Interview with Ivan Pickles (part 2)
At the time when Ivan had started working on the first underpass next to the Civic Offices site, he was asked to design the plinth for the Black Horse statue outside Lloyds Court, and liaise with Liz Frink, the sculptor. He recalls visiting the artist’s studio, seeing the plaster form of the horse, and liaising with the company supplying the granite. ‘So I coordinated the building of the plinth, the delivery of the bronze horse and the lowering of it by crane on to the plinth’. He describes the problems (and panic!) they encountered lowering the horse into position.
Ivan talks of the social side of life in the City Centre team; initially drinking after work at the Plough in Simpson, and later, he says: ‘We held some fabulous parties. Once we got Lloyd’s Court finished we …the City Centre team, moved in … We took up half of the first floor… if I remember rightly. Wonderful’. He recalls that from the first anniversary of the Summer Solstice, they held an annual Summer Solstice party, ‘… a real family gathering, you know … we finished up having them actually in Lloyd’s Court itself’.
Ivan remembers his colleagues and the buildings they designed: he notes the influence of Mies van der Rohe in the simplicity of buildings throughout the City Centre and in the wider Milton Keynes area. In his opinion, the City Centre ‘stands the test of time extremely well’; he considers that some changes have led to a deterioration in quality, and ‘some of those (recent) buildings are absolutely disgusting’. He says: ‘some of the buildings that we put up will be there for quite a while yet. …The Shopping Building …is a beautiful building and it really works. It always has worked, an absolute delight and joy to be in’. He still lives in Milton Keynes, noting the easy access to the canal, lakes and the countryside, combined with quality shops in a few minutes drive: ‘There’s nowhere else in England you can do that, there isn’t’.
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