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My Walk this Week – Architecture at The Glynn Vivian

My walk this week is not in a natural environment but instead it is around the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and Museum – unless you consider our need for creativity a part of nature, which I do! It is an essential part of our existence that we observe the things around us and it is a part of my own particular nature to enjoy observing what we call art, and also on this occasion, architecture and design.

Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and Museum

The architecture of the original building is formal, balanced, symmetrical. The newer wing is made in concrete and the even newer entrance is largely glass. This is perhaps fitting as the building opposite also has a new glass extension as entrance to Swansea College of Art and the original design of this building reflects that of the Glynn Vivian.Continue reading

Architecture and Art in Cardiff City – Reviewing the Walk

Looking through the entrance archway of Cardiff City Hall towards the end of my walk this week and the National Museum of Wales, I have completed my circuit of the rectangle of classical, brutalist and functional architecture that makes up this cultural and educational sector at the approach to the city centre.

Completing the walk in the museum itself and the Artes Mundi exhibition (already visited three times), I can only recommend a visit to the show before it ends on 26th February.

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Mixed Media in Cardiff City

My walk this week featured a range of mixed media. From the natural mossy trees in perspective and their shadows on buildings to a classical architectural foreground with a more modernist tower in the background; the intricacy of sculptures and the simplicity of the structures within walls along with urban pedestrian functionality. It makes for quite a mixed bag and all to be seen within a hundred yards or so in the centre of Cardiff City.

Cardiff tree perspective

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My Walk this Week – Culture, Classical and Concrete

My walk this week takes a tour around the classical and concrete block of cultural, educational and municipal buildings in the centre of Cardiff, Wales. Amgueddfa in Welsh or museum in English, this first image shows a segment of the display block alongside the National Museum of Wales which currently shows the banner for the Arts Mundi 7 exhibition. This is a biannual international art exhibition which we have seen since it started 14 years ago. The exhibition has one of the largest prizes in the art world (£40,000).

Started in Cardiff, it is a an event of which Wales can be justly proud. It ends in cardiff on 26th February and I will be trying to get to see it for a fourth time before that. John Akomfrah is the justifiable winner on this occasion but the whole exhibition, while being largely video based, is well worth giving the time to tour fully.

Amgueddfa / Museum

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Classically Standing Alone

The new Great Hall at Swansea University Bay Campus stands alone in the arrangement of buildings housing the College of Engineering, the School of Management and student accommodation. The whole complex has quite a conservative feel about it, but the Great Hall is very deliberately classical in style.

Swansea Uni new campus-18

Is this building and the rest of the campus architecture intended to present such a serious and sober outlook? I suspect it is.Continue reading