Bad Buildings: The New Architectural Legacy in Liverpool
Adhering to rules
as insisted upon by Liverpool’s new generation of ‘design aesthetes’ is already
shown to be an unmitigated disaster, even if we confine our own critique to
that of heritage based aesthetic issues!
The ‘palette’ of many districts is being turned from a rich variety of commercial
white and light stone, render and cladding into a suffocating dirge of ‘northern
mill-town’ cheap red brick. The over-all quality of many neighbourhhods has
been greatly diminished due to the intrusion of ugly buildings that have been
designed to defer, not offend or display good manners! This is at the insistence
of 'design aesthetes' within the planning and regeneration authorities and we
can plainly see that it is utterly wrong.
Just where do they get their ideas? They are as bad as the buildings they impose.
What makes the situation doubly heart-breaking is that the ideas have been played
out in the city for years now. The landscape, physical and architectural consequences
are all around us in suffocating numbers.
Can we please put a stop to this, NOW?
We are busily creating a dire litany of Bad Buildings - at a time when investor
interest and market confidence gives us the leverage to demand quality. And
worse, for a city that boasts of its primacy in well designed building stock,
in a golden age of architectural style, design and innovation...we are being
forced to go wanting.
If we take the
London Rd district as an example where, because of low values and interest,
the heritage agenda has been applied with full force, we can see that the area
is hastily being turned from an organically developed area, on its uppers, but
with quite a number of individually attractive buildings, into a hideously
ugly ‘templated’ district!
Obsession with roofline, palette and 'character' has led to some areas being
suffocated under a blanket of monotony, uniformity and insufferably low grade
design interventions.
The area around St George's Hall, our 'most precious', is now another woeful
example. It has been diminished from being a district composed of individually
interesting, quality buildings into a bland ‘form’ where quality and
individual grace has been forgone in the clamour for utterly slavish adherence
to stilted (and not very well interprated) notions of ‘in keeping’
and ‘good manners’. Heritage aesthetes where given free rein (and
stacks of public cash) to design an examplar of what could become a
study in best practice, their ‘ultimate’ appropriate modern
building in conservation area. Just look at what we got!
Commutation Plaza as an individual piece of architecture is crass and ugly -fake
stone, pastiche detailing, apologetic rear-end. But as a contribution to the
heritage landscape and as a component of an overall landscape, it is absolutely
destructive. Even the new Pevsner guide - - describes it as 'feeble' and 'unsubstantial'.
Far from lying quietly next to the William Brown Street group (not that we agree
that great buildings should ever do this) it sits there sulking
like a sickly cousin who is spoiling the party.
Individual features and architectural interest has been submerged under the overwhelming blanket of a continuous palette and horizon, the area now taking on the character of a single, lumpen mass. The overall effect is now one that induces sleep, rather than breathless awe. Additionally, to add insult to the injuries suffered to urbanists through this type of dallying, when the Empire box office is closed there is now an unbroken 'commerce-free-zone' of dead street frontage running from Lime St Concourse to ..Great Homer Street! [And Lime St Concourse is to be demolished!]. But of course this is no matter to the advocates of good manners, compositional form is all.
The ‘Renaissance
Quarter’ also, a major scheme, is another example of new development that
instead of consisting of elegant, modern buildings of the highest quality design,
materials and contribution to urban considerations as it could be, is instead
to be a squat, brown, plain series of boxes, that, as opposed to what is insisted
by heritage predilections, will definitely offend the heritage stock of buildings
it abuts.
The Ropewalks,
though containing many new buildings, is now another needlessly UGLIFIED district
as a direct result of forcing the new development into massing and palette envelopes
considered essential so as to maintain the primacy of the older buildings and
district 'character' (which in actual fact is utterly eclectic and incongruous),
to say nothing of the most horrifically kitsch impositions that are intended
to 'live up to the grandure of their genuine cousins'!
The Northside of Dale St too is a reminder that the ideas of ‘appropriateness’ has been a disease inflicted upon the city for many years. As can be seen from the pictures of Dale St below that in the rush to show comlete obedience and adherence to rules on the sanctity of uniform roofline that they forgot that spires, domes and cupolas are devices used to 'elegantly' surpass the otherwise uniformity in height, resulting in this case of a decor being squashed down into the loftspace. We would ask if, in their mediocraty, whether they even knew that this is a standard rule encouraged by the heritage aesthetes they so desperately try to ape?
There is no such thing as 'neutral impact' architecture, bland is bland, and bad is bloody awful!
 Williamson Street |
 Upper Duke St |
 Creating heritage. newly faked corniceline - Dale St |
 Commutation Row - perfect intervention? |
 Strand -central |
 Islington |
 mindless 'preservation' - Old Hall St |
 Monument Place - off London Road |
 Prescot Road |
 Williamson Square |
 In keeping with 'in keeping' Moss St |
 Strand - southern |
 Shaw Street |
 Anson Street |
 Sticking to the letter! - Dale St |
 The ultimate in pastiche - Duke St |
Do we REALLY have
to submit to these quite specific demands in order to fully uphold the integrity
of our 'heritage assets'? Are the principles currently fostered as sacrosanct
really so? If we depart from the guidelines will we really irreperably destroy
the perfection of composition and status? Of course we won't.
If we return to the 'Cultural Quarter' for one moment we can explore the issue by looking properly at the 'peerless and harmonious composition'. Alfred Waterhouse, masterworker of the Victorian Gothic - and a Liverpudlian, may indeed have had to face Lime Street Chambers in pale stone to respond to St George's Hall, but the style, massing, height, roofline and scale of his design are all completely different, not only from the classical styling of St Georges Hall and the other civic buildings, but also from the 'hi-tech' railway sheds, or indeed, everything else in the surrounding area.
The old Commutation Row, composed of small scale Georgian and early Victorian domestic buildings, sat easily with their grander neighbours, as did the early 1920s' commercial block to its South end. The Legs of Man pub, with its tan-brown tiles did not 'offend' and of course, the existing Empire Theatre breaks every heritage 'rule', though no calls have been made to put it onto any 'X lists'!
If we want to test current thinking about 'appropriateness' where it could be imagined that it was to be insisted upon most, then we only need to walk down to our mighty waterfront and view our three graces. Apart from some colour sympatico, the buildings are as completely and wonderousely different from each other as it is possible to be. Not a form, a style, a reference-line or height is there to be discovered. The evidence is there, so what should we do?
Rather than us
just gripe about planning and development in Liverpool over the last fifteen
years, what advice do we have then to reverse this decline?
Insist on Quality - at whatever specification, be it penthouse or petrol station
Trust - when professions give you their considered advice, consider it!
Take Risks - employ young architects, take on practices from Bangkok, even Liverpool!
No Zoning - and build mixed-use into all schemes whenever appropriate
City Scale - urban design at the heart of the process, not just in the Design
Guide
Love Tall Buildings - when designed with care, they add style and grace to cities,
not detract from it.
Innovate - challenge yourself, client and developer to come up with something
that is even better than before
Aspire - where will the RIBA Awards of the next decade come from..?
People - cities are about the people who live in them. Liverpool is young, energetic
and maverick. Liverpool is not Letchworth.
Deliver - ultimately the talking has to stop, and you have to BUILD IT.
All text and Images © October 2004 (amended March 05), Downtown Liverpool. All rights reserved.