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 | | |  | | |  | | | | | | Name:
Stephen Howard Smith
Building:
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts
Location:
University of Birmingham
What is your relationship to this building?:
It was my 'spiritual home' from 1971 to 74 when I studied music at the university. I spent part of every weekday there and attended concerts some evenings.
Why do you love this building?:
Partly personal, it was the scene of many musical discoveries for me during my time there. But more because the building is so 'right', so satisfying in every way. One had the feeling it could not be otherwise.
It was built in the 1930s and has the appearance of having been an expensive building. Reminiscent to me of an Egyptian Temple, it is marble-walled throughout , and consists of a long entrance hall, theatre surounded by an interior corridor with rooms off round the outside, an art library, a music library in an annex, and on the first floor an art gallery contaning a remarkable and exeptionally well-chosen collection of paintings and sculpture.
It was such a marvellous place to enter, stroll about and 'hang about' , grand enough to be impressive, but not pretentious.
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