Tag Archives: concrete

They must be expecting riot and insurrection at Amazon Fresh during the carnival

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DURING THE NOTTING Hill Carnival, always held during the last weekend of August, some homes, shops, and other businesses in the area where it is held or along the routes leading to it, take precautions to prevent their properties being damaged by over exuberant (i.e., drunk, drugged, or violent) revellers. Usually, the preventative measure taken is the erection of wooden boarding, which is usually soon covered with colourful graffiti.

The recently opened Amazon Fresh supermarket in Notting Hill Gate has taken things much further. Not only have they put up wooden boarding (upmarket quality compared with what other businesses use), but behind it they have placed huge concrete blocks such as are usually used to make temporary barriers to protect workers from being hit by fast moving traffic while they are doing repairs on busy motorways. Furthermore, these heavy blocks have been encased in sturdy metal cages. And to prevent things from being lobbed over the top of this recreation of the Berlin Wall, netting has been placed. The weak points in this anti-insurrection barrier are gaps in it for the entrance and exit. No doubt, tough security guards will be stationed at these vulnerable positions, but would they be prepared to risk injury and the wrath of a mob simply to save the paltry selection (compared with other nearby shops) of wares sold in the shop? Finally, I wonder whether the cost of the precautions taken will be outweighed by the profits that this now unwelcoming-looking, fortress of a shop might hope to make.

Designed by a disciple of Le Corbusier but it stands disused

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THE BUSTLING KHWAJA Market in the heart of old Ahmedabad (Gujarat, India) stretches from the Bhadra Fort to the three-arched Teen Darwaja – a magnificent medieval gateway. Between the two, on one side of the marketplace, there is a 20th century edifice that is hard to miss. Built in the Brutalist style, this massive concrete building is the Premabhai Hall.

Premabhai Hall in Ahmedabad

It was completed in 1972. Its architect was Le Corbusier’s disciple and collaborator, the late BV Doshi (1927 – 2023). His building – an auditorium -replaced an earlier meeting hall, which had been built during the British occupation of India.

Looking like a giant piece of moder sculpture Doshi’s building hardly clashes with the mediaeval buildings on either side of it. Sadly, because of concerns about fire hazards, the Hall ceased being used in the 1990s. Luckily, it is still standing, but when looked at closely, it is showing signs of deterioration.

I hope that one day, the Premabhai Hall will be restored to its former glory.

A pioneering bridge

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THE CONCRETE PEDESTRIAN bridge over the railway tracks at Kew Gardens Station cannot be described as attractive. In fact, it is rather ugly. However, on a recent visit to the station, I spotted a notice attached to the bridge that provides interesting information about it.

The bridge was opened in 1912. It is one of the earliest examples of the use of reinforced concrete in Britain. The technique used to construct this bridge was that pioneered by François Hennebique (1842-1921). The first building made in Britain using his method of reinforcing concrete with wrought iron beams was the Weaver Building in Swansea (in 1897). An article in Wikipedia related that between 1892 and 1902, over 2000 structures were made using Hennebique’s method. This makes me wonder why the plaque on the bridge at Kew is described as a “rare example” of this kind of structure. Maybe, what is meant is that it is a rare surviving example of his construction method. In any case, the bridge at Kew incorporates two features that were designed to protect users of the bridge from the smoke produced by steam engines that used to travel beneath it. One feature is the high wall on each side of the pathway over the bridge. The other are small projections over the railway lines, which were designed to deflect smoke from the bridge.

Kew Gardens station was opened in 1869. It is the only station on the London Underground network to have a pub attached to it. In the past, this pub, now known as The Tap on the Line, had an entrance directly from the London bound platform. In addition to the bridge described above, there is also an underground pedestrian passageway running beneath the tracks. The main reasons to use this station are to visit the National Archives and/or Kew Gardens. If you are coming from central London to visit the gardens, you will have to cross the tracks. So, why not cross them on a bridge that, although ugly, is a landmark of engineering history?

Just in case they attack

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AFTER WW2 MANY thousands of concrete bunkers were built all over Albania because the country’s paranoid and brutal dictator Enver Hoxha, who ruled between 1944 and 1985, was concerned that the country would be invaded by its neighbours or others further afield. The invasion never happened. Likewise, the much-feared invasion of the UK during WW2 never occurred (except for the Channel Islands). However, in anticipation of a feared German invasion of the UK, the country, like Albania, was covered with concrete fortifications in many shapes and sizes. During a recent visit to Sidmouth in Devon, I spotted one of these, a small concrete ‘pill box’.

Located high on a cliff (overlooking Jacob’s Ladder Beach) next to Sidmouth’s Connaught Gardens, this small bunker was probably constructed as part of a coastal defence system in  1940-41. Later in WW2 when the risk of a German invasion was getting smaller, it was used during the training exercises that were performed prior to the Allied invasion of Normandy in early June 1940. It was from the south Devon coast that the invasion force set out for France.

Designed to resist destruction, bunkers such as the small one I saw in Sidmouth (and the multitude of mostly hemispherical bunkers I have seen in Albania), they are both difficult and expensive to remove when they are no longer needed. Interestingly, these concrete defences are no guarantee against successful invasion, as can be seen from the ineffectiveness of the Maginot Line in eastern France and the huge structures built by the Germans on the Atlantic coast of that country.  

Point of departure

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TORWOOD STREET RUNS downhill to the harbour of Torquay in Devon. This usually busy street is currently (March 2022) closed to vehicular traffic because it is undergoing repairs including resurfacing. During WW2, the street was resurfaced with concrete sufficiently strong to bear the weight of tanks and other heavy military vehicles that were making their way downhill to the harbour. One of our friends in Torquay told me that the current roadworks was partly to replace the concrete surface that was laid down in the 1940s. This US military equipment was on its way to the beaches of Normandy, where the invasion of German occupied France took place: the D Day Landings in 1944.

When these heavy vehicles reached the water’s edge, they had to be loaded onto boats. Concrete embarkation ramps were constructed in May 1943. They were used to load the equipment onto seagoing vessels in June 1944 to carry out Operation Overlord, which involved landing the US forces onto the Normandy coast. The concrete slipways, which have been preserved, were called ‘Embarkation Hards’. According to information displayed on a memorial close to the ‘hards’, the landing craft used in Operation Overlord operated a shuttle service between Torquay and the Normandy beaches. Soldiers of the 4th US Infantry Division, who embarked at Torquay, were amongst the 23000 troops who were landed at Utah Beach in Normandy. Along with them, 1700 tanks, guns, and trucks also arrived on that beach.

The ‘hards’, point of departure for Normandy, are not particularly attractive to look at, but they are an impressive souvenir of what was an important military operation, which in no little way helped to bring about the downfall of Hitler and the Nazi regime.