Reflections in a Giant Golf Ball...Riyadh 2011

Al Faisaliah Tower is one of the two landmarks on the Riyadh Skyline, referred to some as the pen and by others as something out of Star Wars, whether you love it or hate it the tower does make for a dramatic silhouette against the desert sunset. With its gently curving columns framing office floors, mechanical levels, a spherical  restaurant and finally communications dishes before coming together to form a point at the top, hence the reference to a pen.  Unlike my previous visit to a Foster landmark, the Commerzbank Headquarters in Frankfurt, this one is open to the public if one is prepared to spend a minimum of 100 Riyals in the restaurant or alternatively 35 Riyals to ride in the elevator which at approximately 8 Pounds Sterling is on a par with any of the visitor attractions in London, a view over Riyadh at 40 storeys is well worth a look.

On the ground the way into the base of the tower is less obvious, hidden behind the curving glass west facade along the drop off protected from the overhead sun by a series of deep louvres. A closer look at the planar glass wall reveals a shopping mall that like the rest of the city appears to be distinctly closed. A walk round to the South reveals a similar facade with opening times, it seems that nothing really happens until night time, and when it does it is ‘Families only’. A continuation of the walk around to the east side on Olaya Street reveals yet another curving glass facade beneath the louvres, but this one has doors that appear to be open. a young Indian guy is busy polishing them after brief enquiry and pleasantries it is into the cool air of the Faislaiah mall, lined with designer shops that appear the same in London, Birmingham, Dubai...except that there are no women, even in a lingerie shop the sales assistant is male. All around the shops are targeted at women, jewelry, lingerie, designer dresses, killer heels...which is a bit ironic really as women are not allowed to be seen in public without being completely covered in a black abaya, which considering the heat, the air temperature is 48 degrees Celsius, is the last colour you would want to wear outside.

At the top level of the mall an air conditioned glass corridor becomes a bridge that runs along the full width of the lobby before terminating at Kenzo Tange's Khozama Centre and King Faisal Foundation Headquarters, a masterpiece in Metabolism, raw concrete weathers well in this climate and still looks pristine as it did when opened in 1976. A brief walk around the shaded plaza the white concrete, deep shadows and planting in neatly ordered raised beds gives the sense of a modern university campus and for a while its is easy to forget that you are in Riyadh. The lobby of the Al Khozama Centre is a dramatic space, an inverted ziggurat to the North side, steps in to meet its partner a shear facade of glass, at the top of a six storey atrium where very little direct sunlight is admitted overhead. At the ends a clear glass wall protected from the sun allows light to burst into the space casting dramatic shadows and reflections off the glass.

Back onto the air conditioned glass bridge and into the Faisaliah lobby, and what a lobby! a wall of petals four storeys high, sloping down to meet the plaza, heavily filtered daylight gives a sense of protection from the heat. Outside Ferrari's are parked in full view of the restaurants that occupy the wings on either side of the green plaza that contains the base of the tower giving a tiny fragment of the glamour of Dubai . Beneath the plaza a ballroom the size of football pitch with a network of movable dividing walls that can sub-divide the space into any number of permutations.

Back beneath the bank of petals and into the lift lobby and up to the globe, the golden geodesic orb that is so distinctive on the skyline. The view from the globe reveals the true extent of the sprawl that makes up the city of Riyadh. Horizon to horizon, low rise blocks form an endless continuum of of villas, ranches and private resorts hidden away behind concrete walls, in an ever expanding grid relentlessly marching over the desert, obliterating any geographical features, each new block contributing to the constant drone of air conditioning units that release more heat and Carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Riyadh has no real public transport system at present, so the grid is constantly alive with cars in an ever increasing stampede of people moving in and out of the city.

Closer to the base of the Tower the city fabric becomes a patchwork of vacant lots, construction sites, where portakabins forming site offices sit precariously at the side of a five storey hole in the ground, vertical faces cut out of the bedrock. Two parallel roads running North - South: King Fahd Road to the West and Olaya Street to the East form a strip that is home to Riyadh's towers, to the South, the Ministries with their fortified perimeters and signs politely telling you that photography is forbidden. To the North 2000 metres away is the Kingdom Tower, the counterpoint to Al Fasialiah on the skyline, elegantly reflecting the view of the changing city fabric in between. The two roads running to the north give an impression being torn from the city fabric where the edges have formed a wall of towers on either side. Further to the north visible only as a black mound in the beige continuum is the future of Riyadh, 300 hectares of office space under construction at King Abdullah Financial District, a symbol of the ongoing 'greening' of Riyadh.

All along the Watchtower, Frankfurt 1998

In my previous post 'Boob Tube or the New Birmingham' I made reference to the interface with New Street, High Street and the new Bull Ring feeling like Frankfurt, it is only fair that I also share my impressions of Frankfurt, this is a piece that has existed in notes and memories from a visit to the city over 15 years ago and has never found a reason to be written up...until now.

What I find interesting looking back over old notes are the observations made from an English perspective, and how far behind we are in terms of planning in England. In 1998 the Midland Metro was a new concept and a bit of a joke in the local press. Today a scaled down new scheme for the long awaited expansion has been released by Centro, see: http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2013/09/04/glimpse-at-31m-midland-metro-extension-through-birmingham/

At Bockenhiem Worte, is the university building with its student halls that are to be home for the next few days. This part of the university is ideally situated, adjacent a market square, main shopping street, McDonald's, bus route, tramway, and underground station (U-Bahn). Across the square stands a tower built in the middle ages looking like something out of the brothers Grimm’s fairy tales, a former watch tower at the town’s edge, the city wall is no longer there, the town’s edge has since moved as the city has expended. In the distance stands a communications tower with flying saucer and traffic cone. German students are very sociable, we are welcomed by at least twelve sitting around a large circular table in the large communal kitchen area, sharing cigarettes, everyone smokes here.

Below in the square streams on people emerge from the U-Bahn station, browse around the stalls at the open air market, fresh olives seem to to be the favourite, and walk across the square to hop on one of the numerous and frequent trams and buses that pass by the end of square. Everything seems to be well joined up here, mixed use is not an issue because it was never separated out.

A walk between the market stalls and into the U-Bahn through the most striking entrance, a railway carriage tilted at about thirty five degrees and driven into the ground, enter through the end and move downward along an escalator running through the carriage, into a light and spotlessly clean space to purchase tickets and proceed to the platform to be board a tram??? yes exactly the same as those on the surface running under ground. A friendly female voice announces arrival at each station over the on-board public address system, and very swiftly our destination at Kontsablewache is reached. A walk up the steps to be addressed by a distressed pigeon, cooing at its mate laying dead on the pavement, looking like an aerial courtship display has resulted in a fatal collision with the ironwork that supports the canopy to the station entrance.

The square at  Kontsablewache is surrounded by modern buildings unashamedly sitting alongside historic ones, this is a large square with a stage being dismantled from a event that has just finished. The bustle of passing traffic gives the feeling of a very lively city centre. A short walk off the square and into the Medieval city centre dominated by the intricately carved spire of the Der Kaieserdom  St Bartholomaus. It is lunchtime and Dom Platz is absolutely buzzing, it is April and not exactly warm but the locals are happy to sit outside the restaurants and cafes, 'doing lunch' and sharing cigarettes, it is very much a smoking culture here. The facades above the restaurants look every part the romantic chocolate box image that signifies the Europe of the brothers Grimm. I later learnt that the square had been bombed during the war and had been rebuilt exactly as it was before. The new trams running along the cobbled streets between the Medieval Buildings create a sense of juxtaposition where the new and old coexist in balance with each other.

Sunday afternoon and the Birmingham Pub is showing F1 Grand Prix, Coulthard in the McLaren versus Schumacher a thrilling race which would be more interesting to watch it the management did not keep switching off every time that Schumacher lost the lead. Race over, Schumacher won, luckily, I don't think we would have been allowed to stay if he had not, and time to look around the rest of the main shopping area. The Birmingham Pub is situated in the middle of Ziel, a totally pedestrianised area, a street linking Konstablerwache at the East end and Hauptwache at the West end, I love these German names, one that absolutely leaps off of the fascia is Peek & Cloppenburg for no other reason than conjuring up the image of the opening scene of Monty Python and the Holy Grail...clop clop clop! clop clop clop! I don't think they sell the two halves of coconut though.

The most contemporary intervention along the Strasse is the Zeilgallerie, architecturally a high-tech playground designed by Kramm + Strigl, out of the same vein as Archigram, Piano, Rogers, Grimshaw. Externally a folded frame less glass facade defines the front of a narrow central space of the retail environment that is dominated by escalators and glass lifts and expressive steel structure with pin joints and cables. The rubber moving handrail of the escalator usually black, is red. A ride up to the top level, ten in all, and a slow walk down a continual slope lined with shops selling anything from  home accessories to comic books. A ride in the glass lift back up to the topmost level and a walkway threads its way around the atrium to emerge outside to a rooftop observation deck, and the panorama of Frankfurt am Main spreads out below. Glass towers pop up from among the sea of tiled rooftops and tree lined Strasses in a scene dominated by Foster's elegant Commerzbank Tower, which at 56 storeys is the tallest building in Germany, and well worth a closer look.

In New York an observation that was continually repeated was that the skyscraper builders were continually extruding blocks from the grid and merely making ornamental tops to them to mark their presence on the skyline. With the exception of very few it seems as though the designers were unable to make their buildings meet the ground. On walking through Frankfurt’s financial centre the skyline is dominated by skyscrapers, some of them seem  pretty anonymous, however on the ground there is wealth of sculptures in the plazas outside them. The most dramatic being the Commerzbank Tower, here the design of the tower extends to the space that the tower sits in, it is a plaza slotted in behind the historic buildings that make up the street frontage.

The main entrance to the triangular tower is via a long, wide, flight of steps that rises in procession from the street forming a kind of mediating space between the street level and the entrance level, with sculptural almost triangular slots that abut the adjoining buildings. In essence the landscape that the tower sits in has been carved out of the existing fabric to make a space between two buildings and a great deal of care has been taken here. allowing this prominent tower to actually touch the ground really delicately. The setting back of the tower from the street edge makes it a successful intervention into the urban fabric.

On the opposite side of the sunken plaza that opens out onto a large public square, and reads as a secondary entrance to the tower but contains the plaza restaurant and crèche, that further assists in the sitting into the urban grain another sculpture that is actually a signage screen for the building rotates at closing time, slowly extending on both sides to close the plaza and complete the street frontage to Gross Galastrasse, nicely done.

On reflection The Frankfurt of 1998 was way ahead of its twin Birmingham, and in some ways it still is.

Boob Tube or the New Birmingham? 2003

Sitting in the office today waiting for documents to upload to the clients’ FTP site the computer monitior gores into sleep mode and displays images of dramatic landscapes  on  a loop, sunrise over fjords, sunrise over paddy fields, and something resembling a giant sequined boob tube that anyone who has been to Birmingham in the last ten years will recognise. Which reminded me of Hugh Pearman’s review of Future Systems’ Selfridges store in the Sunday Times in the April of 2003, and a line that has stayed with me: ‘Whether you regard the building as an exotic toadstool, a sequined boob tube or an alien spacecraft is immaterial. This is already the new Birmingham’.

Having explored the Bull Ring Centre in an earlier posts  ‘Into the concrete jungle ‘ and ‘I see No ships’ some five years earlier this is an account of my first impression of the new Bull Ring on the opening night in December 2003. Approaching  from the  base of the Rotunda.as as per ten years earlier. Gone is the aroma of KFC, the cash point queue for Lloyd’s Bank and the constant wall of buses.  Lower New Street and High Street are pedestrianised and the area has a feel of Konstablerwache in Frankfurt, which is quite fitting really with Birmingham being twinned with Frankfurt, and the pedestrianised street connecting Konstablerwache and Hauptewache being the location of the Birmingham Pub. No ‘Peek and Cloppenburg’ in this version though.
Heading off towards the Zielgallerie or is it the Bull Ring? with hoards of people rushing in all directions... bronze bull in front of shear glass façade must be the Bull Ring! The bronze bull is a major attraction with lots of people having their photographs taken sitting on top of it. The ‘Square’ anything but square, is populated by solid sculptural granite blocks, set into the artificial ground acting as benches. The bull ring incidentally has nothing to do with Bull fighting, its name is derived from a cast iron ring set in the ground outside a butcher shop where cattle were tethered before being converted into steaks. I guess the matador metaphor is more appealing.

On passing the bull, the street is lined with brand new designer shops and gently slopes down to the internal environment, where the external bustle is replaced with noise...like that of a school swimming gala, with high pitched voices bouncing off the hard surfaces...shopfronts, marble floors glass roof. High street brands proudly exhibited in a series of galleries surrounding a  3 storey void with wide bridges and massively overcrowded escalators: value engineering perhaps? transporting people down into the pit. A walk along the mall passes food outlets with street style seating outside, with glimpses through to the outside where St Martins sits in its new surroundings. Passing the interminable array of new shopfronts the letters LEGO stand out from all the usual high street shops, and a look inside reveals lego models on glass cases, wall to wall lego kits and the back wall, the back wall! Lego bricks and components in cylindrical cubbyholes set into the wall, pick up a bag and select the pieces you need, how cool is that?

At the end of the mall Selfridges forces its organic facade into the scene making all the other facades seem bland by comparison. The high gloss white free form shapes that up until now has only been visible in the books of Future Systems, or the many proposals that appear in the Architectural journals and remain proposals with the exception of the Lords Media Centre; is manifested for real. A walk inside, the aroma of raw fish, not the fish market but Yo! Sushi along with other food bars lined with occupied stools the place is absolutely buzzing! At the heart of the store is another Bull, this time made of jellybeans, probably in the location that I found the statue of Nelson years before, but in this new space city who can tell? A ride up the escalator through the pristine white free form void feels like a journey into the future, or is it a possible future illustrated in movies like Logan’s Run, but for now this feels fresh and exciting and a definite leap forward from the world outside. An orange pod dominates the the middle floor, and inside the most amazing bookshop, comprising the best collection of architecture books I have seen outside the RIBA, along with books on art, interior design, and ‘The Earth from the Air’ Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s most startling array of aerial photographs documenting man’s impact on the planet. At level 3 the retail floor morphs into a lobby that springs a dramatic bridge across the traffic far below to connect with a pretty ordinary car park.  Next to the traffic is the newly restored Moor Street Station, previously a ruin concealed beneath high walls and office blocks, now proudly taking its place in the city again, complete with preserved a steam locomotive sitting alongside the platform. The lobby is lined with hundreds of pictures of people, hundreds making up a montage that instantly says to me what the city is about...its citizens.

Descending through a smaller jellybean shaped void criss-crossed by escalators, with trademark Future Systems lime green trim, in this case the brushes that line the treads.. On leaving the world of of the Future on the intermediate level of the mall shopfronts march along to a shear glass wall, and out into the night, a new street that forms a pedestrianised route back up the hill to Frankfurt, is lined with very busy restaurants, and a look down the hill, there is Nelson! his stature restored statue to its  to its original position. At the edge of what is now called nelson square, a balustrade defines the perimeter of the sunken plaza, which looks as though an archaeological dig has unearthed the church as an 11th century artifact, which like Nelson has been newly restored and looks all the more dramatic against the sequined backdrop of Selfridges a building conceived as department store without windows has a positive relationship with multiple walkways penetrating the facade at different levels. The gently curving volume encompassing St Martins. gives a real sense of the layers that make up the city, the new proudly sitting next to the old in a place that has brought life back into the city.

The outdoor market has been displaced across Edgbaston Street, that runs along the southern edge of the scheme, although the continuum of new public squares and the central street that meander their way up the hill to the Rotunda connect the markets to the city more successfully than the previous version with its network of subways, beneath the traffic . Along Edgbaston Street, a new market hall and multi-storey car park on the South Side, and on the north side a confused jumble of brick, stone and glass facades try unsuccessfully to disguise that back of the retail units that have their frontage inside the mall, the result a four storey facade with absolutely no chance of fitting into the urban grain or addressing its context. In the build up to the opening of the New Bull Ring, there has been a lot of media attention on Selfridges and some ordinary people in the street passing less than complimentary comments on Central News, strange how nobody has been asked to comment on the rest of the scheme, I supposed clad in brick it is camouflaged and nobody has noticed it. At the end of Edgbaston Street, the fragments of the old Bull Ring Centre remain, the Midland Red bus station still sits beneath Smallbrook Queensway, although now a loading bay for the retail units of the new scheme. A spiral stair in a glass block tower makes the ascent to Smallbrook Queensway, and opposite the department store block of the Bull Ring Centre of 1964, newly refurbished and doing what it has been doing for the past 39 years, now branded as TK Maxx, crossing the road at high level, the same concrete bridge now with metal cladding, crashes into the new department store to balance out the Future as exhibited with Selfridges, n this case Debenhams, looking very much a product of the 1980’s. At the top of Smallbrook Queensway, retail units are  suspended off huge steel trusses pinned into the base of the Rotunda, one can only guess it is to maximise retail space whilst avoiding the railway lines running beneath the street.

So for any wondering what the image on the windows screen saver is, ...the silver discs on a curving blue background...there you have it, it is a department store representing the future of Birmingham, inspired by a Paco Rabane sequined dress, or so I am told.

28 Days Later...Riyadh 2010

This was not actually 28 days after I arrived, it is more like 15, but the title is taken from the Danny Boyle movie of the same name because walking around the streets of the city during the Eid holidays was very similar to the way that London was depicted. Completely deserted, it is about 10 in the morning and there is nothing, not a single car moving along the road and it looks like I am the only mad fool walking outside during the heat of the day. Having grown up in the UK, the appearance of the sun without clouds is such a rare event that we don’t feel the need to hide away from it.

The ability to cross what would normally be 6 - 10 lanes of traffic is quite a novelty though. Heading westward roughly in the direction of the two towers, or at least one of them, the route threads its way through back streets lined by villas behind blank walls, with the canopies of trees poking out over the top as though nature and life itself is hemmed in. Walking along what passes for pavements or side walks becomes quite a challenge as trees are planted down the middle, where small shops line the road, the pavement disappears and becomes parking, eyes peep out from the darkness of the shop hoping that you have walked this way to buy an antique toaster.

As the side road joins the main road, Faisaliah appears above the featureless plain of low rise retail units, that stretch as far as the eye can see, some familiar names appear, like British Home Stores (BHS) adorned in English and Arabic on a distinctly closed Arabic themed concrete box across an empty car park. (or is it parking lot?). The roads are lined with date palms interspersed with lollipop trees, not that lollipops grow on them, but they are clipped to look like lollipops, in an ongoing attempt to ‘green’ the city plastic pipes thread through sparse ground cover planting and discarded empty (non-alcoholic) beer bottles. The shiny surface of the deserted road still looks like it has rained during the night, but there has been no rain for months, its is just the residue of rubber polished by the usual deluge of cars. There are no road markings only stainless steel studs.

Crossing to the shaded side of the road, not exactly shaded but slightly less in the full glare of morning sun, maybe a degree cooler, The continuous plane of four storey concrete retail blocks is interrupted occasionally by the lack of retail block, faded timber hoardings with rampant vegetation clinging to the corners of the vacant lot, in others the vacant lot is an area of levelled sand, and absolutely nothing else. The blocks themselves are about the same size, with retail showroom on the ground floor, currently hidden behind roller shutters, the upper levels being probably storage, apartments or offices, behind the myriad of different window shapes and air conditioning units planted onto the facade.

Following the curve of the road, alongside the palms and lollipops, blocks or lack of blocks, the space opens up into a park, rock formations, green slopes, clusters of date palms, interspersed with roads on legs, roads looping around beneath the over pass, and legs without roads!  Columns adorned in silver cladding and a yellow cap topped off with the Saudi Flag.  New glass office blocks loom up around the perimeter of what has become known as Cairo Junction, without a pyramid in sight. The blocks get bigger as the road heads north, still the same format, showroom at ground floor, with offices or apartments above, the street is punctuated with parked cars, jersey blocks trying to prevent it, and yellow skips, each skip with its colony of alley cats awaiting the next delivery of discarded food. In the distance the two towers that define the skyline come in to view along with the sense of how far I have already walked this morning. Continuing the journey Northwards, The Faisaliah Centre, Foster’s first project in Saudi.. is far more than the tower, that I had seen on the skyline, he first view on approaching from down town is the name Harvey Nicholls on the face of a sandstone coloured concrete wall, located behind a row of palm trees and jersey blocks. A desert sand coloured GMC truck with a machine gun in a turret on the back says that the owners don’t really want you hanging around taking photographs, beyond the truck, the base of the tower can be seen at the end of a manicured lawn that ends in a water feature where water cascades down over a stone depiction of the facade of the tower only to disappear behind the jersey blocks to the street edge

Continuing Northwards along the street edge the glass facades of the office blocks reflect the empty roads, line with their date palms, footbridges span the King Fahd Road, or at least they span the six lanes of the main road, to deposit the pedestrian on an island to then cross another two lanes of road. Between the blocks piles of construction materials deposited at the street edge await the process of assembly into some kind of order, steel beams, reinforcement, street furniture all deposited at the side of the road. A  small area of green, a few date palms and a deserted playground behind green steel fencing. Tower cranes crowd around the concrete skeleton, of what will become the twin towers of Riyadh’s World Trade Centre, now standing silent as work is suspended for the holidays. A the north end of the strip, Kingdom Tower, with its shear glass facade giving a clear reflection of the urban devastation at its base, or is it simply that it is under construction? A sand bank with an archetypal American yellow GMC school bus perched on top of it. A twisted bent steel sculpture that was once a car before it hit something solid lays rusting on a rough patch of sand.

Around the corner the hot flint smell of the sand is replaced by the rich smell of vegetation, the air temperature drops as trees shade the baking sidewalks, fountains playfully throw water into the air the familiar names Debenhams and Marks and Spencer become visible through the trees, flanking the base of the Kingdom Tower, that bursts up through the canopy and for a moment the feeling of being in the hottest capital on earth is replaced with that of arriving at an oasis, a feeling that is quickly suppressed by the presence of the ever present jersey blocks and trucks with machine guns guarding the entrance.

Heading South along Olaya Street, the sense that this is the front door to the strip in inescapable as the names from the glossy magazines proudly stand up to the street edge, Bulgari appears behind a planar glass storefront, with marble sidewalk taking their place among the older showrooms with parking lots out front making the walk along the sidewalk somewhat impossible. On the opposite side of the street, across the ten lanes of traffic, if there were any, in places the sidewalk disappears completely to reveal a hole some five storeys deep, framed only by lightweight timber hoarding. All adding to the sense that that this is very much a city in the making.

The Need for Speed

A slight departure from the subject of architecture this week because surfing the BBC website during the week, I learned that this is the week of the 75th anniversary of Mallard’s world record run where 126mph was recorded near Grantham, Lincolnshire on 3rd July 1938 a record that still stands as a world record for steam traction, and a reminder that I was mad on trains as a kid.

Mallard? not a duck but a steam locomotive named after it designed by Sir Nigel Gresley, distinctive by its steamlined body shape. To mark the anniversary Mallard and the five remaining sisters have been reunited, a reunion that involved shipping two from the US and Canada, and suddenly it seems it is cool to be interested in trains again,  if only for a short time. For the numbers already flocking to the National Railway Museum (NRM) in York, most of this summer’s ticketed events are already sold out this probably represents a once in a lifetime opportunity to view these impressive machines in the same place. The theme of the exhibition as shown on the NRM website is understandably about the quest for speed.

Considering where I am writing this, Bahrain, a country yet to posses a railway, interest in trains must seem strange if not a little absurd. What is it that draws the huge numbers of people to a gathering of machines? The love of steam? A romantic view of travel in the 1930’s perhaps? are they really celebrating visions of how life was much simpler in those days, no television, no computers, few cars, few telephones, along with smog, poor air quality and health problems as the whole country ran on coal. Travel was concentrated on summer excursions to the seaside...Blackpool, Skegness, The English Riviera, by train naturally.

For me it is about something else entirely, it is about national identity, and the period in history probably represents Britishness at its height, regarded as world leaders, the names of two of those locomotives in the exhibition a standing testament to the sprit of the age. ‘Union of South Africa’ and ‘Dominion of Canada’ the two living reminders of the Empire, when everything was wonderful (at least from a British point of view), one fifth of the globe was coloured pink, and represented a well behaved world governed by the British, through colonies, protectorates and dominions, with progress considered to be in the name of the common good regardless of consequences. Tea came from Yorkshire, chocolate from Bourneville, the origins of those products idealised on the packaging.

Birmingham was considered the workshop of the world, Liverpool was the city of trade, receiving goods and passengers from all around the world, Manchester supplied the world with textiles, the best Steel came from Sheffield and the railway was the vital lifeline that held it all together. The year 1938 represents Great Britain at its height, a year before the outbreak of WWII, when Britain was last considered ‘Great’ and the future looked bright. Six years later ‘British Made’ no longer had the same meaning, and so started the trend of importing goods made far more cheaply in South East Asia, and with it the decline of industry in Britain.

75 years later are we celebrating advances in engineering of are we lamenting the loss of something quite different?

Misplacement of Paradise? Birmingham 2003

Faced with imminent demolition following the construction of Mecanoo's new library on Centenary Square, and potential replacement with a group of what appear to be anonymous commercial buildings, the Birmingham Central Library as I know it is destined to cease to exist, consigned to pictures in books, which ironically will probably be stored in the new library. For me the library represents many hours spent conducting research, learning about the evolution of Birmingham from small market town to the workshop of the world and then to what has been referred to by many as the concrete jungle. Having studied the building for my final project of the Post Graduate Diploma, a project to design an archive to replace the one currently located in the attic of the library, I cannot help but be impressed by the library.

Built 1971 – 1973, designed by John Madin Design Group, concrete framed, inverted ziggurat form, designed to be flexible and functional, is part of larger unrealised masterplan and forms the centre piece to the curiously named ‘Paradise Circus’, essentially a traffic island which is home to Birmingham School of Music, (The Adrian Boult Hall), Fletcher’s Walk Shopping Centre including ‘X-posure’ Rock Café. Birmingham Central Library, with Paradise Forum below. Later additions include the black glazed boxes of the Copthorne Hotel and Chamberlain house offices, at what was the outer edge of the city centre before the reconfiguration of the ring road and pedestrian bridge to bring Centenary square into the city. A reconfiguration that places the library on the main route from the central shopping and civic areas to the new entertainment and conference areas to the west of the Inner Ring Road at Broad Street and Brindley Place. With the gradual transformation of the city and removal of the 1960’s Bull Ring, the ongoing reconfiguration of New Street Station, Paradise circus represents the last complete remaining fragment of the Manzoni masterplan for a modern city. The site of the Central Library was originally designed to accommodate the Central Bus Station in its basement, forming a transport hub nestling between the civic buildings that define the city centre, the  Gas Hall home of Birmingham’s Museum and Art Gallery and the Council House from the Victorian era, and the Art Deco Baskerville House, the only built element of the ambitious Civic Centre from the 1930’s.

The main pedestrian approach to Paradise Circus is via the amphitheatre of steps that encompasses the Joseph Chamberlain memorial outside the Town Hall built in the era of classical revivalism said to be modeled on a Roman temple of Castor and Pollux, in the Roman Forum resembling the much earlier Parthenon at the Acropolois in Athens. The route is defined by a steady stream of people walking to the city centre from Brindley Place and vice versa. Dominated by Mc Donalds situated in a plastic enclosure based on roman ruins, the Paradise Forum is a later addition to the plaza beneath the inverted Ziggurat that houses the central library.

On the ground? The artificial ground level that defines the public realm beneath the library is defined by a crossing of routes, the route to the left leads past the Conservatiore to a dark stair that doubles back on itself to bring the visitor down into a lost garden and traffic! traffic! traffic! ground level is surrounded by four lanes of traffic moving in a constant stream of conflict, stopping, changing lanes, cutting up other drivers. Choking the trees with a constant barrage of exhaust fumes. What feels like a subterranean street leads through the darkness of the shopping centre and subways to the plaza at the base of the iconic Richard Seifert & Partners' 100m tall Alpha Tower built 1971-1973, the former headquarters of ATV, that later became Central Television before moving out to the far less inspiring 1980s (or is it 1990s?) mock Victorian warehouse at Gas Street. The route rises up gently curving round the edge of alpha plaza to a surface crossing on Broad Street, on crossing Broad Street to the fenced off Centenary Square and Baskerville House and War Memorial and the constant stream of people head towards Paradise Forum and the city centre, crossing the wide bridge that spans four lanes of traffic as the Ring Road joins Paradise Circus.

Walking between the curious book ends of the Copthorne Hotel and the office block that mirrors it, past the grapevine pub on the left and with Italian restaurant on the right below the Library theatre and back into the plastic forum to the pedestrian crossroads. Turning left into the environment of the concrete jungle, a  plaza dominated by the blocky stump of a tower an empty rectangular pond and timber walkways that appear to have been added as an after-thought. A heavy concrete bridge crashes into the Gas Hall whilst a sunken car park forms the gloomy outlook from the rooms of the Copthorne Hotel.

A flight of timber steps descends from beneath the tower to a neglected car park with wire netting fence, and another subway running beneath the traffic. Turning right in the subway a path leads up to what was intended as a bus station, a dark space with concrete canopies to protect pedestrian routes from the weather in a typical modernist way. A blocked up door in the base of the concrete tower reveals that it was intended as a lift to the main deck level with its pond and entrance to the library space. Meanwhile down in the space below the deck, what was intended as bus lanes is filled with parked cars. Discarded pieces of the plastic forum lie in the corner and a fenced off narrow slot leads through to the garden that would have probably been taken up with bus lanes if it was it built as intended.

On entering Birmingham Central Library (and Information Services), the visitor moves it is up some steps past a cheerful? security guard to ride up a long escalator. The escalator ride moves up through a space that is framed by a structural with a glass wall to the left and the glass fronted children’s library to the right, to the top an enlarged landing that forms a temporary exhibition space where our studio from Birmingham School of Architecture exhibited our proposals for the new Archive in 1999. The entry space is a void that must be at least five storeys tall, crsis-crossed by bridges makes the experience of going to the library a dramatic one. The sculpted raw concrete gives something of a feel of being inside an ancient temple, as natural daylight is filtered through narrow bands at high level to avoid damaging the books on the shelves, augmented by fluorescent tubes to control the lighting levels. Reading spaces are double height shared volumes, that work well when studying, giving the feeling of being in a great hall. Orange carpet and black Formica desks firmly place the interior in the 1970’s along with microfiche readers, the later addition of 1980’s beige box computer terminals, that are perched on desks everywhere, to access information, access the library catalogue, locate whatever you need.  Moving between floors is via escalators that climb through the central atrium giving an impressive view over the top of the tacky plastic statues, curved pediments and columns making up the ‘forum’.

Not everyone likes the look of raw concrete, and with Prince Charles’ comment that the library looks ‘more like a building for incinerating books rather than storing them’ would not have helped the public like the modern building. Opinions based on appearances are subjective, but as an architectural piece that is a representative of its era, and as a building built for a specific task of protecting the documentation of our culture, for me it performs very well, and when studied in 1999 it was 25 years old and could easily have performed for another 25.

Beyond La La Land...Riyadh 2010.

After the glittering towers of Dubai arrival in Riyadh is something of an anti-climax, seemingly moving back in time to the late 1980’s. Indeed the skyline something more akin to the Dubai of 1988 of Michael Palin’s account of ‘The Creek’ in  the BBC TV series ‘Around the world in 80 days’.

My Saudi adventure began in 2010, arriving at the end of August during Ramadan. For those first few weeks I was living in a hotel with a great view of the city. The first day was a bit of a revelation, having arrived at 5.30 in the morning I was wide awake by 8.30 anxious to make contact with the people who had recruited me, to find that the office is two doors away, having understood that there is no rush, I take my time to get ready and step outside at about 10.00. Now when I experienced the middle east in January it was a ‘pleasant 28 degrees. I have just stepped out of an air conditioned environment into 48 degrees...wow that is like stepping into a furnace, so a short walk across the forecourt of the adjacent hotel, across the shared forecourt of car rental offices, and into the cool of the lobby that is going to become very familiar to me in the coming months, and no sweat, I mean literally there is no perspiration at all the air is so dry that it has evaporated off

I had heard that women are not permitted to work in Saudi, but it was still a shock to step out of the lift and see three young men sitting behind the reception counter, and to find myself in a totally 100% male office. A quick tour of the office and introduction to my new colleagues many of whom very quickly became my friends, it seems that nobody is expecting me, it has only taken two months of bureaucracy to get here! So it is a find out who is on vacation and use their desk until they return scenario. Having been located in an office and set up on said absent collague’s machine, it is time to find out what we are working on, and ‘learn the project’. Apparently I have two weeks to learn about a joint venture with Foster and Partners, and in the process learn about far more than the project, about whole new cities being built, high speed rail links where there is currently only desert, and a Kingdom that is serious about modernising albeit at a slow controlled pace as opposed to the mad rush of Dubai.

As I mentioned it is Ramadan so consumption of food and water in the office is forbidden, in fact I have not heard the word 'forbidden' used so much as on arrival in the Kingdom, so it is a return to the hotel and order room service routine, on returning to the office for the afternoon stint, the office empties at 4.00 except for the non-Muslims who have to work the full hours, and the consumption of water and coffee is permitted to resume. The next morning the office is still only populated by the sparse few expatriates that I met the day before, and it is only after 10.00 that the food and drinks have to be put away.

The office like the hotel is west facing has a stunning view of the skyline, where the skyscrapers number two, as opposed to the rapidly approaching two hundred of Dubai. Viewed across a constant plane of blocks punctuated by the occasional tree, the two towers define the main strip that runs North-South and are about a mile apart, Foster’s Faisaliah Tower at the South end and paints a delicate silhouette against the orange glow of the setting sun, Ellerbe Becket/Omrania’s Kingdom tower at the North end takes on an ethereal appearance as the light reflecting on the facade causes the tower to blend with the sky, almost disappearing then reappearing as the colours change. In between the two towers mid-rise blocks and blocky stumps with the occasional tower crane hint that the two towers are likely to be joined by a few more in the coming months.

The evening call to prayer from the Mosque opposite forms a tranquil soundtrack to the sunset, as the light reflects off the rooftops before fading to a dusky glow and then the fall of darkness. The hotel begins to fill up as people gather in large numbers to open their fast, actually large numbers of men as women are quickly whisked away into a blacked out room where ‘ladies parties’ occur, this new life in the Desert is going to take a bit of getting used to...