Outrage - View

Architectural Review, The, Nov, 2003

Bradford, in the heart of what was once England's industrial north, used to be a rather impressive little city, with a Victorian centre of neo-Italianate warehouses and offices built on a poky, picturesque Yorkshire plan. Then, in the 1960s and early '70s, manic civil engineers and perverse planners decided to demolish a great deal of the centre to make way for free-flowing traffic. The splendid Kirkgate Market, the main arcade and the Mechanics Institute with its giant Doric pilasters were the most outstanding of the demolished landmarks, but much else was obliterated by roadworks and really second-rate late neo-functionalist rubbish. Of course the city centre declined, and has an 'oversupply of property with low values'.

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Now, there is a new plan by Will Alsop for the centre which promises much. It will tidy up a few of the dreadful postwar mistakes and celebrate some of the remaining fine Victorian buildings. But it also promises some really rather frightening things. Alsop's passion for blobs is modified only by his love of squiggles and thrusting rectangles. Everything new in the proposal shouts, and much of the low value property is to be demolished to allow the new buildings enough space to boom in.

The poor Neo-Gothic Town Hall (partly by Norman Shaw) is left, dwarfed, on a promontory in a new lake, in which it is supposed to be reflected. New scaleless blocks radiate out from the lake, jutting, wriggling and writhing, often with no-man's lands between. These buildings are carefully positioned to collect winds from the hills that form a bowl round the centre, and to focus them on the lake, picking up litter on the way and turning the water into a species of municipal cesspit.

The plan is now open for public comment until Christmas. Citizens must surely be fed up with having their town ripped to bits with grandiose schemes. In a few years' time, this one will look as dated as the '60s civil engineers' efforts. Surely the time has come for gentle repair, upgrading, and careful insertion of fine new elements. Let the past speak to the future, not be obliterated by grandiose versions of what might be. P.D.