A World Of Panes

All Images: Central Leicester, January 2016

Windows remain a regular motif amongst my routine trawls of urban, photographic source material.  Whited-out ones have loomed large in my consciousness of late, whilst otherwise blind or barricaded examples have also cropped up on here with some regularity - and continue to retain their fascination.  Another variation is the grid of multiple panes, two recent examples of which feature here.

Leicester is still full of industrial and commercial buildings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, - which often speak of a once vibrant manufacturing economy steadily slipping from memory.  Quite grand, or at least purposeful, edifices can often be observed sliding gradually into increased dilapidation, in the current urban landscape. Others linger on, in abandoned or burnt-out dereliction, or are eventually reduced to vacant plots awaiting redevelopment, possibly behind some last vestiges of a facade.

Those, once unified buildings that remain in continued occupation or utility, often do so in a sub-divided and increasingly ad-hoc state, giving the impression of merely providing a temporary shelter for opportunist enterprises, who would gladly move on, - should the opportunity or favourable economic conditions ever arise.

This is often reflected in their gridded, glazed elevations, which were once part of some architect’s carefully-designed attempt to present a proud face to the world, or to represent the stylistic orthodoxy or idealism of a previous age.  Nowadays, however, they often reveal: their mixed occupancy, - through evidence of internal partition or multiplying, shonky signage; changes of use or attitudes to privacy, - through blanked or totally decommissioned sections; the history of recent years, - through the visible, abandoned detritus of occupants, past and current; or just a wealth of disrepair, neglect, or good old wear and tear, (all the good stuff to which my lens is perpetually drawn, in fact).

Anyway, the examples shown here display various aspects of all this, not to mention two rather differing iterations of Modernist design, - separated by a few decades.  The quasi-Deco styling of the first building must once have appeared pretty smart, although it is now anything but.  It comes from a period when, whilst the modular grid was already becoming supreme, it was still deemed worth the expense and effort to augment it with elements of formal decoration.  Despite its current, poorly maintained state, that green paintwork and the frieze of period colours, still glow pleasingly against the red brickwork, on a sun-lit day.  As the signage suggests, the whole place is now little more than a nest of relatively cheaply-rentable floor space, however.

The second building clearly represents a later, International Style of pure functionality, although we’re far from the top-drawer elegance of Mies van der Rohe here, and much more in the familiar realm of lowest-cost pre-fabrication.  This is an aesthetic characterised by mass production and little concern for the quality of aging materials; one, in fact, destined to appear obsolete in an alarmingly short time span.  This example displays many of the signs of entropy characteristic of its kind, as well as (un)clear evidence of blanked-out window panes.  The tatty, vertical blinds are a typical period signifier, whereas the pristine new vinyl signage indicates the latest change of use (or rebranding, at least), within a new, globally networked context.  Most intriguing of all is the row of eerie little doll/mascots lined up on one window ledge.  They speak of a completely different order of interior idiosyncracy altogether.

I guess the only other point worth making here, is that such architectural grids seem full of the concept of endless variation within a single, modular format.  Given my own current creative preoccupations, it's surely no accident that I’m so drawn to that idea.