Dateline 03.07.12: Domus, , 542 Colne Road, Burnley, BB10 2LD has been listed Grade II Domus is a house. 1958 by Alan Chambers for Eric Cookson and his wife in a contemporary modern style. “Domus, 542 Colne Road, Reedley Hallows is designated![]()
Domus listed!
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Happy Bithday Civic Centre Plymouth
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Book launch with our Patron – Jonathan Meades
Book launch: with Jonathan Meades September 27, 6:30pm £5 (includes glass of wine), booking advised Museum Without Walls is the new book by the cultural commentator, writer and filmmaker Jonathan Meades: join Jonathan Meades for a launch event including a discussion with Manchester architecture expert![]()
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the modernist magazine issue #5 – launches at Manchester Art Gallery
the modernist issue 5 launch ‘campus’ the manchester gallery manchester city art gallery Please join us for our very special launch event of volume #2 and a new design for the modernist magazine at 6.00pm – 8.30pm Thursday 13th of September in the![]()
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new home – new view
And so, as the modernists fondly bid farewell to our home on Chapel Street, we look forward to a new era from our lofty 6th floor office. With a view over our beloved UMIST and a splendid central location,![]()
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pitched roofs thwarted
Good news reached us this week as local residents and campaigners at the Bentley House Estate (Hulme’s ‘Redbricks’) thwarted an attempt by the local Housing Trust to put inappropriate pitched roofs onto parts of the estate which currently has flat roofs. After![]()
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manchester modernists at the movies
The Changing Face of the North West: Modernist Dreams and Utopias The Manchester Modernist Society, the North West Film Archive and Manchester Metropolitan University Geography are pleased to bring to the City Art Gallery a curated programme of archive films charting![]()
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modernist mag issue #5 – launched at manchester art gallery
the modernist sales team, Emily and Lucas.. get ready for action lovely gallery … oooh, and that’s Des, our designer, taking his coat off and they listened intently to Maureen’s speech the modernist magazine – out now!![]()
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our friends in the north
We at the MMS have can’t get enough of Glasgow, that other great post industrial city of the north with with a powerful Victorian and 20th Century built heritage. So, imagine how delighted we were to come![]()
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is the naughty diocese of shrewsbury up to their old tricks?
photo: Aidan Turner Bishop ‘Shrewsbury?’ I hear you shout! Why are the Manchester Modernists banging on about Shrewsbury? Well, first a little history… the RC Diocese responsible for much of the Greater Manchester area is the Diocese of Salford, indeed![]()
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vote for us! vote for us!
Little did we know when we launched our CAMPUS fundraising campaign back in April, that the UMIST film we featured was to become a celebrity in itself.. not only featuring in the Manchester Evening News but also making a fleeting![]()
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our evening with jonathan meades and phil griffin
We had an anecdote-tastic evening with our patron Joanathan Meades and our favourite Manchester architectural commentator Phil Griffin at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation…![]()
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Library Walk – Storm the Bastions.. attend the Planning Meeting.. and change the Council’s mind!
In association with Friends of Library Walk So, you like a bit of architecture then? Maybe you’ve been on one of our walks or attended a film screening? I’m sure you’ve heard about the terrible plan to block off the![]()
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Toastrack
Well our ‘residency’ at the Toastrack – aka Hollings Faculty of Manchester Metropolitan University is now under-way. We will be investigating the building and the Architect (City Architect LC Howitt – along with his team), as well as delving around the building for interesting titbits. We will also be encouraging collaborative creative projects with other departments at MMU to help celebrate their final year of occupation at the Toastrack (Hollings will be moving to All Saints Campus in 2013).
Keep an eye on our ongoing activities on our special Toastrack blog – here
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launch invitation – the modernist magazine ‘cuppa’ issue
launch invitation
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issue 6 launch
‘cuppa’
 the heady aroma of an espresso bar; the novelty of meeting friends in the sleek new municipal library café; the luxury of a Butlins all-in holiday and your journey complete with a welcome rest stop under the parabolic futurism of the Little Chef….
at
NORTH TEA POWER
winner ‘Best Coffee Bar’ – Manchester Food & Drink festival 2012
Please join us for a cuppa at our Yuletide Social and special launch event for issue #6 of the modernist magazine
at 6.00pm – 8.30pm Thursday 6th of December
North Tea Power
36 Tib Street Manchester M4 1LA Copies of our ‘cuppa’ issue will be available to purchase – hot off the hob! free event - click here to attend if you cant make it to the launch – you can get a copy posted to you from our very own online shop…
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Wanted! Volunteer Art/Architectural Historian-Researcher
The Manchester Modernist Society is an arts and heritage collective focusing on the 20th Century Built environment of Manchester.
In 2012/13 we are acting as ‘Modernists in Residence’ at the ‘Toastrack’ (the Hollings campus of MMU) as the catalyst for a number of creative activities relating to the designer of Hollings – Manchester City Architect LC Howitt, as well as his other extant and demolished buildings including: The Manchester Abattoir (1962); Manchester Crown Courts of Justice (1962) North Manchester Crematorium (1960s) and Hollings Campus (‘The Toastrack’) (1960).
We aim to draw attention to the significant impact of Howitt’s architecture on the post war reconstruction of the City, particularly in relation to the social context of the time. The buildings are public and municipal and are born from a kind of civically focused planning and architecture that no longer exists – public architecture that was once commissioned by the City in order to service the public’s varied needs.
We aim to utilise the research to support and inspire the creative residency and ultimately to create a final publication containing this and other findings.
We are seeking a volunteer art/architectural historian to carry out research as part of this project.
Duration – c. 1 day per week over aproximately 7 months
Qualifications/skills required • Academic historical research, collation of materials and writing up findings • An interest in the History of Architecture & Design of the post war period • Would suit Art History or History [under] Graduate. (Location – Manchester)
To apply, send letter of application outlining your interest in the project and relevant skills to info(at)manchestermodernistsociety.org
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Death and the monument
On Thursday 22nd of November, Manchester City Council approved the relocation of the Grade II* Cenotaph (Edwin Lutyens ,1924) from its current location in St.Peter’s Square.
Eamonn Canniffe leads the Architecture Research Centre and the MA in Architecture + Urbanism at the Manchester School of Architecture and he has kindly allowed us to reproduce his blog post ‘Death and the monument’ here.
(Keen observers should note the irony of the tram name in this photograph)
When I saw two men urinating on The Great Stone, oblivious to it’s dedication to ‘The Glorious Dead’ last October I should have realised the extent of the threat to the city’s memorial to its war dead. The news splashed gleefully across yesterday’s Manchester Evening News that the city fathers are considering moving the cenotaph in St.Peter’s Square to make way for more efficient tramlines follows in a long and tragic line of municipal waste when it comes to their judgements about the public realm. Who can forget such previous triumphs for the council as the mysteriously vanished Market Street obelisk, the similarly vanished ‘B of the Bang’ or the continuing calamity which is Piccadilly Gardens?
In the Cenotaph’s current arrangement one has a rare ensemble of monument and civic buildings which work to dignify the public realm and to lead citizens through their city. The current siting of the tram stops is a problem, but fails to fundamentally impair the beauty of the relationships between the Lutyens monument and Harris’s library, with Library Walk, and with the broader confluence of Oxford Street, Peter Street and Lower Mosley Street. The more sensitive projects displayed for St.Peter’s Square last summer recognised the importance of this piece of grand urban composition. The obvious solution is to move the tram stops closer to Princess Street, since there is a large ill-defined territory designated as the Peace Gardens, but hardly shown any respect as such.
Would Liverpool consider moving its memorial from outside St.George’s Hall, or Sheffield consider moving its memorial from the beautifully restored City Hall? So why should Manchester even contemplate it? Do it’s echoes provide some problem to potential investors in the office scheme to replace Elizabeth House? We should be told, but are unlikely to hear that from the MEN or the city council. At least presently the Cenotaph is spared the indignity of being exiled to Spinningfields, but I might come to regret that suggestion.
Thanks to Eamonn Canniffe
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A modernist walk in a fallow field…
Corrr! What with all our film events at the Manchester Gallery, we’ve not got together for a little wander recently.. so here’s a special treat courtesy of Mr. Eddy Rhead.
A meander around Modernist Fallowfield… here’s the highlights
Saturday 15th December:
Meet at 10:30 outside front entrance of Sainsburys, Fallowfield (good for buses)
From there:
- Synagogue by Joseph Sunlight
- Owens Park and Mitzi Cunliffe
- High School and Mitzi Cunliffe
- A quick look at Manchester Grammar
- Toastrack / MMU Holllings by LC Howitt
- Appleby Lodge
- Worsley Court and William Mitchell
- and finally – Dwelle
With a little luck we might just get a sneaky peak inside one or two.
As ever – this is a free event but we need to know how many people are coming so please reserve your place here
And, don’t forget it could be cold and wet so dress suitably and be prepared for a 2 and a half hour walk.
This walk forms part of the Manchester Modernist Society Toastrack project
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Preston Bus Station to be bulldozed
And so the sorry affair of Preston’s magnificent Bus Station continues. Turned down for listing and regarded as economically un-viable by Preston City Council, the end seems near as the Council debates demolition.
Suspiciously pipped at the post on a recent poll of BDP’s best buildings by Heslington East (eh?), the Bus Station and Car park is described by Owen Hatherly on the BDP Placebook site as “Designed under BDP’s most famous partner, Keith Ingham, Preston Bus Station is part of one of those classically 1960s attempts to redevelop a town through the remaking of its circulation into walkways, underpasses and towers, with people separated from cars. The two towers create a distinctive, vigorous skyline, but the Bus Station is the masterpiece. From a distance and even up close, its glorious sweep is so simple, so confident, so right, that only a churlish antimodernist could fail to be seduced by it. Inside, matters are a little different – original signage battles with recent tat, and a clean is direly in order, but the aim to make such a mundane function into something special is still vividly palpable. Although there are proposals to demolish, rather sadly with BDPs own involvement, the Bus Station is held in encouraging public esteem – it recently won a local newspaper poll for the best building in Preston. Which it is.” See BDP Placebook for this and a set of super archive photos.
The news has caused a flurry of activity on Twitter as well as reports on BBC and ITV news.. so just maybe sense could prevail.. but don’t hold your breath.
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Twentieth Century Fallowfield.. and a bit of Rusholme
Modernist Society Walk hosted by Mr Eddy Rhead…
December 15th 2012
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More Pages to Explore .....
