Outrage

Architectural Review, The, May, 1997 by Peter Davey

What is it about British cities that makes their new architecture almost inevitably second rate? Compare for instance Birmingham or Leeds with other great nineteenth-century cities like Melbourne or Chicago. In the best Australian and American cities, there is a tradition of decent building, both civic and commercial, which continues from Victorian times to the present: their centres may not contain amazing architectural jewels but they mass handsomely, and their towers, if not elegant, are at least individually confident.

This proposal for the centre of Birmingham is yet another example of British pussy-footing. A dreary existing tower is to be complemented by a new one that would look at home in one of the brasher but less successful cities of South-East Asia, Johor for instance. As shown in the perspectives (which have a queasy affinity between graphic style and subject), the entire six-acre new development is to be under a glass canopy around what the developers call a 'spectacular water feature based on a canal theme'. Birmingham may have been the centre of Britain's canal network 150 years ago, but can't it find something new to be proud of? Insult is added to inanity when you think of the superb detailing of the original canal works, the wonderfully elegant and economical brick bridges, the solid robust iron railings, the massive stone abutments, all canonical elements of what J. M. Richards called 'the functional tradition'. In contrast, the details proposed here are pathetically flimsy, apparently churned out of a provincial PoMo pattern book. The design is by HOK International in colonial mood; they used to have too much pride to design such pasticheries at home in America, but apparently it's all right for the naive natives of the British Midlands.

Central Birmingham was wrecked by appalling road planning and commercial development in the '60s; the prettification schemes of the early '90s did a little to ameliorate the worst of the horrors, but what the city needs now is guts and pride: more and better towers, arcades and shopping malls by all means, but ones with faith in the future rather than timid nostalgia for a past that never really existed.