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Exercise

Instructions:

You are given a piece of text with six spaces.

Six paragraphs have been removed from the text, corresponding to the spaces.

You are also given a set 7 paragraphs A, B, C, D, E, F and G  for each space.

You are required to put each given paragraph into its correct space.

 

There are 2 ways of putting your chosen paragraph into the correct location:
1 - Type the letter which corresponds to the chosen paragraph into the empty space.
2 - Click on the chosen paragraph first and then click on the chosen empty space. The paragraph will appear in the chosen empty space.

 

Once all the questions have been answered, click on the check button.

Correct answers will appear in green, incorrect answers in red.

Your mark will be given as a percentage.

 

The pass mark for this exercise is 60% or over and you need to be able to do this exercise in the exam in about 10 minutes.

(Here a timer is given to help.)

10:00 min.

Occupied

Occupied! Would you live in an old public toilet?

There are very few young women who would get excited about a line of art deco urinals, but when architect Laura Jane Clark Q.1 first saw the antique porcelain in a block of Gents toilets in south-east London, she had a light bulb moment. She thought they were totally wonderful.

(1)

Why?

When she finally got the keys, her descent below ground revealed a Ladies and Gents placed end-to-end to form a long thin space Q.2 furnished with rubble, rusty plumbing and unsavoury toilet cubicles complete with cisterns.

(2)

Why?

With her architect's eye, Clark saw the height, the glass-brick ceiling lights set into the pavement above and space for an indoor-outdoor courtyard. But it would be almost seven years before she got the go ahead to turn it into a home. Some might celebrate a new home by Q.3 popping the bubbly and having a house-warming get-together.

(3)

Why?

Known to friends as Laura Loos, Q.3 Clark's Lamp Architects practice has since been called upon by buyers to advise on other lavatory conversions. She is helping with a planning application for one in north London and Q.4 is about to work on designs for a converted toilet in central Cambridge.

(4)

Why?

q.4 Austerity-pressed councils, looking for ways to cash in on assets, have recognised the potential for flogging their under-used conveniences. But don't get too excited. While Clark and Ranger found buildings with history, features and desirable locations, Q.5 these buildings tend to be dull, utilitarian post-war buildings with nothing to boast of but pebble-dash and plumbing.

(5)

Why?

Q.5 The only one of the five to offer a faint hope of residential use is a flat-roofed, post-war toilet on Canaan Lane in Morningside. No guide prices were given, but a week after the closing date in August, Q.6 the council said there was a good level of interest.

(6)

Why?

In Bristol, Q.6 an ornate period lavatory is leased by the council as a gallery space called the Edwardian Cloakroom. A former Victorian public convenience in Kentish Town, north London, was reopened last year as a cocktail bar, aptly named Ladies and Gentlemen.

The Tribune

Paragraphs

  • A Clark was not the first toilet dweller, though. An Arts and Crafts style public toilet in Forest Hill, south-east London, was converted into a home in 2002. John Ranger, an architect, lives with his family in a former toilet in Witney, Oxfordshire, bought for 36,000 pounds in 2005. And there are surely more to come.
  • B Another subterranean toilet from around 1890, in London's Fitzrovia, has been turned into The Attendant, a bar that makes a feature of its reclaimed Doulton porcelain urinals. Sadly, despite the bleach, Clark's originals couldn't be saved.
  • C Instead, the first thing she did when she signed the lease was to go down there with a huge bottle of bleach. Clark's subsequent conversion should go down in London planning history as a triumph of hope over adversity. As well as a long and bumpy negotiation with planners, Clark succeeded in turning a useless, derelict public building into an inspirational urban living space.
  • D Planning limitations have resulted in some surprising re-uses for former public toilets. McLean is about to buy a postage stamp WC on the edge of Scotland's Carnoustie golf course. In an ideal world, he'd like to demolish and redevelop it, but in the short-term he's thinking of leasing it as a dog grooming salon.
  • E This was a property viewing like no other. It was 2005 and Clark, 24 at the time, had spent nearly six months trying to persuade her local council to show her a set of redundant underground toilets that weren't really for sale.
  • F Among five urban toilets recently offered for sale by Edinburgh City Council, one is beautifully placed on the corner of Royal Terrace Gardens on the boundary of the city's World Heritage site, but the building itself is an unprepossessing Sixties block with mean little windows. Another, on the seafront promenade at Joppa, is attached to an Eighties pumping station.
  • G She described them as pretty disgusting, adding that these public conveniences, which had served the people of Crystal Palace since 1928, had been closed for 30 years. But she knew there was something really special about the space and she could see the potential.