With the reorganisation of Birmingham New Street Station well underway and in the press this week, it seems the 'modernist' centre of Birmingham that earned the name 'Concrete Jungle' has ceased to be, leaving only a few fragments of Manzoni's masterplan. I first came to Birmingham in 1993 to start my journey in Architecture, and what a city to choose, it became home for the next 17 years! The city was already undergoing massive transformation following the unsuccessful bid to host the 1992 Olympics had put Birmingham on the map long enough to demonstrate the potential of Britain's second city to host international events. This blog is written from some of my first impressions of the city centre around the Bull Ring, describing a city that now no longer exists.
Starting out at the base of the Rotunda, formerly known as the Coca Cola building, its graphic in huge red letters at the top of the 22 storey black and white striped cylinder as seen on postcards from the 1980's. At street level, Lloyd’s Bank in green letters along the top of the white podium, vertical slots march their way along the podium above an array of cash points and disorderly queues of people waiting to get their money out of the hole in the wall, the aroma of fried chicken and KFC wrappers lay in corners on the ground like some snow drift as deposited by the wind. The door into the bank which takes you up to the banking hall after a ride on an escalator, the vertical slots direct natural daylight onto the most amazing abstract concrete relief sculpture reminiscent of cubist painting meets Mayan sculpture, which floats above the counters. From the calm of the banking hall the harsh light and the city in its gritty form, the interface between fragments: the chink of classes and the intermittent sound of raised voices from Bar St Martin, litter on the steps taking you down into the network of pedestrian subways, dark blue and silver double-decker buses groaning their way through the traffic overhead, murals on the subway walls showing 'The Shambles' at the centre of another city called the Bull Ring, red and beige ceramic tiles, blackened paving slabs, Argos in the underpass between the Rotunda and the Bull Ring Centre. The busker playing Rod Stewart songs on the acoustic guitar, with shaggy bleached hair to complete the illusion. The overly large woman in a news stand belting out ‘get you mail’ sounding much more like a beached whale. The tramp walking around with his possessions in a carrier bag, wanting his photo taken to put in my project. The blackened spire of St Martin’s church, the remaining fragment of the old Bull Ring in the mural. Framed by the large concrete slab with large red plastic letters that reads ‘Bull Ring Centre’ and the abstract representation of a fighting bull on one side and the sheer face of the Nationwide Building Society on the other.
The journey to find the spire of St Martin's is beneath the moving wall of blue and silver past the Argos in the underpass, the bookmaker, who does not actually make books but takes bets from punters standing in the doorway watching the racing on TV. A glimpse of sky and green, a flower seller outside a glass door and the entrance to the Bull Ring Shopping Centre. The green belongs to Manzoni Gardens, rows of empty benches empty lawns, London plane trees are clustered around the outside of a walled garden The Rotunda stands proudly above the scene giving all the impression that it is set in the green landscape.
The shopping centre frames the garden with its rhythmic panels of concrete set against dark brick majestically marching off towards Smallbrook Queensway, on the Inner Ring Road. A gap in the tree belt, a multi coloured mosaic adorns the side of the wall that holds up the blue and silver stream of steel and exhaust threading its way through pathways between cars, cars, and more cars. A white wing of the shopping centre reaches into the garden from the main block like an armature forming a backdrop with picture windows displaying cut price womens’ clothing under the plastic lettering that reads Mark One Fashions. No sign of the spire from the garden which is completely walled in with the only way out being though the small gap next to the flower seller. Into the darkness where the flower seller is calling out his prices: two bunches for a pound, dim flickering flourescent lights give the place a wintry gloom, a short walk past shops selling cheap looking plastic goods, and bursting out into the daylight, a sea of heads with green and red canopies popping up at regular intervals, the aroma of cheese, mixed with frying fish and chips hangs in the air, a surging mass of people carries you down a long ramp with the calls of market traders emanating from beneath the canopies, the black spire is visible from behind more dark blue and silver continuing the ever present stream of traffic moving on top of the wall at the bottom of the ramp.
A gap in the wall, a tunnel beneath the traffic, the wares change from brightly coloured polished apples to brightly coloured garments on hangers, the black spire belongs to a black base, with arched windows, tracery, steel barriers, gates, trees, litter, and a door that takes you through to a different world, an empty world, gone are the sounds of traffic, sights of blue and silver replaced by pink and yellow as light streams in through stained glass, figures are picked out in the windows, in the stone depicting stories from a different city, a different time, words carved in stone telling of the founding of a different town called Birmingham.
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