Read on Twitter
Nominated by @gilliandarley for 10 buildings I love.
1. Laon Cathedral - here I am sitting in empty nave. Laon wears the then-new Gothic style with such graceful & intellectual ease I wondered if all later Gothic a debasement. I'm not normally into perfection - but here it is.
1. Laon Cathedral - here I am sitting in empty nave. Laon wears the then-new Gothic style with such graceful & intellectual ease I wondered if all later Gothic a debasement. I'm not normally into perfection - but here it is.
2. Weltenburg Abbey. I wonder what the Benedictine monks were up to when they commissioned the Asam brothers to concoct the showbiz-rococco church, with histrionic George, dragon & princess. A building so jolly my cheeks hurt with smiling *&* there is a beer garden right outside.
3. The Wedgwood Memorial Institute in Burslem (1863-9), a sumptuous Victorian Venetian concoction of sculpture, red bricks, & terracotta friezes. It is currently empty & needs a new use - and like a lot of the beautiful things in Stoke pulls at my heartstrings.
4. Penllech (1840). Increadibly hard to pick amongst many magical @friendschurches for my 10 (its a terrific organisation - do join). Penllech is on the Llŷn Peninsula & you have to go through a farm 1st. The interior is bright & calm. It is a cliche but centuries dissolve here.
5. Francis Pym's thrilling brutalist extension (1964-72) to the classical Ulster Museum (1924-9). Mark Girouard described it as 'like one of those incomplete Michelangelo statues in which a highly finished torso emerges out of a block of rough hewn marble.’ I have a model of it.
6. The delightful, slightly wonky, 9th century abbey gatehouse at Lorsch.
This was a highlight of @EmilyGuerry & my tour of Germany two summers ago, in which we saw 16 cathedrals, 15 Abbey churches, & 13 UNESCO world heritage sites in 9 days.
This was a highlight of @EmilyGuerry & my tour of Germany two summers ago, in which we saw 16 cathedrals, 15 Abbey churches, & 13 UNESCO world heritage sites in 9 days.
7. The Clarendon Building, Oxford. Hawksmoor is an important architect for me; my childhood window had a view of St Anne's Limehouse. But thinking on a summer day about sitting with friends at the KA & looking across to this banger:
8. Place Bonaventure (1964-7) in Montreal. This is *the* great sixties megastructure - a vast corduroy concrete block, not easy to photograph (so less famous than Habitat) - with a train line running through it, and a dreamlike sequence of interior spaces of piranesian vastness.
9. Santa Maria e San Donato in Murano. I teach a term in Venice, & taking @WarwickHoA students here, with its dazzling floor of 1140, one of my favourite things - the east end with its sweet colonettes & embedded stones is more elaborate, I think, because it faces the canal.
10. Gillespie Kidd & Coia's St Bride's, East Kilbride. I love this building. Asked Isi Metzstein whether he was influenced by Amsterdam School (how did I not include one of those!), & he said no, there is only so much you can do with bricks. This does a lot with *just* bricks.
Sad to come to the end of this - so many left. Can I have 10 from @EmilyGuerry (who drove me to many of the above), @WalkerArchHist, @MorleyRA, @sundaegirl, @tontita00, @EwanMHarrison, @IntrWr, @Grindrod, @MunicipalDreams, @PEMcCullough, @Rosamund_Lil, @izzy_kent, @TMOWilkinson?
