Barnabas Calder

@barnabascalder.bsky.social

3343 Followers 1011 Following

Historian of #architecture and #energy, at University of Liverpool School of Architecture. Author of Architecture: From Prehistory to Climate Emergency (Pelican, 2021), and Raw Concrete: The Beauty of Brutalism (William Heinemann, 2016).

An aerial view of part of the Uni of Liverpool campus in the 1960s, showing demolitions and new buildings.
Prof Tim Waterman lecturing to an audience in Liverpool.
Cardiff Central Station
A light fitting and the top of a pilaster
Form Follows Fuel - a book by Florian Urban and Barnabas Calder about the energy history of architecture.
Flensburg municipal building
Brick stools in a brick and terrazzo building.
Poster for "centring the past" event
A wrought iron station roof.
St Agnes and St Pancras Toxteth Park, looking from near the entrance towards the altar.
Geometric stone flooring.
Photo of a stone building showing a decapitated skeleton corbel above a gothic arch.
Dr Alexandrina Buchanan giving a talk in St Michael's Church, Liverpool.
Second page of contents from Form Follows Fuel
Front cover of Form Follows Fuel, new book.
An oak woodland with three dead trees in the foreground.
Bernat Klein Studio - a stunning modernist building in rural Scotland.
Excerpt from forthcoming book Form Follows Fuel in which the Methodology section begins by offering readers the option to skip reading it and go straight to the analysis.
Screen shot of an article headline under an image of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, a 1960s modernist building. The headline reads "Grade I listed? Liverpool's ghastly cathedral should never have been built at all."
A mystery chunk of medieval church crossing.
A fairly standard contemporary British housing layout.
Lime Street Station, Liverpool
The former Victoria Terminus in Mumbai, illustrated by John Joseph Burns for Florian Urban and Barnabas Calder's forthcoming book Form Follows Fuel.
Graph showing the comparative carbon footprints of paper (1.2kg/kg), silver (110kg/kg), gold (18000kg/kg) and platinum (33000kg/kg).
A very fine early nineteenth century classical building in pink sandstone.
A boarded up window surrounded by red sandstone with channeled rustication.
An excerpt of text reading "Disillusioned proponents of the idea that money leads to happiness can take some solace from the fact that it's not just money that disappoints; almost nothing that people expect will bring happiness has its anticipated effect. Part of this is because happiness is determined much more by how one thinks about the world, than by the way the world actually is."
Stunning sunset over the Mersey Estuary, seen from a train on the Runcorn Bridge.
A letter confirming that the threatened London Wall office block is to be demolished and replaced.
Terracotta and iron detailing, ornamented in a mannerist classicist fashion.
A white tiled wall in the background of a steel and chunky timber-balustraded staircase.
An article screenshot quoting me saying that "the default position needs to be that we reuse buildings rather than replace them, even if they don't have this charm."
The Pyramid of Khufu, Giza, Egypt. Photo Nina Aldin Thune.
Conwy Civic Hall, Wales - a punchy bit of Brutalism grafted confidently onto medieval walls, now under threat despite listing. Photo by Jonathan Taylor, from C20 Soc website.
Painting of a Brutalist stair tower from a car park designed by Rodney Gordon