Saturday 2 November 2013

Strange architecture

Today was Miss Mouse's gymnastics club's annual display.  This year it was held at the Ravenscraig Regional Sports Facility. That's a bit of a mouthful isn't it? It reminds me of when the local dump was called the Civic Amenity Site. It's now called the Recycling Centre. The dump that is, not Ravenscraig Regional Sports Facility.

Ravenscraig Regional Sports Facility is a bit odd. I mean, look at it:


Are your eyes doing funny things? Mine are. It's a recent building, opened in 2011, built on land that used to be Ravenscraig Steelworks which seemed to always be on the Scottish news in the 1980s (I can't remember why now, and Wikipedia doesn't tell me) and finally closed in 1992.


I'm pretty sure that picture is squint but with optical-illusion-building on the horizon it's quite hard to tell.

We never really have any reason to go to that neck of the woods, so it occurred to me on the way there that the last time we went along that particular road heading in that direction we were on the way to the hospital and I was about to give birth to Miss M, quite imminently. Like 40 minutes later.

The display was excellent - the gymnastics club is quite big, with a wide range of abilities, from beginners up to the Really Quite Good and they were all very enthusiastic.  I'm glad someone had mentioned that the seats are really uncomfortable though. We took cushions. Four hours without cushions would have been, well, uncomfortable. Sports Facilities seem to believe in torturing the audience.  Well, we're the weak ones I suppose, we should be out there doing, not merely spectating. Shame on us. 

Miss M had a blast, though it overran by half an hour (inevitable really). Blue skies when we went in, pitch black and pouring with rain when we got out again at about half past six.

I keep looking back at those pictures and it is a really odd building isn't?





2 comments:

Mrs. Micawber said...

It's quite dreadful - as bad as Denver International Airport, which is saying a lot. :)

Peeriemoot said...

I try to be charitable towards unusual architecture, but yeah, it looks pretty awful! And because it's sitting on its own in the middle of as yet undeveloped post-industrial wasteland, it stands out rather. However I've read up on it a bit and they're doing some interesting things with north-facing windows to get as much indirect natural light as possible, so it's not all bad :-).