Tuesday 29 May 2012

Is Liverpools Regeneration A Plastic Facade of Bad Design.

 BEFORE..............................................
And After
We live in an age where architects can largely only understand how to make boxes. Just look at the Three Black Coffins at The Pier Head.
Gone are the days of architects (or CAD monkeys as most of them are now called) can understand scale and its relation to the human spirit.
Crow-bared into the place of architectural equilibrium is a stagnation forced by the need of most architects to give up their past principles and start to understand the needs of the developer and his corner cutting methods of construction.


Where has the need to employ craftspeople gone,to make things that people can be overawed with? Why was Matt Brook of Broadway Malyan allowed to do this piece of architectural vandalism with a World Heritage Site.

Where did this cold calculating off the peg finish that has invaded our cities come from?
Why have the architectural schools trained a flock of sheep to plop the country with pieces of architectural rubbish?


A town is an open air museum Jonathan Meades says and there is some truth in this.
He says about Bilbao. http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b01j5fw0/



That it spawned a new method of architectural regeneration that gave the idea that you jet in a jet lagged architectural big name to work within the parameters of the Regional Development Authorities grant structure.

He says Salford Quays is a soulless place of architectural bling full of museums with nothing in them.
He says regeneration of the new Labour years has been a racket.

Theories of city making and the icy perfection of regeneration comes into question.

Anna Minton who wrote the book "Ground Control" and worked quite hard to take into account the effect of Liverpool One style developments, and other gated communities on the people who live within and around them.


Have a listen to the radio 4 programme, which is an intellectual debate not based around Liverpool but it could be related to the past years of madness.

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