“Bloody fools,
bloody fools”

In the first of three movies filmed at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Reinier de Graaf of OMA talks about Pimlico School, a brutalist building in London that was demolished last year and which features in OMA’s Public Works exhibition of “masterpieces by bureaucrats” at the biennale.

Pimlico School was designed by John Bancroft of the Greater London Council’s architecture department and was constructed in the 1960s. Its demolition to make room for a new building followed a long campaign to have it listed. “The architect campaigned very actively but he wasn’t a star architect,” de Graaf told Dezeen. “They took him to the demolition site and all he could murmur was ‘bloody fools, bloody fools.'”

De Graaf explains that although they weren’t credited by name for their work, architects working in government departments during the 1960 and 1970s created buildings with “enormous vitality and an impressive social mission.”

Read more about the exhibition in our earlier story | See all our coverage from the Venice Architecture Biennale

Read more

• Architecture
• Videos