Floral Hall portico

I love posts like this....from discussing the colour of a Floral Hall Portico to Ancient Egyptian Astronomy is one easy step.

Superb!

By the way is that Ptolemy geezer the bloke who appeared on the TV prog Restoration??

The structure is a mixture of mainly original and [I assume] some new bits, and because if you look closely there is a less than perfect finish to some of the flat surfaces the grey paint does emphasise the look of something having just been cast. Yet look from a distance and it almost seems too perfect next to its neighbours, a bit like grey plastic...perhaps it reminds me of the unpainted airfix kits my brother had....or were they black?

Yes, Daniel - Ptolemy was on Restoration

He was also the architect of Southwark Cathedral's millennium project (the courtyard, library and refectory etc on the north side)

A Melted Pony ?

My Old Ant Pee ?

openly mated?
dopey, mental?
apt old enemy?
Ole, my pedant!
deploy at men?
tend maypole? (or, dent maypole, if that sounds weirder)?
yodel apt men? (high on a pyramid stood a lonely camelherd?)
no pet lady me?
pee manly dot?



[obviously i used a computer for this]

I loved the restoration program last year I didn't take much notice of the presenters ,so this Ptolemy Dean is a trusty of the market,thats why every one else's opinions on this have been ignored

Well sadly he's misguided and wrong.

Silvery desaturated colour would be better than gray giving the building some warmth and luster

A good designer could play around with the circles and squares on the building and come up with a slightly more contemporary veneration on the original colouration theme

The options are endless
Gray can work as part of a balenced colour scheme on its own its just dead.

Half of Spital fields market was demolished last year to build gray office buildings its a sort of insult to the idea of conservation to paint a historic building like its an office block.
Which is basically what they have done, especially when the colouration of most office buildings is dictated entialy by cost cuts,which is why there gray .

Michael,

You are obviously very knowledgeable and passionate about your subject, but the main building which is currently being constructed on the former site of half of Spitalfields market (Bishop's Square) is largely glass, with a green (rather than grey) colour scheme.

It is, of course, still an office block.

Of course, there is always another argumant, namely that too much conservation would be stifling and the city needs to adapt to survive. To move part of one building across town is hardly conservation in it's purest form anyway. London is full of buildings that have been adapted over different periods. To what point should these be restored?

I'm inclined to agree that the grey does look like primer and so the whole thing looks unfinished and that's a shame.

An interesting point Harry, I remember when the people in charge of the Tower of London thought it might be a good idea to flood the moat, thus restoring it, why not knock everything else down post the Norman period and restore it completely? The evolution of buildings and sites are (in IMHO) a fascinating part of London's history. Good to see Ptolemy and Copernicus getting a name check, can I just give a big SE1 hello to Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe.....................