Ely Cathedral

Today I decided that, if I was going to have to walk in the rain, it was going to be somewhere other than London. (Ironic, that: that I wanted a break-out from my jailbreak to

. . . that untravell’d world whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.)

 

I looked at where I could get to from Kings Cross, and the place that called out to me was Ely.

I’ve visited before but since then I have learned to distinguish Perpendicular from Decorated. Here was Romanesque, here Early English Gothic lancet windows, here Decorated Gothic . . . but the nave! Elongated, and seeming all the narrower for it. Romanesque on the sides with reassuringly massive pillars, Gothic and soaring at the ends. The octagon lantern, built to replace the collapsed tower. The asymmetric West front (blame subsidence), the Romanesque blind arcades both inside and out. Oh, what to do with such inspiring monuments to our “hunger . . . to be more serious”? Or is it just centuries and the sediment of generations that anchor them?

Little things from the train journey and my jailbreak:

• Solar panels taking the place of arable fields. How does that help?
• Three days of going in and out of the hotel, shops, galleries and trains has accustomed me to wearing a mask. Before this it was only something I did occasionally to go out and buy food.
• At railway stations, I have inadvertently joined the ranks of smokers: lingering outside the premises as long as possible – frisch air for me, foul for them.
• You can’t chew gum in a face mask.
• I guess all the media worry about facial recognition technology is currently on the back-burner.
• Working from home – if it does indeed become normalised – is going to upset the current house-building model. All those mini-canyons of cramped apartment blocks whose only attraction is their proximity to a railway line to London – who’s going to want to live there in future?
• No housekeeping in the hotel (unless requested) is great. I am capable of making my own bed, thank you, and pacing my towel use so that 4 clean towels can last 4 days. Farewell to the tussles with the unseen chambermaid over scatter cushions and that silly bit of fabric at the foot of the bed. And I haven’t yet exhausted the number of times a disposable beaker can be re-used.

Oh, when will it end, though?

Turin day 3

Lots of walking around Turin today, assisted by the modern underground, in search of stile Liberty buildings. Things to remember:

• Litho-cement was used for the sculptures and mouldings. It’s very hard-wearing, cheap and only needs moulds rather than stone-masons. That explains the masses of cherubs everywhere.
• Windows and balconies are very decorative.
• Stile Liberty keeps many traditional elements of Italian architecture: palazzo, overhanging eaves . . . those cherubs.
• Alessandro Mazzucotelli was the master of wrought iron in Piedmont and Lombardy. I had, unwittingly, seen some of his balconies in Milan. His early work is naturalistic, his later work more ribbon-like.
• The Prima Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte Decorativa Moderna was held in the Parco del Valentino in Turin in 1902. Frances MacDonald and Herbert MacNair were amongst those exhibiting their work.
• Milan and Turin industrialists had Liberty style villas around the northern lakes as well as townhouses.
• Pietro Fenoglio is the big Turin architect of the time.
• Giuseppe Sommaruga in Milan.
• Most of the stile Liberty buildings are private villas or apartment blocks built for rent. Some of the latter take up an entire block.
• They used modern construction techniques like cast iron and reinforced concrete using the Hennebique system.

So, here are some photos from the Nizza and Vinzaglio districts:

Former Palazzina Menzio, 1900, Alfredo Premoli

First FIAT factory, Alfredo Premoli, 1906

Parco del Valentino

Edificio di civile abitazione, Giuseppe Besozzi, 1904

Between the two, we visited the old Fiat factory (1916-23 by Matté Trucco) at Lingotto. It’s an enormous, light-filled building around a courtyard, with car ramps at both ends. It’s been converted by Renzo Piano into a vast consumption and leisure complex, with the small-but-perfectly-formed Agnelli art gallery at the top. (Modigliani, Picasso, Caneletto, Bellotto’s views of Dresden, plus Balla’s 1913 Velocità Astratta – very appropriate for Fiat – and Severini’s 1915 Lanciers italiens au galop). The view from the rooftop racetrack was spectacular – as was the steep banking on the curves.

Administration building

By evening, the 28-Days-Later feel of Turin had been replaced by the Saturday evening passeggiata. Coronavirus or no coronavirus, some traditions just have to be maintained.

Turin day 2

Having seen postcards and the needle spire of the Mole Antonelliana from a distance, I just had to go and see it. It was conceived as a synagogue* in 1863, when Turin was the capital of the newly united state, but costs spiralled and the city decided to take it over. It was built without an internal steel structure and completed in 1889, but it needed strengthening with reinforced concrete in the 1930s. Nowadays it is the National Museum of Cinema. Walking into the museum under the spectacular dome quite took my breath away . . . and when I discovered there was a lift to the top, there was no stopping me.

Unfortunately my visit had to be short: my camera lens had failed and I wasn’t going to walk around Turin with just a pocket camera. I ended up buying a new lens just in time for the arrival of the rest of the group: 4 people! (There had been a mass defection from the tour when the Italian government announced the closure of schools and universities.)

There are so few tourists around that elegant cafés which would once have been heaving are very quiet, so you can get a good look at their interiors. Then a gentle tour of lo stile Liberty – that mix of traditional palazzo, baroque, neo-Gothic and art nouveau that I had seen in Milan. Unsurprisingly, they were on the streets with tramlines: both signs of modernity.

Caffè Torino, Piazza San Carlo

Palazzo Bellia by Carlo Ceppi, 1898

Palazzo Bellia arcades

Casa Reda by Giovanni Reycand, 1902

Casa Florio by Giuseppe Velati Bellini, 1902

Carlo Ceppi also designed the façade of Porta Nuova railway station.

Another trip up the Mole now that the sun was out, and lots more baroque (some in brick, which was novel) on the way back to the hotel.

* There were Stolpersteine outside some buildings.

Final day in Newcastle

Inside the stairwell of the former Co-operative department store (now a Premier Inn)

Lots more to see and ponder. The juxtaposition of the solid Northern Rock clock above the financial institution that has replaced it: metaphors with such different connotations. And, after Friday’s visit to the Enchanted Interior exhibition, I wasn’t sure what to make of the damsels advertising kitchen utensils.

I also had to acknowledge that, lovely as sunshine is, overall detail in photographs works better when there is less less contrast between light and shade. So here is the Civic Centre again:

My destination was the Great North Museum. Its exhibits are impressive: it has the usual stuffed animals, but here there is an elephant and a polar bear in addition to shelducks and stoats; it has the usual artefacts collected by local antiquarians, but here they have the advantage of Hadrian’s Wall and the Shefton Museum; it has fossils, of which the NE coastline has a shedload. It was – unsurprisingly for a Sunday – full of small children pressing any buttons they could find and filling the place with noise and bustle. The museum-goers of the future, of course, but I’m a museum-goner so I wasn’t inclined to linger. But it was full of memorable sights: my reservations about the technical skill of local craftsmen of the third century AD would intrude, and I can see how the fallacy arises that polar bears and penguins live on the same continent.

Building stone from High Rochester Fort

T rex

I hope it doesn’t sound too morbid that the exhibit I was most taken by was a slab of ammonite fossils, which looked like exquisite lace. However it is what geologists call “a death assemblage”:

On my return, I took some photographs of the façade of the 1930s former General Electric Building

and of Percy Street car park, which is up there with the one above Preston bus station:

and I went inside the old Co-op store to look at the stairwell, which has little figures shouldering the banisters. On the ground floor is a poignant memorial to those men from the store killed in both world wars.

My final visit (before retiring to a restaurant for a very late and very long lunch) was to the castle keep, from where I was able to photograph the ill-fitting, single-glazed sash window of my hotel room. The next guest will thank me for the camembert cover I have wedged in to stop it rattling in high winds. (The Burmantofts tiles and plasterwork ceilings on the hotel’s grand staircase far outweigh any other deficiencies.)

Newcastle today

front

rear

A beautifully sunny day with a poor weather forecast for tomorrow, so today I wanted to make the most of outdoors.

First of all, a bus ride to Whickham View to see the outside of a former secondary school built 1936-38 to designs by F W Harvey, Newcastle building surveyor (those were the days). It’s straight out of Dudok (or Speke airport) and very impressive, but seeing it was also rather depressing. Firstly, it’s empty and the forecourt is railed off, so goodness knows what will happen to it. It still looks in good condition and the lovely brickwork is solid. Secondly, it’s set amongst an estate of 1930s semi-detached houses originally provided with large front gardens. Today there’s barely a shrub or blade of grass to be seen beneath the cars and wheely bins. (I exaggerate but . . .) All that post-depression, pre-war optimism buried under over-consumption and disregard for the natural world. (The thirties might not have been conservationist, but there was far more of the natural world then to disregard.)

I ditched my original idea of walking back to the centre: it was nice to be on the side of the valley and overlooking the Tyne (it’s not called Whickham View for nothing), but otherwise it would have been a fairly dreary walk.

In the absence of a tourist office, I’d downloaded some guided walk brochures and worked out a route on the map. It took in the former Co-operative store and the Civic Centre – both of which were just wonderful.

Former Co-operative department store, L G Ekins, 1932

Newcastle Civic Centre, George Kenyon, 1967

The Civic Centre in particular was a revelation. Looking at the rotunda of the council chamber from underneath, I realised how much no-cost-spared attention to detail there was. (Kenyon was the city architect during T Dan Smith’s reign – so the building is almost an argument for a corrupt but benign despot.) It’s actually a Gesamtkunstwerk along the lines of Hilversum or Stockholm city halls. The figure of Father Tyne on the wall, his hair dripping wet . . . what civic pride and optimism that embodies!

Then through Newcastle University buildings and past the city baths (fortunately saved from demolition and restored) to the Lit & Phil. It’s a delightful neo-classical building that just begs you to look inside . . . so I did.

Lit & Phil, founded 1793, this building designed by John Green 1825

It is – obviously – full of books, but there are also a few stuffed animals. (Every library needs some.) The decorative detail was exquisite, and the fiction section looked like the kind of library I’d started my borrowing life in.

Next came the riverside, with a little detour beside the old castle keep.  The steep slopes south of the railway station are dominated by bridges and viaducts, and it was a pleasant walk in the sunshine to the Baltic, an old flour mill converted into a gallery of contemporary art. Me, I went for the viewing platform.

Inside the Baltic

Bessie Surtees – 2 Jacobean merchants’ houses near the river

I ended my day with an ill-considered trip to South Shields; by the time I got there I only had 20 minutes before I needed to return – just enough time to see that it was a mix of former grandeur and more recent decay. I didn’t even have time to see the sea! But I was impressed with Newcastle’s public transport system.

Fernsehturm

Fernsehturm from the Weißenhofsiedlung

Two for the price of one: a ride on the Stadtbahn (a cross between an underground and an uphill tram) and a spectacular view across Stuttgart und Umgebung.

The tower, built 1954-56, was the first of its kind. It’s set amongst trees, and the journey up gives good views over the city (although nothing compared to what is to come, obvs). Even better, it’s a pleasant (and much shorter) walk down through the woods to the city centre, which brings home to you just how steeply hilly Stuttgart is. Roads peter out into steps, and at times I realised that I was almost leaning backwards as a brake on downhill momentum.

During a second breakfast at the top of the Turm, I began to wonder about the “housekeeping” arrangements. How does the water reach the taps? Are they fed from a tank above? And there must be a waste water pipe running all the way down the shaft. (Thoughts of mediaeval-castle-style garderobes would spring to mind.)

Weißenhofsiedlung

J J P Oud

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

J J P Oud

Peter Behrens

Matt Stam (blue) and Peter Behrens

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

So, one thing to remember: this was Deutscher Werkbund, not Bauhaus. Same faces, different umbrella.

Stuttgart City Council and the Werkbund co-operated to find a solution to the housing shortage in the 1920s by holding an exhibition of new types of dwelling. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was in charge of the project and designed the layout. Seventeen European architects (including Gropius, Oud and Behrens) designed 21 buildings – all modernist, mostly white, making use of prefabrication and new, often untested, materials. The exhibition opened on 23 July 1927, for which Willi Baumeister designed an iconoclastic poster.

These buildings were not really the answer to the shortage: technically they were not suitable for mass production. The Nazis hated them but did not actually destroy them. That was left to the RAF: several were hit by bombs and now only 11 survive.

Le Corbusier got the best plot and the biggest budget, and his pair of semi-detached houses form the museum nowadays. The shapes, colours and narrow passages (fortunately with stairs rather than ramps) reminded me of the Villa Savoye, but less space meant that there were sliding partitions and stowaway beds.

It wasn’t a worker’s house: there was a maid’s room on the ground floor. The views from the ribbon windows and absence of furniture makes it seem more spacious than it actually is.

It’s a fascinating idea . . . but I had noticed from the (flat) roof of the Stadtbibliothek that nearly all the houses I could see had pitched roofs and discrete windows. Sorry, Corbu. The city council found it difficult to persuade a tenant to live in the house at all, and modifications to the layout were soon made.

Staatsgalerie by day

Neue Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, James Stirling, Michael Wilford & Associates, 1979-84

The Neue Staatsgalerie is linked by a bridge to the very traditional (down to the equestrian statue in the court) 19th-century Staatsgalerie. It’s very post-modern: playful (note the “hole “ in the hidden ground-floor car park), referencing previous eras, mixing colours, materials and styles. There seems to be no pointing to the masonry; I wonder how well that works in Stuttgart. It’s a building that encourages you to be playful – hence my pretentious photo of the opera house reflections.

It forms part of a long line of public institutions along (what else?) Konrad-Adenauer-Straße; there’s the state history museum and the eccentric (except that it is a circle) School of Music and Performing Arts (a later Stirling addition).

Unfortunately the upper floor was closed today. From what I remember from a previous visit, it looks like a roofless ancient ruin. It’s post-modernism at its most engaging, eliciting surprise and pleasure as you walk around.

Stuttgart is still building like crazy. It’s not just the redesign of the railway tracks. The new city library, which 4 years ago was practically isolated, is now surrounded by commercial blocks on 3 sides. (Public buildings lead the way and private companies gobble everything else up when they see what pickings are to be had. I guess that’s how prosperity spreads.)

Einstein Tower

Einstein Tower by Erich Mendelsohn, built 1919-22

This is the other thing I didn’t see this summer* – this meringue-like confection that could house either a hobbit high-rise or the old woman who lived in a shoe. It’s in the Wissenschaftspark up the hill from Potsdam Hauptbahnhof. I hadn’t realised that the tower is still functioning as a solar telescope. (It was originally built to prove or disprove Einstein’s theory of relativity.)

A revolutionary theory requires a revolutionary building, and even the stairs are a work of art. The design was a little too revolutionary however: like the Midland Hotel in Morecambe, it was meant to be built of concrete but ended up being built mostly of brick covered in stucco, which has caused no end of maintenance problems.

* But I did see a Schiffshebewerk!

Ringsiedlung Siemensstadt

Apartment block in Mäckeritzstraße by Hans Charoun,

An extra day in Berlin to rectify omissions from this summer’s cycle tour. First was a walk around the council housing erected in 1929-31 to offer decent homes to Berliners living in overcrowded, insanitary conditions. These ribbon buildings in green surroundings (albeit with the giant Siemens work over the road breathing down their necks) were commissioned by housing associations with the aid of public funds. They were designed by avant garde architects calling themselves “the ring”: Walter Gropius, Hans Scharoun, Otto Bartning, Hugo Häring, Fred Forbat and Paul Rudolf Henning.

By Hans Scharoun – nicknamed the Panzerkreuzer

It’s a UNESCO world heritage site, so it’s impossible to say if the blocks’ elegance, variety of materials and forms, or playfulness would shine through if they were not so well maintained, but they are definitely more interesting than the general run of apartment blocks just across the street. The only other social housing blocks I’ve seen that are so striking are neo-classical ones like Karl-Marx-Allee or Nowa Huta – but their re-heated styles are weighted with connotations and references.

Walter Gropius

Walter Gropius with later changes

There are some changes from the original designs – WWII saw to that – but it’s good to see that all these blocks are still occupied and appear to be in a healthy state.

Hugo Häring – kidney-shaped balconies (a shape that minimises the amount of shade cast) on one side and plain on the other

Langer Jammer by Otto Bartning – rear view

Langer Jammer by Otto Bartning – street view

Hans Scharoun lived in the Panzerkreuzer for many years and designed an extension to the Langer Jammer to repair bomb damage:

Hans Scharoun – deck-access flats with a further nod to ocean liners