Victorian architecture in the north of England: 200 years ago these cities were themselves novel but a new breed of mercantile princes and governors came to build a raft of civic buildings. ibid.
In 1795 the writer James Wallace published A General and Descriptive History of the Ancient & Present State of the Town of Liverpool: he wrote of the Blue Coat: ‘There are in this school 79 orphan children, 143 fatherless children and 158 whose parents are in indigent circumstances’. ibid.
Throughout the 18th century Liverpool was controlled by men … who made up the Corporation. It was a closed shop of cronies, unelected sons who … looked after the town’s needs but chiefly they looked after their own. ibid.
The 16th century Italian genius Andrea Palladio: an important principle of Palladian buildings is that they are bound by symmetry, geometry and numbers in firm proportion. ibid.
Clearly in the 1740s the slave trade was nothing to be embarrassed about. ibid.
Liverpool’s Lyceum was Europe’s first lending library, designed by Thomas Harrison in 1802 this fine little building has fine strong bones – Greek bones at that. ibid.
Liverpool was fast becoming the Athens of the North. ibid.
Their handsome Portico Library (founded 1806) … Just 100 yards from the Portico is the Royal Manchester Institution. ibid.
St George’s Hall: One of the hall’s most glorious features is its Minton floor, a mosaic of over 35,000 clay tiles. ibid.
Half of its children were dead by the age of ten. ibid.
Leeds’ budget £200,000: enter Cuthbert Brodrick. ibid.
In a golden age of civic architecture the North created buildings that expressed the fashions and the philosophy of the day. But behind the grand facades there are human stories: personal conflicts, private passions, lives and loves set in stone. These civic buildings were bankrolled by proceeds from the Industrial Revolution which turned modest market towns into vast modern cities. Jonathan Foyle, People’s Palaces: The Golden Age of Civic Architecture II: The Gothic Revival
A pointed arch – that’s the central motif of Gothic style; the rest is just variations on its theme. ibid.
The vogue for medievalism combined with concern about the architectural health of the nation would see Gothic move beyond ecclesiastical architecture to become a suitable style for the North’s great civic structures too. ibid.
Manchester: They opted for a fashionable Gothic design by local architect Alfred Waterhouse … designed to suit a committee and Waterhouse made some compromises which Ruskin may not entirely have agreed with. ibid.
Santiago Calatrava: he’s given us a world full of spectacular bridges, airports, railway stations, and other public buildings all instantly recognisable by their white fins and wraparound sinuous shapes. The Art of Architecture s1e1: Santiago Calatrava, Sky Arts 2020
The World Trade Centre transportation hub delivers them to lower Manhattan; it surfaces near the memorial. ibid.
‘A great thing when an architecture can draw freehand … He is trained as engineer and architect … He’s taken modernism in a new direction.’ ibid. Marcus Binney, author Bridges Spanning the World
35 years after it was left for dead Battersea Power Station is being restored. Designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the man who created the red telephone kiosk, this London landmark was being rescued by a Malaysian consortium which selected architects Wilkinson Eyre to give it new life. The Art of Architecture s1e2: Battersea Power Station
Battersea Power station survived the Blitz, was doubled in size in the 1950s – two chimneys became four – and exactly fifty years after opening, it was decommissioned. ibid.
In the six months after the new V&A museum in Dundee opened, half a million people walked through its doors … a signature building by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma on Dundee’s waterfront could trigger the regeneration of this city spoiled by insensitive development in the 1960s. The Art of Architecture s1e3: Kengo Kuma ***** Sky Arts 2020
[Shackleton’s] Discovery came home to Dundee in 1986 around the time Kengo Kuma first visited Scotland. His impression of the landscape particularly in the cliffs stayed with him and 30 years later would influence his design of Scotland’s newest building. ibid.
In New York one of the biggest developments in American history has chosen British designer Thomas Heatherwick to create the centrepiece inspired by the stepwells of India, the vessel has been built in Italy, shipped across the Atlantic, and erected on Manhattan’s West Side. It’s cost $150 million dollars. It’s been a hit with the selfie-generation, and it goes nowhere, just as its designer intended. The Art of Architecture s1e4: Thomas Heatherwick
Built over the unlovely train tracks on Manhattan’s west side, Hudson Yards is a $25 billion development – the brainchild of Stephen Ross: it’s a mixture of office, shops and apartments … At its heart is a structure hard to classify. ibid.