i was young when i left home – 2012 in art

twelve months on from the last time i wrote about the year in art, i am going to open it with pretty much the same words. a lot has happened over the past 12 months, and i would not have been expecting to close the year out working at a national gallery, having left behind a city i had just been falling for. yet these things happen don’t they? it also means that over the course of 2012 i have shifted from spending my days in the most exciting new gallery around to working with a collection of major historic importance to this country and beyond. as i have continued to develop a relationship with the appreciation of art, here are a handful of shows which stood out for me over the course of 2012…

republic of the moon, fact

one of the first exhibitions which i saw this year, and easily one of the most enjoyable. here fact brought the moon to liverpool, with seven artists declaring their vision for lunar life. the standout work was definitely agnes meyer brandis’ the moon goose analogue, a fantastic project which followed the artist putting a team of geese through their training ready to fly to the moon. alongside the documentation of the training regime the artist had constructed a full lunar control room from which you could see the ‘astronauts’ at work on their moon base (also known as pollinaria in italy).

bill drummond: ragworts, site gallery

for this exhibtion dummond created a series of ‘scores’ which provided the soundtrack to the city of sheffield. placing words into a world without music, drummond created a new means for negotiating thoughts about the city, how it relates to the inhabitants, and visa versa. the scores were placed throughout the city, and led followers around sheffield, with instructions to say hello to birds along the way amongst other actions. seeing the scores together in the gallery space at site, all of a sudden the static words on the page became a passionate landscape vision of a city. this was truly wonderful.

heather & ivan morison, ben rivers and david thorpe – the hepworth wakefield

the first of two exhibitions from my former place of work, the spring 2012 group show brought together three displays looking at notion of utopia and apocalypse. i did enjoy david thorpe’s intricate cabinets and paintings, but this exhibition was really about the interplay between ben rivers’ film slow action and heather & ivan morison’s installation/object theatre/puppet performance anna. where rivers created/edited four forms of utopia, the morisons constructed a world in a state of assault from creeping ice based on anna kavan’s fiction. to have had the opportunity to work with these displays was an absolute joy.

louisa may parker – bank street arts

louisa may parker works with notions of drawing in a way very similar to an artist who appeared in this list last year, and i think that is one of the things which i saw in this display in one of the front rooms of bank street arts in sheffield. alongside a series of intricate and beautiful works on paper, the artist had installed table, book – a sculpture/drawing which consisted of a table, book and weight covered entirely in graphite.

jeremy deller: joy in people – the hayward gallery

i’m not sure that there is much to be said about jeremy deller which hasn’t already been said. ever since seeing his procession at manchester international festival in 2009, i have felt a connection with deller’s work – and more importantly the inspiration behind it. here is an artist who is more interested in the people he is making art about that creating some vaunted conceptual piece. this retrospective at the hayward gallery gathered together work from across the artist’s career, from a recreation of the exhibition he staged in his parents house through to the battle of orgreave (which was also shown at the wonderful s1 artspace this year).

stuart roy clarke: homes of football – national football museum

i have loved stuart roy clarke’s photography for a long time. family holidays as a kid tended to head towards the lake district, which for me was always a great things as it meant i could pester my dad to take me to the homes of football gallery in ambleside. kicking things off for the newly manchester-ed national football museum, clarke’s photography more than ever reminds me about why i love football, at a time when my attachment to the top/professional ranks of the game is growing weaker with each passing bout of silliness which is tearing football apart. much like deller’s art revolves around participants, clarke’s photography is about the things, and more importantly the people around football. don’t expect pictures of big name players engaged in prepared dance routines; this is football from the terraces, and for the terrace. a triumph. (oh, and did i mention that the display is soundtracked by british sea power?)

ansel adams: photography from the mountains and sea – national maritime museum

another display of photography, this time from one of the most iconic american photographers of the twentieth century. i think possibly the most affecting images in this exhibition are not the huge waterscapes for which adams is rightly famous, but actually the handful of photographs which were taken by a teenage adams, with a simple box brownie camera. the depth of image which he was capturing even at this stage when he was learning how photography worked is stunning.

richard long and luke fowler – the hepworth wakefield

my final pick of the year, and the second at the hepworth wakefield, includes two artists whose work always inspires me. to have had the chance to see both of them in action whilst installing their work, and get to have a chat with them only acted to confirm how much i love their work. in this display a selection of richard long’s works on paper were installed alongside three large scale floor pieces, one floor to ceiling wall drawing and a prototype grass sculpture. alongside these very physical pieces, luke fowler’s film the poor stockinger, the luddite cropper and the deluded followers of joanna southcott delved into the workers’ education association and the writing of e.p. thompson in and around yorkshire. the same traits of editing, sound and linear camera movement can be seen through this piece and fowler’s hugely well deserved turner prize nominated all divided selves. on face value it isn’t overly clear how well these two artists would complement each other in a gallery space, but the shift between the natural world and evolution of education was actually a real masterstroke.

a wondrous place

i am really really excited to let you all know that this week i have been invited to represent the city of sheffield over on the northern spirit theatre company’s ‘a wondrous place’ project. northern spirit is a fantastic company, who are putting together a new work for 2013, and as part of the research for this they have invited some of the best writers from around the north to celebrate where they live, thus entering into a process of finding out what ‘the north’ means as an idea, as a place, and as a community.

i am truly honoured to have been asked to contribute as one of the ‘spirited people with a surprising perspective on places in the north,’ and to be writing alongside folks like natalie bradbury from the shrieking violet, short story writer amy roberts from liverpool and sheffield’s own doodler and writer missy tassles to name but the writers who have come before me – and i know there are great people yet to come! in a very exciting turn of events the whole process was featured on the guardian’s northerner blog last week, and i fully recommend that you head over to the website and check the amazing work that is already up from the past three weeks.

i will be guest curating the website all week, so expect a blend of architecture, music, walking and vague nonsense on a daily basis!

being followed home – yorkshire exhibtions

over the past week or so i have seen some wonderful exhibitions in sheffield and leeds, some of which are coming towards their closing dates. here is a quick summary of some of the best, which i would highly recommend fitting into your plans for this weekend.

standing out as a) the most thought provoking and impressive display and b) the one  that closes on saturday, i would put tom ireland’s notes on western expansion , currently on display at bloc projects, at the top of the list of things to see. ireland’s investigation into the relationship(s) between modernist art and the western space programme of the 20th century as proponents of interrelated aesthetic and ideological values is a wonderfully thought out show. somehow this is the second terrific lunar themed exhibition i have seen this year, following republic of the moon at fact in liverpool, and it holds similar qualities to part of the earlier show in that it places the viewer into a relationship with the space/space. ireland’s triumph at the centre of this experience is a soundpiece which slows beethoven’s moonlight sonata down to fill the time that neil armstrong spent walking on the moon. with this ireland builds a work of brilliant poignancy, which changes all relationships within the gallery space by placing the viewer into an atmosphere of slow but recognisable progress towards a recognised but unrecognisable goal. it is a rarity that i see a show where the physical embodiment of the art take such a back seat, but here the ‘art’ on the ground/walls is there as a placemarker on your journey along the soundscape.

tom ireland, courtesy of bloc projects

hoping down the road from bloc, i cannot even begin to express how much i love the print it exhibition/pop-up artist book shop at site gallery. the entirety of site has been taken over by books, books and more books, and as you may have picked up from reading this blog i am quite a fan of books! the main gallery space sees a collaboration between the artists’ publishing platform copy and the coracle press archive, resulting in a beautiful look at what can be achieved by the medium of the artist book, and some of the best examples i have seen of this in a while. real standouts throughout the exhibition were the work of erica van horn of ireland’s coracle. the standout piece from van horn’s work in my opinion was a series of books detailing the interior of envelopes, before using the medium to explore art history. make sure to check out the related events and talks that copy have planned alongside this display which look fantastic.

print it, courtesy of site gallery

hop through into the smaller gallery space and you will find your wallet trying to dive out of your back pocket, as site have pulled together a collection of the best artists books available in their pop-up shop. i mentally spent around £160 in there after a quick snoop around, with work by simon faithful, john dilnot, robert williams and the ever-impressive sheffield publicity department. it is also wonderfully arranged, using pallets as low budget shelving units, a lovely touch.

print it, courtesy of site gallery

a quick dash across sheffield is well worth risking the sun/howling wind/soaking rain (delete as applicable) is well worth it to get over to bank street arts, where they also have a pair of fantastic displays of artist books presently. clare rogers’ from here you can almost see the sea: a response to living in plymouth is, quite simply, brilliant. rogers uses a variety of printed to media to explore what her hometown of plymouth means to here, what it looks like, why she loves it, why she hates it, and what it feels like to be there. this sounds like an interesting enough project for a visual artist, but here the artist uses words alone to engage with her subject matter, combining ‘photography’ with poetry and book works to create her image of plymouth. i’ve been back to this exhibition twice already, and suspect i will be there again before it closes at the start of september.

clare rogers, courtesy of bank street arts

the second artist book display at bank street at the moment is elisabeth tonnard’s sheffield artist books prize 2011 winning a dialogue in useful phrases. i’ll admit that i found the printed version of this piece far more effective than the soundpiece which has been created using project guttenberg audio files to re-contextualise tonnard’s book. still a really interesting idea, which is creates a great dialogue from abstract phrases.

elisabeth tonnard, courtesy of bank street arts

lastly for this roundup, a train trip over to leeds to see a fantastic new exhibition at blip blip blip, the gallery space within leeds college of art. this week saw the opening of jenny west’s projection, and exhibition which explores the relationship between architectural space and domestic objects through the process of drawing. or, in other words, stunningly detailed and precise drawings of jelly moulds which look better than most architectural designs you see. west has a habit of leaving large amounts of her construction work on show within her work, which for me works brilliantly as the process is given as much of an airing at the product. the relationship between the works on paper and the large scale wall drawing create an interesting comparison of scale and working practices, and if you get over there quickly enough you might still be able to grab one of the beautifully presented essays which accompany the artist’s work.

nb – the below image doesn’t do west’s work anywhere close to justice

jenny west, courtesy of blip blip blip

 

at last, our promises – creative spark, sheffield hallam degree show 2012

ever since i gained an awareness of new art, i’ve known about the reputation of sheffield hallam as a school of art. this is the first chance i have had to take in the sheffield degree show since moving over here, and have spent a brilliant afternoon crossing the city to see some really exciting new work across a range of creative fields. admittedly, the nature of a degree show means that it was a pretty mixed bag, but i’m not writing this to put down people who have spent the best part of three/four years working towards this point. i’m just someone who has their own ideas of aesthetic, and i certainly wouldn’t want to make a negative comment about any of the upcoming artists on display as part of creative spark.

the fine art display at s1 artspace was the first time that i have seen the gallery space displaying work other than film, and it was fantastic to see the room so animated. with a mixture of sculptural works, painting, photography and film, the display took on a variety of different directions.

the standout pair of works for me came from jason mould and hannah sarah james. both artists’ work took seemed to deal with ideas of negotiation of landscape, though in contrasting manners. mould’s piece the debatable land takes on a richard long-esque quality, mixing a vinyl wall piece of the english-scottish border with a physical border between soil from both sides of the divide. i got a real sense of the importance of place from mould’s work, and was really impressed; i would really like to see more of this artist.

jason mould, the debatable land

hannah sarah james, 0.7

adjacent to mould’s work was hannah sarah james’ wall drawing 0.7, a wall drawing working around four sides of a supporting pillar. using the simplest of ideas, that vertical line, the artist creates undulating contours which spread around the pillar. it is probably a leap to far to suggest that these mountains were the peaks along mould’s border. a terrific placement of two of the best pieces i saw all day.

     

shifting around the corner from these pieces sarah simmonite’s progression offers another seemingly simple idea, blocks of colour moving from shade to shade, from a light ecru and moving towards muddy brown. it wasn’t the blocks that drew the eye and interest in this piece though; the spaces between the solid slabs danced with variations, a really nice touch to bring a sense of shared progress to the entire work.

sarah simmonite, progression

other standout work from the fine art show came from carole cluer, who reworked the ideas of kintsugi repairs using graphite in place of gold. cluer’s artist book complemented her ideas and plate work to great impact. dominating the entrance to the gallery space, annabel snowden’s parachute asked some interesting questions of the viewer, with the main thing lingering for me being an ongoing problem deciphering whether the parachute was falling towards or anchored by the fantastic print on the gallery floor. lastly, victoria bailey’s macintosh-esque wooden frame supporting punctured paper work worked perfectly this afternoon as light flooded through the miniscule holes, creating a sense of life. the texturing of bailey’s paper offered yet more contours, a theme which i really warmed to throughout the works which appealed most to me in this collection.

victoria bailey

moving on from the art show, i headed (via a swift trip to millenium gallery to partake in their £1 coffee deal) into the unknown for me, jewellery. i honestly can’t give you anything on the technical abilities of any of the artists on show, as i have no real terms of reference with which to describe what i saw. however, i can tell you which two artists really stood out to me as the ones whose work i really enjoyed. luana poerio’s collection hope of spring saw silver flowers arranged into wooden blocks, with lovely allusions to natural forms and window boxes at the same time.

from the natural to the very man-made, emma swailes’ the sea side memories collection was loads of fun. objects inspired by the british coast, with deckchairs and beach huts supporting some really lovely pieces working around aesthetics of the chip fork. ok, so it might not be ‘beautiful’ or ‘pretty’, but this work really grabbed me and stood out as something i would want to buy in the future for loved ones.

heading on from the jewellery i attempted to find the (very poorly signposted) architecture display. it must be really frustrating for the students to find that their work is displayed in such a chaotic manner, and indeed nigh on impossible to find. short of a sign on a door saying ‘beware of the leopard‘ it couldn’t have been much more difficult to actually find the 4th year architects work, which only discovered by dint of having looked at the 2nd year display from across the atrium and traced a vague line towards something across the way that looked like it might be more architecture. moan over, but seriously, shouldn’t the architecture department be the best at getting you into a space to see the work?

once the final year projects were found, it was worth the trip. working to a brief of designing an international hub for learning on the dearne valley/river don corridor which showcased environmental features, there were some brilliantly thought out buildings here.

liam gladwin’s building made fantastic use of space, placing the public circulation areas at the heart of the design, yet without impinging on the practical usage of area. alongside a very clean and considered interior, gladwin’s exterior seemed thoroughly planned to at once make a strong statement on its materials whilst also blending into the natural world around it. really impressive stuff.

liam gladwin

just as impressive in my eyes was tony buck’s concept which combined wood frame, glass and local stone with a green roof to create a building of striking qualities which somehow took me straight back to the moorland visitor centre in edale. i’m a massive fan of said building in edale, and someone buck managed to maintain this combination of the natural, great design and a certain softness throughout his project.

tony buck

the creative spark exhibitions run until saturday 23rd june, and i would heartily recommend that you find the time to go and give them a look before the weekend. it is really encouraging to see so much great new work going on in sheffield, and i am honestly looking forward to seeing where all of the artists i’ve spoken about above go next. keep your eyes peeled folks.

museums sheffield: the arts council funding fallout

*this whole story is developing all the time, see the comments at the bottom for the latest*

fairly regular readers of this blog will know that over the summer i moved over the hills from manchester to sheffield. since arriving in sheffield i have been enjoying getting to know a brand new set of museums and galleries, which i have generally been impressed by. yes, everything is on a much smaller scale than those which i used to frequent on a near daily basis whilst studying for my MA whilst in manchester, but i try not to see them as comparable institutions. weston park museum is a very well curated introduction to a city, and includes some really nice flourishes of delivery including the gallery built around snowy the polar bear. in the city centre the millennium gallery has proved a reliable place to head for when i’ve needed to see things to either calm thoughts or spark inspiration – in particular the kid acne exhibition and the ruskin gallery struck me last year.

there is one gallery which i have not yet fully got to grips with, and that is the graves gallery. working in an art gallery means that you sometimes end up completely missing others, especially when they have restricted opening hours. this has been my issue with the graves gallery, which i have seen a total of three rooms in. i was a bit shocked at how much work there was in the gallery when i first stepped in, presuming that their limited opening hours belied a limited collection. instead, i think that they may be the tip of an iceberg which sheffield is unfortunately ploughing straight towards.

last week the arts council announced that, despite a very strong bid, museums sheffield has missed out on £4.2million of funding over the next three years – which represents a cut of at least 30% in funding for the city. reports suggest that this leaves funding for the arts in sheffield at around £4 per head, whereas nearby leeds is sitting pretty with over £20 per person. it is frankly shocking that a city of sheffield’s stature, with an arts scene which seems to be growing around the work of museums sheffield, has been cut adrift.

i can still recall the consternation of the last round of funding cuts when i was working in a manchester arts venue (which was allocated its money), and the issues which were faced by those who missed out. at least one major venue has gone the way of dust as far as i know. sheffield is now facing a situation where the museum service must find ways of meeting an £800,000 shortfall for their current budget, let alone the dark times yet to come. talk is of around 50 jobs going, an end to the expansive exhibitions policy which has seen major national shows exhibited in the city, and potentially worse.

museums sheffield have been very upfront about what this funding decision means for their service. combative posters have appeared across their venues appealing for the people of the city to support them in this dark time, and they have made realistic announcements about what these cuts mean. an end to big name exhibitions, cuts to family engagement, the wrapping up of outreach programmes.

yesterday i attended sheffield council’s public consultation on the budget cuts it is facing itself. the council is losing around £24million of their own budget from central government, and is thus being forced into cuts of around 10% across all its’ services. yet they chose not to apply this to museums sheffield, instead implementing a cash standstill which would support the outstanding arts council bid, and the industrial museums’ hlf bid. so here we are with a council which is willing to draw back on other areas to support the visual arts and heritage, but even that is not enough to see these vital services protected.*

so what next? museums sheffield held discussions with arts council england’s yorkshire team yesterday to discuss the short term issues, and the application of ‘transitional funding’ parachute payments which are being rolled out to those renaissance funded institutions who have missed out on the current round of funding. talks are also ongoing about an appeal to overturn the decision, which whilst i support in principle of the need of these funds in the city, you have to wonder how the arts council could begin to find the money to offer sheffield any form of funding? remove it from services who were successful in the initial bidding process?

i am hopeful that a solution can be found, whether via an appeal process or through a succesful application by museums sheffield for the arts council’s renaissance strategic support fund. either way, action is going to be needed from the people of sheffield to show their support for their arts institutions. now is the time to make use of those politicians who you put in power, be it at local or national level. make a noise about how important these museums and galleries are to the city, to you personally, and to the lives of those who need them most. contact you mp. write to your councillor. go direct to the arts council.

most of all, get to the museums and galleries. you know those gift aid envelopes you normally walk past? use them. that family birthday coming up – get them something from the gallery shop. sheffield, support your cultural institutions now, whilst you still can.

museums sheffield blog – help us make the case for culture in sheffield

*it must be noted that sheffield theatres and site gallery have both seen their funding cut in line with sheffield council’s budget cuts.

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