‘Sublime Beauty’ may not be the words you would normally use to describe this facade, but they are the words used by Architect Sam Jacob when he nominated this multi-storey car park in Welbeck Street, just north of Oxford Street in Central London, for the Design Museum’s Lesser Known Architecture Show in 2013. He wrote: ‘here infrastructure is handled with such delicacy that all its rawness is elevated to sublime beauty’. He also described it as: ‘simultaneously practical and symbolic’.
The building is a product of the Brutalist era of Architecture, of which the Barbican Centre in London is a prime example. It was designed by Michael Blampied and Partners, and built in 1971.
The sad news is that this building may soon be demolished. While researching for information on this building I came across an article dated Feb 2016 (click here to view it) that reported that the car park was in the process of being sold and was likely to be demolished and the site then re-developed.
This building no longer has that newly built pristine look, but the rain-stained concrete has acquired mood and atmosphere over the years that suggests something slightly sinister. To me it has tremendous appeal as a work of symmetry and design, and definitely it has a raw and sublime beauty.
LensScaper 
Another terrific shot that you have spotted. Your ability to find beauty where others do not is a gift.
LikeLike
That’s very kind of you, Len. Thank you. I have walked past this quite often (although not in recent months) as the Royal Society of Medicine is just a stone’s throw from this site. It would be very sad to see this turned into yet another building site in the heart of London. I’ve only photographed it once – on a dull day. Sunlight would, I think have been an intrusion. But perhaps I should re-visit with the aim of capturing a few more images before the wrecking balls arrive.
LikeLike
I agree Andy, the detail and symmetry is beautiful. You have such a wonderful eye for this.
LikeLike
Thanks very much Edith
LikeLike
Another one bites the dust….hope you manage to get some more images of this,,..
LikeLike
It will be sad to see this go, and only forty-five years since it was built. Is this the new span of life of a new building? If so it seems incredibly shortsighted.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Agreed!
LikeLike
The design is wonderful. My first thought upon seeing the image was of the pen nibs from my grade school days — amazing that I grew up in a time of ink bottles and pens that were dipped – and ink blotters. That was the day when merchants handed out advertising cards that functioned as blotters. Only the big kids got the fancy blotters that came with desk sets.
It’s sad that this building is going to go the way of pen and ink. Sic transit gloria mundi, I suppose.
LikeLike
Sad to think that a modern building that has recognised ‘status’ as something special can be demolished when it is only forty-five years old. Another example of the throw-away society in which we now live.
My desk at school had an ink well (and we had to use fountain pens, refillable ones) but the inkwell was just a hole through which we fed marbles that ran round the interior of the desk on a carefully constructed slope made from the text books etc to a hole drilled in a corner of the floor of the desk! Ink blotters I recall from my father’s desk too.
LikeLike
Fantastic shot – it’s almost hypnotic 🙂
LikeLike
Thank you Lisa – patterns can be wonderfully hypnotic, can’t they.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The B/W processing brings out the beauty of the patterns, perhaps less obvious if the yellowed concrete and probable rust stains are seen. A shame it will be demolished; it has character.
LikeLike
Thank you. There was not much colour in the original, and the colour that was present was irrelevant. One of the joys of B&W, as you will know so well, is the way it simplifies images so that they are all about tonal range and contrast.
LikeLike
This is a beauty. Any thought to trying a version with the camera twisted?
LikeLike
I hadn’t thought about that, Frank….But I have now! And I will post an image tomorrow (Monday) that I have produced earlier today.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pingback: On the Diagonal | LensScaper
Captured brilliantly Andy!
LikeLike
Many thanks Adrian.
LikeLike