With the last week in Uni seeing me and my course-mates handing in all of our work on the Canvas system that was the end of the teaching. My coursemates need to continue the prep for the early June degree show, but with mine being next year now I was done for the year. With that in mind I had the afternoon to do something that I thought might help out with my practice for the summer and also perhaps for next year. I looked at the map on my phone to see where I could go to take some photos of architecture and concrete buildings. I’d recently been to Coventry, Walsall, Wednesbury, Dudley, and Wolverhampton so I was looking for something else, Leicester popped into view so I went off for a drive to a few places in Leicester.
Space Walk
The first stop in Leicester was the National Space Centre, to have a walk around the museum and look at the exhibits about the journey of mankind into space. There were some awesome items that astronauts had used in training and in mission flights, some by astronauts like Helen Sharman and Tim Peake. There were parts of space craft dotted around too, some from the British rocketry experimentation and others from Russian and US exploration. There was a Soyuz capsule hanging from the ceiling as I entered the main hall, and not far from it was the TTV2 Tow Test Vehicle from the Gemini missions that had been tested as a vehicle to return to earth, that once inside the atmosphere deployed an inflatable wing with which it glided into landing. It was test flown by Jack Swigert (according to the boards in the centre) and the design of the Rogallo wing is still used today by modern day paragliders.
The space centre was £20 entry for me as I have a Student Art Pass, and this gives me access for a year, should I want to return. I probably won’t though, it was full of kids running around left right and centre trying to learn facts about the exhibits on display and whilst I do not mind this at all, I feel that the centre is aimed at the younger generation. There are plenty of things for the older guest to view but not so much that it will take over 90 mins to get round it all. It was cool to see Matt Damon’s space suit from the Martian movie, Tim Peake’s training space suit and Helen Sharman’s suit, but I felt that there was less attention paid to actual artefacts and more to small experiments for kids to learn about space travel. Not a bad thing at all, Id love all kids to go there as part of their science education but I was left wanting more.
I had shot the photos in the Space Centre on my Canon R5 MkII with the 24-70 f2.8 lens as I thought that it might be lower light conditions within the centre, and the wide angle end of the lens at 24 would allow me to get some photos of larger exhibits. As it happens, this was the perfect lens and camera for the job and I was happy with the small number of photos I made inside the centre. (I was careful to not photograph around the schoolchildren that were everywhere, so I had to leave some photos behind.)
Concrete Jungle
In the book Brutalist Britain by Elain Harwood there were some sections about Leicester that I remembered and there were a few buildings at the University as well as a big car park in the city centre, so I headed over to the University Of Leicester. Arriving at the university I could see the engineering building over the barriers but was not able to get into the campus in my car, rightly so too. I turned around and drove out then found an old car park down by the fire station, this was a about 15 mins walk away from the uni so I left the car and walked through the Victoria Park towards the targets.
I carried my Canon R5 out of the car towards the university as I thought that the zoomier end 70mm might help me pull out some details of the buildings. It was lovely and sunny so I wasn’t worried about the lighting availability, more the option for wide angle and telephoto for details. The first building I came across was the Attenborough building and I had a wander around here looking at the really tall building with its angled windows against the wonderful blue skies with the odd cloud. I walked all the way around the building and take images of angles that I hadn’t previously seen. The next building nearby was the Engineering building with the tall red brick construction and the metal and glass diamond shaped windows. There are some awesome shapes and patterns that all tie the buildings together. The Engineering Building was designed by Stirling and Gowan between 1960-63 whilst the Attenborough building had been built in 1970 by Arup Associates.
Wandering around further I came across the Charles Wilson building which is known as the Optimus Prime building due to the awesome shapes made by the concrete structure mounted atop the main building. This is a Denys Lasdun design that was built in 1966 that is also known as the Happy Robot building due to the facial features on the front of it created with windows and vents.
Lee Circle
From here, it was time to head back to the car and then onwards to the next target, a large concrete car park in the city. I had looked at the Google Maps directions for it but it told me it was permanently closed so I headed for the John Lewis car park instead. I left my Canon R5 in the car and took my Leica Q3 with me to the car park and the city centre as I wanted to be a little more stealthy with my camera and draw less attention to myself.
A walk away from the John Lewis shop I came upon the Lee Circle Multi Storey car park that had been opened to much acclaim by Carry On Movie star Sid James. It sat atop the largest supermarket in Europe at the time, a large Tesco store that has been replaced by multiple smaller stores today.
When I approached the car park I noticed that there were cars parked on the first two floors and wondered how this could be if it was closed, when I spotted the answer. It was badged up as an NCP Car Park, which had gone into administration earlier this year so have closed a number of their sites. This one though looks to have been “reopened” by the locals. The barriers have been ripped apart, the ticket machines had their guts disemboweled and large paper snakes of blank unprinted tickets left strewn across the entrance gates. Entering the stair wells the untidiness and smell of urine became magnified 50 fold. The rubbish and detritus of human activity, some of it obviously not wholesome, had left the hallways and stairs looking like the production design team from 28 Days Later had been involved in the dressing of it. It was probably the pissiest stair well I had ever been in, beating even the Northern Quarter car park of Manchester to the title.
I love a car park me so I exited the stairwell and walked up the vehicle ramps between the levels to venture up to the top level, where from ground level I could see some vintage steel work. As I walked up through the levels there were no cars with the parkees believing in the safety in numbers theory and staying on the first couple of layers. There were some interesting sights to see but as I got closer to the top I noticed a car with about six young men around it all chatting and smoking so avoided gettign too close, lest they thought I was a journalist or something. I headed up to the top deck, seemingly unnoticed, and the steel frames appeared to have previously held aloft a roof for the spaces around the perimeter of this floor. I was lookign outwards to the surrounding parts of the city when I saw Crown House which used to be a municipal set of buildings but has now been left to rot and is in a very poor state. Other buildings caught my eye too such as the Abbey Street car park which looked to be in a poor state from what I could see of it from here.
Carrying on the wander I found myself getting closer to a White Vauxhall Grandland SUV on the very toppest of the top and I thought it might be one of the guys vehicles who were smoking on the level beneath, until I saw a woman moving up and down rhythmically on the drivers seat whilst facing the rear of the car. I don’t know if it was a couple looking for some privacy, an illicit affair between workers, or a sex worker earning a few quid but I knew I should not get closer waving a camera around. I turned as soon as I realised what was happening and headed back down to the base of the car park.
Again there were a few sights to behold as I descended and a few youngsters smoking some herbal cigarettes and I nodded to them as I walked past, making sure the camera lens was not pointed in their direction in case I caught their ire. As I got to the exit I saw that these barriers were damaged also and the ticket machines destroyed. I walked around the perimeter of the building and captured a few shots of the multi level wonder before heading off into the city centre to see what else was there to tickle my architectural fancy.
There were a few shop fronts that looked like they were concrete murals or patterned concrete to provide some interest but nothing much so I headed back to the John Lewis car park and before I paid for the stay I headed up in the lift to level 8, the uppermost of this car park. There were also some T shaped structures all around this top level but they were to provide lighting and not to support a long lost roof. I liked the geometry of the light structures and it reminded me somewhat of the Muse album cover for Origins of Symmetry which featured pylons on a landscape. These T shaped posts along with the yellow lines painted onto the deck were pleasing to my eye also.
I looked around the outer edges of the top deck but saw little of interest apart from a building that appeared to be an old telephone exchange building but is now functioning as a self storage facility. After capturing a few different angles on the roof of this car park I headed down to Level 2 and paid for parking before jumping back in the trusty Skoda and heading back for home. Two hours later I was arriving home to spend the remainder of the evening with my wife.
Camera Choice
My choice of cameras today was bob on and I think if Id had my Canon R5 with me in the car park , it might have been a little more obvious and I was glad of the subtlety of my Q3. The canon worked well in the Space Centre and the University Campus as the 24 mm lens allowed me to encompass the whole of the building and the zoom to 70mm was good for hiding some of the context that I didn’t want in the photo. The battery life of the cameras was excellent too, with no changes required in either. The Canon lasted for the time in the educational sectors whilst the Q3 lasted for the whole of the trip around the city. I have some spares with me and I was ok if it ran out but I do tend to manage the battery usage by turning off EVFs and LCD screens when not in use. I have my screens set to off by default and only ever employ them if needing to check a photo or shooting at a lower or higher angle. I generally don’t “chimp” and prefer to wait until home to see the results of the whole shoot. I might check one or two to ensure that the exposure looks ok but with the latitude available in the exposures on these cameras it’s often not worth worrying about too much.
The university buildings were definitely worth a visit and an amble around looking up at the engineering marvels of the modernist buildings. I wasn’t challenged by anyone walking around and had a quick chat with a maintenance worker as he was mystified by what I’d found interesting enough to point my camera at. The Space Centre was a good trip for a family but lacked a bit for me as someone who reads a lot about the space programmes and watches documentaries about the progress made over the years.
The car park (Lee Circle) was sketchy as hell and I was happy that I was not approached by anyone but I put this down to my observation skills. It would have only been a few more steps of innocent walking to end up in a position whereby I was confronted and I like to think that by putting on the appearance of someone who knows where he’s going and having a purpose to my stride helps me avoid such issues. I also have the ability to talk to people in the event of needing to, in order to allay fears that I’m spying on them, but on this occasion that was not required. I wouldn’t recommend that other people go for a wander into the Lee Circle car park alone but it was great to see this behemoth of a parking structure before it is left too long in a state of disprepair.
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