Birmingham's blue blob - Letters - Letter to the Editor

Architectural Review, The, Nov, 2003

SIR: In the architectural debate here in Birmingham, I try to detach the serious discussion of design standards from the sometimes fevered rebranding, marketing and hyping of this city through its new architecture. For this I am not always popular among those who have a vested interest in the selling of 'the product'. Yet, while agreeing with your assessment of the new Self-ridges (AR October pp24.25), I felt a twinge of pain when you loaded the blame for it on to the cultural history of 'poor old Birmingham'. We didn't ask for the blue blob! Unlike the Inner Ring Road (on which, incidentally, there never was motor racing - that was elsewhere), it's not our fault! The spaceship has happened to land on the edge of the Bull Ring; it could have chosen to land in any other city (and would have been equally out-of-place). Admittedly, some council leaders, press and marketing people are uncritically gushing in their admiration of the Emperor's new Paco Rabanne coat. But their obsessions with not being seen as second-best causes them to welcome any novelty that gets Birmingham headlines in the national and international press.

Yours etc

JOE HOLYOAK

Birmingham, England