city middle: birmingham

a couple of weeks ago i visitied birmingham for the first time, or at least the first time properly. my previous experiences of the city were a few changes in the depressing underground labyrinth of new street station, and an exciting if ultimately fruitless trip to villa park. here was a city that i actually knew very little about, despite it being one of the biggest in the country. so here was an opportunity over a few days to work out what birmingham actually is, what makes this supposed second city tick?

i’ll start with the good. in terms of place specific cultural experiences, the pen room is one of the finest museums i have been to in a while. whilst walking through the jewellery quarter (which is definitely still full of sparkling things) a tourist information sign for a pen museum was exactly the kind of thing that would turn my head. the pen room opens with a bold claim, that at the height of the city’s industrial output three quarters of everything written in the world used a pen from birmingham. big talk. whilst i have no means available to me to even begin to verify this, i can confirm that there are lots of different pens in this place. more pens that i have ever seen in my life. i had a go at making a steel pen nib. i wrote my name in braille. i looked at lots of pens. a hugely enthusiastic and knowledgeable volunteer provided a bridging point and means of engaging with a pretty overwhelming collection, and thus showed the importance of places like this. if cities and communities are to retain a grip on their cultural and social past, then places like this need to be supported. if you are ever in birmingham i really do suggest heading to the pen room, and make sure to leave a donation to support their work.

from pens, to art. ikon gallery had always been one of those names that i knew, but couldn’t see a time that i would be able to visit. before considering the exhibitions within, the gallery building is marvelous. housed in a converted neo-gothic school, ikon makes great use of its space. in particular, the glass lift inside the building does a great job of presenting the interior of the space; it does that showing you the outside of a building but on the inside trick that i always gawp at (see also the great court at the british museum and john rylands library). the lift also has the added extra of housing one of martin creed’s sound installations, which was a welcome treat as just a week earlier i had failed to find his similar work at the festival hall. i digress.

ikon gallery. image – ikon gallery

the three display spaces in the gallery work really well, set across two and a bit floors. in terms of the work on display, timur noviko’s fabric works capture perestroika-era soviet life in a way that i’ve never thought about it before, and his seven pictures on rice paper, produced after the artist had gone blind, are simple, beautiful and inspiring. on the first floor a collection of john flaxman’s sketches are aesthetically interesting, but i’ll admit don’t do a huge amount for me. they are very well displayed though.

however, the space that interested me most in ikon is the ‘tower room.’ currently home to a video installation by/of the angolan artist nastio mosquito, this room seems to exist outside of the rest of the gallery spaces, in a nowhere ground between the first and second floors. from studying the building from the outside you can see where the tower fits in, yet it somehow felt like it was in a different place to me once inside. i’d be really interested to see other uses of this room, as whether it can live up to the title it has been given.

from ikon i drift towards the heart of civic birmingham. the town hall (where i would later see steve reich and the london sinfonietta perform within beautiful surroundings) proudly sits next to the council house and birmingham museum and art gallery. these are big buildings, built by industrialist proud of their city. i pick up shades of leeds here, overblown and unabashed grandstanding in civic terms. the victoria square into chamberlain square run of public space is really well done, and features everything you expect of a regenerated city centre – large scale buildings set around a modern sculpture and/or water feature, and the remains of sculptures which used to dominate the space but are now somewhat overlooked. not necessarily a criticism, certainly not when you consider the issues of public/private spaces in this city (more on that later).

the round room. image – heart of england galleries

the entrance to the museum and art gallery houses a memorial which i think capture the essence of the boom in museum culture and its civilising aims - by the gains of industry we promote art. you do the hard work, and here we will educate you. on walking up the stairs you are punched in the face by the grandure of the round room, a vast space crammed with paintings on pretty much every available point of the walls which reach upwards to the high domed ceiling. this is a fantastic entry point, and shows something of the respect with which the elders of birmingham past viewed their cultural duties.

with limited time in the gallery, i soaked up the wonderful collection of modern british art which included some brilliant examples of lanyon, heron, hepworth, moore and epstein. there is also a great display from new art west midlands, the highlights of which were grace a williams’ work on notions of photography and art, and lizzie prince’s drawings inspired by brutalist geometry.

lizzie prince. image – lizzie prince

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what of birmingham the city though? there are signs of interesting things happening culturally, though i would also note that in the little time i was there i didn’t feel like there was any kind of coherent arts scene, in a way that manchester, sheffield, leeds, nottingham and liverpool have. there are signs of interesting architectural conversations trying to happen around the city, especially with the new library building which i will definitely want to see once it is topped out. however, the overarching feeling i left the city with was one of unease at being constantly ‘managed’ through spaces. pretty much every journey on foot through the city is forced to wind through an enclosed private space, be it the icc’s deluge of conference rooms, the premiere retail experience of the mailbox, the confusion of corporate non-identity of the cube or paradise forum shopping centre. there is a cloying sense of paranoia that is enforced on you as a pedestrain, knowing that you are merely walking from the view of one cctv control room to another, becoming another footfall on a visitor counter whilst being subjected to piped sound and recycled air. birmingham is by no means alone in this approach of managing public/private space, just take a walk through liverpool one or wakefield’s trinity walk to get the same experience. as someone who loves exploring cities and discovering their identity through their streets, what i learnt about birmingham is that it is more interested in commerce than retaining a coherent city identity. which maybe is exactly what the identity of the city is; commerce, conferences and chain coffee.

edge of darkness: dungeness

a few weeks before christmas i visited a part of the coast of england which i had never had any cause to go near before. as someone who is quite accustomed, and indeed a hearty supporter of, walks along abandoned beaches in winter, this was obviously a quite exciting prospect. whilst we were based in camber, which i would definitely recommend as a terrific winter beach – camber sands was a huge expanse of nothing, it was the short hop down the coast to dungeness that left a lasting impression.

situated at the dropping off point of kent on the east coast, dungeness is a headland like no other i have seen in this country. as the road winds towards the coast there is a certain point where you switch from being in the uk to regarding an ‘other place.’ the vast expanse of, well, not much, feels far more like the images you see of abandoned scandanavian coastal regions than britain. following signs for the old lighthouse, the barely marked road flanked on one side by ‘the village’ on one side and the expanse of shingle on the other.

the accommodation of dungeness village resembles a cross between railway carriages, tin huts and sheds. at the time i felt this was a mere observation, but it turns out that the majority of the chalet-esque huts are actually built around the base block of railway carriages from the point in the headland’s history when the southern railway owned the majority of the land. these are building constructed to stand up to bracing elements, but also to retain a sense of impermanence. one picks up a sense of a classic ‘stay indoors until the strangers pass’ spaghetti western in terms of atmosphere, though then again i did visit early-ish on a saturday morning, with the only people out and about on the ‘streets’ an assortment of folks gauping at the bleakness (like myself), fishermen (who one presume are all very accustomed to this view) and twitchers who had ventured down from the rspb reserve. that said, the britannia inn was hugely welcoming. there was something quite fantastic about drinking in what felt like the last pub in the country, the warmth of the open fire and strange collection of keyrings almost accentuating the nothingness outside.

     

the beach at dungeness is famed for being one of the largest expanses of shingle in the world, and as such is of ecological and scientific importance. the headland is protected through various means, including designation as a national nature reserve, special protection area, special area of conservation and a site of specific scientific interest. december wasn’t the right time to go hunting for wildlife, though some research suggests that this part of the world is home to a host of rare spiders, beetles, moths and bees. on my visit, the main focus was on taking a wander along the boardwalk over the shingle to reach the coast.

on the headland itself there are three main landmarks which standout when looking back from the coast. the most attractive two points are the lighthouses which stand at either end of the main residential stretch, with the nuclear power station lurking in the background. at one end is the 1901 built high light tower/the old lighthouse. this name could be seen as something of a misnomer, given that it is actually the fourth lighthouse which has stood on this stretch of coastline. due to the shifting nature of the sea, the beacons constructed in 1615, 1635 and 1790 all became increasingly redundant as the coast receded, meaning that the growing shingle banks were creating a greater distance between the beacons and the ships they were to guide. the light from the 1901 lighthouse, first lit in 1904,  could be seen from 18 miles away. however, the building of the power station in the 1950s blocked the beam from the lighthouse, thus rendering it as redundant as those which preceded it. however, this lighthouse escaped the bulldozer, and stands now as a tourist attraction.

the fifth dungeness lighthouse was first lit in 1961, and continues to provide a beacon for sailors along the east coast now. where the old lighthouse has a very traditional fat at the bottom tapering towards lantern design, this 60s piece of utilitarian engineering stands like an interjection of the modern world into the forgotten surroundings of dungeness, though with far more conventional beauty that the behemoth-esque lines of the nuclear power stations which sit beyond the old lighthouse. i think the 1961 lighthouse is possibly the focal point of this conurbation, but then again i am a sucker for that era of design.

     

i’ll also posit a controversial point; i’m moved to argue that the power stations actually add to the feel of dungeness. there is something about the looming presence of the huge buildings which offsets the cluster of huts which make up the village – the power stations lend a sense of solidness which adds to the accumulated emptiness of the rest of the landscape, a concrete concretion within the shingle.

     

yet it is not the power stations which characterise this area. dungeness is all about the relationship between the shingle, sea, rails and time. the human hand shows itself in the placement of objects, yet it is the battle between object, elements and the clock which give this area a real sense of place, a place which is nowhere yet could not exist anywhere but here. dungeness is about huts and boats which were once by the sea, but have been left to decay as the sea continued its journey away from the english coast, receding back into itself, leaving these objects as remainders of a time which may have passed 10 days ago, 10 years ago, 10 generations ago. it is this complex relationship which may yet prove the final undoing of dungeness too, with some theorists positing that the sea will return inland within the next 150 years or so, leaving only the lighthouses above the waves as a reminder of the lives which once floated here.

these lights are meaningful – nottingham contemporary

there is something really enjoyable about visiting a new gallery, especially if it means getting to see a city which you have previously seen only from the train. or maybe from the station, as i reckon i’ve drank coffee there before, but that is another unfinished rhetorical conversation for my head. i had wanted to visit nottingham contemporary for a while, even though i didn’t really know that much about it. i had a vague memory of seeing an interesting piece about the gallery on the culture show, but beyond that there was nothing that could guide my steps as i jumped on the train from sheffield.

     

that big flashy sign up at the top of that page was the first sight i caught of the gallery, and i’ll admit it didn’t exactly set my heart racing – it isn’t a design rich logo now is it? however, this signpost stood at the top of a staircase which led down to the cafe terrace, which on the day i visited was bathed with mid-morning sunshine, the perfect place for a coffee before embarking on the gallery. first impressions were of interest at how the building worked. from this point, at the very bottom of the building and looking up, the gallery appeared to shoot straight up out of the land for three or four storeys, yet i knew full well that following the run of the street that the majority of the building was actually at street level. i love a building that gets you thinking about how it is put together before you’ve even started with it, much like other pieces of gallery as re-gen seem to work (the lowry and imperial war museum north in salford, the hepworth wakefield, the pompidou in paris).

     

so, a bit about the exterior before we head inside. the building is supposedly situated on the ‘oldest site in nottingham,’ formerly cave dwellings, a saxon fort, mediaeval town hall and victorian train line. seems like a contentious choice of wording, but at least it isn’t claiming a ‘quarter’ title. what is without doubt is that this area of the city was home to the lace trade, which is reflected in a lovely piece of cladding design by the architects caruso st john. the green/grey concrete moments which make up the majority of the exterior walls of the building have been cast imprinted with a lace design, which only becomes more interesting as you get closer to it. a fine start. coupled with the concrete walls, the building is topped off by gold-tinged aluminium towers, which seems a little distracting from the exterior (but come into their own once within the gallery). i spent quite some time walking round this building, up the steps, checking angles of reflection in windows, back down steps, following lines and generally marvelling at what has been achieved with a pretty small footprint.

moving inside (noting that there doesn’t really seem to be a front door when approaching from the train station end of the city, an urban planner’s nightmare surely?) the building blocks of the gallery emerge, and what a surprise they are exposed concrete. which i really like. i’m unapologetic about how much i like concrete as a building material when it is well used, which it really is here. the staircase leading up from the cafe/studio space, past the admin offices up to the gallery/street level is all straight, heavy blocks, and really shows off quite how tall this building is. whereas david chipperfield galleries leave the concrete on show outside, here the structure is used to emphasis the site, reinforcing ideas about how this gallery is fitting into the city. yet the best is still to come.

those aluminium towers that look a bit plonked on from the outside actually provide the stunning lighting for the gallery spaces, tempered through delightful use of angles and colour washes, to create spaces which feel so so full of air and light. admittedly, i was there on one of the sunniest days of the year, so had the kind of experience which the architects dreamed of, but my did it work. that said, these skylights didn’t have to be the focus, and as a flexible use building they can be blocked out when displaying sensitive work, as they are for the alfred kubin display. alongside this natural light from above, both gallery spaces which touch the street feature huge picture frame windows, which place the street within the gallery, and more interestingly the gallery within the street scene.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

it is this placing of the gallery within the city which is the unquestionable highlight for me. i’ll admit that my knowledge of nottingham is restricted to robin hood, brian clough, stuart pearce and the mid-90s forest team, alan sillitoe and the pop fest (which i still haven’t been to yet), but i’m guessing that the arrival of a contemporary art gallery which looks out to the city as much as it does at artistic influences was a bit of a shot in the creative arm. with a really interesting exhibition programme, including the current pairing of francis upritchard’s odd figures with kubin’s disturbing images and the ‘star city: the future under communism‘ exhibition of 2010 (which i nearly bought all the postcards from on this visit – stunning design), nottingham contemporary is presenting intellectually challenging work within a fantastic space, which is underpinned by windows and gallery spaces which work to draw the people of the city in. on the way back to the station at the end of my trip i passed back through the gallery, finding the cafe just as busy with people grabbing a local real ale; i really do hope that this is a sign of the place which the gallery sits in the city, a mixed use resource encompassing culture, education and community.

the alfred kubin & francis upritchard exhibitions are on display until 30th september. the gallery is about five minutes walk from nottingham train station. if you are planning a visit, i can also fully endorse a wander to the malt cross, a terrific ale pub in a converted music hall.

 

 

berlin – city in memorial

as a city which has been torn apart by conflict, it would be impossible to write about berlin and not consider how war has impacted upon the place, and how it is remembered. unsurprisingly there are memorials to the loss of life right across the city, with the spectre of the second world war and ongoing loss of life which resulted from the occupation of berlin displayed with a blunt matter of factness which i think few cities would attempt. berlin knows that it has a lot to remember, and doesn’t hide the fact. here i am going to consider two very different, but just as powerful approaches to memory and the differing traces, footprints and impressions they place into the context of the city.

the soviet war memorial at treptower park, like much of architecture of the former russian side of berlin, is about memory and scale. moving from the weeping russian motherland at one end, through to the gigantic red army soldier at the zenith of the gardens, this is an act of the soviet union states remembering those who fought in the battle of berlin, the role they played in the defeat of facisim, and more importantly acting as a ground on which to celebrate the lives of the 5000 men buried here.

the establishment of soviet strength cries out from each different facet of this monument. the weeping mother represents russia, morning her lost sons; looking on from here the scale begins to strike home. the shattered russian flags, fronted by red army soldiers bowed in reverence, cut perfect lines, furthering the sense of how small the individual is in the face of both the war, and the soviet state.

sixteen stone sarcophagi representing the states of the ussr carry the words of stalin, and in places the great leader manages to sneak in as a soviet worker; even in commemorating her dead the russian state was furthering stalin’s image – any opportunity is a propaganda opportunity. yet of these murals it is the image of lenin above a row of red army troops which is most powerful. the perfectly straight line appear once again, with a sense of perspective enforcing the strength of the succesful soviet army.

however, this all shrinks away in comparison with the twelve metre tall statue of a soviet soldier , holding a child, a sword (which held surprisingly tsarist overtones in my opinion…) and standing atop a broken swastika. the statue purports to represent nikolia masalov, a sergant of the guards who risked german machine gun fire to rescue a three year old german child whose mother was missing. this may be the tale behind the monument, but the unmissable message is that the soviet state is powerful, that you are insignificant in the shadow of it, but that it is also at its heart caring for you. a hugely powerful monument, a fitting memorial of those russians who died to defeat nazism, but steeped in hugely political overtones.

moving across the city, the second memorial i’d like to consider is denkmal für die ermordeten juden europas, which directly translates as the memorial to the murdered jews of europe. located right in the heart of berlin’s district of historic power, just down the road from the reichstag and brandenberg gate, this memorial is at the heart of the city, and in a way could be seen to define how berlin, and possibly germany or indeed europe at large, is seeking to bring a different manner of thought into memorial . scale is once again at play here, though in a hugely different manner to that seen at treptower park.

next to the shining american embassy, and just across the road from the tiergarten, the holocaust memorial appears far more understated in comparison to the soviet memorial. there is no huge statue dominating proceedings. in fact, from the street the 19,000 square metre site appears understated to say the least. 2711 grey concrete blocks, seemingly of minute difference across the vast area seem to lack a real impact. at first glance, other than the fact that a site of such size has been set aside for a memorial site rather than maximised for commercial opportunity, this is a possibly too understated monument.

yet the power of the holocaust memorial is evident as soon as you start to move throughout the maze of grey stelae. starting as low level protrusions, indeed seeming not much more than a series of concrete benches, as you move further into the memorial site the stelae slabs become more and more imposing, as the ground level undulates creating a sense of scale and loss. the concrete blocks vary in height from 20cm up to just short of 5 metres, and as you move further into the maze of monuments to lost life you find an inescapable sense of uneasiness, somewhere between loss, claustrophobia and confusion. where the memorial at treptower park makes its point by placing the viewing in a relationship of awe, here you are forced to face a grid system which appears ordered, but offers no support.

in amongst the concrete labyrinth there is a bunkered ‘place of information’, which i’ll be honest, i didn’t find. that said, i didn’t know it was there until i read about it later. what struck me most about this monument was the sense of peace which is created by the downward slope of the floor, which leaves you standing some way below street level and surrounded by concrete which muffles the city. you are faced with this contemplative silence, whilst also facing the anxieties which the structure itself brings on. i know that this memorial has caused a fair amount of controversy due to its lack of a monument or recognised symbols of grief/remembrance, but the questioning of a system of order, brought about by human design, is massively powerful when considering the lives of those taken away during the holocaust.

having spent the best part of half an hour getting deeper into the monolithic towers of the stelae, the sombre mood was shattered by a group of school children tearing around the memorial screaming and shouting. at the time i was really quite offended by this, they were clearly not respecting what this space was all about. yet after i got back i started to think about this memorial in a different way; the central positioning of this site places it very much in a role as an active role as part of the fabric of the city. would stopping kids from using a public space in the manner that they would naturally not be a tiny tiny tiny baby step vaguely in the direction of the problem that this memorial is here to recognise? the decision not to have an obvious entrance point with directions, signage and rules has been very carefully taken, so the means of use must be openly considered. one thing is for certain, this isn’t the kind of behavior that the imposing red guard soldier would abide…

berlin and that…

i have recently returned from a short break in berlin, and want to write about a few of the things i saw there, and the impact they had on me. i guess that this is going to spread into a few posts about specific points, so i’ll use this one to give my general sense of the city.

    

berlin has always been a city which has interested me. as an undergrad history student with a particular interest in the birth of modern europe, the unification of nineteenth germany was always one of my key interest. berlin has been a city with the weight of modern history place well and truly upon its shoulders, from the rise of fascism, the collapse of hitler’s germany through the escalation of the cold war, up to the unification of germany and the current role of the german government in the future of europe. this is a city which is important.

lets start with the people. the cosmopolitan attitude of the people i encountered was pretty reminiscent of places like barcelona and manchester. bar culture meant that sitting with a beer until whenever you wanted to was pretty easy to achieve, and in the morning/afternoon afterwards nobody would bat that much of an eyelid as you tucked into your first bockwurst of the day. berlin seemed like the kind of place you could set yourself up pretty easily if you wanted to, which was pretty much confirmed by the fact i was staying with a friend who had done just that.

so, onto the city itself. i think big and heavy is the way to describe it best. yes, going in january meant that the oppressive nature of much of the architecture was accentuated by a foreboding winter sky and chilling temperature, but the thing that strikes you as you walk done streets in the east of the city is that this is a city which has no consistency to it at all. berlin is a place which has been torn apart and put back together so many times, by so many different people, that a true sense of architectural identity is pretty much nul.

yet in places where a swathe of one style dominates, you really do get a sense of what different ‘owners’ have tried to do with the place. around the brandenburg gate and the reichstag the influence of western victors is clear in some pretty bland, pretty corporate looking bits of shiney-ness. the real interest is when you hit the former soviet areas.

    

karl-marx allee is probably the part of berlin which will stick with me most in terms of scale and scope. here is a road which was designed to remind the people of east berlin that they were very very very small, and that the soviet union of which they were a part was really really really big. this grand statement of soviet strength, saw a whole street dominated by huge modernist architecture, with the boulevard being mostly constructed over the 1950s at which point it was still named after stalin.

haus der stastistik

the soviet process of destroying the cult of stalin led to marx’s name being added to this stretch of road in 1961. the huge buildings, housing everyone from workers up to luxury apartments, have mostly been refreshed to reflect their former grandeur – though the haus der stastistik, former home of the stasi, is notable by its emptiness. probably the highlight of the street is a 1960s addition though, the kino international cinema.

yet once you stop looking up and being generally overawed by the size of the city, and the weight of events and history upon it, berlin is really accommodating. the rumours of having to know which unmarked doors to go through to find the best bits are definitely true, and this trip benefited from knowing someone who know where these doors were. great little coffee shop lurk behind curtains, bars playing nondescript (but exactly what was needed) house music are just off staircases that would be better suited to a multi-storey car park.

in terms of culture the place really came up trumps. my own stupid decision to not see enough stuff over the weekend meant that a lot of the galleries i wanted to see were closed on the monday, but visits to both the neues museum, recently reopened after being very thoughtfully restored by david chipperfield, and the hamburger bahnhof were both excellent.

tomas saraceno at hamburger bahnhof

tomas saraceno at hamburger bahnhof

i don’t think enjoyed is the right word to describe the emotion i felt after this trip. under conventional circumstances it would be, but it seems to be a bit remiss to describe a trip in which you’ve spent a good chunk of time crying about the horrors of very recent european history as enjoyable. if you don’t know the place already i would highly recommend berlin.

too sick to pray: sheffield cholera monument

“a neat and appropriate monument has been erected in norfolk-road, opposite the shrewsbury hospitals, in memory of those who died in sheffield from the ravages of the cholera in 1832, and who were buried on this spot. the disease ravaged from the beginning of july till the end of october. the numbers attacked were 1,347, of whom 402 dead.”
illustrated guide to sheffield, pawson and brailsford (1879)

1832 was the year which the asiatic cholera pandemic, at the time simply the second pandemic, reached the uk. the disease swept through cities indiscriminately, decimating east london, manchester, swathes of nottingham and sheffield to focus on but a few. around 22,000 died across the country, of whom 402 were buried in the cholera pit in the norfolk park area of sheffield, just off from park hill. the disease reached the city in july of 1832, and was considered somewhat under control by november; reportedly the dispensery at sheffield university issued over 3500 leeches that year, against a normal figure of around 100.

by 1834 construction had begun on this monument to the dead, financed in part by sales of models of the sculpture, and also with the support of the duke of norfolk. the monument itself was completed in 1835, with the gardens around it following in 1850. by 1930 the norfolk estate had handed the grounds over to the city, and the monument has since been struck by lightning, seen its top scattered around the gardens by the weather, been rebuilt and grade II listed, alongside a green flag for the park.

this was my first walk up to this area of the city, looking out across sheffield from a brand new perspective. this is going to keep happening, as i discover new ways of viewing a city which i now call home. coming down through the city i crossed the train station bridge, which is under threat as a public access route thanks to the lovely folks at east midlands trains, and came out at the base of the steel steps which rise up to park hill.  carrying on up and to the right, you follow signs for the memorial, and after a brief wrong turn reach a real haven on tranquility within five minutes of the city centre.

this is the kind of place that i always bemoaned the lack of in manchester city centre, an area of green, quiet, contemplation, and no sign at all of offices, fast food, pedestrian crossings or chuggers. the memorial grounds lead off a quiet residential street, which by the bye has some beautiful tudor style villas on it, and once through the gate you are drawn straight through the park towards the monument. the die straight path, and trees on either side, work brilliantly to accentuate the monument, which appears to be rising up from just below the level of the path – a really nice piece of planning from those who put the grounds together nearly 200 years ago.

the pevsner guide to sheffield sums the monument up as ‘an earth-bound gothic pinnacle or spire,’ with the man himself suggesting it as a gothicist’s obelisk. in fact, there are probably a few links that can be drawn between the cholera monument and darwen tower, the rocket-esque beacon that looks over east lancashire. much as darwen tower is currently lacking it’s nose-cone (nb – it was actually replaced only two days ago!), the cholera monument was only restored to past/current glories in 2005.

alongside the great views of the monument itself, this spot is a fantastic spot to take in the geography of sheffield city centre, and acknowledge just how dominated by the hills around it the city really is. in every direction from here you can see the land rising above the city, and on a crisp cold january afternoon it looked stunning. with just the sound of birdsong, and the odd rumble of a tram, this was as far from life in a city centre as i’ve found thus far in sheffield, and way more than anything i ever found in manchester. the city of hills is starting to show her cards a bit…

sometimes in the middle of the night, in that building…

so, this blog now lives in sheffield. guess i should probably mark the occasion with a look at what i believe is going to become one of my favourite parts of the city. over the past few weeks one of the most consistent views i have had of sheffield has been walking down the hill from the public library down towards the train station, with park hill sitting above it all, peering down on the city. yet this isn’t the park hill that was built as a bright new hope for the city at the turn of the fifties into the sixties. six years ago urban splash, those of turning half of manchester’s old factories into swanky apartments, took over at park hill.

for those who don’t know anything about the building, park hill was built over 1957-61, and replaced masses of sheffield’s inadequate social housing. the massive estate, designed by the city architects jack lynn and ivor smith, moved whole communities into its ‘streets in the sky’ – walkways in front of flats that were famously big enough to drive a milk float down. here was the epitomy of brutalist architecture, with some incredible details such as the orientation of every one of the around a thousand flats planned to maximise sunlight. yet it wasn’t just architectural rhetoric, park hill had shops, pubs, a school – it had community. over time this, and parts of the building, appeared to crumble. yet unlike the crescents in hulme, park hill stood up defiantly, up to the point in 1998 when the concrete shell of the building was granted grade II* listed status, making it the largest listed building in europe.

so here we are. i went to a talk at park hill tonight by the chap who has been project manager of the refurb for urban splash since they started to put ideas together six years ago. it was the first time that i had been up close to the estate, and was really taken aback by the sheer scale of the place. i’ve read loads about it, and have seen it from afar, but nothing quite prepares you for both the height and length of the place. which reminds me, i’ve not waxed lyrical about the different heights of the block. at one end park hill is a 13 story building, but a the other end it is just 4, yet if you look at the building the roofline is absoloutely flat right the way across. i tested this theory by trying to balance my phone across the top of it when looking across the whole estate, and it worked. an absolutely stunning architectural achievement.

     

back to the talk. urban splash seem to have put a lot of thought into what they see park hill as, and where they see it being positioned. as anyone who knows the style of project which they work on in manchester will know, urban splash quite often talk a good talk about social housing, but are very very good at selling fancy apartments to young professionals. which is exactly what they are doing here. one of the finest pieces of social housing design in the country is being converted into aspirational flats which the likes of me are supposed to be snapping up. indeed, they are being snapped up – they shifted five on the first day of opening to the public on saturday.

     

with the approval of english heritage, the developers have knocked down all but the concrete struts of the first phase of their refurbishment, and replaced the old flats with new apartments which match the needs of a ‘new set of social dynamics.’ gone are the original three levels of brick which signified the different levels of homes between the ‘streets’; in are bigger windows (a massive positive) and some fucking horrific day glow panels (a massive negative). the streets in the sky, which were always open to public access, are now there for residents only, as part of a new access control to the building. the decks had been seen as one of the main negatives of 1980s park hill, as clear escape routes for criminals; yet no-one has tried to close roads in any other part of the world – surely they are the clearest escape route for those on the rob?

what about the flats themselves? i got to have a poke around the showflats, and was impressed by the building, underwhelmed by the apartments. the views out across sheffield from one side, and the rest of park hill on the other, are simply stunning. as a man with problems with heights i was a bit shocked at quite how much i was dashing out onto the balconies to stare out across my new homeland. so, views good. i also really liked the touch of leaving bare concrete on show in all of the apartments, with the integrity of the building shouting out against the newness of other bits. yet seeing the concrete on show did make me feel a bit like i was in a park hill theme park, as that surely wasn’t/isn’t the case in the original flats? we’ll say that the concrete is good though.

what about the negatives? well, all three of the different designs i looked round felt a bit pokey. the use of the orignal park hill idea of split level ‘flats’ still worked, yet there was barely any room for things. all the rooms felt like they would be fine as they were, but there was no storage. anywhere. are urban splash looking to market park hill specifically at people who don’t own books, or records, or clothes, or just stuff in general. oh, and don’t even get me started on the marketing. in one of the showflats was a clothes rail with aspirational tshirts (yes, aspirational tshirts), whilst the twisting of a piece of graffiti which resulted in a woman turning a man down is now being used as a bullshit rhetoric about how if sheffield loves park hill then park hill will love it back. at least someone in the urban splash team has a sarcastic bone in their body, a copy of owen hatherley’s new ruins was out in one of the show flats…

     

so i left park hill feeling pretty similar to how i entered. i love the building. it is an absolutely stunning piece of design and engineering (even if a certain sheffield band once called into question the integrity of the building in the face of a thousand orgasms), dealing with the topography of its location and makes the most of it. i’m still undecided about the refurb. park hill was in need of some tlc, well in fact a lot of tlc. urban splash-ing the place means that it is gaining a new life, and that people are going to go on living in it. this is obviously a good thing, as a building as impressive and important as park hill should still be in use.

yet surely it should still be in use as social housing, rather than pushing out council tenants and communities in favour of young professional types. i can’t claim to be anywhere near an expert on this, but it just still seems to be going against the reason that park hill was built in the first place. i know that urban splash are making an effort to include social housing, 26 of the flats in the first phase of 78 are available for part-ownership. i think this one is going to rumble on in my head. the one thing that i am certain of is that park hill is really impressive.

further reading

guardian report on re-opening
observer review of the new park hill
owen hatherley on the social housing repercussions of the new park hill 

autumn sweater

ah the first of october, a time when the trees are golden brown and losing their leaves, whilst the air turns cold and you are in that in between stage between a bare neck and a scarf (or in my case, bringing out the small, autumn scarf). or not. this weekend i went for a walk in the baking sunshine, which drifted from the top of a hill down towards a pub with a packed beer garden, full of families enjoying the near tropical climate.

      

this was the first weekend i’ve had off from doing anything since moving to sheffield, no thoughts about work to do on the house or anything like that. so, following a quick trip to a popular high street book seller to pick up the ordance survey map that covers the bit of the peaks not included on the one used for getting around edale, it was time to jump on the train from sheffield to grindleford. whereas manchester to edale takes 40 minutes at the other end of this train line, sheffield to grindleford is a short hop of 15 minutes via the totley tunnel, which is the second longest inland railway tunnel in the uk.

enough of the train ride. from the sleepy railway platform, the map led us up the hill, through an amazing old forest. the trees had this wistful air of longevity to them, and as if to prove that they were somehow better than me one of the oak trees lobbed an acorn at my head. there were some lovely bits of stonework, which i honestly couldn’t tell you whether they were natural or man made. the path for example, not the faintest idea how long it had been there, or indeed if the rocks were there first and a path second. needless to say, the national trust appeared to be doing a cracking job of looking after padley gorge.

once out of the forest, we hit what appeared to be picnic point. families chucking around flyaways, hipsters in their toms, the works. it was dead nice, but not where we were planning on stopping for our lunch. no, more hard work required first. more good nt work was seen at the longshaw estate, from where the map continued taking us up the hill towards wooden pole. which was a wooden pole, quite a good name actually…

from wooden pole, with it’s ominous looking crow (which flew away from atop the pole as i got my camera out) and confused looking sheep, it was off to totley moor, and a walk over the top of a ridge which pretty much followed the route of the afore mentioned railway tunnel. this moor offered the kind of desolation that reminded me a fair bit of hiking in peru (which at the time i did comment on the fact it looked a lot like yorkshire). a quick lunch stop, accompanied by an inquisitive/confused sheep wandering around in the background, offered a view down the city of sheffield in the distance. this was the first time that i could really quantify just how close to home i actually was, whilst being in the middle of nowhere. i get the feeling that this access to the countryside is going to more and more become one of my favourite things about moving to sheffield.

onwards and downwards, after lunch there was only one aim. well two in fact, given that i’d already decided that the pint of shandy would definitely need a pint of ale to back it up pretty swiftly. an hour or so later we came out at the cricket inn in totley, which was the perfect place to be on a late summer’s afternoon. in fact, so good was the experience here that i was back in the pub for lunch this afternoon – they have amazing food to go with the excellent selection of thornbridge ales. of particular note beer-wise was the thornbridge brown rabbit, which was surprisingly crisp for an autumnal beer. pretty apt actually, given the weather.

victory of ghosts

one morning this week i noticed a flurry of activity on the origin princess street building site. the origin, a massive mixed use project on the corner of princess street and whitworth street, has been a ghost town for ages, with the only signs of any life being the two tower cranes watching over the site. for some reason the lights were still on in the cranes, i never could work out who was putting the pennies in the meter for them. anyway, i digress. the cranes came down this week.

i’m not massively sure what this signifies, as it has been nigh on impossible to find any news relating to the build. have the developers finally given up on origin, or have they sold the site on? having been unveiled as a high end project some years ago, the developers west properties built an identity for the project that gave off the impression that if you weren’t patrick bateman then there was very little point in you even considering the prospect of being part of this.

here is the quite horrible website for the project, which is seemingly trying to sell people the idea that awful, vacant people with no love of life want to be ‘part’ of origin. origin-princessstreet.com

in may of 2009 the build was seemingly very much on track, with an early 2011 opening scheduled in. piles were driven, a pretty hefty slab put in place, and then… well, nothing. one can only presume that the money ran out, and that was it. like many of the big building projects around manchester that sprang up in the mid-00′s, work slowed, and then stopped. according to the developers “origin occupies one of the very last prime development sites in the city.” shame that it appears to have been an abject failure then.

rather than constructing the quite oddly designed buildings, the origin site is now just a very specific set of foundations, waiting for someone to either pick it up and complete the build, or rip it apart. rather than representing a fantastic space, slap bang between oxford road, piccadilly and canal street, this site is all but unusable. i do hope that someone finds a way to finish this project, but i believe that the ‘aspirational aims’ of the original plan will have to be ditched. opulent office, spa and lifestyle choices aren’t going to sell. personally, i’d like to see an effort to introduce a green space into this area, akin to sackville street gardens, though i acknowledge that this is totally unrealistic. we shall have to wait and see what happens next.

number one

when the posters started to go up a lot of people thought that they must be a joke, probably for some insurance company or something like that. number one, first street. get out of town. however, this was no joke. manchester city council have indeed emptied out the town hall, and moved the office staff to this new building, which holds the natty address of number 1, first street, manchester. (nb – it is let down by it’s postcode, which should surely be m1 1m).

‘first street’ has been invented down at the bottom of whitworth street west, and this has been a building project that was kept in the dark for quite a while. as much as i was approaching this building with a certain amount of pre-prepared apathy, i quite liked it. the interior is nice and spacious, though a little confusing with a multitude of waiting areas around the building. i really like the idea of city library having a presence in the building, with this satellite to the main library also serving as a book drop off/pick up point if you need it.

the landscaped garden around the back of the block like building is really quite pleasant, and not what you would expect from a behemoth-like council headquarters. muted purples and greens worked well together, and i can imagine this being a great place for folks to wind down in the summer months. in a city which is quite bereft of green space, first street has been very thoughtfully put together, with an expanse of lawn filling as much room as the car park does on the other side. i think that the council appear to have joined most of the dots together properly here.

yet things aren’t quite finished here. despite being installed months ago, the gymnast sculptures are still wrapped in bubble wrap. i can only guess the these pieces are designed to give your walk to sort out your council tax some energy, but when covered in their protective layers you wonder if they are telling you more about the shell shock you are about to receive. not that anyone other than me gave them a second glance whilst i was visiting.

dancing above your head, i can’t really see why these gymnast are here. if they were re-purposed from 2002, and thus representing a terrific era in this city’s regeneration, then i’d get it. but these are new new new. where are the bees? where are the tributes the hallé? no pankhursts. no gladstone. there isn’t even one of the cows. it just feels a lot like a missed opportunity to me. i think someone else may have similar feelings…