Did You Know There’s a Giant Pikachu Hiding in Plain Sight in Bangor Town Centre? He’s in My Favourite Non-Residential Bangor Building.

My favourite non-residential building in Bangor is one that you may not even take heed of. It’s sort of faded into the patchwork of the Main Street over the years, but when you take a good look, it’s a very unusual, modernist marvel.

From the front you can see the huge glass front door panel, and the windows are massive, and by the looks of them, still single-paned, which must mean it’s a pain to heat for current tenants Boom Studios. 

The building was originally home to the Allied Irish Bank, built in 1969 to a design by Shanks & Leighton. Again I’m mourning my loss of a certain book, An Introduction to Modern Ulster Architecture, by David Evans, as it’s got a photo of the interior when the building was first built. It’s interior design was as modernistic as the outside. The walls swooped down to a curve to meet the floor, making the offices look like the inside of a spaceship, if perhaps the alien HR department.

A nice touch is the fact Boom Studios have had a poster made by Neal McCullough from Hand Drawn Creative (lots of great prints for Christmas gifts in his store by the way)  featuring the building itself.

So, the Pikachu? Well, Smix spotted it one day when we were walking down the town. It’s peeking out of one of the top windows, round the corner just off Main Street. Watch out for him next time you are down.

Earliest Childhood Memories Part Two- Exterior Features as Interior Walls- as seen in Ex Machina, Including Summerland, Isle of Man

I loved Ex Machina. I love robots (I'm also terrified of them, due to another childhood memory), the soundtrack was class (this tune from the film's climax especially)  and I loved the story of the film. Another character besides the robot fascinated me however, and that was the house of the billionaire inventor. I especially was drawn to the rock face feature that made up one of the stark living areas.  I was goggling at the house more than paying attention to plot.

I've always been fascinated with exteriors used as interior ​walls. Locally there's a great example in Bangor's heritage centre. Coffee Cure restaurant cafe is indoors, but one wall is the old exterior courtyard wall of Bangor Castle. For years any time I've visited the small museum I've remembered peeking through the door to see the wall, and feeling very happy at the sight of it. I think I know why.

Coffee Cure at Bangor Museum set up for an event

It's one of my earliest childhood memories again. When I was a toddler my parents would take me on holidays to Rose Cottage, a rental home on the Isle of Man. I have very little memory of it. Just the tail-less cats at the cottage, some of the beautiful seafront gardens of Dingle, the giant sunny face of Summerland (below), and the interior rock wall of its indoor pool.

Summerland was a giant leisure complex, which originally was much bigger. It would be a billion pound venture to build these days. The pool below is the original, I can't find a photo of the pool I would have been in. I'm almost sure it was parallel to the wall. 

The reason I couldn't have remembered this pool is because Summerland #1 burnt to the ground in 1973. 

You can see the complex was much bigger in the early 1970s.

They rebuilt Summerland on a smaller scale in the late 70s, and I was born in 1980 and visited in the early 80s. 

They demolished 'my' version of Summerland in 2005, but you can still see the rock wall I remember from the smaller rebuild. 

It amazes me that my early memories seem to certainly shape my tastes if not more. 

As for the Ex Machina house, it's actually an exclusive hotel in Norway, so maybe someday I can visit and stare at their wall to my heart's content. 

My Favourite Houses in Holywood, Plus A Real Life Grey Gardens in Bangor?

I'm starting off with the red herring. It would be an easy guess that this George McDermott designed, positively mansion-esque, flat-roofed home in Cultra would be my favourite house in Holywood. 

Sitting alongside the Culloden Hotel on the main road from Belfast to Bangor, it's as luxurious inside as the size would imply. The interior has been fully modernised, but I would love to see photos of its original 1970s' stylings, especially the pool room, which it's rumoured George Best frequented back in the day. Best loved this place so much that he has his home in Cheshire based on some of the wilder features.

The home went on sale a few years back for £1.2m and includes vast grounds and an outdoor pool. 

While I admire the modernist design, it alone isn't my favourite house in Holywood. There is a cluster of split-level, reverse-rooved wonders just a little further up the road and on the opposite side.

The Marino area on the hill side, not the coast side of the main road, is home to half a dozen parallel streets with these family homes of 1960s & 70s quite innovative designs. 

Because of the hill, split level is used frequently, as well as lovely big windows for the views. 

Here is one of the homes that's been modernised in the last decade, although the others don't look too dated. 

I do wonder if this style of modernisation I've seen on bungalows in Bangor West too, will soon look more dated than the original homes, the way the cladding fad has. 

This one isn't terribly design heavy, but I love it because it is true , right this minute Kitsch. A small family home overdecorated to the point it looks too much. Anything too ornate on something small is kitsch. 

Finally, I'm not sure if this would be of interest to anyone, but there is a real life Grey Gardens really close to my house. Someone really lives in this house, year round. The house is as it was when the street was built. No upgrades or double glazing, in fact the top further window is broken and just has card in place.  

I wonder how much it would cost to repair the place to how it should be? Would it be cheaper to tear down? 

So now I think I've featured all the houses I know of and love, but does anyone know of any others I might like to look at? I've a feeling there's a patch over in Greenisland with similar houses to Marino, I just don't know where to look on Streetview to see them. Let me know! @rudedoodle

My Favourite Art Deco House in Bangor Northern Ireland- Plus Tonic Cinema Illustration From Hand Drawn Creative

I shared with you my favourite house in Portstewart last week, so how about my favourite house in Bangor, where I actually live.

Its this pink beauty which resides in the wonderfully named 'Beverley Hills', in the Ballyholme area. Built in the 1930s it nestles amongst a neighbourhood of otherwise regular family homes, and backs onto a golf course.

I know what you're thinking- ​the cladding. I know. Cladding the exterior of a house in fancy stonework was a trend in the 1970s and you would wonder who in their right mind would have altered such an already high concept design building like this, let alone all over cladding, then painting it pink.

The photo below showing the house in its original form is so much better, the corner windows to the left side are totally lost under the heavy brickwork. 

The current owner was not responsible for the cladding, or the pink, ​and they also say the original interiors have been stripped and changed too. So no retro futuristic interiors to observe, sadly.

David Wilson architects did some remodelling work recently extending the kitchen and living area on the ground floor. They appear to have done a good job, in keeping with the traditional design of the building.

Bangor has some beautiful Art Deco public buildings, one of which Neal McCullough from Hand Drawn Creative has featured in a clean crisp illustration, which you can buy on his Etsy Store.

The Bank of Ireland building is another example, right at the midpoint of Main Street. The building to the right which you can't see in the photograph has quite a few modernist qualities. I have an old Ulster Architrcture book somewhere that features it, I must dig it out to share with you on another blog post.

There's another section of Bangor, what I call the new-build sprawl of the East which is like a maze to me, but which has a pocket of home designs I've always loved.

Along the ring road and into never ending suburbia there are a couple of streets of these happy little chalets. They look like designs of the 60s or 70s, family homes with asymmetrical rooves, cute archways and novelty balconies. 

There are several designs dotted along the Pinehill / Silverbirch area.

Incidentally Neal has a print that looks a little bit like these homes- Hand Drawn Creative Hollywood Bungalow A3 for £20. Apart from his Fisher Price retro toy illustrations, I think this is my favourite of Neal's work.

The last home of my favourites in Bangor list, is one I've been telling my parents I wanted to live in since I was a little girl, when we moved to the same road when I was aged two.

"The Sugar Cube", as its lovingly named by the family who live there, is a flat roofed design house on the same road as my parents' home. I always told my parents I would love there so I wasn't too far away from them when I moved out as an adult. Ironically I actually live almost this close now, although it's round the back of the Springhill Road, rather than down and opposite from my parents' house.

So have I got all th unusual homes in Bangor? Or do you know of any that I might like to nosy at too?  Hit me up on Twitter- @rudedoodle

I may feature Holywood next- it would require a lot of time on Google Streeview going up and down the split-level, modernist heaven that is Marino!

One last bonus architectural oddity- the Ballyholme windmill, which peeks out from in between the streets of homes. 

I would LOVE to live somewhere like that. 

She Spies Retro Futurism By The Seashore- My Favourite House in Portstewart

Houses like these make my heart soar. Just look at that staircase in the long, completely glazed hall. Look at that totally impractical reverse pitched roof. I always have to slow down to ogle this home when I'm driving past to get to the Portstewart Strand.

I did a little poking about online and found some info on Alan In Belfast's blog. In a post dated 2006, he shares a little history of the building, which he is next door to. The two photos below are his, and show the house in disrepair a decade ago. However the building is listed, and rather than be demolished for apartments, like so many old plots along the coast, today sees it as in the photo above. It's inhabited and all fixed up.

Alan's investigation found that the reason for its listed status was not the architecture alone, but the large outdoor mosaic adorning the front of the building. It's a piece by the Irish artist Colin Middleton, one of the few surrealists of the early part of the last century hailing from our island. He was heavily influenced by Van Gogh, and spent the latter part of his life living in Bangor, where I'm from.

The story of how this particular piece of his came to be is an interesting one. The story goes that Middleton had been staying in a house in Portstewart, but didn't have enough money to pay for his board, so he designed this mosaic to pay his way.

The architect of my dream house, Noel Campbell, also commissioned Middleton to create a mosaic for a home he designed in Ballymena, Scandia, seen below. 

Another of Noel Campbell's houses is just round the corner from Portstewart Strand, Little Rock, on Larkhill Road, below.

But my heart belongs to the Strand Road beauty!