Chiltong V – A Brutalist Crawl

The Billy Chiltong Collective recently had their fifth outing. We returned to London, this time for an informal tour of brutalist architecture.

The Plan

My very cool sister gave me the Brutalist Map of London for my birthday, and this was the final straw,  after years of saying I wanted to go and look at it all, the map broke the camel’s back.

I put forward a ‘Brutal Crawl’ to the ‘Billy Chiltong Photo Collective’. The Idea was to hit as many of London’s Brutalist Buildings as we could in a day.

I made a loose plan based on a loop that started at Paddington Station, and took in some of the brutalist highlights that London had to offer, while remaining open to change in the face of both logistics and desire.

My Loadout

After the time and money spent on shooting my panoramic and large format cameras over the course of this year, I had planned to make this a digital adventure, because it would be cheaper.

I felt a brief stab of regret that I no longer own my TS-E 17mm f4L as this would have been the perfect outing for it, but its absence did mean I could leave my tripod behind, and no tripod meant no filters. An R5 Body and my 15-35mm f/2.8, would have to suffice.

My newly arrived iPhone 17 Pro Max went into to the bag, because my train tickets were on it, as well as my gps, modes of payment and ability to phone people. I was also keen to see what its cameras could do.

The arrival of the new KEKS M Meter put pay to any suggestion of digital only capture. I decided I could use the day to try the meter out and to reengage with my Voigtlander 28mm. At least shooting 35mm is cheaper than shooting either the panoramic or large format camera. 

First Stop – 102 Petty France

Our first stop was 102 Petty France. Designed by Fitzroy Robinson & Partners with Sir Basil Spence and completed in 1976.

Its imposing and fortress like architecture lends itself nicely to its current incarnation as headquarters of the Ministry of Justice, and prior to that the home office. In May of this year it was announced that the MOJ will be leaving at an undisclosed date, and in August it was acquired by the Arora Group for £245m, the plan being to redevelop the site as a hotel.

Stop Two – The South Bank

Stop two was technically The Old Star, a pub opposite 102 Petty France, which gave us a chance to regroup and look at the plan for the rest of the day. Our second destination was the South Bank which is a target rich area for the fans of brutalist architecture. The area boasts the National Theatre, South Bank Centre, Hayward Gallery and the Royal Festival Hall.

We had to wait out the intermittent rain and weather the naff grey skies both which hampered results and dampened the mood.

Luckily there were burritos to eat and bridges to shelter under.

Break time

We made our way towards  Waterloo in search of beer and took further shelter in the Leake Street Vaults. Not brutalist, but vibrant and undercover.  

Final Stop – The Brunswick Centre

Our final stop of the day was to head out to The Brunswick Centre. Built in the late sixties it was designed by Patrick Hodgkinson based on studies by Leslie Martin.

Grade II listed since 2000, it contains various shops, cafés and restaurants, all controlled by the developer. It also contains 560 flats administered by the London Borough of Camden.

Since its listing it has seen significant renovation, although the split public/private ownership has led to an incongruent implementation of the developments, as the developer has renovated the structure and the shops while the council has been slow to improve the residencies.

Conclusions

As always I underestimated the travelling time between destinations. We were dogged by flat grey skies and intermittent rain for much of the day.

My plan to finish up at the Trellick Tower was consumed by travel time and a concern to not be in London all night. We had a lot on, failed to achieve a lot of it, and had a really nice time.

The trip was impacted to some extent by the previous trip to The Barbican, a site so expansive and explorable that dedicating a day to it just wasn’t enough. The photographs of these smaller  examples, captured under worse light and under the pressure of time pale a little in comparison.

 I also attacked the day with a little less gusto than I did the Barbican, and I think that’s visible in the photographs. They are more a snapshot of the things I saw than photographs of them.

In terms of the hardware the phone camera is fine, the 28mm flummoxes me with the enormous frame lines and the Canon was my trusty Canon. The KEKs M Meter will have its own post soon but in general I’m super happy with it.

The downside of keeping things cheap is I don’t think as hard about what I’m making. Had I taken the big cameras, I might have spent more money and more time, but I would have taken a more considered approach. We might have seen less, but the photographs might be stronger.