Screen Manchester Piccadilly by Tadao Ando

You can buy this image at Alamy

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Latest Sale

Here is one of my latest sales to a magazine. Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral by Frederick Gibberd was built between 1962 and 1967. One of the first cathedrals to have a centralised plan for the liturgy. Between 1963 and 1965 Gibberd also built an almost identical structure at Hopwood Hall College near Middleton, but without the flying buttresses.

See all of my photos of the Metropolitanc Cathedral Liverpool

Shippon

Up to Cheesden Pasture Mill yesterday for the first time. It lies north of the Edenfield Road and you have to get over a high stile into the field to be on your way. I just about made it after falling over the stile and almost losing all my camera equipment. It was worth all the effort though, because the site still shows the remains of the mill and lodge which started its life in around 1810 and finished in the 1890's.

Now within the lumps and bumps is another vernacular curiosity. Built of concrete (I would say post war) a shippon lies to the southern end of where the mill was. I loved it - almost cathedral like in its form with its nave like arches spreading upwards to shroud the sheep in warmth and solitude. To the exterior its bitumined hide which reminds me of the upside down boat cabins on Holy Island (photo courtesy of p smithson).

You can see all the mills on my archi-map of the Cheesden Valley

Cheesden Valley Project

Tadao Ando

You either love him or hate him for his abstract structures or his use of concrete but Tadao Ando has a large international following and a significant list of architectural commissions. My interest developed when he designed the a Japanese style Pavilion and Screen for Manchester UK's Piccadilly Gardens. It is designed to screen the Gardens from the tramway and as a structure I'm not sure it works. It seems to be in the words of Frank Lloyd Wright (correct me if I'm wrong) on the place rather than of the place. In other words it looks out of place.

Now, don't get me wrong this doesn't mean that I don't like the screen. In fact, through trying to photograph the screen I have learnt a lot about the man behind it and his love of light, shadow and mass including the interplay of such a solid object with its surroundings especially the contrast with softer more permeable elements such as trees and foliage as I hope the photos I took below show.

You can view all of my photo's of Tadao Ando's Screen here

This is the book that I first read about Ando

More about Tadao Ando (a brief biography)

Tadao Ando at Great Buildings Online