Saturday 8 February 2014

The Egg Box Town Hall extension.

Sheffield Egg Box Town Hall extension being demolished
Photo by neuroticcamel from Sheffield, England (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
I'll admit it. I liked the Egg Box. Plenty of people hated it but I refuse to hate any building that could possess such elements of chunky sticky-inness and sticky outness.

Not only that but it'll always hold a special place in my heart as the first building in Sheffield whose creation and then death I witnessed. Somehow, experiencing the entire lifespan of a building gives you a whole new view of life and the passage of time.

Of course, its great claim to fame was that, in Barry Hines' TV movie Threads, it was the location of the bunker from which Sheffield City Council would run the city in the event of a nuclear holocaust. Given that the council often struggle to run the city when there's not been a nuclear holocaust, perhaps it was a little optimistic to think they could run the place when there was one.

Well, that's all fine and dandy but, for me, its other claim to fame is that, in the 1970s, there was an amusement arcade in Blackpool that had a roof like an egg carton - and thus the two buildings felt like spiritual brothers. That building had a dalek you could sit inside and pretend to kill people with.

Sadly, Sheffield's building lacked such a thing.

No wonder it wasn't popular.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I liked the egg box too and the fact that it had a mate in Blackpool made it even more special, somehow.

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