please empty your brain below

A throwback Monday for me, dg: thank you!
Where do I recognise the Ziggurats from? Oh yes, the cover of The Streets album Computers and Blues.
"We enjoyed our jacket potatoes."

How intriguing.

DG normally eschews purchasing refreshments on days out, particularly overpriced ones.

Was he perhaps entertaining a lady friend?
The jacket potato-serving Sainsbury Centre cafe now has less competition in Norwich: both (!) the Norwich branches of Spud-u-Like closed on Friday, as have all the others.

As for company, regular readers would suggest a different answer.
That made my Dad laugh.
When the Sainsbury Centre opened in 1978, we demonstrated against it because there was a real shortage of student accomodation in Norwich. And because that's what you did as a third-year Social Studies undergraduate. The Centre duly opened and we wandered in and had a Sainsbury's cheesecake. Never lived in the Ziggurats though.
UEA certainly is a wonderful place to study. I was a post-grad there 1972-76 before the campus was over-developed. The ziggurats (designed by Denys Lasdun) contain rather nice study-bedrooms, most with a balcony which is the roof of the room underneath. Although many people don't like the ziggurats, I did as did my wife (yes we met there!). They're certainly different and interesting.

The Sainsbury Centre was opened edging towards opening before I left; I recall going in there only once about the time it opened.

I've not been back to UEA for many years and I suspect I may not like the way it has been (over-)developed. It really was a super place in the early-70s.
If you watch the last episode of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation 'Heroic Materialism', 39 mins in there's a segue from Hiroshima to...East Anglia University where he sees hope in the future our 'bright minded young people'.
I visited a here a couple of years ago on a premier dining charter train trip to Norwich from Stockport.

Thanks to Network Rail we did not have long in the city but good pre planning meant we had trip for a flying visit and was well worth the effort.
I lived in another Lasdun building at university of a similar design, they really were feeling their age by the mid-00s. The corridors, kitchens and bathrooms had no windows at all, and the room design was painted breeze blocks and hessian!

The following bit from Yes Minister was widely quoted about the building:

Sir Humphrey: Do you want the National Theatre turned into a carpet sale warehouse?
Bernard: Well, it looks like one, actually.
Sir Humphrey: We gave the architect a knighthood so that nobody would ever say that.
It was so lovely to read this post. I did a ‘study abroad’ semester at UEA and loved my experience living in the Ziggurats with a room looking over towards the lake.
Happy memories from another UEA graduate (78 to 81). I lived in a Ziggurat and spent many happy hours in "Sainsburys". And yes, we rebellious students did occupy the Sainsbury Centre in 1979 to protest cuts. And south London lad brough back happy memories of th superb cheesecake they used to serve (sadly no longer).

One outcome of my time there was a love of Brutalism and also for anything designed by Norman Foster.










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