Building #57
Fictional city hall
I’m planning a new book about a fictional historical building, which at the time of its completion would have been considered a ‘modern’ city hall.
The original objective was to bring together all my prior research and writing on the history of building design and construction, including a doctoral thesis; then put it into a more accessible form, in a similar way to this Substack, which started as a spin off from my first self-published book in 2019, ‘Building Passions’.
It’s not been a straightforward task, but sharing some of my thinking in posts such as this one has been very helpful to me.
Previously, I explored the concept of a building design and construction continuum with a purist- decorist horizontal axis, as well as its relationship with a connected vertical axis of standards (fidelity of replication through innovation). I’ve also mentioned my interest in certain historical buildings such as the Royal Liver Building in Liverpool (1911) and the American Radiator Building in New York (1924).
There is a developing outline of the proposed book with some sample text. The key premise is that two architect-partner brothers disagree over their joint approach to designing a key municipal building in their home city. Things get out of hand and personal and professional relationships stall, jeopardising the whole project.
Below is a brief taster:
Joseph had come up with an initial concept that was bold and exciting, full of dramatically contrasting geometric shapes, in true modernist style. Michael, on the other hand, had critiqued his brother’s design for its lack of structural coherence and beauty, as well as his failure to capture the appropriate tone of a monumental city hall.
Joseph wanted to build using untarnished reinforced concrete, but Michael preferred coloured bricks for the design.
This all takes place in the first half of the 20th Century, a period when building design and construction was responding to technical innovation and economic and social upheaval, including a global depression that separated two intercontinental wars.