Robert Proctor
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rproctor.bsky.social
Robert Proctor
@rproctor.bsky.social
1.1K followers 410 following 730 posts
Architectural historian of the twentieth century.
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rproctor.bsky.social
That's my weekend sorted. And the next one.
'Needs grading: 134'
November 21, 2025 at 9:35 AM
rproctor.bsky.social
Stumbled on the best reddit thread in architectural history.
Gluten-Free-Jazz: 'By any chance do you have the source of this statement? I'm currently reading some Colin Rowe and would love to know where he writes about this specific topic!' TomLondra: 'Your source is me. He said it to me, during a conversation in Florence some time around 1996'.
November 19, 2025 at 5:07 PM
rproctor.bsky.social
Free online seminar alert - 'Down Under Webinar: Religion and Architecture in Australia' (via KADOC/KU Leuven), 8 Dec, 8am UK time. Registration link - kadoc.kuleuven.be/english/3_re...
Flyer image for 'Down Under Webinar: Religion and Architecture in Australia', programme - 9.00 (CET) Welcome; 9.05 Practical and Active: Australian Religious Values from the Ground Up (Professor Katharine Massam - University of Divinity); 9.50 Building Faith in Australia's Capital: The Diplomatic Mosque and Other Architectural Narratives (Dr Md Mizanur Rashid - Deakin University); 10.35 Break; 10.45 Constructing Faith in the Antipodes - The Making of the Book (Dr Lisa Marie Daunt); 11.30 End. Free. KU Leuven / KADOC. Monday 8 December 2025 at 9.00 CET (8.00 GMT).
November 19, 2025 at 8:44 AM
rproctor.bsky.social
Chequerboards (flint, ashlar, brick), Winchester.
Wall and gate in brick, flint and stone in a range of chequerboard patterns. Tile-hung house gable and chimney peeking above a wall of stone, flint and brick rubble, chequerboard pattern at base. Three-storey house with patchwork of masonry including brick window surrounds and string course, and stone and flint in a chequerboard pattern.
November 14, 2025 at 1:40 PM
rproctor.bsky.social
Lutyens's Campion Hall, Oxford. Tinkling bell capitals similar to those at New Delhi, and a busy proliferation of horizontal lines.
Complex pilasters and mouldings in brown stone around a doorcase looking up at Campion Hall, Oxford, by Lutyens.
November 7, 2025 at 9:44 AM
rproctor.bsky.social
Finishing touches under way for my talk on Percy Thomas's interwar modern classicism at the Lutyens Trust conference on 1 November. #20s30s www.lutyenstrust.org.uk/portfolio-it...
Two soaring fluted piers of black marble looking vertically up to a coffered ceiling with decoration picked out in gold and green and a round spiky light shade.
October 17, 2025 at 2:35 PM
rproctor.bsky.social
I keep thinking there should be a biography of the prominent C20 classical architect everyone always ignores, Sir Edwin Cooper, but there's no way I'm going to write it myself. Anyone want to do it for a PhD, get in touch?
A black and white portrait photograph of Sir Edwin Cooper as a bald old man with round glasses.
October 11, 2025 at 8:20 AM
rproctor.bsky.social
Amazing facts. It's almost as if people like education for reasons other than cash. Apparently this is bad?
From the I newspaper: "A 2020 analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed that around 30 per cent of both men and women see 'negative total returns' from going to university, and one in five would be financially better off if they skipped higher education".
October 8, 2025 at 9:17 AM
rproctor.bsky.social
Bath architecture + October sunshine = 💥
Part of the Circus, Bath, 18th century curved terrace of houses with classical orders, a shadow grazing it from the right, an old street lamp in the foreground.
October 6, 2025 at 5:05 PM
rproctor.bsky.social
I mean look, this is marvellous!
Inane and over-polite copilot email reply draft prompted by 'no thanks, it's not my specialism'.
October 2, 2025 at 4:04 PM
rproctor.bsky.social
Not quite sure what's going on here but enjoying the idea of living in a Clarice Cliff world. Unbuilt competition-winning scheme for Croydon Civic Centre by F. W. Halfhide and R. J. O'Donoghue, 1935.
Oddly abstract drawing for 'Proposed Civic Centre at Croydon', modern buildings with slot windows and blank walls, a tall chimney-like object in the centre on the axis of fountains, circular lollipop trees and tall thin cypresses.
September 26, 2025 at 3:14 PM
rproctor.bsky.social
Mildly amused by this presumably lost corner of the 'Treasury Corridor' in John Soane's Bank of England.
A narrow corridor lined with Ionic columns holding up a vault, culminating in a pier of a vault with doors at angles on either side.
September 26, 2025 at 11:47 AM
rproctor.bsky.social
lol
Screenshot from Google AI asking it how many 'a's there are in 'artificial intelligence'. The answer is that "There are four 'a's in the phrase 'artificial intelligence'. The word 'artificial' has two a's, and the word 'intelligence' as two 'a's." The answer provides links to further information about these purported facts.
September 25, 2025 at 11:14 AM
rproctor.bsky.social
Just don't.
The word 'thingliness' in a journal article.
September 16, 2025 at 3:29 PM
rproctor.bsky.social
Might not.
The word 'relationalities' underlined in red in Zotero.
September 16, 2025 at 3:26 PM
rproctor.bsky.social
Soul crushed.
Duolingo screenshot showing a two week streak on a calendar and "0 day streak" written above it.
September 13, 2025 at 7:19 PM
rproctor.bsky.social
Roast bittern for dinner?
17th century painting by Frans Snyders, The Poulterer's Shop, in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. A customer holding a chicken talks to the old shopkeeper, surrounded by his wares, including partridges, a grey heron and a bittern strung up on the wall.
August 29, 2025 at 7:58 AM
rproctor.bsky.social
Representing nature at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.
Corner of a Pre-Raphaelite oil painting depicting wild roses in carved gold-leaf frame of vegetation. Japanese blue and white plate depicting a preening crane. Fossil ichthyosaur rib cage. A stuffed common tern hanging from a nylon thread against a painted backdrop with reflection of lit-up panels.
August 19, 2025 at 7:49 AM
rproctor.bsky.social
Later, of course, ultra-modern Dutch metropolitan style, more recently followed by postmodern neo-Victorian heritage warehouse style.
Rows of modern housing in Bristol harbour with boats lined up on quays.
August 15, 2025 at 1:19 PM
rproctor.bsky.social
1990s/early 2000s harbourside regeneration housing in Bristol: Lancashire suburban Tesco style, Essex Design Guide neo-vernacular style, Dorset village Regency style.
1990s harbourside housing block, Bristol, with herring gull in foreground. 1990s harbourside housing, Bristol. 1990s or early 2000s harbourside housing Bristol in cute Regency style with canal and boats in the foreground.
August 15, 2025 at 1:09 PM
rproctor.bsky.social
I am reading about 'heritage bollards'.
The phrase 'heritage bollards' in inverted commas.
August 11, 2025 at 2:47 PM
rproctor.bsky.social
Nevertheless my post-university-collapse career-change plan is to move here and carve wooden figures while snowed in over winter.
A farmhouse in the Valtellina area of Italy with a small car in the drive, hay meadows all around it, pine forest and mountains in the background.
July 23, 2025 at 11:13 AM
rproctor.bsky.social
Valtellina valley vernacular = big house of stone, light layer of render; attached hay barn mostly made of wood, open in places; rusty corrugated iron roof held down by sticks and stones (prob replacing shingle). Sadly not much evidence of conservation efforts compared to e.g. Alto Adige.
An old vernacular farmhouse at Semogo, Valtellina, with stone house and hefty attached barn made of wooden logs. Farmhouse in hayfield next to mountain forest at Santa Caterina, Valtellina, stone house with attached barn made of stone and timber, corrugated iron roofs.
July 23, 2025 at 11:02 AM
rproctor.bsky.social
Sold out! Currently in discussion to get further copies printed. Still available from some bookshops, however.
Red warning sign saying '! You cannot add "Percy Thomas" to the cart because the product is out of stock'.
July 22, 2025 at 1:23 PM
rproctor.bsky.social
Found a delightful little alpine rustic medieval church unexpectedly covered in high quality Renaissance art: S. Giorgio, Grosio.
Medieval Italian church tower with conical steeple and forested mountain behind it. Church interior with wooden truss roof, arched bays, pews, boxy wooden pulpit, covered in frescoes. Gold-leaf covered sculptured Renaissance altarpiece in a church. Renaissance frescoes in a vault depicting saints in thrones, Christ in a rainbow, various other figures, decorative bands between them.
July 22, 2025 at 12:58 PM