I loved the Flintstones cartoons. The creators were so imaginative in their ideas of how a modern stoneage family would function. Fred played ten-pin bowling with stone bowling balls and stone pins. It was fabulous. The cars had stone wheels and were operated by the legs and feet of the characters.
The later movies, with actual actors, were so very clever, set in the stone age equivalent of Las Vegas and in the quarry where Fred worked as a crane driver - the crane being a dinosaur. When water floods the quarry, it mixes with the stone dust, creating concrete - a new invention to be named after the quarry's owner's daughter Concretia. Amusing to think that might actually be the way that the ugliest buliding material ever availabe to man began.
Concrete is the scourge of urban development. I will never forget the eyesore building on Blackpool's Golden Mile. A huge, hideous grey blot on our coastal landscape that has thankfully been recently demolished. This kind of Brutalist architecture sprung up all over Europe during the 1950s and 1960s, While lauded by some, these buildings have brought about many depressive environments.
The term Brutalism was coined by the British architectural critic Reyner Banham to describe the approach to building particularly associated with the architects Peter and Alison Smithson, The term originates from the use, by the pioneer modern architect and painter Le Corbusier, of ‘beton brut’ – raw concrete in French. Banham gave the French word a punning twist to express the general horror with which this concrete architecture was greeted in Britain.
Many high-rise apartment blocks and municial buildings employed the use of raw concrete, including London's National Theatre.
You to me
Are sweet as roses in the morning
Are soft as summer rain at dawn, in love we share
That something rare
The concrete and the clay beneath my feet
Begins to crumble
But love will never die
Because we'll see the mountains tumble
Before we say goodbye
In love eternally
That's the way
Mmm, that's the way it's meant to be
I see the purple shades of evening
And on the ground
The shadows fall and once again you're in my arms
So tenderly
The concrete and the clay beneath my feet
Begins to crumble
But love will never die
Because we'll see the mountains tumble
Before we say goodbye
In love eternally
That's the way
Mmm, that's the way it's meant to be
7 comments:
I have to say I like the look and feel of the National. I see it every day on my way to/from work, in all sorts of lights and weathers and it works for me.
Unit 4+2 famously were filmed performing (i.e. miming to) 'Concrete And Clay' on a building site in London in 1965. What was being constructed there at the time was the Barbican Centre, an icon of British Brutalism. The clip is on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zstZkoGyZS4
I used to love The Flintstones. Yes, Fred was a crane operator but his given job title (always made me laugh) was "geological engineer". I have no recollection of Concretia at all.
Interesting. I used to love the Flintstones as well. I do think brutalism isn't concrete's fault. It's the architects who are to blame for using it in that way ;)
I suppose like any material the key is in the design. I love Preston Bus Station.
The song was ok but I thought the name of the band was great. I didn't buy the record.
I remember that song.
I used to watch the Flintstones cartoons on tv. I didn't know there had been a movie as well - after my time. As for concrete, there's definitely a place for it. We wouldn't have safe football stadiums without it. Look what happened at Bradford.
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