Eighties Buildings

Chancery Lane

INSPIRATIONS: Toytown. Egyptian revival (again). Art Deco. Palisades. Coronets (cylinder with spikes round the top). Totem poles. Let’s shove together the Platonic solids and make them huge. Give it that “assembled from a kit” look. Let’s copy those Victorian warehouses we’ve been renovating. And put a Greek temple on the top. Combine the following:

angular greenhouse on the top of a building

lunettes (and anything lunette-shaped)
giant fanlights
triple giant fanlights like a child’s drawing of a cloud
shallow curves
giant silver tubes

stripes, stripes, stripes

neon

bay windows
dark-blue mirror tinted windows, copper tinted windows
square windows divided into squares
windows with shallow curved tops
round porthole windows
wraparound windows
square windows with rounded corners
diamond windows (square windows tilted 45 degrees)
oriel windows

outsize, misused classical motifs
giant pediments
pyramids
balls
round towers

catslide roofs
Swiss chalet roofs in case it snows
Italian villa overhanging roofs
barrel vaults, barrel roofs
sharply peaked roofs

grids
treillage (garden trellis-work)
lattice, red lattice, red window frames
as above, in Kelly green

ribs, slats, struts, Meccano
steel and glass porticos
metal clapboarding
corrugated metal

ziggurats
ziggurat-inspired stepped patterns
upside-down ziggurat patterns
upside-down ziggurat windows with square panes

pillars, big fat squat pillars, fluted pillars
arches and pillars that support nothing

pastel pink and green
terracotta, brown, pink, yellow ochre
pink marble

silver and glass
tinted glass
rusticated bottom storey, all-over rustication

buildings that look like spaceships
panopticons
metal balconies

rows of square or circular motifs along a “pediment”, or circle in square motifs

atria with splashing fountains, waterfalls and trees (nice)

formal gardens with lattices, struts, slats, pergolas, gazebos, oriental plants, fountains

Put them all together and you've got Postmodernism.

More eighties style here.

More 80s Style

LIGHTING
optical fibre lamps
globe lamps
lamps with a globe in two hands
All these were sold by shops that also sold indoor water features and reproduction phrenological heads.

tulip wall lights
lamps in the shape of old movie cameras or spot lights
quarter-circle wall uplighters
uplighters of all kinds
replica 30s bankers’ desk lights
No cylindrical lampshades were seen during the 80s. They were a throwback to the 50s, 60s and 70s (shudder). Lampshades were all conical, coolie-hat shape, often pleated.

THINGS
Kilims (woven oriental carpets) were very in, and were quickly turned into fabric design and plastic tablecloths. These lived on in cafés for far too long, in shades of navy, ochre, burgundy and forest green. And you had the fun of saying “kileem” when anyone rhymed them with “gym” or called them “keelims”. "Kilim" was the 80s’ "quinoa". The kilims (and cushions made of old ones) faded, rotted and were thrown out.

square mirrors with a row of smaller squares round the edge
mirrors with art nouveau lilies
mirrors with Op Art (Albers)

Mockintash mugs with roses (still around the 90s and you couldn’t NOT like them, same with the Clarice Cliff knockoffs)

Lazy Susans (revolving wooden tray for your pepper and salt grinders) Part of a genre of shiny, lacquered wooden kitchenware (salt and pepper grinders, salad bowls and servers, pestles and mortars) that arrived in the 70s. You could even get a chequerboard wood pestle and mortar.

glass heads, glass blocks

marble – and an Ancient Roman bling look in general
marble platonic solids (white, black, peach)
chequerboard marble ashtray
obelisks, sometimes marble, small ones to store your rings
fake marble tiles with fake marble tile dadoes

ornate “antique” bird cages (Corsican ironwork?), minus the birds
"hippo birdie two ewes" cards

FURNITURE
dark brown cupboards with fake leaded glass, or early 1800s Chinese-style lattice-work
black ash furniture
plaid sofas and chairs
cylindrical steel planters
modular seating
built-in bench seating round the walls
venetian blinds

More here, and links to the rest.