Brit-tiki: Beachcomber designer dies - General Tiki

A atomictonytiki Tiki Socialite Spain Joined: May 14, 2002 Posts: 1322	A atomictonytiki Posted posted on Mon, Jun 19, 2006 5:25 PM While searching around I found this obituary for one of the designers of the Mayfair Beachcomber and the butlins Beachcomber bars.. Obituary Patrick Garnett Architect whose designs caught the mood of swinging London. Patrick Garnett, who has died aged 74, was a successful architect whose practice, Garnett Cloughley Blakemore (GCB), designed memorable, three-dimensional sequences of 1960s' swinging London, and connected pop culture with a wide cross section of society - from Belgravia to Butlin's. heir constructions included a revolving restaurant on the 34th floor of the Post Office tower, the electric Kool-Aid interiors of the Chelsea Drugstore, framed for posterity in Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange, a chic, regutted Belgravia house for Earl Mountbatten of Burma, a Bond-style discotheque - complete with piranha fish swimming beneath the glass dance floor - and the bright and breezy Scratchwood service station at the southern end of the M1 motorway. What made GCB different from conventional architectural practices was a decision made early on by Garnett and his business partner, Tony Cloughmore, to invite Erik Blakemore (1926-87), an Elstree film designer, to join them. This was looked on by fellow architects as something quite shocking at the time. Blakemore's sets for such best-forgotten British films of the late 1950s as The Depraved, Three Crooked Men and The Great Van Robbery, directed by Max Varnel, were eclipsed in the young architects' eyes by his design for the fashionable south seas-style Beachcomber bar at the Mayfair hotel. Holiday camp king Billy Butlin loved this stuff, too. As a result, in 1965 GCB were asked to design six sub-Beachcomber bars - all bamboo furniture, fishing nets swagged from ceilings and local girls sporting sarongs - at Butlin's camps at Barry Island, Bognor Regis, Filey, Minehead and Skegness. The Top of the Tower restaurant, also for Butlin, followed in 1966, though, sadly, it closed in 1980, nine years after a bomb exploded in the 620ft Post Office tower. ..a disco with a pirhana fish dance floor!! for the full obit go HERE

While searching around I found this obituary for one of the designers of the Mayfair Beachcomber and the butlins Beachcomber bars..

Obituary
Patrick Garnett

Architect whose designs caught the mood of swinging London.

Patrick Garnett, who has died aged 74, was a successful architect whose practice, Garnett Cloughley Blakemore (GCB), designed memorable, three-dimensional sequences of 1960s' swinging London, and connected pop culture with a wide cross section of society - from Belgravia to Butlin's.

heir constructions included a revolving restaurant on the 34th floor of the Post Office tower, the electric Kool-Aid interiors of the Chelsea Drugstore, framed for posterity in Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange, a chic, regutted Belgravia house for Earl Mountbatten of Burma, a Bond-style discotheque - complete with piranha fish swimming beneath the glass dance floor - and the bright and breezy Scratchwood service station at the southern end of the M1 motorway.

What made GCB different from conventional architectural practices was a decision made early on by Garnett and his business partner, Tony Cloughmore, to invite Erik Blakemore (1926-87), an Elstree film designer, to join them. This was looked on by fellow architects as something quite shocking at the time. Blakemore's sets for such best-forgotten British films of the late 1950s as The Depraved, Three Crooked Men and The Great Van Robbery, directed by Max Varnel, were eclipsed in the young architects' eyes by his design for the fashionable south seas-style Beachcomber bar at the Mayfair hotel.

Holiday camp king Billy Butlin loved this stuff, too. As a result, in 1965 GCB were asked to design six sub-Beachcomber bars - all bamboo furniture, fishing nets swagged from ceilings and local girls sporting sarongs - at Butlin's camps at Barry Island, Bognor Regis, Filey, Minehead and Skegness. The Top of the Tower restaurant, also for Butlin, followed in 1966, though, sadly, it closed in 1980, nine years after a bomb exploded in the 620ft Post Office tower.

..a disco with a pirhana fish dance floor!! for the full obit go HERE

Post #238654 by atomictonytiki on Mon, Jun 19, 2006 5:25 PM