20th Century Society comes to Grand Parade Campus.
15 Aug 2013
In April some 50 members of the 20th Century Society visited the Main Building at Grand Parade as part of their walking tour ‘Brighton Revisited with Pevsner’. The tour was conducted by Nick Antram and Richard Morrice, authors of the new ‘Pevsner City Guide for Brighton and Hove 2008’ which looks at post 1914 buildings in Central Brighton.
Buildings viewed included the Masonic Centre, Queens Road; Brighthelm Centre, North Road; Brighton Square; Pavilion South Gate War Memorial; Ha-Ha bar (former Brighton & Hove Herald offices); Former Fruit & Veg Market, Circus St; American Express and the Jubilee Library.
Grand Parade main building is described in Pevsner as ‘one of Brighton’s better post war buildings and remarkably considerate to its site. Concave front following the curve of Grand Parade with glazed ground floor set behind pilotis. Two bands of fenestration above, articulated in a rhythm which reflects the width of the Regency terraced frontages that follow.
A small display of elevation and plan drawings as well as notes from ‘From Art School to Polytechnic’, J.M. Woodham and S. Worden, 1986, was available for the members to look at and a talk was given by a ex-staff member in Architecture & Design who worked with Percy Billington, Brighton Borough Architect, on the project.
The tour looked at the 1930s “rising tide of commercial building” in the town centre, designed by London architects such as Goodhart Rendel and the local practice, John Denman, who used craftsmen from the Ditchling community. They looked inside a number of buildings including Denman’s astonishing Freemasons’ Hall (1928), Brighton University by Robert Matthew Johnson Marshall (1967), and the new Library by Bennetts Associates (2005). It finished at Brighton Museum to study the important collection of 1930s furnishings for private and commercial interiors from Paris, London and Northampton, as well as from two contrasting houses: Edward James’s Monkton and Pevsner’s own home.
The visit was arranged in conjunction with Dr. Catherine Harper, Head of School of Architecture & Design and John Ritson, Site Manager, Estate & Facilities Management.
http://www.c20society.org.uk/docs/about/aims.html
http://www.c20society.org.uk/docs/about/history.html
