Comments by "Tim Murphy" (@timmurphy5541) on "The Aesthetic City" channel.

  1. My concern would be about the freedom to do things that matter to me - will I get planning permission for solar panels on my roof, for example? I also don't think that "modern" automatically means ugly. History has many periods and building styles that one could choose from and they all had to be "modern" at some point. I remember a library in my hometown that was modern in the 1970s but it was just lovely to be inside. It would be sad to be stuck in a timewarp country. OTOH there are some horrendous buildings in the UK and horrendously ugly towns which are not in any way "modern" so much as just crap. They're pretty much places which must have happened because people didn't care. At least Poundbury is a place where someone cared.
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  2. What about black granite? That's what we have in Zimbabwe :-)
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  3. There's a "modern" building in Harare - the City Library - which always had a wonderful atmosphere. It wasn't that beautiful outside but inside it always had an incredible feeling of space and peace and shade and light. There was a courtyard with a fountain so that you got this wonderful sound of water at the entrance and the newspaper room along one wall with its huge windows and comfortable chairs just gave you a fantastic feeling of quiet and nature. It was rather like being in a forest with multiple levels that you could look up to and down from - shadows and a bright central clearing. The building has suffered terrible neglect until just recently when some donors helped repair the roof and put some books back but I don't think it's the same.
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