1
Office building on Blackbrook Park Avenue
Image: © JThomas
Taken: 9 May 2013
0.03 miles
2
Rear of The Griffin, a Harvester pub, Taunton
Image: © nick macneill
Taken: 2 Apr 2011
0.03 miles
3
Summerfield
Image: © N Chadwick
Taken: 21 Oct 2016
0.04 miles
4
Holiday Inn Express, Taunton. Meanings and Signs.
The European Union flag, the Holiday Inn flag and the Union Jack fly in the car park. What does this mean? The Holiday Inn flag stands in the centre. What values do we associate with that flag and how do they interact with those which we might associate with the other two? What do they stand for?
In the expanse of bland architecture, a small white tower breaks up the roofline and is echoed by the porch at ground level. There is nothing to be offended by unless you make the effort to notice the building, which it tries its hardest to prevent you from doing. Their ordinariness makes them invisible, but in future days, these ordinary buildings will be of interest in many ways. Many businesses and organisations use these venues to conduct their affairs.
Image: © Tom Jolliffe
Taken: 28 Apr 2010
0.04 miles
5
Blackbrook Business Park, Junction 25 of the M5
The Holiday Inn and the Harvester are to the right of the fountain.
Image: © Barbara Cook
Taken: 24 May 2006
0.05 miles
6
Holiday Inn Express, Taunton. Car park shrubbery.
The shrubs are essentially a form of topiary, fashioned into great sofas which envelope and accommodate the cars that doze in the bays. This swathe of snipped green upholstery has a rounded almost Rubenesque form and also seems to form part of a heart shape, out which springs the tree, which also seems to pierce it. We all pass it without a thought letting its smooth curved edges escort us blindly to the exit.
Image: © Tom Jolliffe
Taken: 28 Apr 2010
0.06 miles
7
Entrance porch objects, Holiday Inn Express, Taunton
Square windows, square columns, tapered white pots and undistinguished plants. I can't say if this is a standard approach at all such hotels, but I guess it might be. The white theme picks up the colour theme of the porch roof and the mock tower on the building. Sitting amongst these themed objects, which make a deliberately unexceptionable background to which it is hard to object as one's aesthetic sensibility has been anaesthetised, there is a symbol of our changing society: the "ashtray". Those addicted to smoking tobacco have been driven out of public buildings altogether by law and this stainless steel column cringing against the grey brick background, trying to hide itself, signals the exile. Commonplace objects that are so commonplace that they evaporate instantly from the memory. They are not intended to be photographed.
Image: © Tom Jolliffe
Taken: 28 Apr 2010
0.07 miles
8
Service station off Dean Gate Avenue
Image: © JThomas
Taken: 9 May 2013
0.07 miles
9
Holiday Inn Express, Taunton
Dull functional architecture, acres of brick panels, acres of "municipal" shrubs. Little boxes.
Image: © Tom Jolliffe
Taken: 28 Apr 2010
0.07 miles
10
Murco service station, Blackbrook
Image: © Roger Cornfoot
Taken: 4 Feb 2015
0.07 miles