Fry and Drew: Buildings Now

Veterinary Building, Liverpool University

The importance of the Fry and Drew research project has been demonstrably underlined with the recent demolition of Maxwell Fry’s School of Veterinary Science (1955-60) at the University of Liverpool. There’s something particularly ironic about the Vet School being situated just a few hundred yards from our offices at the Liverpool School of Architecture – where Fry was a student in the 1920s – or maybe it’s just depressing!

Anyway, over the course of a week last October, it was demolished to make way for new student residences. Here it is, in two pictures: the construction and demolition, just over fifty years later (sigh).

© Sheffield Hallam University. Duncan Horne Collection, c. 1960.

© Jessica Holland. 24 October 2012.

During the same period Fry also designed the university’s Civil Engineering building. Like the Vet School, it’s a great example of his humanist take on post-war modernism – combining textured and colourful materials, and artwork inside and out, to give a building ‘soul’ (in Fry’s words).

For further reading on these commissions, and for more images of both buildings, see: Iain Jackson, ‘Post-War Modernism: Maxwell Fry’s buildings at the University of Liverpool’, The Journal of Architecture, vol. 16, no. 5, pp. 675-702. Available here.