Birmingham Central Library Risograph Print — Look-Up

Birmingham Central Library Risograph Print — Look-Up

£15.00
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Birmingham Central Library Risograph Print — Look-Up
  • Birmingham Central Library Risograph Print — Look-Up
  • Birmingham Central Library Risograph Print — Look-Up
  • Birmingham Central Library Risograph Print — Look-Up
  • Birmingham Central Library Risograph Print — Look-Up
  • Birmingham Central Library Risograph Print — Look-Up
  • Birmingham Central Library Risograph Print — Look-Up
  • Birmingham Central Library Risograph Print — Look-Up
  • Birmingham Central Library Risograph Print — Look-Up
Birmingham Central Library Risograph Print — Look-Up

A Madin legend, in black-and-white Risograph by Spaceplay

Birmingham Central Library Risograph Print — Look-Up

£15.00

3 FOR 2 ON ALL RISOGRAPH PRINTS

A3 Risograph Print with border
Print Size: 30cm x 42cm (A3)
Print Style: Black and White Risograph
Paper Style: Heavy weight textured cream
Sold unframed and posted in a tube
Based on my original photograpy

A black-and-white study of the ziggurat from directly beneath, before it went. Affordable, sustainable wall art for anyone who remembers standing in that shadow.

Real printed artwork without the gallery price

Low-impact printing with soy-based inks

Grain and textures perfect for Brutalism

Artisan printed in the UK

SHIPPING + RETURNS

Shipping

All Spaceplay prints are posted within 14 days.

All orders are sent using a tracked postal service, and you’ll receive tracking details once your model has been posted.

UK orders usually arrive within 3 working days after posting. International orders usually arrive within 8 working days after posting, although customs and local postal services can sometimes cause delays.

If you need your order for a specific date, please let me know after ordering and I’ll do my best to help.

UK customers can also select Express Shipping at checkout to have their print  posted within 7 days.

Returns

You can return unused and undamaged items within 30 days of delivery for a refund, excluding return postage costs.

If your model arrives damaged, faulty, or incorrect, please email me within 14 days of delivery with your order number and photos of the issue. I’ll arrange a free replacement to be made and posted to you.
For EU orders Click Here

Building Information

Location: Birmingham, England
Architect: John Madin
Completed: 1974
Status: Demolished 2016
Brief Overview:The iconic Birmingham Central Library, with its inverted ziggurat form, was well established and celebrated as a great example of British Brutalism.  It was not however without its critics- most famously Prince Charles described it as resembling 'a place where books are incinerated, not kept'.  Birmingham City Council had planned to move library services away from Central Library, and lobbied for Immunity from Listing- which sadly was granted.  Despite efforts from English Heritage, Twentieth Century Society, World Monuments Fund and Friends of Central Library-  demolition began in late 2015- two years after closing.

My Risograph Prints

I often go hunting for Brutalist buildings and photograph them wherever I can get to them — car parks, bus stations, university towers, housing estates. Some of the ones in this collection have already been demolished.

 Photographing them is how I collect them; printing them is how I share them.

I think Risograph suits concrete. It's a stencil process: soy-based ink pushed through a drum one layer at a time, soaking into the paper rather than sitting on top of it in a glossy film. You get grain, texture and gorgeous matte blacks, and small variations from one print to the next that mean no two are quite identical. I think this makes it look and feel more like concrete.

Every print is produced with an independent artisan printer here in the UK, on 170gsm Munken Pure Rough Premium paper. The soy-based inks replace petroleum ones — lower in solvents, easier to recycle — and the press needs no heat to fuse them, so it draws a fraction of the power of a laser machine. This makes all of my prints affordable and eco-friendly.

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Birmingham Central Library Risograph Print — Look-Up

Standing underneath Birmingham Central Library, with each concrete floor projecting further out than the one below, was genuinely unnerving — the building overhung you more with every level. This risograph print was taken from down there looking up, which is the view that explains why people fought so hard to keep it. Demolished in 2016, after John Madin's masterpiece lost its listing battle. Printed A3 in black and white on heavy textured paper, riso ink deep in the overhangs where the light never reached. Birmingham Brutalism at its boldest and now entirely gone. A3 wall art for anyone who used it, worked in it or protested for it, and a meaningful gift for an architect who understands that this is what the city traded away.