What I can't work out is why this car park failed so badly (It's true, the building standards were shocking in the era it was built) but the old A1 fly-over is still going strong and it was built around the same time....
Partly it was v poor build quality (which got worse the higher up you went) and the resulting spalling of the concrete - spalling is what happens when water seeps into thin or poor quality concrete and rusts the reinforcing bars, causing them to expand and that expansion cracks the concrete from the inside. But the car park was never well used - the top half was fenced off and out of use for much of the '90's and the remaining half was never full. Also people didn't seem to like to park so far up - took ages to get down again and the lifts were shocking! The flyover is beginning to spall now, too, and will probably be demolished in the next 10 years or so.
In my opinion this kind of architecture, with so much brutally exposed reenforced concrete, only has a chance to work well if it's built in a very hot and dry type of climate - the Middle East or other parts of the world with desert climates. As soon as you expose something like this to a couple of Northern European winters (protracted rain, snow, ice) it just gets...I dunno...it gets damp and stained and scummy and...urgh! Then people stop respecting it - so it gets vandalised, it gets covered in graffiti, the stairwells start to stink of piss, etc.....and then game over. Great place to shoot a gritty early 1970s British crime drama though! :-)
Good riddance , the upper floors could never be used as it wasn’t safe, it stunk of urine and was an eyesore, i used to work in the city centre and there was a few people that have jumped to their deaths from it. 😢
Good camera work.
What I can't work out is why this car park failed so badly (It's true, the building standards were shocking in the era it was built) but the old A1 fly-over is still going strong and it was built around the same time....
Partly it was v poor build quality (which got worse the higher up you went) and the resulting spalling of the concrete - spalling is what happens when water seeps into thin or poor quality concrete and rusts the reinforcing bars, causing them to expand and that expansion cracks the concrete from the inside. But the car park was never well used - the top half was fenced off and out of use for much of the '90's and the remaining half was never full. Also people didn't seem to like to park so far up - took ages to get down again and the lifts were shocking! The flyover is beginning to spall now, too, and will probably be demolished in the next 10 years or so.
Great pics and vid Iain
Best thing they ever done. Knock it down. It was like an open weeping abscess on the Gateshead skyline.
But good video.
In my opinion this kind of architecture, with so much brutally exposed reenforced concrete, only has a chance to work well if it's built in a very hot and dry type of climate - the Middle East or other parts of the world with desert climates. As soon as you expose something like this to a couple of Northern European winters (protracted rain, snow, ice) it just gets...I dunno...it gets damp and stained and scummy and...urgh! Then people stop respecting it - so it gets vandalised, it gets covered in graffiti, the stairwells start to stink of piss, etc.....and then game over.
Great place to shoot a gritty early 1970s British crime drama though! :-)
Good riddance , the upper floors could never be used as it wasn’t safe, it stunk of urine and was an eyesore, i used to work in the city centre and there was a few people that have jumped to their deaths from it. 😢