Birmingham: It's Not Shit

Central Library for and against

My highlighting:

The Twentieth Century Society:

“The Twentieth Century Society is tremendously disappointed by the Minister’s decision not to follow the advice of her advisers and list Birmingham Central Library. EH advice on listing is not often overturned and this is a key case in that regard. Minister Margaret Hodge has made no secret of her personal dislike for post-war buildings and has here failed to understand the basic premise of heritage protection in England.

Listing Birmingham’s impressive brutalist library would not prevent renovation work, or even a well-designed radical makeover. Libraries need to be flexible as the services  they provide will continue to evolve. We believe not only that the Central Library is historically and architecturally significant, but that it is capable of being adapted for the needs of 21st century Birmingham. What listing would do is make sure that proposals took into account the historic interest of these structures rather than seeking to change or even demolish them.

One of the key strengths of our heritage system is that listing is decided purely on the basis of architectural or historic interest. This then allows a detailed analysis of economic viability and wider social issues to follow. This  works very well and any problems that occur generally reflect lack of skills, experience and confidence of local authority planning departments and committees. The process does not require Margaret Hodge to fix it. BCL, designed by one of Birmingham’s most accomplished architectural sons, John Madin, could have another life. The Twentieth Century Society will continue working alongside the local groups who have done so much to push the debate forward”

Architect Tom Hewitt, a design director at 3DReid’s Birmingham office:

“I am proud to be from Birmingham and I can see some architectural merits of the existing library, especially in terms of its context relative to the period and the bravery of the design in that era… but I don’t like it and I never have.”

from The Architect’s Journal.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 12:13 pm by Jon Bounds and is filed under Birmingham, Birmingham City Council, architecture, environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.