Window in Flint Wall - Picture of the Week 14 August 2015

This pretty, shuttered window is on the front of a small terraced house in St Leonards-on-Sea. The window seems rather large for the house and was probably once a shop window. It is a shame that the flint stones, arranged in careful rows in the wall, have been painted over. Nearby houses have left them plain, as originally intended and though rather dark, they are an attractive part of the local Sussex vernacular in building. The ugly grill at ground level covers a small light-well to a cellar room.

White Horse - graffiti; picture of the Week 19 March 2014

One of my favourite graffiti works.

This little horse walks along a wall in a tiny, narrow alley off a side street in St Leonards-on-Sea.
Although less well publicise than St. Ives in Cornwall, St. Leonards has been a bit of an artists colony for many years.

Lost Buildings 1 - Alexandria and Berlin

Fall of the Berlin Wall 1989
(photo from thecommune.co.uk)

All around the world, buildings vanish every day, as do other manmade structures. Some losses are notable. Nobody is likely to mourn the loss of the Berlin Wall, which for 28 years divided not just the city of Berlin but the surrounding countryside for 100 miles, before inexorable political change led to it being torn down in 1989.

On the other hand, the Ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt was deliberately burned down by Christian fanatics in 391 AD after Emperor Theodosius outlawed 'paganism'. This barbaric act lead to the loss of a thousand years of learning.  It was only with the 1799 discovery of the Rosetta Stone and its eventual translation, 22 years later, that the way to read the hieroglyphic writing of the Ancient Egyptians was re-learned.




The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina 2006 (my Photo)

I saw the Berlin wall as a teenager and happily re-visited, with my own children in July 1990, to observe its demise. There was some left then and I have a piece which I picked up from beside the Brandenberg Gate. And as if to celebrate a brave new world, in Egypt the Library of Alexandria, lost almost 1700 years ago, was finally replaced by a superb new library, designed in 1989 by Norwegian architects from the Olso and New York Snǿhetta practice.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina Interior 2006 (my Photo)

This modern building, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which I was lucky enough to visit in 2006, is a beautiful low pyramid of glass and steel housing a multilingual library. It seemed popular and well used when I visited, I sincerely hope that Egypt's current political, religious and social disruption doesn't damage this beautiful and essential  repository of learning.  The Egyptian people deserve to live with education and erudition freely available and if it can remain associated with great architecture, so much the better.

Between the world famous extremes of the Berlin Wall and the Great Library of Alexandria, many smaller, less significant structures also fall, sometimes almost unnoticed and their loss is often nothing to do with either religion or politics. I'll talk about some of them in a week or two.

Grafitti ; What have they done to the earth? Picture of the week for 20 July 2013

With graffiti, style and technique isn't as powerful as a strong message. Taggers take note.

Abstraction - Old Walls; Pictures of the Week 22 June 2013

Walls are essential to all buildings. New walls are functional and we appreciate their practicality.

Old walls are beautiful, even in disrepair, especially in disrepair.



These three Old Walls are in Crete.

The shapes, colours and textures these Old Walls contain could grace any modern art gallery.

I could have manipulated the images to emphasise these abstract qualities.
It didn't seem necessary.

Bricky On the Job

 Working it out on the job. I wonder how many other materials the poor bricky was required to put into this one wall. Hope he remembered to drink his tea before he immured the thermos flask.

Wall, Picture of the Week for 2 December 2011

TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY

 ..was the title of a 2005 exhibition in

the Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast;

visitors were encouraged to respond.

walls are barriers      if you want in

fences are barriers    if you want out

words are barriers    if you won’t hear

pictures are barriers  if you won’t see

      

Defy barriers!