Pixelated Birmingham hotel

I suspect that fewer buildings of the twenty-first century will weather as well as those built in earlier centuries. Are there any modern buildings, I wonder, that will be improved by exposure to time, weather and the rough and tumble of daily life, something that is a feature of quite a few older structures? I pondered this as I took the photograph above. It is a detail of a Holiday Inn Express building in the centre of Birmingham. Its pixel-style cladding is certainly eye-catching. But, I wondered, will it be cleaned when required, will rust stains appear, as they have on the nearby old\new styled street lights. Or will it be re-modelled when the sharp newness of greys, blacks and white becomes passé drabness?

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Old pub advertisement

The Queen's Arms at Newhall Street, Birmingham, is a pub designed by the architect, Joseph D. Ward, who worked for the brewers, Mitchells & Butler. It dates from c.1870 and has been extensively modernised twice, the first occasion being in 1901 and the second in the late C20. The tiled advertisement on the corner of the pub must date from the 1901 remodelling and has suvived remarkably intact. It employs a cassical egg and dart border (awkwardly broken by the name at the top, a cartouche with gold medal awards from the C19 and a style of lettering frequently seen at the turn of the century.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Forward Together

I like the idea of public sculpture better than the reality. Why? Because really good public sculpture, it seems to me, is quite hard to find. So much of it offers too little in the way of interest or challenge, or is gimmicky, or weathers in a way that changes its essence. So, when I come across a piece that I appreciate I'm both surprised and pleased. A recent example is "Forward Together", a piece by Luke Perry in Victoria Square, Birmingham. It is a representation of people literally pulling together on a chain to achieve a goal. The figures seem to be made of CNC-cut metal and based on high contrast photographs. It is, I'm sure, a sculpture that will repay several visits.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Hollins memorial, St Paul in the Square, Birmingham

The Georgian church of St Paul in Birmingham is located in the city's last remaining eighteenth century square. It has a number of interesting features but on our visit to the building what caught my eye was a stained glass window flanked by a portrait bust on one side and carving in the splay of the other side. The dedications are to the architect-sculptor, William Hollins (d.1843), his wife Catherine (d.1831), and their children. These are decorated with beautifully carved vines and is the work of William Hollins' sculptor son, Peter. I don't recall ever having seen carved memorials in window splays before. The way the light caught the carving was very appealing.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Reflections, Centenary Square, Birmingham

Plaza water fountains, also called pavement fountains - a grid of individual fountains that rise, fall and stop altogether - have become something of a cliche in cities across the world. There are multiple examples in Britain such as this one in Peterborough and this one near King's Cross, London. We recently came across a further example in Birmingham in Centenary Square. Unlike others, when this one stopped a large area remained covered in a shallow film of water. I don't know whether this was intentional or not but it certainly provided good reflections of passers-by.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Queen Victoria and cranes

The cranes in my photograph of the statue of Queen Victoria are, to use a phrase of the computer age, "a feature not a bug". That is to say, I deliberately included them and they were not unavoidable. Why include them? Because the centre of Birmingham was something of a building site when we visited the city, and this photograph reminds me of that fact. Appropriately enough this statue can be found in Victoria Square overlooking buildings old, new and still emerging. It dates from 1901 and is the work of Thomas Brock. Or rather it doesn't and is - sort of! The statue was originally of white marble and was recast in bronze in 1951 by William Bloye.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Grand Central, Birmingham

Grand Central is the name given to the shopping centre that adjoins the redeveloped Birmingham New Street railway station. Both of the buildings opened in 2015 after a £750 million refit. Grand Central is linked to the Bull Ring shopping area, and the railway station has a concourse three times as big as the one it replaced. The redevelopment that became Grand Central was plagued by disagreements between the architects AZPML and the clients, and the final building has features that were not in the original design. This photograph shows a part of the development where the station adjoins the shopping centre.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Solitary in Birmingham

The saying, "You're never alone with a clone", needs to be updated to "You're never alone with a phone". Or perhaps not, because although a mobile phone offers 24/7 connectedness, very often there seems to be something other than a person on the other end: the phone occupies the owners attention with words and images rather than human to human contact. On a recent visit to the city of Birmingham this newly created space in the city centre seemed to be a place that most people were passing through. This man was an exception, engrossed in his phone among the concrete, blue glass and shadows.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Birmingham to Shrewsbury coach

I assume this is a replica (or restored original) of the coach that served as transport between Birmingham and Shrewsbury - they are the two placenames painted on the exterior. Once again it is a four-in-hand (see the previous post). I have no idea why this coach and its passengers were undertaking a horse-drawn trip, but I imagine it is a re-enactment of some kind on a shorter journey than the fifty or so miles between those places.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10