReplyDeletethose "feature hedges" are something else.
Let's face it, in comparison to a lot of stuff, this is a mere pecadillo. Might be quite nice to stand under the canopy and feel in the presence of something big ? Even if it is a box of cornflakes.
ReplyDeleteThey possibly serve a useful function though: litter can collect at the base, instead of blowing around that great arid expanse.
ReplyDeleteThis is what the result of 20 years of domination by Norman Foster over prevailing architectural discourse in the UK looks like.
ReplyDeleteClose scrutiny shows that nervous facilities managers have already adorned every glass door with a bloody great big plastic sign - including the ones that the designers bothered to specify pre-etching with contrast markings!
ReplyDeleteNice bollards, though. Shame they are completely at variance with the rest of the street furniture.
Actually, I think the landscape and public spaces are nicely designed.
ReplyDeletehttp://landscapeping.blogspot.com/2009/09/derby-college-roundhouse-campus.html
But I suppose I would. Otherwise...
I take it these guys are the same who did De Montfort Uni in Leicester's student Union, it is a very similar, plain, ugly building. That's an un-popular eye sore so they must've just re-hashed the drawings. W@nkers.
ReplyDeleteTrouble is - architecture is no longer created by architects. It is created by men in suits hidden behind disguises or lost in cyber space often known only by an email address.
ReplyDeleteNot a crime in itself or a recie for junk. This happens when fearful architectural practice directors or managers havent got the balls to say NO!
Archie Tect - 15.05.10
You guys are idiots, have you seen the rest of of the campus, it's award winning and extremely nice, NO they didn't design de Montfort, and it's what derby needs !! Look at the rest of the campus, Maber are very good architects :)
ReplyDeleteDerby is just awful; the whole new area around the station (A building site for 15 years after they trashed the original Victorian one), Pride Park, the 'Cock Pitt', the college etc, is one depressing cocktail of anywhere mediocity. It's guaranteed to depress the spirit each time you see it.....
ReplyDeleteDerby is just awful; the whole new area around the station (A building site for 15 years after they trashed the original Victorian one), Pride Park, the 'Cock Pitt', the college etc, is one depressing cocktail of anywhere mediocity. It's guaranteed to depress the spirit each time you see it.....
ReplyDeleteDerby is just awful. Almost all of it, but especially the new stuff in a mile radius from the station. Boxy, tasteless mediocrity along dismal roads to nowhere. It depresses me every time I travel through the place :-(
ReplyDelete