Brutalist Architecture

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Brutal is as brutal does.

Damp problems? Concrete is not a material that breathes and without positive ventilation and insulation, cannot make a satisfactory dwelling. None of this was provided (windows don't count) Greased palms everywhere.

I worked at Bison's in the sixties; deaths and injuries were commonplace. People who ridicule Health and Safety now should have been there at the time! WOW.

Post-industrial society has been punctuated by some people in business complaining that various pieces of legislation were 'anti-business' or 'hampering competition'.

This was the case with the act that stopped people sending children up chimneys and continued with the completely innacurate scaremongering by the Tories about the minimum wage.

Yes sometimes it is abused (although not as much as The Daily Mail would have you believe) but how any reasonable person can argue against the Health and Safety at Work Act is a mystery to me. It has saved countless lives, and vastly improved the working conditions of many more, whose families don't have to worry to anything like the same extent about their loved ones coming home with an arm missing, or worse, not coming home at all.

It is, alongside the NHS and the minimum wage, Labour's greatest gift to the people of this country.

 

[malg]

I'm shit at putting pictures on here, but if anyone is really into this rather shite architecture, then you could have a look at a place called the Army Personnel Centre in Glasgow. Bloody awful looking building.

 

[stonerblue]

Its 1950's communist design statements lacking in any architectural merit.
Embraced by the UK in the early 60's with the realisation of cheap cost effective building.
No consideration on the design as fit for purpose, never even entered the equation, Hulme flats a classic example of shoddy building design, damp and a muggers paradise but good enough for the poor of Manchester thanks to an idiot left wing council.
Wonder how many palms were greased in securing the contract in the first place ?
No admission of council negligence in over seeing the build of modern slums worse than the terraced they replaced and communities destroyed.
Pulled down within 20 years without an apology for being built in the first place.

You're simply wrong - Shall we go back to the slums these flats replaced? And they weren't called slums for nothing - Fancy living in a gaffe with one single cold tap in the entire place?

Most of the problems (apart from exceptions like Forts Beswick & Ardwick) stemmed from the social circumstances the majority of the tenants found themselves in.

Most of these estates represent an opportunity lost that will never be repeated. And replaced by what? Housing Association gaffes with tiny windows.

One of the major problems with high-rise living was the constant breaking down of lifts.

 

[Ducado]

It is, alongside the NHS and the minimum wage, Labour's greatest gift to the people of this country.

It was actually put through by William Whitelaw who was a Tory, but labour were returned to power and continued with it.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

It is, alongside the NHS and the minimum wage, Labour's greatest gift to the people of this country.

It was actually put through by William Whitelaw who was a Tory, but labour were returned to power and continued with it.

I am well aware that Willie Whitelaw was a Tory.

The fact is it was started by Labour and finished by them too, and whilst he deserves credit for taking it up you could hardly describe him as the main driver of the Act. That was probably Barbara Castle, a female titan who halfwits such as Blears, Smith and Flint look like pigmies in comparison to.