I met Clive Dutton yesterday, he reminded me a bit of Jonathan Meades, which is a fine compliment for a city planner. I also met the architect of the Rotunda a wonderful man called James Roberts (pictured below), and briefly spoke to Chris Upton about beermats. The reason for this gathering of Brummie luminaries (and the excuse for my attendance) was the première of Nic Gaunt’s film ‘Rotunda: 21 Stories’, a ‘Towering Inferno’ for the psychogeographic Midlands. The film, also book, DVD and exhibition, found 21 stories about the Rotunda to match each of the 21 storeys of the building — you see what they did there? Clever. Some were deeply frivolous, me, Malcolm Stent doing a joke about Selfridges and hub-caps, ex-mayor Randall Brew XI claiming that “they’ll have to carry me out of Birmingham in a box” (didn’t know the lack of burial space had got that bad), and some were very serious; a number of takes on the Pub Bombings. Some of the stories come from James Roberts designer and architect father of the building: He reveals his thoughts on the original build — that it gained 5 floors almost a whim — and how pleased...
