Jon-Marc Creaney said: “I liked this building. In it’s industrial backland setting, it reflected the purpose and function of the building rather than being a simple cheap industrial shed, as simple as that!”

It is also now the earliest surviving example of the type nationally as the Castrol Building in London has been altered and re-faced. But it’s more than just an office block, it’s an integrated newspaper production facility with the podiumGlossary Term and slab offices linked to a separately treated but very fine attached printing works.

Information from Looking at Buildings

Nice kitty

Demolition has commenced on Top Gear presenter James May’s recently constructed Lego villa after a bill of £50k was quoted to dismantle and reassemble the plastic pile.

James' telephone

Legoland had been lined up to assign a plot for the unusual home, gauging it to be a star attraction for the home of all things Lego. But the building block theme park now say it is too expensive to move.

Around 1,000 volunteers assembled the two storey home in Denbies Wine Estate, Surrey, but the vineyard needs the land back to harvest grapes.

A facebook page had been set up by the TV personality in a last ditch bid to stave off the wrecking crews, ultimately to no avail.

Unusual amongst their catalogue however was this Edinburgh Hospital constructed between 1960 and 1968. It was arguably one of the most influential designs for a hospital pavilion but was sadly lost through fire in 2002.

It’s design continues to inspire however and Malcolm Fraser adopted its style for a new housing development within the hospital grounds.

Leslie remarks: “This was a Ferranti factory building and EAA Medal winner in 1988. It lasted about 12 years. Going…. Going….. Gone.”

“The projects were built immediately on a rush basis, including diversion of a burn, and much midnight oil was consumed. BL was however as sick as the proverbial parrot and failed and to the best of my knowledge the buildings were never used for the purpose for which they were intended. They have been demolished and replaced with stereotypical residential Noddy boxes. A monument to the frequent futility of political intervention! Alas I have no photographs; maybe somebody else does?

I had never done a steel framed building before and learnt quickly!”

Image taken by maniceye of flickr.

Film fans the world over were wowed by Michael Cain’s antics in the unfinished monster, which was to have included a rooftop restaurant, if rather less impressed by the surroundings.

Now after lingering on the skyline for decades the cinematic relic of the sixties is to be consigned to celluloid.

Despite some interest in preserving the brutalist structure, recently lent some muscle by Sylvester Stallone, the monolith was regarded as a white elephant locally.

It’s replacement is however unlikely to reach such levels of iconicity, featuring a mixed-use development for Tesco designed by 3DReid.

Image taken by loodealer at flickr.

How it looked at night

This project regenerated an area of East Belfast during troubled times with a mix of retail and leisure uses. On behalf of client Ewartco plc, John Muir designed a new 120,000 sq ft shopping mall to link the redundant Gallaher warehouses on the site. The warehouses were then converted – retaining much of the original structure – to accommodate a leisure pool with flumes, slides and chutes, together with a multiplex cinema and food court.

The warehouses and shopping mall have since been demolished to make way for retail sheds.

Photos thanks to John Muir himself.

According to the council, to replace a shopping centre that is drab and uninviting with one fit for the 21st Century. In practice, it was a “bright idea” for the Millennium to remodel Bath to make it vibrant and relevant to the present day, that then took 10 years to get through the planning process.

How it looked at night

This bright idea ignored the fact that the residents of Bath still bore a grudge that 5 acres of perfectly serviceable 200+ year old mostly Georgian shops were demolished to build Luder’s “shopping centre of the future” (which a graffiti artist labelled “Bath Borstal” even before it had been completed), and now that it is at the end of its useful life residents used to the idea that buildings last centuries found the idea of a 35-year lifespan incomprehensible. It also ignored the fact that tourists come to Bath for its old buildings, not its new ones. It also ignored the fact that Luder’s award winning shopping centre, although getting shabby, contained shops that were doing good business and in the gap between demolishing it and replacing it with new shops, people have learned to shop elsewhere. If you want to see Luder’s centre reduced to rubble and what replaced it, see http://southgate.ipl.com/video.html

Photos thanks to analogueandy on flickr

A view from a different angle

“Guy’s Hospital Tower and Seifert’’s London Bridge House were the others. It is ironic that of the three, the two most unlovely buildings, by anybody’s standards, are still standing.

“Designed in 1969-70 this was a reinforced concrete structure and an early example of energy-saving design. Clad with glass and brick on a Y-shaped plan, with sun-shading balconies and cantilevered glass panels to reduce cooling loads.

“The reflective glass of the outriggers that clad the building’s main facades produced spectacular patterns in the sunlight and shaded the building from solar gain, as well as giving window cleaning access.

“Stephen Furnell spent five and a half years as lead designer, along with Len Abbott the Partner -in -charge, and many other designers, and although he no longer works for the firm who built it, is heartbroken to see it go. The site is now the location for Renzo Piano’s Shard of Glass. Let’s hope his glass looks as good.”