[kids]

A thread idea borrowed from the Liverpool and Birmingham forums which has produced many-a picture of glorious buildings. Let's see Mancs answer.



Right, I'll start with the more obvious ones.

Sunlight house,

Ship canal house

HSBC king st

I know there's loads of examples in south Manchester, and i'd love to see em.

 

[Chogmook]

Dock Office, Salford Quays:

 

[b4mmy]

 

[The Longford]

I know its a long way off but i'm doing a guided walk of Manchester's city centre inter war buildings* in September looking at all these buildings (and more).
Ive done it before so if you want to see the notes ive prepared PM i can email them to you as a pdf.

* point of pedantry. Art Deco is decorative term applied to furniture, jewellery, paintings etc. but rarely to buildings. Most inter war buildings labelled Art Deco follow the Modern or International Style with perhaps Art Deco touches in the detailing, but rarely would a whole building be judged as Art Deco. The Hoover Building in London or the Chrysler Building in NYC are good examples of Art Deco.

When i have time i'll post lots more of Manchester's good inter war stuff.

 

[Farsight]

I don't think there are many "Art Deco" buildings in Manchester. There's the cinema on Stretford Road, maybe the former Daily Express building on Ancoats, and Jeez, I'm struggling. Those obvious one don't seem quite so obvious when you look at this stuff in London:

http://www.london-footprints.co.uk/galadoffice.htm

 

[Cherguevara]

Well the Midland and Ship Canal aren't really that deco anyway. Ship Canal has a giant writhing bronze woman on it, which suggests an art nouveau influence if anything. You could say Debenhams has touches of it, but there really isn't very much of it.

I don't like art deco anyway. It's tea-service mnodernism for the unadventurous.

 

[maggie]

the ship canal house and hsbc look more of an edwardian style than art deco

 

[maggie]

Well the Midland and Ship Canal aren't really that deco anyway. Ship Canal has a giant writhing bronze woman on it, which suggests an art nouveau influence if anything. You could say Debenhams has touches of it, but there really isn't very much of it.

I don't like art deco anyway. It's tea-service mnodernism for the unadventurous.

umm.. its not tea service modernism.. its classic modernism

 

[Farsight]

I like Art Deco, Cher. My previous house was built in the thirties and whilst the building wasn't very Art Deco in itself, things like door handles were. But I have to say my current (totally refurbished) house hasn't got any Art Deco in it. Yep, I like it Art Deco, but not enough to fit and furnish my own home with something that was adventurous and modern, and now isn't.

 

[Cherguevara]

Is it buggery. It's modernism for people who find modernism a bit stark. The work of the Bauhaus was classic modernism. Le Courboursier is classic modernism. There are some nice art deco things (mainly tea services) but spritually and ideologically the form is vapid.

Farsight (et al): I should say that while I don't really like it myself obviously people are entitled to. I just find it very dated.

 

[Farsight]

I find it dated too Cher. But it was really something when it came out. In those days electricity hadn't been around that long, and it wasn't called even called Art Deco. See below. IMHO it used to be modernism, now it's retro. I like it kinda like the way I like Victorian Gothic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco

 

[Bachy Soletanche]

it's 70 years old, of course it's dated!

I'd rather have Vapid than serious, you end up with stuff like Communism/fashism and 60s Tower blocks with 20th centry serious.

(what's that law called, about the longer a thread is, the more chance of Nazis being mentioned?)

 

[maggie]

well of course its dated its over 70 years old, but that shouldnt be any reason to not appreciate its style a draw inspiration from its simple elegance that effective gave birth to the type of modernism we know and love today

 

[Bachy Soletanche]

We love modernism?

 

[maggie]

We love modernism?

well if you prefer post-modernism...

uke: uke:

 

[Cherguevara]

it's 70 years old, of course it's dated!

I'd rather have Vapid than serious, you end up with stuff like Communism/fashism and 60s Tower blocks with 20th centry serious.

(what's that law called, about the longer a thread is, the more chance of Nazis being mentioned?)

And here they both are again, the Nazis and Stalinists hating serious modernism.

The Soviet Communist government rejected modernism on the grounds of alleged elitism; and the Nazi government in Germany deemed it narcissistic and nonsensical, as well as "Jewish" and "Negro" (See Anti-semitism). The Nazis exhibited modernist paintings alongside works by the mentally ill in an exhibition entitled Degenerate art (Louis A. Sass (Bauer 2004) compares madness, specifically schizophrenia, and modernism in a less fascist manner by noting their shared disjunctive narratives, surreal images, and incoherence).

Indeed in my mind Art Deco has always shared many similarities with those Italian Fascist paintings celebrating war. I'm not saying Clariss Cliffe was evil, but AD seems more towards the reactionary end of modernism.

And while I agree that everything dates, only some things are then reappreciated. In my opinion Victorian Gothic isn't as dated as Art Deco*. AD just seems to be an artistic dead end. It attempts to soften the blow of a movement that was all about revolutionary change, and in doing so robs it of it's impact.

However I'm very much of a pluralist outlook, and believe anything that someone finds beautiful has a place. You'd never get me to say the cinema on Chester Road is particularly beautiful, but I wouldn't want it to go as the road as a whole would be poorer for its loss.

*I have several theories to why this is the case to do with the aesthetic similarity in industrial and gothic forms which I shan't bore you with.

 

[Cherguevara]

And it didn't give birth to modernism, it was an industrial by-product of modernism.

And to my mind Post -modernism and Art Deco have an awful lot in common.

 

[Bachy Soletanche]

Good point!

But then I like Modernist (?) Law courts next to it, so what do I know?

(semi serious point: but then there's a problem around that whole, area, everything they're putting in it soo small and mean, and neither good Moderism, or indeed post-moderism, a sorta blanded out middle ground that suits no one. Although I do like the, err, New world Square one.

 

[Bachy Soletanche]

And here they both are again, the Nazis and Stalinists hating serious modernism.

Nazism and communist, well Sovietism, are both 20th Modernist ideas. Nothing to do with Architecture. That was the half baked point I was trying to get over.

 

[Cherguevara]

I don't know if Nazism was really a modernist project. It seems to have been a largely confused effort to return to a pre Christian pure Germany. Modernism did generate some aspects of Nazism, but I wouldn't said led them as catalysed a tendency already there. It's very difficult to categorise Nazism due to the sheer magnitude of the personal psychoses involved. Soviet Communism was a modernist endeavour, but as with all things it cherry picked those aspects it admired (the efficient production methods of Taylorism/Fordism, rejection of the old order) and rejected those it didn't (questioning and rejection of authority, art for arts sake).

In either case it's a spurious argument to make that as modernism led to political disasters and Art Deco led to happy old leadies on the antiques road show that the latter is in anyway better. In deed it proves my point, for all it's faults modernism was important, and art deco is merely a garish offshoot curriosity of it.

Anyway this is way off topic and I have to go and do some cooking.