Yesterday I watched a towering thin chimney being demolished. I'd always liked it as I went about my work and was sad to see it go. The huge white tube reminded me of the Saturn V!
I've always enjoyed seeing the space race in architecture, whether it be real or imagined like the chimney rocket.
With a childhood diet of space missions and cosmic mysteries it was inevitable I would be drawn to the New Age as a teenager. I read Daniken's Chariots of the Gods with gusto [did you?] and Hitching's World Atlas of Mysteries, which I adored and still have in the bookshelf.
Like many of you my passion for outer space and its mysteries spilled over into magazines, TV and records. One album I loved was featured in Roger Dean's Views, the amazing rocket steeple on the cover of Rameses' Space Hymns.
I must have stared at that painting for hours and even now I can't look at a church without thinking that the steeple's a rocket! Somehow it seems fitting that they should be cosmic vessels, perhaps even space arcs heading for a new Earth!
A couple more sites that I really like are the rocket testing battery on the Needles, Isle of Wight, where the old Black Arrow was fired up. We visited it a few years back.
Perhaps though, the most iconic of all space-age buildings I've ever seen were the 'golfballs' of RAF Fylingdales perched on top of the moors near Whitby on the Yorkshire coast.
Here's a remarkable image of them being constructed in the Sixties as part of the Cold War [seen on Corridor 8]. Truly arresting, the futuristic spheres were removed in 2006 and replaced with a small pyramid. Did you get chance to see the balls?
Have you a favourite space age building or bit of space building art readers?
I like the Atomium in Belgium. Went there as a kid.
ReplyDeleteNever been there Kev. There's something similar in Eindhoven in Holland I think.
DeleteFylingdale is still there, with more balls than ever! I visited the Needles years ago, but didn't realise the rocket range was there, damn! Went past Forton services the other week, going to Blackpool. I like the two RAC Service centres on the motorways going through Birmingham too.
ReplyDeleteMore balls? Really? I didn't notice them last summer! Maybe they're stealth balls?
DeleteFor me, a Space Age style building with a futuristic look would be the RAC regional control centre at Bradley Stoke. We often pass it travelling along the M5. As a kid it would've had my vivid imagination kicking into gear. Straight from the world of Gerry Anderson. Youtube link below, Woodsy.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krhkEKVzQgQ
Thats one of them Tony! Looks great at night all lit up. Think theres another one round Brum with a slightly different aesthetic
DeleteLooks fab that Tone, very space age. It'd make a great look out for Mad Max in a future road desert!
DeleteI saw the Golfballs in the early 70s on a school trip to Whitby. We stopped the bus specifically to look at them.
ReplyDeleteThey seemed very UFO (the TV series) to me.
We also had a trip to the Jodrel Bank radio telescope, near Manchester, which was very futuristic, at that time.
Also, any planetarium building, with their domed roofs, of which I visited a few as a kid, looked to be out of this world.
Never been to Jodrel Bank Mish but I'd like to go. It must have been great seeing those golfballs in the 70's when you were kids. Like Quatermass on the moors!
DeleteWe had a shopping center in Portsmouth called The Tricorn, brutalist concrete straight out of most sci-fi from the 70's onwards, when it was brand new it was amazing but the local council hated it and spent jack shit on maintaining it and it was demolished 2004, I believe the same architect did another and is in the background of a scene in Michael Caine's "Get Carter"
ReplyDeleteJust googled The Tricorn MJ. I like it. Very bauhaus. It should have been Listed! Reminds me a little of Preston's new bus station when I was kid in the early seventies. I love Get Carter!
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