August 25th, 2008
11:37 am by bounder
July 30th, 2008
7:25 pm by bounder
Light Night, is being held as part of this year’s ArtsFest (which is fast approaching —12th to the 14th of September). While I struggle to see anything particularity arty about “architectural lighting of iconic city centre buildings and iconic landmarks”, it promises to be an interesting evening - especially if they project the painting from the art gallery of penguins onto the Town Hall as they seem to be suggesting: (that’s this one).
July 14th, 2008
3:27 pm by bounder
I’ve just put Mike Whitby’s letter to Margaret Hodge of the DCMS about Central Library up online. Go read it, it’s interesting, but I’ll pull out a few points here, and comment from my own perspective:
“how has the situation has changed in the five years since the former Secretary of State decided the building should not be listed [?] In terms of the physical condition of the building, clearly that has deteriorated further…”
Well it has (if it has), because the Council have let it happen — if deterioration of a Council building isn’t their responsibility whose is it? Maybe a building needs listing more if those responsible don’t maintain it.
“and the inadequacies of the building for a contemporary library service in a dynamic multi-cultural community at the heart of a globally relevant city become evermore apparent.”
Listing doesn’t always rely on usage - many people have suggested the building stay, but the purpose change.
“the building has never received a single architectural award since its completion, locally, nationally, or internationally.” “…not a single building by John Madin has been statutorily listed.”
Awww, let’s give it an award now, ‘BiNS Library of the Year’. Let’s not do something because it’s never been done before, not a visionistic argument really.
” the opinion of both the City Council and the overwhelming majority of leading organisations representing the educational, commercial and civic life of the City, together with residents,…”
Opinion of residents? Have we had a vote? Or consultation?
“The accretions to the original building have also clearly detracted from the original monumental statement.”
He means the additional stuff — well TAKE IT DOWN!
“In his authoritative book ‘Building Jerusalem’ published in 2007, Tristram Hunt describes the erection of the Chamberlain Memorial as the apogee of the civic gospel and goes on to say, ` Once a shrine to public service, it is now sullied by the glaring neon lights of a McDonalds and the tat of second-rate retailers.’”
Yes, we hate the MacDonalds too — unsully the library.
Apart from that it was mostly the Council position as has been stated before, I’m still wondering how knock down one building and selling the land for to build another creates “space”.
Well, the period of time to write to the government has closed - for now - so all we can do is wait.
July 11th, 2008
11:20 am by bounder
Today is the last day to say anything to the Department for Culture Media and Sport to support (or otherwise of course) English Heritage’s bid to list the Central Library. Email them at enquiries@culture.gov.uk.
Make sure that they know you’re talking about Birmingham Central Library, and say that you agree with English Heritage’s recommendation that it be listed. The more personal you make your email the better.
I’ve tried to collect most of the debate on delicious.
June 22nd, 2008
2:30 pm by bounder
Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch! An ‘artist’s’ impression.The city council have said that whatever the result of English Heritage’s attempt to get The Central Library listed, they still intend to knock it down.It’s nice to have city planners with vision, but we’re allowed to disagree when we think they’re wrong and I do here.
Quite a few people have raised objections, which the council won’t listen to, but so far I don’t think anyone has voiced an opinion on what should be done. One of the main arguments against keeping the library is that the whole ‘paradise’ development cuts one side of the city centre off from the other — I think this is quite valid and the council is obviously keen to have events in Centenary Square, and people do see the divide as an effort to cross.
The council want to be able to see the Town Hall, they think the library cramps it — but the beauty of the library is similarly cramped by truly horrible buildings.
So, lets open it up — and knock every bit of Paradise Circus apart from the library down.
Get rid of the Copthorne hotel, Adrian Boult hall, Paradise Place, and leave great a great expansive ‘city space’ with Central Library and the Town Hall as one end, the new library and ICC at the other. A huge place for shows, gatherings, meetings, tree ringed, maybe a couple of European-style kiosk cafés in the centre.
Yes, I said new library, let the council build their new library, we can use the old one for something else (in part perhaps all the books they’re thinking of chucking). Something else that needs no light, server farm, whatever?
Paradise Forum becomes a huge contemporary art space, the new library is a digital library, with swathes of electronic access to whatever the future can bring. The beautiful central library stands as if Birmingham’s Pompidu Centre, in it’s beautiful ugliness.
June 19th, 2008
12:57 pm by bounder
Despite the speed of the web, and my anal skim-reading of absolutely everything that mentions Brum, I still end up finding out things from the Evening Mail (or it’s 15 at a time, title only RSS feeds at least). Today I learnt that there are two projects in Brum up for Lottery Funding in one of these dreadful public votes (leading to lottery idol TV show).
Nechells Baths are looking for help with the restoration, the Lottery web-site says £1.6M (but seems to talk in the past tense) while the Mail article talks about two thousand pounds [Edit, as Dave Harte says below, this isn't a vote for funding? I can't make head or any other body part of it]. You can vote just with a click, without registering (think it looks at IP address, so if anyone was to continually reset their router and are on a ISP with dynamic IP addresses…).
There’s a link through to an organisation called the Birmingham Foundation, a charity I’d never come across before, they obviously do a lot of good work but don’t like to talk about it.
(photo by ray_wilkes2003)
June 19th, 2008
9:29 am by bounder
She’s even done the research that I’m too hungover to attempt:
“He was designed by one Nicholas Munro in 1972, and made his first public appearance at the Manzoni Gardens near Birmingham’s Bull Ring Shopping Centre, where he stood for about 6 months before being sold to a local car dealer by the name of Carl Racey. Mr Racey changed the name of his business to King Kong Motors and displayed the statue at his premises at the Camp Hill Flyover.
Not long after this, however, Mr Racey sold the statue to Spook Erection, a company that organises various street markets, and in particular, the infamous and sadly-missed Ingliston Market just outside Edinburgh. Here he stood for maybe 30 years, providing a useful focal point for lost children, until the market closed down, leaving many of his fans wondering what had happened to him: there were even suggestions that he’d been melted down!
I was delighted to find him gracing our local market at Penrith, where I hope he’ll develop a new army of fans as loyal as his previous ones. Long live Kong!”
Long live kong indeed.
(ta to Spaghetti Gazetti for finding this.)
June 17th, 2008
4:36 pm by bounder
The Clifton Bingo hall in Great Barr is to call time, along with “house”, “clickey-click” and other bizarre bits of slang, this coming Monday (23rd June), closing Gala the owners say, due to “the smoking ban, increased taxation and new laws banning big jackpot machines.” (via the Mail). I like bingo as a concept far more than as a game, but it’s doubly sad as it throws into question the future of a lovely piece of art-deco architecture (seen above in the BiNS calendar 2006).
Built in 1938, as a cinema, it’s Grade II Listed which means it’s safe from the bulldozers at the moment at least, but the commercial uses in this day and age for a building of its size and structure are few.
This particular area of North Birmingham has a fair amount of shops and pubs, but there isn’t a lot of entertainment around (as I remember from my youth) — what would be lovely would be if the council could buy it and open it up as a community space of some kind. Theatre space, art space, community hall for meetings, how great that would be.
June 10th, 2008
12:56 pm by bounder
Elizabeth Ingram is a jewellery designer of no mean talent and — despite living in Scotland —she’s designed rings based on one of Brum’s most potent forces. She says: “I have just designed some jewellery based on Spaghetti Junction, which seems to confuse people no end as they seem to think I should be taking design inspiration from rare orchids or Picasso or something.”
“I used to travel over the Spaghetti Junction every day, and there is a beauty and chaos apparent even in its smooth concrete functionality, I wanted the attractive side of this criss-crossing mass to be there, but I wanted the dark side to lurk in the bushes, as surely we all do”
No word on the blog about whether this is the sort of thing I can afford to buy for the other half, but they’re really nice.
May 28th, 2008
10:31 am by bounder
Building Design, a website for architects, has video of a lecture given about the refurb of the Rotunda by Nathan Cornish of Urban Splash and Glenn Howells of Glenn Howells Architects. More details here on the bd site:
