With the summer off Uni and time to spend on actually getting out and taking photographs I decided one Friday afternoon in August, to take a trip out to photograph some brutalist architecture over in East Anglia. I’d seen it mentioned in a book, Brutalist Britain, by Elain Harwood and a couple of times online in other peoples posts so was eager to see what it looked like in person.
(Click on any image to see a larger version in this post)
Eastwards Drive
The next day being a Saturday when I was unoccupied with the family all doing stuff anyway I thre my coat, hat, Leica M6, Leica Q3 and DJI Mini 4 Pro into the car for the 3.5 hour journey Eastwards across the centre of England. For the 35mm film camera I selected a roll of Ilford HP5Plus, a roll of Kodak Portra 400 and also a roll of Harman Red, a redscale film that might provide some interesting photos.
It was a fair old drive and after getting off the motorway I ended up on some of the smaller A roads that seemed to stretch across the flatness of the area towards Norwich. On the way out to Norwich I went past Cambridge which I thought might make for a good stop on the way back so Id keep that idea in my back pocket for now.
University Campus
As I got to the University area I started spotting a lot of people around but followed the signs to the university car park. A large wide open car park in the University Campus with the buildings I was interested in a mere ten minute stroll away.
I wasn’t sure how welcome I would be on the grounds of the University as I had been hassled at Brunel University by security. For this reason I left the drone in the boot of the car and wandered off towards the Norfolk and Suffolk terraces that I was interested in first of all. There were all manner of concrete buildings all around the campus, similar to that of University Of Leeds, today was going to be good.
I took a photo of the campus map from a signpost and used this to orient myself before adventuring. You can see the zig-zag terraces at the top end of the map, with the car park to the left side of the map.
As I walked through the alleyways and walkways there were the odd sign or two for Open Day so I think I’d timed this just right for there were a number of people all taking a look around the site with their children who might be prospective students.
Library
The first building I came upon was the Library, after I’d walked through the entrance of the main reception. This structure designed by Denys Lasdun in 1962 and was completed in 1964. There is. a wonderful staircase on the rear of the building too but I didn’t get into the building as the doors are protected by swipe cards.
I wanted to capture some angles of the building so decided that Id spend some time here before heading off to the “Ziggurats”. I had a walk around this side and to the rear using a mix of both digital and film to make images.
This photo shows the front entrance, with the recent sign on the wall underneath the 1969 Civic Trust Award plaque. Above the door of the library is the usual metal cutout letters making up a LIBRARY sign. in much the same vibe as those building notifies at Leeds. Now I look at this image I can see that the large white outline symbol for a library is very distracting, perhaps I should have blocked it with the concrete in the foreground.
Gormley’s 3X Another Time
As I travelled down the stairs to get to the ground I walked around the building and noticed that there was a figure on the edge of the roof. It is part of Antony Gormley’s 3X Another Time where figures that have been displayed elsewhere had been installed in specific locations on the campus. A video of the installation is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3mv_KtYBXs
There were statues installed in 2017 but there was a deal of controversy about the purpose of the art and whether it was related to suicide, concerns were raised by staff and students. This caused a movement in the Uni to work on removing it in 2022. It appears to have not been successful as the three statues are still in place, although I only found two of them.
Stairway To Concrete Heaven
Around the rear of the library I found the staircase made from concrete that would be called ugly by many people but I consider it to be a well engineered and functional piece of the building. The fact that there are no real flourishes or extraneous details give me the less is more vibe.
After a good look around this area I turned through 180° and headed for the Terraces. I saw this stair case in a similar fashion, which was on the end of Suffolk terrace.
Terrace Views
Just through the gap between the stairs and the tree in the above photograph you can see Norfolk terrace, which I had spotted before making my way down the grassed open space towards the river.
With a walk out onto the grass the whole pair of teerraces opened up behind me so I stood to take a few photographs.
The terraced buildings contain the student accomodation for the uni and they look futuristic from afar, but dated when closer to them. The corners of the buildings reaching out from the terrace recede further back the higher you go up, they contain the kitchen and dining area for the flats within and when able to walk closer to the windows you can see the almost morgue/lab style facilities in there.
As you can see from the image below, a couple of stainless stell work surfaces with sinks, hobs and wall mounted grill and microwaves, with the communal table being a stainless steel surface and bench seats either side of it. there appear to be no under or above counter storage cupboards and students look to have a small locker on the wall to the side.
The corners of the building floors also act as the gutters and drainage of rainwater. Each corner features a spout that drops the contents to the floor beneath and then once at the ground floor the spout releases its contents into the large square drain catchment that ultimately leads to the surface water drainage system. I would hazard a guess that in the event of heavy rainfall the water exiting the spouts causes a large noise on the roof of the kitchen beneath.
Looking into the reviews of the accommodation from students it seems to feature whether there will be a party atmosphere in the terraces, but something I picked up seems to be a playful rivalry between the students in the Norfolk and Suffolk terraces. A couple of stairwells and other features on the top of the tallest buildings caught my eye.
Sainsburys
As I continued to walk around the facility I came across an area where there was an external building called the Sainsbury Centre, a more modern rectangular building but it contained a couple of art exhibitions so I had a wander in to take a look.
An exhibition by Anton Forde showed a large number of wooden stakes (known as pou) stood upright with sculpted heads on the top, dressed with relevant tribal necklaces and decorative jewelry.
They were arranged in a protective formation to protect a shorter member of the group, a child, who represents the future of the tribe. This is a New Zealand based piece of work in collaboration with Shiree Reihana. It’s a welcoming piece of work that allows you to walk through the protective throng and look at the woven materials and necklaces.
After a look around this work I strolled over to the museum/gallery’s collection of other work.
There were a number of pieces on the walls and display cabinets from some very well known artists such as Bacon and Giacometti with some particularly interesting looking paintings and sculptures.
Upstairs was an exhibition about the Seas and how they are coping and will cope as we move forward into the future.There were some thought provoking art works as well as some that I didn’t really gel with.
It was an impressive collection of art and one that I was not aware of until I walked up to the building in a curious manner. Funny the things you find from jsut going on a random ramble.
After a cappuccino and a packet of crisps it was time to head back out into the grounds of the Universtiy on the hunt for some more interesting photos of the buildings and details. The sun was out fully now, no longer hidden behind the grey clouds and the temperature was rising.
Rest Of Campus
I walked back along the fronts of the two terraces taking photographs as I went and then found a way up onto the walkway that seems to take you all the way along what is called the Lasdun Teaching Wall and around back to the Sainsbury’s Centre. Here, higher up the view of the overly engineered ventilation system and it’s huge concrete boxy structure is unobstructed. Another of Gormley’s likensesses is atop the building on the corner and looks down over the area.
One thing I did notice about the Lasdun’s Teaching Wall was a bunch of additional metal tethers that are fixed from the wall to the concrete panels which sit proud of the wall, below and above the windows. They looked like relatively new features long with the metallic hooks under the large panels. These panels are concrete cladding panels and are fixed to the building using steel fixtures. At the time I was stood in front of them (see below photo) I would assume that there was a risk of the cladding falling from the frontage, leading to possibly fatal injury if someone happened to be beneath it.
Looking further into the reasons I can see from this proposal for works from Shepheard Epstein Hunter that the steel brackets used to support the cladding have indeed corroded, leaving some risky conditions. There are notes in there too about spalling of concrete and even a huge amount of asbestos included in the building fabrication. It looks like the building will take some effort to recondition and prepare for the future. It’s good to see though that the University appears to be willing to spend the money on this “Landscraper”. I love the word landscraper too, it’s an amazing vision to behold a huge building laying on the floor .
Fly Time
With the most of my exploration done in this area I decided that I might head back to the car and fly the drone from there, over to the terraces and make some aerial photographs. As I walked to the car park I could see that it was getting busier, and talking to someone else it seemed that a concert was about to get under way, Olly Murs, Blue and Scouting For Girls were due to get underway soon.
Back at the car now and grabbing the drone out automatically triggered me to look up at the trees and they were moving quite a lot, a sign that I shouldn’t really be flying the drone, there are limits on the amount of wind is safe (10.7m/s) and it looked more than this. Not safe I thought, but I thought back to 15 minutes ago at the large grass area in front of the ziggurats and it was still, with hardly any sign of wind blowing the trees. I’d be daft to launch the drone here, and risk it not getting over the top of the trees and having issues.
I’d keep it in the little bag and then walk back to the field by the river. Once there the wind was not so evident, it must be funneled by the larger buildings around the car park. Sitting now at a picnic bench I set up the drone and controller then launched it up into the air. I kept it above me for a moment, to check it was stable enough with the wind speed and then sent it on it’s way to the student accommodations. I flew high enough to be able to gather some photographs but kept well within the 120m altitude limit. Because I’d checked at home too, I knew that Norwich hospital is close by and they have an air ambulance so I would be careful to lower the drone if I heard a helicopter.
After a quick flight around the terraces, Norfolk and Suffolk I concentrated on capturing some images of the Gormley statues atop the roofs of the buildings. I wanted to safely get close to them and possible behind them to see what their sightline would show if they really could see.
With the drone down on the picnic table and being safely stashed away it was time to head off. I had no complaints from anybody, no concerns with the weather conditions, no accidents or no encounters with air ambulances or birds. I would classify this as a successful flight and not in any way similar to the previous disastrous flights with the Mini 2 and Mini 3. The latter was lost in a battle with a large tree and the former was lost int he River after it lost GPS signal and the ability to stabilise it’s location.
Redscale Images
I mentioned briefly at the top of the post that I was taking my 35mm Leica M6 and a roll of Harman RED. This is a film that has been fitted into the canister/roll the inverse way. The orange plastic of the colour film is therefore the firt thing the light has to travel through on its way to the emulsions for each of the colour layers. In a usually prepared film the light from the shutter/lens hits the emulsions in a prepared order before seeing the orange plastic, with the film plastic being the first thing it hits.
I was careful to over-expose the shots I was making as my previous experiments with Redscale, including the Dudley Zoo attempts, led me to prefer the output from an overexposed shot rather than a shot exposed to the box rating. The rating of thsi film was ISO 125 so I was setting the meter in the camera to be exposed correctly [ > O < ] then altering the shutter speed or aperture to an overexpose of two stops. If it was correctly exposed with the meter at ISO125 with Shutter Speed of 1/250th sec and an aperture of f/8.0 I would alter the shutter speed to be 1/1000th or the aperture to be f/16.0
As a result , most of the photos came back with a reasonable exposure, and only one that I did on the meters recommendation came out redder. The more of an over exposure the more yellow the picture becomes.
Some of the images are intriguing and I had the film developed at AG Photolab and a set of prints produced also, so i have scanned these in on my little epson scanner. I hoep that in the next few weeks I can use the colour dark room at Uni to have a crack at some of the negatives to get better prints on 10×8 RC paper or maybe even my last few 12×10 RC paper sheets.
Onwards
A short walk back to the car now and a decision about what the next step should entail. I had a self imposed choice to make, a short trip to Great Yarmouth, Id never been there, or a drive back and a visit to Cambridge. After some deliberation and a warm bottle of fizzy pop I decided to head to the seaside. Lets see if Great yarmouth deserves it’s title.
Average Yarmouth
After a 45 minute drive to the most Eastest of East Coasts in the UK I found a car park at the Market Gates shopping centre, with a few people asleep on the pavement outside. Not an auspicious start to the first impressions of the place. The sun was still shining and it was around 20°C on the seafront. I had a walk along the front of the promenade before going up onto the pier for a little bite to eat. I was careful to shield my small tray of chips from any attacking chip eagles (seagull) and once re-energised made a walk to the ferris wheel my next mission.
It was quite an uninspiring location and when I got closer to the area I was interested in there was an old abandoned derelict Winter Gardens, a huge glass building which has seen better days. It was closed in 2008 and in 2027 it should start it’s regeneration works to bring it back to life.
There were not many photo opportunities available here but a couple of guys wearing pink cowboy hats saw me with a camera and posed for me and asked me to take their picture. I was probably in Great Yarmouth for about two hours, I had a hard deadline as the car park closed at 5pm.
With a few photos in the SD Card or on the 35mm film I headed back to the car and from there a drive home that would take me around 4.5 hours. Would I go to Great Yarmouth again? Probably not. It seems to suffer from the usual issue of too many vape shops, barbers and even a couple of American Candy stores that seem to be widely recognised as fronts for money laundering or other dodgy organisations. There seemed to be an abundance of people down on their luck, struggling with addiction and even some causing a nusiance up and down the seafront. Whilst this is not unusual in most towns or cities across the UK it tainted my appreciation of this particular place.
After a full day of driving and photography I arrived home tired and ready for bed. I class it as a great day, even if many hours of it were behind the wheel of my car. At one point I did consider sleeping in the car and visiting Cambridge on the Sunday but remembered that my previous attempt to sleep in the vehicle was very uncomfortable and cold. That was in Stanmore Tube Station car park in the winter so it would probably have been ok. I preferred the idea of being in my own bed though so ignored Cambridge and headed home.
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