béton brut beginnings

The origin story of my practice subconsciously and in part lies in the ‘crescents’. Not the Georgian Royals, but Wilson and Womersley’s elevated béton brut blocks of maisonettes in Hulme, Manchester. These sickle-shaped streets in the sky were my undergraduate housing, their fleeting quiddity, beginning to end, equivalent to my approximate age whilst attending Manchester Art School, 21 years (constructed 72 - demolished 93). The four south facing bow shaped blocks were named Adam, Nash, Barry and Kent, the analogy with Georgian London and Bath was entirely valid.

These four massive concrete inflections were like oxbow lakes for the rivers Medlock or Irwell, barchan dunes of shuttered, gravel, sand and cement, the wind blowing from Saddleworth Moor and the Pennines. Their morphology was designed to catch the sun, the arms of these non-symmetrical parabolic constructions embraced each other as they intended to embrace the people who lived in them. Their failure was a failure of the imagination. Brutalism has always polarised opinion, it divides the sculptor from the decorator.