Ugliest building in BRIGHTON

[fire&skill]

Can't agree with that - I'm no supermarket geek, but I lived about a hundred yards from that growing up and it won awards [I think]. The arches are supposed to represent the viaduct that went through it and I believe the clock is from Cox's pill factory.

And come on, how many other supermarkets look like Victorian prisons?

Or is that a new thread?

 

[TWOCHOICEStom]

Drumstick had it nailed in the first reply.

Anston House is a disgrace.

Err did you not notice the fine pieces of ARTWORK?? It brings this building to life!

 

[The Large One]

Err did you not notice the fine pieces of ARTWORK?? It brings this building to life!

Behave, Tom.

There's only so much you can polish a turd.

 

[Joey Deacon's Disco Suit]

These are pretty bad

 

[house your seagull]

I remember seeing something called the Park Estate (I think) in Sheffield, where some northern genius of 1960s planning decided it would be a marvellous idea to build loads of horrendous concrete council flats right on top of the hills surrounding the city

The Park Hill estate I presume?

I love the place ... hoping to go and take photos there very soon.

Our version in Manchester - the controversial Crescents of Hulme - were ripped down in the mid-90s.

Of course I can see why they're not to everybodies taste, but I love the concept behind them and they're now protected.

 

[Scampi]

I cant see whats wrong with some of these and that building hove town hall replaced was awful. Some people are definitely stuck in an old=good, new = bad mindset.

 

[house your seagull]

no votes for this bad-boy yet?

 

[34064 Fighter Command]

This thread makes you all sound like old fuddy duddy Prince Charles !

I think a lot of sixties architecture is undeservedly maligned, especially when you consider some of the decrepit rotten unsanitary buildings it replaced. 1930's Art Deco buildings have become all fashionable now when for many years people thought they were too stylelized and old fashioned. 60's architecture represents very much the influence of the Bauhaus, where form follows function, and unnecessary and extraneous decoration ( which Prince Charles is so fond of - he'd have everything mock-tudor if he could ) are ruthlessly excluded.

Have a look at some of the architecture that Albert Speer was designing for 1930's Nazi Germany and you can see where the origins of post war architecture came from. Even though the Nazi's were vehementley anti-Bauhaus a lot of Nazi buildings follow modernism ideas, albeit with a lot of Nazi inspired decoration along neo-classical lines - most of the Bauhaus architects and designers were forced to flee Nazi Germany and continue work in the rest of Europe and the US. Reinforced concrete was a very new material post war and it's ability to be sculpted to almost any shape pretty much defined architecture for the next 50 years post 1945.

It's also important to point out that 50's and 60's architecture allowed buildings to be erected quickly to replace the vast areas of bomb site damage around Europe. Places like Crawley, Harlow etc may not be beautiful but the new buildings put up were a vast improvement over the pre-war slums in the east end of London ( AND many parts of Brighton for that matter, particularly where Churchill Square, and the Brighton Centre are were previously slum areas of old buildings that had fallen into disrepair ) and there simply wasn't the time or the money to spend on tarting them up. No-one could really describe the Goldstone as architecturally attractive, but it was a building of it's time when development had to be done quickly and as cheaply as possible.

Are you going to say that buildings like the Royal Festival Hall, Tate Modern or Coventry Cathedral should all be pulled down, just because they're ugly, because none of these 3 are any 'better' than some of the ones posted in this thread.

Perhaps you'd like Brighton to look like Las Vegas, where every building seems to be a direct copy of something from somewhere else. Architecture didn't just stop with neo-classicism or victorian gothic revival.

 

[house your seagull]

Are you going to say that buildings like the Royal Festival Hall, Tate Modern or Coventry Cathedral should all be pulled down, just because they're ugly

those are 3 of the most celebrated works of the 20th century though to be fair, it's not like le corbussier had a hand in the albion hill flats.

i'm a modernist by the way, i like these buildings.

i read something good the other day, it was along the lines of "we don't want our cities to be designed in the style of a single era, but we do want our buildings to be the best examples of their era" or something like that.

 

[brunswick]

but the odeon on the seafront is easily the worst.

 

[Brovion]

I cant see whats wrong with some of these and that building hove town hall replaced was awful. Some people are definitely stuck in an old=good, new = bad mindset.

With the exception of Hove Town Hall (where I like the old one as well) I tend to agree with you. Another vote here for New England House, although if it were 'done up' it could be ok. All the others mentioned on this thread (with the exception of the old Churchill Square which was a real 1960s mistake) I can live with.

 

[daveinprague]

I remember my mother having a ruck with hove council, and said to us all, that one day she would burn the town hall down... the fire the next day did seem suspicious...remember standing in the garden (Hova Villas) admiring the thick smoke still rising the next day

 

[The Large One]

This thread makes you all sound like old fuddy duddy Prince Charles !

I think a lot of sixties architecture is undeservedly maligned, especially when you consider some of the decrepit rotten unsanitary buildings it replaced. 1930's Art Deco buildings have become all fashionable now when for many years people thought they were too stylelized and old fashioned. 60's architecture represents very much the influence of the Bauhaus, where form follows function, and unnecessary and extraneous decoration ( which Prince Charles is so fond of - he'd have everything mock-tudor if he could ) are ruthlessly excluded.

Have a look at some of the architecture that Albert Speer was designing for 1930's Nazi Germany and you can see where the origins of post war architecture came from. Even though the Nazi's were vehementley anti-Bauhaus a lot of Nazi buildings follow modernism ideas, albeit with a lot of Nazi inspired decoration along neo-classical lines - most of the Bauhaus architects and designers were forced to flee Nazi Germany and continue work in the rest of Europe and the US. Reinforced concrete was a very new material post war and it's ability to be sculpted to almost any shape pretty much defined architecture for the next 50 years post 1945.

It's also important to point out that 50's and 60's architecture allowed buildings to be erected quickly to replace the vast areas of bomb site damage around Europe. Places like Crawley, Harlow etc may not be beautiful but the new buildings put up were a vast improvement over the pre-war slums in the east end of London ( AND many parts of Brighton for that matter, particularly where Churchill Square, and the Brighton Centre are were previously slum areas of old buildings that had fallen into disrepair ) and there simply wasn't the time or the money to spend on tarting them up. No-one could really describe the Goldstone as architecturally attractive, but it was a building of it's time when development had to be done quickly and as cheaply as possible.

Are you going to say that buildings like the Royal Festival Hall, Tate Modern or Coventry Cathedral should all be pulled down, just because they're ugly, because none of these 3 are any 'better' than some of the ones posted in this thread.

Perhaps you'd like Brighton to look like Las Vegas, where every building seems to be a direct copy of something from somewhere else. Architecture didn't just stop with neo-classicism or victorian gothic revival.

I think you're making a valid point, but taking it to an unnecessary extreme.

Of course it's not as simple as old=good, new=bad etc. It's just that some buildings in Brighton have been designed post-war where their immediate surroundings were not taken into account, and this is a very important consideration.

In another contexts, the Kinsgwest building may be considered to have some architectural merit - but as it jars so markedly with its neighbours (a seafront building - with no windows when it was built?) that some more thought could and should have gone into planning.

 

[Lush]

Good thread. I was just thinking about this on the way up to Lewes on the train the other day, and my vote would go to this:

 

[Bold Seagull]

This thread makes you all sound like old fuddy duddy Prince Charles !

I think a lot of sixties architecture is undeservedly maligned, especially when you consider some of the decrepit rotten unsanitary buildings it replaced. 1930's Art Deco buildings have become all fashionable now when for many years people thought they were too stylelized and old fashioned. 60's architecture represents very much the influence of the Bauhaus, where form follows function, and unnecessary and extraneous decoration ( which Prince Charles is so fond of - he'd have everything mock-tudor if he could ) are ruthlessly excluded.

Have a look at some of the architecture that Albert Speer was designing for 1930's Nazi Germany and you can see where the origins of post war architecture came from. Even though the Nazi's were vehementley anti-Bauhaus a lot of Nazi buildings follow modernism ideas, albeit with a lot of Nazi inspired decoration along neo-classical lines - most of the Bauhaus architects and designers were forced to flee Nazi Germany and continue work in the rest of Europe and the US. Reinforced concrete was a very new material post war and it's ability to be sculpted to almost any shape pretty much defined architecture for the next 50 years post 1945.

It's also important to point out that 50's and 60's architecture allowed buildings to be erected quickly to replace the vast areas of bomb site damage around Europe. Places like Crawley, Harlow etc may not be beautiful but the new buildings put up were a vast improvement over the pre-war slums in the east end of London ( AND many parts of Brighton for that matter, particularly where Churchill Square, and the Brighton Centre are were previously slum areas of old buildings that had fallen into disrepair ) and there simply wasn't the time or the money to spend on tarting them up. No-one could really describe the Goldstone as architecturally attractive, but it was a building of it's time when development had to be done quickly and as cheaply as possible.

Are you going to say that buildings like the Royal Festival Hall, Tate Modern or Coventry Cathedral should all be pulled down, just because they're ugly, because none of these 3 are any 'better' than some of the ones posted in this thread.

Perhaps you'd like Brighton to look like Las Vegas, where every building seems to be a direct copy of something from somewhere else. Architecture didn't just stop with neo-classicism or victorian gothic revival.

ALL !? I think you'll find there is reasoned debate through this thread on buildings such as Hove Town Hall, the Sussex University campus, and the Brighton Centre.

You're the first person I've ever heard suggest Albert Speer was some how responsible for the origins of post war architecture, or even made more than a small ripple in the architectural world other than being a Nazi.

Especially given the likes of Adolf Loos, Louis Kahn, Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, Mies Van Der Rohe not to mention Le Corbusier all had far more influence both before and after Speer, especially on the style that became known as Brutalism, exploited in this country by the likes of Erno Goldfinger, Allison & Peter Smithson, and Denys Lasdun.

Albert Speer as you did state simply ripped off some neo-classical, the Futurists, and some modernism to boot. I definitely think you are overstating his importance to the greater world of architecture than his work actually deserves.

 

[Deleted User X18H]

New England House is awful they do breakfast somewhere in there apparently. Vantage Point ( new England Road) is pretty horrific as well. Wellend Villas (Preston Road) does it for me. Never been a fan of Conway Court either.

 

[Brovion]

...

i read something good the other day, it was along the lines of "we don't want our cities to be designed in the style of a single era, but we do want our buildings to be the best examples of their era" or something like that.

I think that's a very good philosophy. The one thing I HATE more than bad buildings is the way, especially in Brighton, sites are left empty for decades whilst everybody argues about what should go there, and of course no one agrees. When I hear of any proposed new development my initial view now, especially after the stadium battle, is to be in favour - and then I might bother to find out what it is and what impact it will have. Yes mistakes will be made, but the worst buildings can be knocked down (Churchill Square again) until you're left with hopefully the best of each era.

The important thing to remember is that Brighton isn't a museum, it's a living, evolving city.

 

[The Large One]

I think that's a very good philosophy. The one thing I HATE more than bad buildings is the way, especially in Brighton, sites are left empty for decades whilst everybody argues about what should go there, and of course no one agrees. When I hear of any proposed new development my initial view now, especially after the stadium battle, is to be in favour - and then I might bother to find out what it is and what impact it will have. Yes mistakes will be made, but the worst buildings can be knocked down (Churchill Square again) until you're left with hopefully the best of each era.

The important thing to remember is that Brighton isn't a museum, it's a living, evolving city.

And there in lies the crunch.

It's ensuring you get the 'best' of each era.

 

[Easy 10]

Embassy Court was pretty horrific. I think they've given it a lick of paint since this pic, but still...

 

[Brovion]

And there in lies the crunch.

It's ensuring you get the 'best' of each era.

Oh I agree, and sometimes the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. And opinions and tastes change, if we'd been having this discussion twenty years ago I'd have said that Hove Town Hall was a hideous monstrosity, but it has really grown on me and now I think it's a fine example of it's era. And if they were redeveloping Euston Station now no way would they knock down the Arch, but in the 1960s Victorian architecture was seen by many as 'ugly'. It's not an exact science.