Wednesday 26 March 2014

Later



Later, on the same morning as yesterday's post, it clouded over and drizzled a fine rain.  Those are the steps on which I stood to take yesterday's photograph, several hours earlier.  The lime-stains on the new-ish buff brickwork make a nicely ironic echo of the bright shapes of the reflected glass windows in that earlier image.

Perhaps not surprisingly, these inevitable stains and discolorations, that always appear within a year or two of the completion of a new building, never figure in the architect's renderings, and yet they do give a sort of character and interest to bland expanses of brickwork.  Just wait until those railings really start to corrode, and bleed rusty red trails down the facade...

3 comments:

Paul Bradforth said...

"and bleed rusty red trails down the facade..."
You're such a romantic; a man after my own heart :-)

Martin said...

Are these the steps at the side of the Students Union?

Mike C. said...

Paul,

I've never understood the attraction of the new -- I no longer buy second-hand clothes, it's true, but I generally look as if I do...

Martin,

No, this is round the side of the new Bio Sciences building, opposite the Mitchell Wind Tunnel (you should see the fantastic model Spitfire they've hung in their new lobby! Vroom! "Biggles thrilled to the roar of the Merlin engine...").

Mike