Someone has gone to all the trouble of revisiting the locations of the film, and taking photos to match various film stills. Lots of stuff that’s not there any more, obviously, and it’s all very interesting.
Owen Luder’s monumental concrete car park is finally coming down, although how soon, who knows. Had an interesting time up there a couple of weeks ago, but have yet to find a moment to edit the photographs down to a small set: click through to my new portfolio site to see the scans from that morning renewing my affection for 35mm film.
Please do feel free to tell me which ones to delete. About 12 – 20 max is where I’d like to head with those. There’s some yummy looking Velvia slides too, yet to be scanned.
Dan Prince has a photograph from inside the restaurant at the top. Does anyone remember the restaurant being open for business or have a meal in there? Did it ever actually get finished?
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8 Comments
The restaurant never opened. I always understood that this was because it was impossible to provide proper access for emergency vehicles so in the event of a fire they would have been unable to get hoses near enough. Yet another example of Owen Luder’s abilities as an architect.
Ahh, I thought you’d probably know. I tend to get it mixed up with the Post Office tower restaurant in Brum. Didn’t get into that one, either.
Didn’t we solve the problem of fire hoses in tower blocks with an internal pump system allied to the staircase sections? Hose reels connected to the mains on every floor was pretty much the norm, afair. And the added advantage one has with a car park, as opposed to a domestic block, is that there is vehicular entry to the top.
But yes, it must have been something like that. Or maybe there wasn’t anyone who wanted to run it?
You are right of course, but I don’t know if the building was designed properly – opening of the car park was delayed about a year because of structural problems for example.
There were people making enquiries about use of the restaurant. I think one was for a club, and the police and fire authorities were concerned about means of escape. Imagine a crowd of drunks trying to get down from there in a fire…
It’s a very odd idea, too, a restaurant/bar at the top of a car park. The views are stupendous though.
umm how do you set up that nice slide show widget?
It’s a feature of Lightroom – tab on the top far right. Lots of customisable gallery pages. You need ftp access, but you have that, yes?
Loving 2, 5, 9, 16, 31, 38 a feeling of utter detachment from life at ground level.
Thank you! Actually, the whole place has that air of detachment, as if it didn’t belong. Not sure the Trident Centre has ever been particularly bustling though, unlike say, the original Bull Ring of the same genre.
The edited set is what I’ll put on the portfolio site: I’ll keep the full thing on here, I think. Really appreciate the help with the edits from everyone.