#not modernist not a delight — Modernist Delights

Chelmsford Citadel, 2025

A modern Salvation Army building with a grey, angular façade and a tall tower featuring a white cross on a red and orange gradient. A sign with The Salvation Army is visible along the roadside, with a few trees framing the top edge.

A modern Salvation Army building with a metal facade and red accents. Large windows line the front, and THE SALVATION ARMY is displayed in bold red letters. The building sits on a sunny urban street with a clear blue sky above.

The less said about this one the better. A more favourable review from the church’s minister at the time of its opening, in April 2009, is available here.

Zion Methodist Church, Torquay, 2025

A modern building with copper cladding and large windows is attached to an older stone structure. Two vehicles, a white van and a silver car with a yellow number plate, are parked in front. A jet ski is parked beside bins near a stone wall. Trees rise behind the building.

I’m all for converting vacant buildings into housing, but fucking hell, this carbuncle stopped me in my tracks!

Sun-dappled car fortress in the Northern Quarter, Manchester, 2025

A red brick multi-storey car park stands on a street corner under a clear blue sky. Several yellow P parking signs are mounted on the building. A person walks past the entrance, and sunlight casts strong shadows on the walls.

A brick building with three floors, each featuring rectangular, open window spaces without glass. The lower level has barred windows and graffiti on the right. The façade is sunlit with shadows, and the roof has black lamps. Sky above is clear and blue.

This doesn’t qualify as modernist, or even really as a delight, but it made me laugh how something so thoroughly modern and utilitarian masquerades itself amongst the Northern Quarter’s Victorian mills and factories with the use of red brick. A concept long forgotten in Manchester’s development-mania, of course, with everything now built out of steel, concrete, glass, and cladding.