Lee Circle Car Park Leicester - 60s Brutalist Architecture,Largest Supermarket,First with automation
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- čas přidán 28. 02. 2023
- #leicester #carparking #architecture
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Who knew that a car park could be so interesting. Lee Circle car park in Leicester is a textbook example of brutalist architecture that had become popular throughout the 50s 60s and 70s.
Concrete was the building material of choice as it was cheap and could be made into almost any shape... and it seems they went to town. Today we might not look favourably at these structures but at the same time, they're an important piece of architectural history so surely we should hold onto these impressive structures.
This car park could also claim to be the first that offered an automated coin operated barrier system as well as housing the largest supermarket in Europe! - Auta a dopravní prostředky
Congratulations on being the first CZcamsr in history to produce content on a Leicester Carpark without mentioning Richard III
And he also managed to avoid mentioning the 110 Richards who came before Richard 111. What a legend.
Who's she?
@@loswilko what Richard III or Leicester Carpark?
Richard the thirds can be found in any multi-storey car park, usually in the lift. So take the stairs
Accurate..
It's my understanding that whenever a new multi-storey carpark is opened, the mayor does a ceremonial piss in the stairwell, to kick-start the aroma we all know and love
Nowadays they have to smoke an inordinate amount of the stinkiest weed ever as well.
Best comment 😂😂😂😂
Glad to see we (America, England) continue to have a common sense of decency. Many years ago, my family and I went to Miami, decided to ride the rail system. Went to the elevator to go up to the track. Four teenagers had just come out. Entered and found they'd decorated all four corners as it was still merging in the center. Not enough butt whipping then, either.
You nicked that from Bill Bryson I reckon!🤣🤣
@@2760ade It is from his teachings that I formed the understanding 😄
The Tesco store was also opened by one Sid James. Interesting? I thought so
As someone who grew up in Leicester I have fond memories of Lee Circle. Mostly memory of parents going into the wrong lift/stair well and our car not being where we thought it would be.
This led the the highly fun (for me) adventure of going back down to the ground floor, walking to the other lift/stairwell and sending to the correct floor, as there was no way to move between the helixs.
I’ve never understood this about Lee circle. It’s one building but you have a red and blue side. What a silly idea…
That double helix design caught everyone out. Wrong floor? Nevermind let's walk up/down to next floor..... WRONG!
Have you got any more stories like this?
@@petejones9755 Been there, done that, met people doing the same thing a number of times, though I never understood who came up with the concept of two unconnected car parks in the same building, with both entrances on the same side of the building. The Lee Byron car dealership (itself named after Lee Circle/Byron Street where it was located) used the top of the Lee Circle car park to store their new cars
Clever!
The biggest crime committed during the brutalist era was the demolition of Nottingham Victoria station, only to be replaced by the concrete block that is the shopping centre.
At least they kept the clock
“Leicester can trace its roots as far back as - a long time ago” 😂❤
Actually, it is even longer than that!
"Incredible, but horrid, I think I like it" is my entire attitude towards Brutalist architecture, great stuff
The roof top of this car park was used for a back drop photo shoot for my 1966 mk2 cortina, for it to be featured in classic ford magazine back in 2010. The feature won best photo shoot of the year in the magazine too!🤘
Went to Uni in Leicester from 98-01. Like most BMXer's and Skaters I'm thankful for Brutalist architecture, having spent a lot of time multi storey car parks, but not for the purpose of parking a car, but practicing tricks, keeping dry and smoking the occasional zoot...
Skated in any multi-storey car park I saw, known as "Appropriated Spaces".
Second best was when I got my first 125 Yamaha blasting round the things with a board on my back and then skating.
Did you ever visit The Edge indoor skate park while you were there.?
@@TheFoolishboy9 not sure if it was there at the that time?, just loved riding all the street, I grew up in small town with slim pickings, so I loved exploring all the spots at the Uni's etc, but did get the train up to Derby to ride storm at bit, even saw Jamie Bestwick ride a vert :)
Who isn't partial to the occasional zoot!😉😉
@James Becki Ah the Sector 5, Fan Club and Charlotte era.
In the "coin operated" car park dad used to park in when we went shopping when I was a kid, the barrier machine issued you a ticket with a 4 digit number on it. At the exit, you were supposed to type in your 4 digit number, then the price would be displayed and you put coins in the slot. My dad, however, used to just type in random 4 digit numbers until it came up with one that was 20p, so we could potentially get a whole days parking for the cost of an hour. Did everyone do this?
In a local car park, you press a button to get your entry ticket, the barrier goes up and in you go. When leaving you have to put your entry ticket into the payment machine, pay the fee and get your exit ticket. What a lot of people do is just go and get another entry ticket ten minutes before going to fetch their car and use that ticket to pay ... 😁
@@phillwainewright4221 Until sensors and technology ruined it for everyone! 😆
This is the best description of Brutalist design I've seen so far on CZcams, which I really appreciate - too often it's people saying "it concrete, it BRUTAL" with a complete failure to research. Appreciate the effort you put in to everything you do!
This direction in content is a welcome move, bravo. I spent 15years shooting editorial car features around the UK and a brutalist structure was always a favoured location - underpasses, car parks - We lived the high life I tell you.
Oooo the smell of stale urine on concrete!
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Its lovely.
On the ground floor of the building directly behind the carpark at 2:23 was a Ten Pin bowling alley. At the time it was the biggest single floored bowling alley in the UK with 36 lanes. The building behind that was built in 1959. it was the main telephone exchange for the centre of Leicester, now it is "desirable apartments".
Was that the "megazone" alley? I fucking loved that place as a kid but never knew where it was because it was gone by the time I reached adulthood
@@Sam-es2gf . No it was Top Rank Bowling, closed down , turned into a disco, think it was called Fusion. That closed, not sure what it is now, never go there now, after spending all my working life in the centre of Leicester.
The bowling was a regular haunt of mine in the junior league on a Saturday morning.
I’ve got to go work this morning so I’m commenting so I can come back and watch this later! I love brutalist buildings and I’m from Leicester. Lee Circle is great! That means our council will flatten it. Enjoy it while you can.
I spent many a happy hour trying to find my car. The "Double Helix" was unique and it served by "Red Lifts" and "Blue Lifts" which made it rather confusing to say the least. Each space was marked with a number so at least you could find it that way. Me and my mates used to race from the top to the bottom on hand made "go carts" usually made from a stolen pram and that was often crashed into a Ford Anglia or Vauxhall Viva on the loops. It's actually one of the best examples of the Brutalist style and should be kept. There are calls to have it listed. But that's not all. It has a sister car park, Abbey Street car park. The same architect and style but this time it had a cinema on the ground floor, car decks then a hotel on top. Also it was rumoured that the council had a nuclear control room under the car park so that in the event of bomb going off, the car park pancaked on top of the shelter. Incidentally it used to be the Lee Circle cricket pitch. Leicester has it all.... DNA, The Elephant Man, Glacier Mints, R111 and Lee Circle. Personally I love it, along with the NT in London. I still have vivid memories of my parents trying to find their MK2 Cortina as they forgot where it was parked!
"Leicester can trace it's roots back to a long time ago." It's nuggets of information like this that keep me subscribed.
I used to visit as a lad (70 years ago) and I can certainly vouch for the fact that Leicester was there then. And in much the same place as it is now.
@@maxberan3897 although the impact of the 2008 Market Rasen earthquake was enough to displace Leicester by a number of millimetres.
"can trace it's roots as far back as a long time ago" nuggets like that are why I watch your vids.
As a regular follower of this channel I'm always pleasantly surprised by the wide variety of interesting and often entertaining comments that people leave. Often just as amusing and educational as the videos themselves. You can't say that about many CZcams channels. Thanks.
Being born, as I was, in the 1950's you become witness to the brutalist architecture. Birmingham had the shit bombed out of it so the quick and easy way to rebuild it was to throw down a shit ton of concrete. Now this concrete looked OK (ish) when it was pristine and gleaming white but by the time I began to venture into Brum from small town, Worcestershire it had weathered considerably! It was difficult to decide which looked worse, the faded post war concrete or the previous centuries smoke encrusted red brick structures.
Back in small town my personal encounter with brutalist architecture was the Secondary Modern School I attended, and sadly its still standing as no one has had the common decency to put a bulldozer through it, but they did change the name, it's now a "High School".
The saddest part of all is that, while many of monstrous edifices have been demolished, someone has decided that this period of regrettable architecture should be preserved so listed status has been bestowed on many of the remaining buildings that concrete cancer and the bulldozer haven't claimed as their victims.
Oh, great video by the way!
They are an eye sore today and need to go.
Reminds me somewhat of the carpark in Gateshead which had a long stay of execution partly because it was famous for being where Alf Roberts was lobbed off the top by Michael Caine in "Get Carter". Eventually everybody thought it was letting the side down, even in Gateshead and it was flattened.
It had a restaurant in it, didn't it? Was it the one that got shut down because fire engines couldn't get to it?
Not quite, though that would've been an issue. The real issue was that it was so high there was zero water pressure at the top and it seems that nobody thought of pumps and local storage tanks, so it was never finished or fitted out. The whole environment was called Trinity Square and it was utterly windswept and dark and desolate. At the very bottom of it was a Presto store, Tesco was over the road behind the famous Shepherds department store where I used to go and see Santa in the 70s.
It would have to be hideous to make Gateshead look bad.
I remember it getting flattened principally because it had been in Get Carter. Didn't realise it had hung on because of it though.
@@C.I... it never opened 😕
Really love this channel always full of insight on things most wouldn't pay attention to..... presented in a cheery manner.
I like it, dystopia at its best!!!
Very interesting. I went to uni in Leicester, so I recognise the 3 university buildings (Attenborough tower, Engineering tower, and Charles Wilson building). Also, I did a lot of cycling when I worked for Deliveroo, so I've been round the car park many times, but never in it because I never needed to.
The outro audio is excellent! Love it!
Bristol has a similar car park in Rupert Street and has been described as "an iconic brutalist car park" by the 20th Century Society.
It was the first of its kind to feature a continuous spiral parking ramp in the UK, which is half-a-mile long.
And they want to knock it down and build student flats there instead 🤷.
@@Rob.Coleman but also people want it listed. Difficult choice really, it doesn't really serve much of a purpose these days.
Can't have been double helix if that long. You've only got three circuits of this to get to the bottom as you drop two levels at a time.
Is it tall enough to throw statues off the top?
@@BibtheBoulder yes, and useless Mayors and Metro Mayors. ;-)
I well remember when it was at its best. It seemed very modern to me, having everything in one place. It all went tits up when Tesco and the petrol pumps went, which were replaced by several small businesses. The lifts were often broken in the 90s and smelled of urine. Eventually they closed one of the circuits. I suspect that NCP and/or the city council were purposely running it down.
They reopened the mothballed circuit a few years ago. I think it's fair to say that NCP maintain it to an absolutely minimal standard but that's true of a lot of their car parks.
I love it, I see a multi level inner city hydroponic allotment/farm with a space on the ground floor to sell what’s grown . I think the council sees private developers & “luxury flats”, cos we haven’t got enough of those already.
Another example of a double helix car park - Bloomsbury Square, Holborn. But its underground. It becomes very clear why this method of construction is used, in this instance, when you use it.There was also a "hole in wall" automated car park near the Royal Society in Picadilly. I remember my father's delight at showing me this wonder as a child in the '60's.
I used this car park regularly until a few years ago. At £3.45 for 24 hours (if you use the stupid NCP app) it's probably the cheapest long-term car park in the city centre.
Broadly speaking I'm pro keeping it but it's scary and depressing in its present state.
NCP do just enough maintenance to prevent bits dropping off and to keep it functional but not enough to stop it looking tatty and unwelcoming. The fact that nearly all the shops on the ground floor are closed and shuttered doesn't help.
The thing that makes the double helix design clever is that it doesn't need any ramps. It has two separate vehicle entrances, leading to a 'red' and a 'blue' circuit. If you forget which one you've used, it gets unnerving because you get very disorientated or you think your car has been stolen. I've had to explain this a few times to unwary people who think they've lost their car. One of the circuits was mothballed for a long time but was reopened a few years ago, after a half-hearted refurbishment.
Like most of Leicester's multi-storey car parks, the stairwells are often used by drug users and homeless people, especially at night. A few years ago, massive steel doors were added to the pedestrian entrances. These can only be opened using a parking ticket (or barcode) but it didn't seem to occur to NCP that there's nothing to prevent anyone walking in via the vehicle entrances. This is exactly what I generally do as its far more convenient than faffing around with the security doors.
As I said, in spite of all the issues, I'm massively pro this car park which is an ingenious design and a little bit of history that deserves to be preserved. I should stress that I used it daily for years with no real problems and still do on the rare occasions that I drive into Leicester.
By the way, there's a smaller but similar car park (incorporating a derelict hotel) on Abbey Street, only a two minute walk away.
As brutalist architecture goes, I like it a lot more than I liked the affectionately nicknamed 'Berlin Wall' in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, which was pretty much just a slab of stained concrete. People fought to save it for some unknown reason but it's mostly been demolished now.
Yes, that was horrid, and I like brutalism too. I was thankful to have documented it when it had graffiti sprayed on it saying "The North is not a petri dish". A short while later it was rubble.
Remarkable that it was designed to take the weight of cars half as heavy (if that) of today's safety / battery loaded vehicles and it still stands and does it's job. It says a lot about the engineers, and builders that it's still standing.
most structural things within the built environment are deliberatly over-engineered for this reason
I bet the painted car slots are still tiny, 'thoug?
@@LankyScotty Absolutely, by many factors (there's an 80 year old Mulberry harbour part in use as a Power Station loading pontoon in Sweden with modern materials handling equipment on it), but I still think that the load increase is remarkable.
@@janethull9748 Still expecting that Ford Zepher to swing in 😁😁
You are 100 times better than Wikipedia!
Love the inclusion of a snippet of Wolfenstein gameplay. Unexpected, but greatly appreciated 🔥
Only you can make a concrete carpark sound interesting.... 😄 Keep it up me love... xx
Built on Lee St where Joseph Merrick was born. Also there are regular reports of car theft as people don't always realise its a double helix. So you can park on one side on the third level but use the wrong entrance and you are on the other third level where your car aint.
There are two different coloured entrances, one for each helix, but yes, if you didn't know that, you could be well baffled by your car's apparent disappearance!!😮🤣
I do like a bit of brutalism. Preston bus station is worth a look, it narrowly avoided demolition about 10 years ago and is now listed I believe
Love brutalist architecture yet I had no idea this existed!
Interestingly (to me at least), brutalism doesn’t get its name from the style of building appearing brutal, but from the French word “brut” meaning raw…the phrase “béton brut” translating to “raw concrete”.
Interesting! I never knew that,even though i am into architecture! 😍😍 Brutalist isn't my favourite.. .but i do like some brutalist architecture.
Leicester: once a pioneer for motorists. Now better known for Walkers.
Take a bow, Steve!
Back in the ‘90s, I worked part-time for the nearby Sainsbury’s (now closed). Although there were a couple of old guys (both called Pete, if I remember right) who did trolley collections, it wasn’t uncommon for students to have to visit each floor (red and blue) to look for trolleys. It was a great excuse to do very little actual work). I used to park my diarrhoea orange ‘79 Mini at the top - so I had enough runs to try bump starting the thing 😂.
As a kid, I remember walking all the way up to to the roof of that thing shortly after it opened. It seemed very modern at the time.
I lived in Leicestershire for 17 years and used to go into the city reasonably often, but I had no idea this even existed!
Give it a sand blast, and a lick of paint on the stairwell buildings, and I think it would look rather impressive. Definitely has some architectural merit - the oval ends really make the design.
I agree but the shots really don't give a sense of how degraded everything else is on that circle. It would be like polishing one turd in a litter tray that has been unattended for quite a while
That outro is elite, you honestly get so creative with your dry yet subtle humour
I actually took my family for a day out to Leicester just to see this car park! It's very important in my opinion, and if we don't look after these buildings they'll soon be none left!
Sid James cut the ribbon at the opening of the Tesco store. There was a poster with him quoted as saying "It's got the lot! Hyackykyakykak"
It’s interesting that you mentioned Crawley in the intro as a slightly altered version of the same thing was built about ten years ago in Crawley, a large carpark with a supermarket built in to it.
Morrisons was the company that was housed in the car park structure but not on the ground floor, it was a few floors up.
Morrisons had two supermarkets in the town of Crawley along with a petrol station but for reason i am not privy to, they pulled out of the town completely after just a couple of years leaving behind a large retail space that has as yet not found a new tenant.
It did seem that Morrisons were unhappy & it actually closed it’s prime town centre location weeks BEFORE Christmas, a time when supermarkets make a lot of their yearly revenue.
Ahhhh Basildon.... as an Australian who grew up in Melbourne.... the suburb... "Pitsea" described the place perfectly... "Its the Pits... see!" ... and it was! I am now happily living in Croydon......looking out to the Dandenong Mountains..,thankfully putting that experience as to what one does in the youth "for experience"....
PS..I am alive today because I stayed well clear of the Laindon pub…..every time I got off the train at Laindon…..!
Utterly brilliant!!! Like an accessible Jonathan Meads. Seriously, I've been saving this up as I knew it was going to be a standout video.
Well done guys.
Wow I lived in Leicester for a few years this was a 2 minute walk from me and I always wondered why they built such a huge car park randomly in town and always thought about what shops were under it! Never would I have guessed tesco. They should keep it and give it a massive face lift, get tenants back in the shops as they all sit empty now.
Great when you get content on the place you live. Enjoyed the M69 video and this was even better.
That old timey outro is awesome.
Congratulations on being the first CZcamsr to show Basildon high street without mentioning Depeche Mode.
This is the best video I've ever seen about anything
Great presentation!
I like that the topic not only talks about a car park but also talks about the concept of modernism in planning and architecture. I hope to see more content like this in the further future.
I can remember going to that car park to go to Tesco when I was aged about 3 in the early 1970s.
Great video as always John. Your witty, tongue-in -cheek delivery is fantastic 😆👍🏼
Great video sir!
As a Leicester lad this car park has many fond memories for me -
In the early 80s there was a Sunday car sales set up and i bought a Marina TC
In the late 80s i worked for BSS at Lee Circle.
In the early 90s i blasted round each bend up to the top floor of the car park in my Golf GTI Mk1 (it was almost empty at the time) - such fun 😊
Like the Turin test track, lovely bit of brutalist architecture
I love the "Pathê vintage voice overs" I reckon you've got yet another talent with that! Nice one. I RECKON that the car park would benefit from a power was, paint job, and lighting refurb. But then again, I've heard it said that modern concrete is crap compared to what the Romans were producing a couple of thousand years ago.
I'm still loving the channel; your growth in subs is well deserved.
The "It was only meant to last 50 years" trope with concrete buidings is effectively nonsense. Saying that most of the panel built tower blocks were built so on the cheap that 20 years was probably pushing it. An example of a good concrete tower block would be Balfron opened in 1967, and not that long ago all previously incumbent social tenants got booted out by the owners who bought it off the council. So now they are privately owned expensive, (probably) luxury flats.
I'd love to see a look into the history of the unique Bloomsbury Square car park in London - it's an underground double helix design, very bizarre!
I love them car parks !
The Tesco sounds more interesting and historic than the car park to me. I think I'd want to preserve that. You said "it was the first store to operate a self-service system". Thats amazing.
I just love Brutalist architecture. I also love your videos Jon and this one is just awesome!
superb as per usual
There is another one in Bristol as well on Rupert Street. The council want it gone and replaced with yet another souless glass box, and so there have been calls from the residents for it to be listed.
Famous disagreement???!!! You have a unique way of describing things. I love it. Keep going.
I love the car park. It's a work or art!
Another great and informative video mate.
We had the Tricorn Centre Multi-storey Car Park in Portsmouth (look it up, its vile). Knocked the eyesore down amid much fanfare. In its place now sits a car park.
Loved that Tesco! Use to go there with Mom 1969 👍
I'm not going to lie.... But when you said "automated carpark" I was thinking of one of those fancy one's like they have in Japan. 😜
I did too. I was very disappointed when it didn’t pick u up your car and park it in a slot.
Like the one in Edinburgh that still had cars from that '80s/'90s in it when it was demolished in 2018. Apparently they were scrap cars that they used to test the system from when they built it in 2001.
I feel a connection here. I was born in Crawley, currently live near Harlow and once, I think I actually used the auto magic car park when I went to Leicester! I also visited Hunstanton for fish and chips. One final connection, I too have used concrete for various construction projects i.e. shed base. I think I can be described as a child of brutalism but don’t tell any no win, no fee sharks(sorry, solicitors) 😂😂😂😂😂
An absolute beauty 🤪
Lived in Leicester for 25 years and it never once occurred to me to park in the dump that is Lee Circle. I wouldn’t even know how to drive to it as roads are such a maze round there.
Reality is that area - if it ever was decent - didn’t stay decent for very long.
A whole new subset of Auto Shenanigans: car parks and odorific lifts ... 🤯
As I am from Hitchin, your comments about Stevenage made me chuckle. I didn't however realise that it was the first new town. Every day is a school day as they say.
We in main city Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Federal Republic of Germany have some brutalist 60's buildings too. One is a big building of the Christian-Albrechts University (CAU). Suddenly (these last years) we can't change it into different using building after the building is in the history building plan what use normally for old strongholds and houses! A concrete building from the 60's!
That's what's most worrying, them becoming listed buildings so you can't knock the eye-sores down.
That double helix design is actually quite clever. I like it 👍
untill you loose your car, its badly marked as ive lost my car a few times here.
Should do as they've done in Preston and just refurb it. Sandblast all the concrete, refurbish the stairwells and install new lighting. Completely transforms these old brutalist car parks.
I'm from Leicester & I remember this car park for a different reason, there was a nightclub called Forbidden that I'm quite sure was on the ground floor when I was in my teens.
Are you sure? I always thought nightclubs in car parks were Forbidden
I used to go to forbidden, 9pm till 6am then on to Hartley's bar. Crazy times
@@jonathanholmes3756 yes, very crazy times, can't help but remember of Sarah G when I think about that place
I don't know why but this carpark is in one of my earliest memories from when I was about 5 in the early 60's
Thank you. I now know so much about a car park that I knew nothing about that I now want to know much more about it.
My procrastination is testament to your mission to educate my ignorance of the history of car parks and specifically those of a brutalist double helix in nature [maybe it's in my DNA]
Know it well. I remember shopping in the Tesco too 😊
We went there to spend our Green Shield Stamps!
That is a great video. Interesting structure - def needs preserving and tarting up. Thanks for the vid.
I remember skateboarding in Banbury multi story car park. It was the same as the one in Wolverhampton that collapsed. It’s been demolished now after the council spent thousands strengthening it.
So I will now be visiting Leicester, to see both car parks and R3! Very interesting, as usual. Thanks very much. 👍
I think it's beautiful 😊
The other interesting Leicester car park is the NCP on Abbey Street just round the corner from this one, it has an abandoned hotel on the roof and an old cinema turned furniture store on the ground floor.
If you go on Street View and go all the way back to 2008 both the hotel and Cinema are still there and open!
Thanks Edward, I'd forgotten about that!
pS - Anyone remember the Haymarket car park that had such a tight spiral that big Volvos got wedged?
And if you go back to Streetview 1976 you can see me going into the The Cinema to watch Picnic At Hanging Rock
@@janethull9748 Oh yes! ...and the deep gouges on the concrete walls where cars had scraped them on the way round. 🙂
"Photograph of 3rd Century Leicester"🙂
Now that deserves another coffee or pint.
Cheers mate, nice one!
There was also a bowling alley on the ground floor at some point cus that’s where my mum and dad first met.
"Features every brand from A to X", the letters Y and Z not having been invented until 1968 and 1972 respectively, thus ending the British Government's alphabet completion program that had been due to conclude in 1927.
that carpark is good for racing around
Love your wit John. Your super star .I think you might go far x
Wonderful!
Thanks
The only Brutalist building I ever liked was the Birmingham Central Library, and I'd like to show you all a picture of it, but it's already knocked down ! It was on an "island" on the Inner Ring Road called Paradise Island, and was to to have been faced in lovely white stone, but as that was too costly, they just left it as raw concrete. The site plan was never completed.
The library was designed by the John Madin design group
Hey MNiJ, Brutal but true! Great presentation as always. I swear your channel is gonna hit the big time soon; eat ya heart out Tom Scott 😆
I remember going to that Tesco as a kid in the 1970s. Apparently Sid James from the Carry On movies appeared at the store when it opened in 1961 😊
Ooo. A car park! But is it pre-tensioned shuttered construction or lift slab post-tensioned? There’s some “interesting” differences and an occasional catastrophic failure.