Liverpool Reborn
Stephen Bayley wrote an article in The Times yesterday about how inspiring architecture is creating wealth, health and happiness.
Cities are living organisms. This means sometimes they die. Pompeii is one example, although no one saw it coming. Detroit’s fate was more predictable, possibly even inevitable: Motor City is stuck in reverse and headed for oblivion.
Liverpool nearly died. Like Detroit, it fell at great speed from economic and social grace. Unesco World Heritage credentials describe old Liverpool as “the supreme example of a commercial port at the time of Britain’s greatest global influence”. It was the New York of Europe.
He talks about how good architects have rebuilt the city and made it fit for the twenty-first century, but observes that politicians in London haven’t noticed. London to me is a city of good modern architecture, but save for a couple of nice buildings, those bridges and Grainger Town, Newcastle doesn’t seem to have been improved. Surely now, in the depths of a recession, we should be encouraging good building to leave a legacy to the future and also provide the jobs and homes we need. I’m not sure you need that many more shops and offices, though.
He ends the article by asking what makes a good building. He believes it is one that makes you feel better. He is absolutely right and having created a few in my time, I like to think I know how to create them. I shall create another when I return to London. Somewhere to live and somewhere where I will probably eventually die.
But then Liverpool in the 1960s turned me from a shy young boy with ideas into a shy young man with ambition, drive and a strong belief in myself. It does that to people. Even now, I go back occasionally to make sure that I know what life is about. It is still the second city of the UK despite what others say.
I shall be buying his book. If nothing else it will give me the faith to carry on in this world.
Around Newcastle City Centre
I walked down from St. James’ Park to the centre of Newcastle.
These days city centres look very much the same with steel and glass shopping centres, although Newcastle does have quite a lot of grand stone buildings in an area called Grainger Town.
Stone Buildings in Newcastle City Centre
This is just a side street and there are a lot of grand building still left in the area, although T. Dan Smith and John Poulson would have probably knocked the lot down if they hadn’t got charged with corruption.
Luckily sense was seen and the area is now being restored.
But that didn’t stop this hideous edifice being erected by the Co-Op.
A Hideous Edifice
Can a building like this have ever looked good? Even as a set of drawings!
Do I have one abiding memory of Newmarket City Centre?
Yes! I’ve never been to a place with so much smell of chips and burgers.
The Sage Gateshead
The Sage Gateshead dominates the south bank of the Tyne with The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts.
I didn’t visit the building, so I can’t comment about the inside, but it certainly looks a good building to me.
Roof Trusses
I’m having a new building put up and by accident I took an interesting photo of the roof trusses in the sunlight and backed by the blue sky. I liked it, so I took some more.
Changing Face of Ipswich
I took these two pictures in Ipswich on Saturday.
Civic Drive, Ipswich - 1
Civic Drive, Ipswich - 2
These two views fit together. In the first one, you see the old Crown Court and the space where the Civic Tower used to be and in the second, you see the AXA offices that have been reskinned and turned into something respectable and a good working environment.
All of these buildings were built at the same time, but why did they pull down the Civic Tower, rather than refurbish like the AXA offices? Was it because it was built to a much lower standard?
At my party yesterday, a surveyor said that civic and NHS buildings are now designed without air-conditioning to save money. Is this short-sighted? I suspect so and in twenty years time, we’ll be upgrading them to make them a decent working environment.
As a postscript to this, I went into Debenhams to try to find something. The air-conditioning had failed, but even with the lights turned down, it was oppressive.
Tommy Ducks, Manchester
Having been to Manchester a couple of times lately and especially a few of my memories of the city start to return. Years ago, I worked with a salesman called Brian Birtwistle and I think it was him, who took me to a pub called Tommy Ducks. I seemed to remember that it some bizarre decor and that ladies were invited to donate their knickers and these were then promptly nailed to the ceiling by the landlord.
Initial searches with Google didn’t seem to find anything, but after changing the terms a bit I found this on Sigma Leisure Books.
It is 100 Barbirolli Square (not 101). It should be recorded that this building stands on the site of ‘Tommy Duck’s’, one of the great pubs of Manchester. It was located in a late eighteenth century house, and got its name in a most singular way. A signwriter was inscribing the name of the landlord, one Thomas Duckworth, on the fascia boarding – but ran out of space. Thus ‘Duckworth’s’ became ‘Duck’s’! In its final incarnation, the interior was unique, owing nothing whatsoever to a ‘designer’ but deriving from the interests and eccentricities of the landlord and his cronies. There was a priceless collection of Victorian theatre and music hall posters, a skeleton within a glass lidded coffin, and the ‘piece de resistance’, a ceiling covered with a fine collection of ladies knickers. These ranged from the skimpiest pieces of lace to capacious ‘bloomers’. (Female regulars were asked to donate a pair, which was duly autographed, dated, and pinned up with due ceremony.) A raid by a group of women who were determined to reclaim them soon passed into the city’s folklore. Sadly, the pub was demolished in a rather dubious episode. It is said that the perpetrators were fined for knocking down a listed structure without consent. ‘Hanging, drawing, and quartering’ would have been more appropriate.
There is also a picture on Flickr.
My memory says that whilst we were drinking in the pub, a lady was asked to donate and the due ceremony took place. It’s probably been upgraded with the passage of time!
They don’t make pubs like that anymore.
The Anonymous Widower 