<
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/jan/14/britains-45-remaining-cooling-towers-are-architectural-gems-lets-save-them>
"Consider cooling towers. They are monuments of industry, built at the size
(and more) of pyramids and cathedrals, graceful in their geometry, the perfect
marriage of form and function, that come not alone but in concrete choirs of up
to 12 in number. They are big enough to capture cloud shadows, in the way that
hills do, and when in use make (or made) their own atmospheres of vapour. At
the scale of Britain, seen from railways and motorways from north to south and
east to west, they are (or were) an index of national landscape, markers of
journeys, always the same but always with local adaptation. Close to, they are
objects of boggling majesty.
This country, if they all vanished, would be sadder and duller. Such, though,
is their possible or even probable fate, as the coal- and oil-fired power
stations they served are rightly being phased out. Immunity from listing,
granted by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, means that there is
nothing to stop those that remain going the way of Didcot in Oxfordshire and
Ironbridge in Shropshire, both demolished in 2019, and four of the eight at
Fiddler’s Ferry near Warrington, which went last month. All could disappear in
a series of balletic booms, dropping like ballerinas into skirts of dust,
memorialised by YouTube videos of their detonations."
Via Diane A.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
