The side of a department store in Birmingham, West Midlands, UK, by Lucrezia Herman, Nottingham.

We asked Lucrezia what it was that had appealed to her about this image:

Taken as a whole, it's a rather ugly building, but in detail shots the changing perspective of the discs and the way the light bounces off them make it a tremendous subject from lots of angles. I chose this particular shot (which I'd titled 'Welcome to the Mother Ship' before learning of your contest!) because it looks like the entrance to a flying saucer, hence the Vogons feeling right at home!

We actually had a couple of submissions with views of this building - a well-known department store in Birmingham city centre. We liked this particular shot because of the way the doors and balcony broke up the texture of the 'bubbles'. As Lucrezia noted, it looks suitably 'alien' and futuristic, but in a way that probably gets up the noses of architects and art critics alike. It also looks quite organic, like a close-up on a fly's eye, or cells mingling together. Great from any point of view... except, perhaps, to stuffy architects and anti-Modernists.

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