Modernist mammoth: sculpture, landscape and gravel working in the Trent Valley, 1960–1970
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines the place of modernist sculpture in a project of landscape design for the head office of a major British gravel company opened in 1965, in the valley of the river Trent, England. As well as gravel, excavators unearthed the tusks and teeth of mammoths; the company used an image of a mammoth as their logo and encouraged archaeological research on site. Leading landscape architect Brenda Colvin planned the grounds for the head office, as well as shaping working and restored gravel pits and designing the private gardens of the company’s owner. Nottingham architects Cecil Howitt and Partners designed the new offices in a tradition of civic architecture and contemporary model of corporate estates. The forecourt of the building featured the then largest free-standing sculpture in Britain, a 23-foot high, semi-abstract figure of a mammoth constructed of steel plate to echo the modern machines made on site as well as the antiquity they revealed. The sculptor Kim James was a leading member of the British Communist Party, and the style revived the revolutionary modernism of the early twentieth century. This article reconstructs the making and meaning of a largely forgotten designed landscape of the 1960s.
Author: Stephen Daniels
Institution: University of Nottingham
Language: English
Subfield: Architecture
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4405498255