Drawing
Subways and Flyovers 002
Gateways and golden ratios – pylon (detail)
Daytime Flats 001
Towerblocks 001
As part of the clearance of the slums, Nottingham’s inner city was transformed by the modernist’s aggressive purity and utopian social engineering.
The jagged angles and clean simple lines failed to herald a brave, transformed society. Utopia didn’t find its articulation and mediation through fearless concrete and instead the city slumped into decay, condemned to a Brutalist death and new slumlands. However, the scaffold is up and once again, the planners are at the fabric once again, unpicking, unpicking, unpicking.
Carbon as concrete motorway 005
Carbon as concrete motorway 004
Commerce is what we believe
Carbon as concrete motorway 003
Cerne Abbas Giant 005
Cerne Abbas Gaint 002
Cerne Abbas Gaint 001
Towerblocks 002
As part of the clearance of the slums, Nottingham’s inner city was transformed by the modernist’s aggressive purity and utopian social engineering.
Thrusting vertically against the passive, horizontal plane rose Truth made manifest, pride, certainty and vigour realised by the endeavours of young poets and philosophers, architects of the Brave New World
Carbon as concrete motorway 002
Motorway drawing
in charcoal
Carbon as concrete motorway 001
Motorway drawing
in charcoal
Subway Flyover 001
Places where no one goes. Abandoned, subterranean, on the boundary between above and below.
What events occur in places like these? Descend to the lower and despair.
Cerne Abbas Giant 004
Cerne Abbas Giant 003
While modern relative to its misconceived Iron Age origins, the lines of its form do link to an ancient node, a time of archetypes and primeval forces stirring in the depths. Like graffiti, like a Banksy out of chalk, out of mischief, devotion or homage to the landscape of Dorset’s South Downs this huge figure is barely seen from the vantage of its own hillside. A depiction of violence, desire and power up close unseen just as the cosmic forces that have driven us since ancient days.
What difference is there between this and the modernity that thrust forth concrete tower blocks? Both look back to civilisations that lived in fear and awe of the gods, of sprites and spirits and faerie folk, those embodiments of truth and power, forever the great mysteries.