The global media sensation the 4am Project was a perfect excuse for about 40 photographers to get access to our beautiful Central Library in the middle of the night. From the stacks in the basement to the very roof, we got to see the lot. Nilki Pugh’s photos, my photos. Am sure there will be more an better than mine at least appearing online, feel free to drop links to any you find in the comments:
“Network Rail is inviting people to have their say on plans to upgrade the Pallasades shopping centre and create a new John Lewis department store to the south side of Birmingham New Street station.” Something of the patio uplighter in the design… Speak here, although exactly where on the site it doesn’t seem to say.
From the Evening Mail: “Lighting firm Christopher Wray wants to pull down the buildings at 7-12 Bartholomew Row and has submitted a planning application. The owner claims that the row, near the new Matthew Boulton College and Millennium Point buildings at Eastside is beyond economic repair. But the council’s Conservation and Heritage Panel says that as the buildings, the earliest of which date back to 1779, have a preservation order the demolition cannot be allowed.”
Historian Ben Waddington is leading a Brum walking tour of sights and buildings inspired by his article ‘Invisible Architecture’ from Issue One of Dirty Bristow magazine. It’s based on the differences in what you see when you look up, rather than down. He says in his piece: “Take a walk down New Street. The challenge is to get where you need to be without being waylaid by market researchers, religious groups, animal rights zealots, charity collectors in pincer formation, personality testers, Big Issue sellers on their last copy, or the unlucky folk needing just 20p towards their train fare. Even if you successfully run this gauntlet, you are never out of the magnetic field of every shop window display, carefully arranged to take your attention and unfold your money. One direction you cannot afford to look is upward. Photo by Gordon Eightball. The impression is that it is a modern arrangement of concrete blocks put up in the sixties at the expense of Victorian splendour. The reality is very different: certainly there are some recent buildings but above the ground floor is mostly rich Victorian brickwork, colourful faience, terracotta, sculpture and ornate ironwork. It is interesting to watch the...
While researching something else, here’s some stuff I found of Brum’s own scalextric Camp Hill Flyover: A photo by Phyllis Nicklin: And a bus-driver’s eye-view of a trip out of town on the 37. mmmm, short-term nostalgia.
A local, erm, enthusiast is campaigning for the King King statue late of the Bull Ring Markets (and some car place, and Dudley Zoo apparently) to be returned to tower over Brum. That’s despite him saying: “apparently poor old King Kong has recently been melted down by his Scottish owners” — or is he in Penrith? An enduring image, isn’t it.
There’s nothing that worries me more than consultation (still no results btw) , apart from knocking down Birmingham’s most important building. So I was a bit disappointed with only “the main themes” being released from the consultation into what might happen with Paradise Circus — out of 153 responses I know at least a few had very strong “don’t knock down Central Library” themes. Why not publish everything? Alan Crawley at The Stirrer pulls the response apart. And if you’re feeling in need of sleep, here it is published as a PDF so that even fewer people will read it.
Got a chance yesterday to pop into the mac (still a week or so before the opening, and work being done all over the building) and taste the catering. Yum. The building re-opens to the public on May 1st, with loads of events, a very much refurbed bar and café and free wifi streaming out into the park. The cinema, theatre and hexagon theatre have all had a spruce up and there’s now extra performance space around the building. Most impressive is the huge new gallery space — a vast room that already looks to be very flexible. The opening exhibition ‘Plug In’ is currently being installed, and features a ton of locally related art, including a sound piece by Peter Cusack, photos by Stuart Whipps and this masterpiece too long out of sight: It’s also got the Brum word cloud in situ — have a quick look on the mac blog. But best of all I found out that the mac had once been the site of Bob Carolgees’s brief foray into the World of architecture:
You can now speak your branes on Paradise Circus about what should go where Central Library is. It won’t surprise you to learn that my answer is “Central Library”.
