Category: Architecture

Categories / Architecture, Design and Interiors, Food and Drink, Homeware

Fuff City Espresso cup

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Fuff city

Fans of 1960s architecture may like to sip their coffees from this Fuff City espresso cup.

The cup is decorated in a panoramic illustration of what they describe as 'traditional British landscape' which translates to high rises and concrete buildings. If you look a bit closer, you can even see the Trellick Tower rising in the background. The scene is topped off with an image of a typically British bird – the pigeon that crops up on all of Fuff City's wares. 

The company also sells an estuary design with a similar look. This cup and saucer will set you back £12. 

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Categories / Architecture, Art and Photography

Lewis’s Fifth Floor: A Department Story – a lost 1950s world rediscovered

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All images (c) Stephen King

It's amazing to think that in the centre of modern-day Liverpool, there's a small pocket of the 1950s still in existence. You can find out all about it in Lewis’s Fifth Floor: A Department Story at the National Conservation Centre Whitechapel, Liverpool. 

Running from 26th February until 30th August 2010, Lewis’s Fifth Floor: A Department Story is a photography exhibition by Stephen King, featuring images taken in one of the UK’s oldest department stores, Lewis’s. King has visited the store’s ‘lost’ fifth floor, closed to the public for the last three decades. Its world of 1950s design has remained hidden since it was closed to the public in the early 1980s, being used as a storage floor ever since.

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Categories / Architecture

Preston’s iconic 1960s bus station set for demolition

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Above image courtesy of Lee Garland

One day, you'll tell your grandchildren about the large concrete buildings of the 1960s, how they once dominated their landscape before the local authorities knocked them all down. Including Preston bus station.

Preston bus station was built in the late 60s, a huge structure with room for 80 double decker buses, 1,100 cars and subway access from the city via three routes. It's not exactly looking its best right now, but if you're ever in the area, you really should check it out – before it goes, which is likely to be in 2011.

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Categories / Architecture, Design and Interiors

Greetings cards featuring classic British buildings from Obiko

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Obiko cards

From the De La Warr Pavilion to the Post Office Tower, Obiko's range of greeting cards includes many of the British buildings that regularly feature in various forms on this site. 

Obiko are a Hastings based company and their seaside location clearly has a strong influence on their designs. The buildings shown are actually part of a series called 'seagull sites'. Happily, they're favourites with us, as well as the gulls, and also show Battersea Power Station and Brighton's Palace Pier, amongst others. 

Each card is executed in the same delicate style and costs £2.90. 

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Categories / Architecture, Property

Rent an apartment in Erno Goldfinger’s iconic Trellick Tower in London

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It's the building you either love or hate, but there's no denying that Trellick Tower is an iconic piece of 20th century design. Want to live there? Well, an apartment has just come up for rent in the Erno Goldfinger-designed west London tower block.

Goldfinger designed the block in the late 60s and despite a large amount of contempt for it, Trellick Tower is grade II listed, so isn't going anywhere in a hurry. Admittedly, we've never been in the place, but we suspect the views from this 15th-floor flat are really going to be something special.

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Categories / Architecture, Homeware

Angry Children cushions featuring 60s and 70s architecture

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Angry Children cushions

If you are a regular reader of this site, you'll be well aware of the work of People Will Always Need Plates. For a new twist on the architecture on homeware theme, how about their German equivalent in the form of these Angry Children cushions featuring 60s and 70s Berlin buildings?

The Angry Children range is the work of s.wert designs and is so-called because they are angry about building fronts that have disappeared or are about to disappear. For example, the cushion on the right shows Ahronblatt, or 'Mapleleaf' building: built in East Berlin between 1970-3 and demolished in 2001. 

There are seven different designs to choose from, all featuring buildings dating from the sixties and seventies, including the Haus der Statistik design shown on the left. Each cushion cover costs 33 euros.

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