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.