Abstract Thursday: "Architectural"

Ingeborg's chosen theme for AT this week is "Architectural".

I popped into town to take some photos of various styles of architecture, and settled on this view of the Council Chamber at Newcastle Civic Centre - suitably abused with the "Emboss" filter in Photoshop. It's funny how that filter has rendered almost the whole image in monochrome, but with tiny remnants of colour - I pondered a formal mono conversion but decided to leave it how it is.

The Civic centre was designed by the city architect George Kenyon in the Fifties; building started in 1960 and was completed in 1967 at a cost of £4.8 million. Of particular interest to me is that one of the casualties of the need to clear the site was the old Eye Hospital: the eye unit was moved to "temporary" premises, split between 2 hospitals on opposite sides of the town - I spent a lot of time in my car driving between them during the 12 years I worked in those premises from 1984-96! Happily in 1996 all Newcastle eye hospital services were finally brought together on one site at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, where I worked until retiring in 2013.