The story of Aston Webb's buildings in Birmingham probably sums up all we need to know about how architecture has progressed over 125 years. His Victoria Law Courts on Corporation Street, designed with Ingress Bell (who never received a Royal Gold Medal), were clearly supposed to convey the power, long tradition and steadfastness of the English judiciary. Webb (1849-1930) and Bell beat 126 other architects to win the competition to design the building in 1887. Greeted by a wrought iron inverted portcullis, visitors were meant to feel tiny in the face of this ancient institution. Detainees could be brought up to the forbidding courtrooms directly from tunnels to Steelhouse Lane Police Station custody cells. Asymmetrical, like a castle added to over time, it was intended to both strike fear into people and fill them with awe, an effect enhanced by Gothic Revival elements such as turrets, sloping roofs, extreme ornamentation and expanses of stained glass outside, and a gargantuan hall, hammer beam roof, dark woods, endless tunnels and corridors within.
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