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Building on tradition?

In order to justify the steady drip of restrictive development controls, based on ideas couched in conservation priorities, and crafted so as to not only preserve and maintain what remains of old building stock, but to use new interventions to craft a 19C landscape.

One rather sinister manifestation has ben the seperation into two main areas of architectural and planning influence, American and European, with the inference that Liverpool somehow belongs to the latter school.

This assertion is as worrying as it is bogus.

There never has been an overwhelming movement in Europe that saw actual restrictions imposed for landscape value and preservation. Most towns have not saw the levels of development pressure that the bigger commercial cities face, and of those that have faced these, then most cities have just gone with the needs of modern urban development. Some famous cities have inded restricted building heights......

Sadly it was liverpool's misfortune not to have ever decided to formalise the structure of the city, if it had, then it would surely have utilised the utilitarian simplicity of the 'American' grid plan!

To say that Liverpool has never really thought these issues through is by no means an insult. In many ways a logical order developed organically, as the city broke out of any instinct to grow radially as other growing towns did. The extension of the docks north and south of the historic centre dictated a 'de facto' grid of permeability, with the major mass-goods transport of the time, trains, coming to Mohamad as it where. In fact Liverpool only developed a radial structure when one was crafted to structure the outer, inter-war estates.

For it seems that the great city has always been content to concern itself solely with individual design when it comes to architecture without any worries about contributing 'form', appropriate massing or in keeping; if the building was good looking enough then that was it...and if it was bigger then all the more was this seen as reflecting the city's impression of itself and visualising its civic ambition.

Architecutrally too, the city has never saw the need to template, growing too fast to pay heed to vernacular, with housing,, warehousing and commerce being all of a jumble any semblence of order and uniformity of district-wide style was never given the opportunity to be raised in the consciousness.

Like other dynamic and creative centres there was a fascination with the new, experimental, the non-stuffy, and though this has led to a tendancy toward fadism, the new, things that are 'all the rage', etc, it can bring a healthy edge to a city that is unique in Britain.

If there has ever been the slightest subliminal affect on what cities should look like then it surely would be influenced by the commonwealth tradition of seeing cities reflect the levels of its commerce. London was the only city to toy with these 'strange, continental' ideas of limiting your city in order to craft a neat roofline. Even though London could afford to do this as the forces to be there are irresistable it never has taken an obsessive approach. Everywhere else around the world just got on with commerce and the examples are all around the globe, where ever Great Britain, indeed where ever Liverpool had influence.

The overall form of the city was dictatred by the three main functions, namely, trade, commerce and overcrowded population.

'Tumbling down to the sea' is one charactaristic the city has, particularly from the southside of the city centre, from Falkner Sq to the river that is actually being threatened by the \in keeping' strictures. As we can see, the occasional builidng that is completely out of proportion has not ruined this aspect of the citys character, but these over extended 'block form' that impose a squat mass on other, earlier organic scruff.

Attempting to impose a stylistic straight jacket on to a free rein, free thinking city is not only but utimately oppressive. Good design can help to stitch the fabric of the city together, helping to define and familiarise public realm and public spaces. Furniture and other fixtures can aid the feel of comfort, place and safety, but.....

The A55 test
From the A55 the over all pallette was one of white, from the walls that line and define the watrside to the commerciak district to the 60's flats taht gave the only discernible visible structure above otherwise blankness.

© 2005 Downtown Liverpool Organisation