Sunday 14 January 2024 – Bloomsbury, London.
I'm going to claim all the credit for this most excellent Brutal Day Out photography walk. I posted on the group Instagram chat that I was going to go to Bloomsbury in central London to photograph the University College London's two brutalist buildings; the School of Oriental and African Studies library and the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. I said that if people wanted to join me that would be great, the group organisers then turned into an 'official' walk and it was given the number 7. This is not a paid group or walk so I wasn't put out by this at all, though they did drop the Royal College of Physicians from my list to add three other buildings that made more geographic sense.
However, I chose to do a side trip to the Royal College of Physicians before we met at Kings Cross station as it was only a 20 minute walk away on the edge of Regents Park. I'm glad I glad I did as it's quite a cool building.
A quick note for anyone stumbling across this post looking for useful information on the buildings I photographed. There isn't any; useful information that is, there are photos though.
Royal College of Physicians, opened in 1964, designed by Denys Lasdun.
I've been meaning to come here to photograph this building for a while and visited it briefly a couple of evenings ago before meeting friends for a drink nearby. I rarely come to this part of London. On that visit I was hoping for some interesting external lighting, but it was too dark and the rain was heavy and the light was poor so a daytime visit seemed like the right thing to do, so I just went to the pub.
Back at Kings Cross I grabbed a coffee and met the rest of the 13 strong group, surprisingly most were on time and we didn't have to wait long for the last straggler to turn up. Having people join from all over the shop, including two from Manchester, and with increasingly unreliable public transport, means patience is sometimes required.
Our first building was almost directly over the road, the lovely ex-Camden Council head office building, now the Standard Hotel. I really like this building, though have to actually go inside. If I did I would want to be able to use the lift.
The Standard Hotel, originally built in 1974 for Camden Council, fully remodelled as a hotel, opening again in 2019.
The Brunswick Centre, opened in 1972.
Mixed use residential and retail this estate was supposed to be bigger than it is but the developers couldn't get all the land they wanted, which (familiar story) means they had to change the original plan of building a private estate and bring the council (Camden at the time) in to help out. It was subsequently opened as part private and part council housing, and remains that way now, which I think is a good thing, though it needs a lot of money spending on it by the look of it.
I was very lucky to be invited into the residential block by a resident who saw me walking around with my camera and told me there was a great view of London from the top floor. There was, but I was more interested in the lovely concrete angles.
Some of my walk mates got invited in to look at someone's flat which I remain a bit jealous of, though apparently it wasn't that interesting. I have visions of residents maintaining a flat like a museum of 1970s interiors, though of course reality isn't like that. I'm going to back one quiet Sunday morning and take some photos of the street level window boxes outside some of the flats.
Imperial Hotel, under renovation.
I found some fabulous old phones in the carpark. Always check the carpark is my policy.
University College London.
These buildings were quite difficult to photograph, or at least I found them to be. I took a few images but wasn't really happy with the most of them. The buildings are big, and there isn't a vast amount of space to get a decent angle to shoot that doesn't end up making the building look really weird, and fixing in Lightroom wouldn't really work either.
Charles Clore House, (Institute of Advanced Legal Studies), Denys Lasdun, 1976.
The Philips Building (SOAS Library), Denys Lasdun, 1973.
Denys Lasdun featured a lot today, amongst other things he also designed the fabulous brutalist parts of the University of East Anglia in Norwich and the National Theatre on London's Southbank. He is my favourite of the English based 'brutalist' architects.
It was starting to get a bit cold and we had been on our feet for 4 half hours so it was time to nip to the pub for a refreshing pint or two. It was another very enjoyable day out. One of the photographers who has been on all the walks had brought along a child's camera, which uses till receipt thermal paper for instant black and white printing. I subsequently bought one for next time.
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