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cdl42
Guest
I suspect that I would agree with adma if I had any clue what he was saying.
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building babel
Guest
I wasn't being dismissive, just accurate. I happen to like the Palace of Westminster - an icon from my English childhood. But the fussy Victorian faux Gothic shops and offices ( and, even worse, the faux timbered Elizabethan buildings ) captured in ganjavih's streetscapes remind me of those rainy day school trips in once prosperous but run down towns, and dull provincial art galleries and museums with flyblown things in display cases, of my childhood. "Stay in line now, don't dawdle, have we lost anyone?"
Having revived Gothic, where could the Victorians go? Gothic Revival Revival? Philip Johnson's tongue in cheek PPG Place in Pittsburgh is the only example of that I can think of, and we had to wait another hundred years for it. No, High Victorian ( a.k.a. Royal Conservatory of Music style ) was a hard slog, with art nouveau, and arts and crafts, beckoning at the end of the tunnel.
cdl42: I'll lend you my secret adma decoder ring sometime - but you must promise me to give it back, okay?
Having revived Gothic, where could the Victorians go? Gothic Revival Revival? Philip Johnson's tongue in cheek PPG Place in Pittsburgh is the only example of that I can think of, and we had to wait another hundred years for it. No, High Victorian ( a.k.a. Royal Conservatory of Music style ) was a hard slog, with art nouveau, and arts and crafts, beckoning at the end of the tunnel.
cdl42: I'll lend you my secret adma decoder ring sometime - but you must promise me to give it back, okay?
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ganjavih
Guest
Just out of curiosity, which photo has the faux Gothic you dislike? Many of the timbered buildings in the city centre do date back to the 1500s... not sure about the ones in my pics.
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building babel
Guest
ganja: And some of the supposedly "later" buildings are probably Tudor too - it was quite common to put new fronts on buildings in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Sometimes you can walk into an elegant "Georgian" building and find irregular Elizabethan rooms inside!
Have you been to Lavenham in Suffolk by the way? It is the most complete surviving timbered town in Britain. Well worth a visit if you get the chance. Some of the buildings have been converted into hotels, including The Great House where the writer Stephen Spender lived. I stayed there in a bedroom that sloped in all directions - and the front of the building had been redone as "Georgian".
www.lavenham.co.uk/greathouse/
Re: your pix: I think the Vodafone building ( pic. 5 ) is faux Gothic ( look at those windowsills ) but there isn't much to go on; pic.15 has a peek-a-boo of timbered that can't be Elizabethan; pic.20 has a cluster of strange mixed styles - not sure what; and pics.24 and 25 have a timbered something or other next to an awesome stone-faced hunk in a style that I can't quite put a finger on ( which also shows up in pic.26 ). What is it, do you know? It has a sort of 1900 Gaudi/Jacobean Manor House/Baroque thing going for it.
Have you been to Lavenham in Suffolk by the way? It is the most complete surviving timbered town in Britain. Well worth a visit if you get the chance. Some of the buildings have been converted into hotels, including The Great House where the writer Stephen Spender lived. I stayed there in a bedroom that sloped in all directions - and the front of the building had been redone as "Georgian".
www.lavenham.co.uk/greathouse/
Re: your pix: I think the Vodafone building ( pic. 5 ) is faux Gothic ( look at those windowsills ) but there isn't much to go on; pic.15 has a peek-a-boo of timbered that can't be Elizabethan; pic.20 has a cluster of strange mixed styles - not sure what; and pics.24 and 25 have a timbered something or other next to an awesome stone-faced hunk in a style that I can't quite put a finger on ( which also shows up in pic.26 ). What is it, do you know? It has a sort of 1900 Gaudi/Jacobean Manor House/Baroque thing going for it.
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Brighter Hell
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babel, you want faux timbered elizabethan buildings? check out pickering village in ajax :\
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adma
Guest
I get your drift, Babel--though maybe there's broader issues (as there'd be for any of us) than style alone--y'know, sociology, usage, even (and I don't mean this dismissively) personal pathology? Locally speaking, it'd be like the queasy vibes one might get from Olde Unionville or the Distillery District or anyplace touristy-central-coreish. Something feels strangely contrived, strained, dead-endy--or excessively highlighting said qualities. And what could be more strained (or compounding of existing strained-ness) than a school trip?
I know; I've been through that too, w/family, w/school, w/friends. Shows like "The Simpsons" have a field day with it. Past architectural-mag critics of the twee of "Townscape" have had a field day with it. Yes, it was and is, in a sense, limited and retrogressive, this c19 Victorian Gothic. But once we take a more distant and synthetic viewpoint, dead ends don't look so dead--especially if we take the meta-viewpoint that anything can be a dead end, if you let it.
So why let it? Hundreds of dead ends = life;-)
Maybe the best thing in this case would have been a more protracted stay in Oxford with a touch of the anti-tourist--y'know, even venturing into the where-fools-fear-to-tread of East Oxford, etc, once the inevitable boredom w/the core sets in. (That's how I'd do it;-))
I know; I've been through that too, w/family, w/school, w/friends. Shows like "The Simpsons" have a field day with it. Past architectural-mag critics of the twee of "Townscape" have had a field day with it. Yes, it was and is, in a sense, limited and retrogressive, this c19 Victorian Gothic. But once we take a more distant and synthetic viewpoint, dead ends don't look so dead--especially if we take the meta-viewpoint that anything can be a dead end, if you let it.
So why let it? Hundreds of dead ends = life;-)
Maybe the best thing in this case would have been a more protracted stay in Oxford with a touch of the anti-tourist--y'know, even venturing into the where-fools-fear-to-tread of East Oxford, etc, once the inevitable boredom w/the core sets in. (That's how I'd do it;-))
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Bayguy
Guest
Beautiful city.
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BuildTO
Guest
Lovely pics! Even the demonstrations look lovely. 
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bizorky
Guest
Beautiful town. Tons of history. Boyle, Hooke, Newton...what a history!
Thanks for the pictures. You have a great eye, ganja.
Thanks for the pictures. You have a great eye, ganja.
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ganjavih
Guest
Thanks bizorky... though I think Sir Isaac was a Cambridge boy if I remember correctly. Other famous Oxonians include Halley (of Halley's comet), William Penn (founder of Pennsylvania), Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, JRR Tolkien, Aldous Huxley, CS Lewis, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Dudley Moore, Stephen Hawking (now at Cambridge), Andrew Lloyd-Weber, Tony Blair, Rowan Atkinson, etc, etc, etc...