Gate 81 Preston Bus Station
April 16th, 2013
The Gate 81 project hacklab/workshop/charette has been arranged for May 2013.
Link: Gate 81 Hacklab
Email for info@gate81.com if you are interested in taking part.
FORGOTTEN SPACES
February 25th, 2013
Continuity in Architecture is almost twenty years old. It is something that we would like to celebrate and we fully intend to mark the occasion with some sort of jamboree or other such event. Look out for further posts.
Over the years we have conducted projects in many different locations: Palma, Venice, Barcelona, Dubrovnik, Dublin, Manchester, London, Valencia, Sant Sadurni, just to start with. But there is one location that we keep coming back to, it is a place that through position, evolution, history and neglect has a huge amount to offer us in Continuity in Architecture: it is of course: Preston. We have produced some marvellous proposals for the place, from bridges to tunnels, new urban squares to department stores, almost non-existent interventions to massive demolition works, all of which have their basis in the understanding and translation of the qualities of the area.
So it is with great anticipation that we notice that another institution has also recognised the worth of the place. The RIBA have just launched their FORGOTTEN SPACES competition in the engrossing city of Preston. Why not have a go? Why not have a look at the project that you’ve already designed? Let us remember some of your fabulous work. See extract from the competition brief below and competition call here
“Preston is full of potential for development, with proposals for major investment across the city. However, there still remain pockets of obscure leftover land and neglected plots that could- with imagination and new thinking- accommodate a host of functions, respond to local needs and provide a counterpoint to these wider investment proposals.
Held for the first time in the North West, this design competition asks architects, planners, artists, engineers and landscape designers to nominate an existing over- looked site in Preston and propose an idea for its improvement.
A ‘forgotten space’ could be small or large - a grassy verge, a wasteland, an unused car park, a derelict building, an empty unit, an underpass or a flyover. The proposal could be simple or complex, a commercial or public facility, a piece of public art or a new building. The main requirement is that it responds to the surrounding area and serves a function for the local community.”
Preston Bus Station fights for life
December 16th, 2012
All our Preston Bus Station posts. The demolition vote is being held by Preston City Council on Monday 17th December.
The Council’s background documentation is here … Including costings and rejected urban design proposals.
End of Year Exhibition
June 15th, 2012
ON THE INDUSTRIAL RUINS
Continuity in Architecture has run two projects this year, both in post-industrial cities: Preston and Barcelona. Each city has approached the problem of how to transform the unban environment to accommodate the needs of the twenty-first century population in a different manner. As always we began with a study of the urban environment, within CiA, the emphasis is always directed towards the site, the place, the situation. Relationships that exist between the different textures within the condition of the location can be explored, translated and interpreted. And thus the form of the new is influenced not by the function but by the form of the existing, and so it is not form follows function, but form follows form.
Coketown
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. (Charles Dickens, Coketown)
Blind with Love for a Language
The prospects of the Barcelonese worker remained the same throughout the nineteenth century: grinding, brutish, and without much hope of change… They lived cramped in garrets and basements, without heat or light or air. Midcentury Barcelona made Dickensian London look almost tolerable; Cerda` found that its population density was about 350 people per acre, twice that of Paris, and that workers had a living space of about ninety square feet per person. (Robert Hughes, Barcelona)
Remember, Reveal, Construct
BIM ‘69, The Integrated Team
February 23rd, 2012
This is the cover of the June 1969 issue of BDP Preston in-house magazine ‘Contact’.
BDP was founded in Preston and pioneered a team-based, democratic approach to building design in the era of the mandatory fee scale. In this illustration entitled THE INTEGRATED TEAM the BDP ethos is affectionately satirised.
I believe the artist was Peter Jones, an architect in the BDP Preston office. Note the representation of the QS ‘CALCULUS ABACUS’ in what appears to be a dunce’s cap.
Adam Khan Architects at Brockholes
January 12th, 2012
My article in Architecture Today on Adam Khan Architects’ Brockholes floating visitor centre is available at this LINK
Piazza San Marco meets Preston Bus Station
October 13th, 2011
In the spirit of the Collage City Unité/Uffizi comparison: Piazza San Marco transformed into Preston Bus Station.
On the Industrial Ruins
September 20th, 2011
Over the last forty years the western world has witnessed massive social and economic restructuring. The old heavy industries, upon which our society was constructed, have collapsed. Countries such as the UK and Spain, once the workshops of the world, are now reliant upon the new service and information-technology industries. The urban areas within these countries contain a vast wealth of memory and experience. We need humility in the face of such grandeur of industrial legacy if we are to construct new elements in these neglected areas. Within the cities of the industrial revolution a new form of spatial production is needed to invest the dying urban patterns and decaying fabric with meaning.
Continuity in Architecture will run two projects both in post-industrial cities. Each city has approached the problem of how to transform the unban environment to accommodate the needs of the twenty-first century population in a different manner. We will examine the qualities and character of the places before making design proposals.
Coketown
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.
(Charles Dickens, Coketown)
Blind with Love for a Language
The prospects of the Barcelonese worker remained the same throughout the nineteenth century: grinding, brutish, and without much hope of change. Statistics altered and demographic shifts were seen: for instance, the more machines were used in the mills, the more demand there was for women to run them, since machinery did not require as much physical strength, and women could be paid less. But the vile calculus of human misery was unaltered… They lived cramped in garrets and basements, without heat or light or air. Midcentury Barcelona made Dickensian London look almost tolerable; Cerda` found that its population density was about 350 people per acre, twice that of Paris, and that workers had a living space of about ninety square feet per person.
(Robert Hughes, Barcelona)
Mistaken Urbanism
May 2nd, 2011
Endless Bridge
May 1st, 2011
Architects at work
February 4th, 2011
Architects’ office April 2006.
Francis Roberts Architects have moved to 1 Ribblesdale Place, Preston.
A Grand Day Out?
January 10th, 2011
ManchesterModernist Society are organizing a ‘Preston Grand Day Out’ on Saturday 22 January 2011. All are welcome - see details on the MMS website.The trip will be led by Aidan Turner-Bishop, a key figure in the fight to protect the architectural heritage of Preston from inappropriate development.
The day out will involve crawling all over Preston Bus Station and exploring the local urbanism of pedestrian alienation (’subways’). The group will subsequently visit an architectural masterpiece - The Harris Museum and Art Gallery …













