Box of Delights - Nottingham Contemporary

Canopy, plaza and entrance to Garners Hill steps

This new art gallery is an extraordinary building. It has been highly praised by architectural critics and in the art world but its uncompromising and highly unusual design initially guaranteed a rough ride with public opinion. When computer generated images of the building were first released there was a barrage of hostile public reaction which threatened to derail planning permission. However political support was maintained, the gallery was built and has been outstandingly popular with visitors. Of course this owes a lot to the exhibitions themselves, like the crowd-pleasing Hockney retrospective which opened the gallery, and to intelligent shows like Star City: The Future of Communism, which included a giant spaceman for fun. However the building itself is a big part of this success.


One of the great townscape sights of England

Nottingham Contemporary has a fantastic location. It is built on the Lace Market escarpment above the Trent Valley. You can see it from the Station. The Nottingham tram viaduct runs straight towards it, veering off at the last moment. The view of the Lace Market cliff with its churches, the Shire Hall, grand warehouses and the reminders of the elegant pre-industrial town all piled up above is one of the great townscape sights of England, reminiscent of Italian hill towns. However the gallery is on the edge of the Lace Market at the interface with the commercial core of the city and the much harsher environment of the awful Broadmarsh shopping centre below the cliff. The Middle Hill road viaduct built in the 1970s forms one edge of the site. It blasted through the historic Weekday Cross onto which Nottingham Contemporary faces and the new gallery is an important part of the successful reinvention of Weekday Cross as a place, now lively with restaurants, bars and delis.


Light and rhythm: Middle Hill

Although a brilliant location, the site was also hugely challenging. It is small and wedge shaped, falling 4 stories (13m) from Weekday Cross down Garners Hill to Broadmarsh. The old Town Hall stood here until it was destroyed for the construction of the Great Central Railway in 1898. The gallery sits partly in the old railway cutting with a tunnel behind together with filled cellars alongside Garners Hill steps. It remained derelict until the 1980s when a landscaped pocket park was created as part of the regeneration of the Lace Market. However drug users became a problem and the park was closed. The loss of the park was one of the reasons for opposition to the new gallery but actually Nottingham Contemporary has reintroduced an important public building to the site of the old Town Hall, surely quite an appropriate achievement.


Gallery window

The aspiration for a new modern art gallery came from the City Council, East Midlands Arts, and the two Nottingham universities. There is a strong artistic presence in the City which allegedly has more artists per head than anywhere else in the country. The Project Board wanted the gallery to be in the historic Lace Market warehouse area which is the focus of the artistic community. The City owned the Weekday Cross site.

The architects Caruso St. John won the competition, beating some very big name architects, on the basis of the concept for the gallery rather than a specific building design. Adam Caruso was of course well known, particularly for his Walsall Gallery, but here he took a quite different approach. What emerged from the design process was a building whose geometry is derived very directly from the irregular site and topography. It takes as its context the Victorian Lace Market warehouses, but this is not done in an obvious way. His concept is a reinterpretation of the principles of those buildings, which were high-tech construction in their day but richly decorated to reflect the city and architectural history. His key inspirational buildings were actually Sullivan's Guaranty Building in Buffalo adorned with lavish terracotta decoration and Berlage's wonderful Holland House next to the Gherkin, clad in greenish glazed tiles with a black granite plinth.


Thrilling and shocking

What emerged was both thrilling and shocking. Owen Hatherley's pithy summary is that the building is like 'a series of curtly corrugated boxes stepping down a hill whose green and gold concrete cladding is … dressed in lace patterns'. This is not architecture which is trying to please. It is not afraid of making an impression but neither is it attention-seeking. It is complex with a strong and coherent logic responding to the brief and the site and expressing a deeply held artistic integrity and takes time to understand.


During the early days of construction: the GCR tunnel still visible

Although the gallery design was not trying to offend it certainly succeeded and its critics rushed to judgement. In addition to the pre-existing unhappiness that it would be built on what had been a pocket park and the inevitable scepticism about modern art it was going to be GREEN CONCRETE! Has any other building material ever acquired such innuendo?

Criticisms came at both an informed level from many people and groups who cared passionately about the city and the Lace Market in particular and also from the 'what a waste of money' brigade. The local media enjoyed this hugely and the politicians were quickly unsettled.


Beautiful elevation by Caruso St John but sub-editors want CGI

I was Director of Planning at the time and had to deal with the problem that this very thoughtful and complex building was being judged largely on the basis of computer generated images of the exterior. Communicating architectural concepts is a huge issue as lay people and councillors find it difficult to 'read' drawings or understand plans in three dimensions. Usually the most effective tool is an artist's impression, even allowing for the licence of fictional landscaping and smiling happy people. However CGI is a much harder and more unforgiving medium which does not flatter and in my experience usually does not convince.


Birkin's nineteenth century lace pattern

Adam Caruso had quickly convinced the planning team of the merits of his building, even if there were lingering doubts about the imprinting of the concrete with a lace pattern, the canopy over the top of Garners Hill and creating the new plaza at an intermediate level. Adam is articulate and confident but also very thorough and down to earth – very different from the caricature of a starchitect. We arranged a special presentation to the Planning Committee with a Q&A session before the formal hearing. There were a lot of sensible and quite challenging questions, many about very practical things like sustainability, energy, maintenance arrangements, dealing with vandalism etc, rather than discussion over the design. It was very noticeable that as Adam demonstrated how carefully thought through every aspect of the building was his confident and straight forward answers won over  the Committee which voted unanimously for the scheme.


City of contrasts #1: Genteel High Pavement



City of contrasts #2: The unrelenting Broadmarsh neighbour

Nevertheless as the building emerged there continued to be a high level of public criticism. The prevalent view was that the building was 'out of character'. Which begs the question – out of character with what? The gallery has in fact created a new character and new public spaces for what was the interspace between three quite different character areas and in the process has drawn them together. Despite its highly individual design Nottingham Contemporary is actually very respectful to the scale of its neighbours – it is only one storey high to Weekday Cross allowing views of the buildings piled up beyond it and not challenging the dominance of the old Unitarian Church (now the Pitcher & Piano). Viewed on the skyline its volumes look very appropriate, almost part of the cliff itself.


Fluted lace panels

One of the triumphs of the building is the finely cast fluted concrete panels. These were beautifully executed by the local firm Trent Concrete and demonstrate the possibilities of this material. The jade green of the concrete is subtle, subdued. The reference to Victorian precedent may be questionable but so what – it is part of the architect's creative imagination and that is what counts. Many people including myself were sceptical about the lace motif, which does seem a bit naff if you live in a place which used to advertise itself as 'City of Lace and Legends'. But actually it is a triumph, quite stunning – more so because it is used sparingly.


Weekday Cross, civic and reminiscent of The Krause Music Store

The masterstroke of the gallery is its relationship with the street. At Weekday Cross there is a huge window into the main gallery, so the gallery becomes part of the streetscene and actually frames exhibits. Subtly you do not enter here but further along the street at the top of Garners Hill, where there are very clear views into the reception area and galleries. Although counter intuitive, this is actually very legible, partly due to the deep canopy across the public space at the top of Garners Hill, which I had thought would be oppressive but works really well as the entrance actually becomes a continuity with the street.


Building meets cliff: Garners Hill

Garners Hill, which used to be narrow steps, has been re-imagined as a grand staircase down to a new south facing public space at first floor level. Again this has been a masterstroke as it actually creates an interesting, sheltered and quite intimate terrace for the café in what is actually quite a hostile environment, with the tram and road viaducts adjacent and with servicing and the unresolved issues of the redevelopment of Broadmarsh at the level below.


Cafe - south facing

Whereas the building exterior appears complex and challenging, its interior plan is very simple and very clear. The galleries are on the top level, accessed through the reception and shop. A very generous staircase takes you down to the education area and offices on the floor below and down again to the performance hall and café. The stairwell is beautiful, wedge shaped and in smooth concrete with a big window onto Garners Hill and the Unitarian Church beyond. The performance area is a wonderful space, like a big concrete cave (very appropriately in this area). It allegedly mimics the qualities of 'found space' with its irregularities and layers of meaning. The café is stylishly fitted out, really the only area to be so. It has rock and roll chick electronic signage.


Raw concrete stairwell

Whatever the misgivings about what the building looked like it was clear from the outset that people loved the gallery and the space. What is interesting is how this changed perceptions – people learnt to appreciate the building from the inside rather than judging the outside as so much urban wallpaper. There may still be some critics but Nottingham Contemporary is undoubtedly a huge success story. For me the building has done exactly what Adam Caruso set out to do. It is a very high- tech functional building but is 'decorated' so that it looks almost like a jewel box. Interestingly this is reflected inside in the library and the 'cabinet of curiosities' which is a real delight. The gallery is also like your city living room (well actually rather nicer than my living room). It is accessible, inviting and it is free. This is civilisation. Please God may it survive the Big Society.


Learning to appreciate the building - parkour style

Owen Hatherley concludes that 'this is a terrific piece of work...the building steadfastly refuses to be obvious. Walking in and around and through the place's concrete surfaces, its patterns, colours and angles I wonder if this might be the first masterpiece of British architecture in the twenty first century'.  I cannot better that conclusion.

N.B.
The Cafe Bar at Nottingham Contemporary serves Castle Rock's Harvest Pale.

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References
Owen Hatherley: Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain
Ellis Woodman in Building Design
Kieran Long in the Architects' Journal
Chris Matthews: Snottingham

Urban Impressions – Amazing Coventry

One of many public modernist artworks in Coventry

Coventry is a fantastic urban experience – it will just blow you away. Maybe that's not the best term to use as Coventry will always be remembered for the horrific bombing of the city centre in 1940, so vividly and movingly recalled by survivors on TV last year. But the shock of Coventry's urban structure and fabric is specifically the response to that tragedy – the rebuilding of the city centre to a bold new vision which would be unthinkable today. It was a source of national pride, a highly symbolic statement. I remember as a schoolchild being taken to see the new Coventry and it made a great impression on me then as it still does today.


Hay Lane - more convincing than Spon Street

Coventry is a highly unusual city. A medieval boom town, it languished as Birmingham exploded in the industrial revolution but then emerged in the C20th as one of the most dynamic industrial cities in England. The bike, motorcycle and car plants were built around the medieval city which remained largely unspoilt, as J.B. Priestley records in his 'Journey through England'. The blitz mostly missed the factories but annihilated the city centre. Amazingly some of the most important medieval buildings survived, like Holy Trinity Church with its famous Last Judgement painting and St Mary's Guildhall. There are enclaves that still recall the character of the pre-war town but the city centre today reads as a dramatic New Town. Having said that the palimpsest of old Coventry can often be traced via isolated survivals often in bizarre relationships to the new city. Also much of the old street layout survives.


Ring road dodgems


A walk in the park for pedestrians and a bum clenching nightmare for motorists

Arrival in the city is confusing. The inner ring road is disorientating and terrifying for the driver with traffic shooting on and off slip roads all very close together. However since much of it is on viaducts it is actually quite permeable for pedestrians and even exhilarating with the drama of the curving flyovers although the groundscape is usually incoherent and aesthetically challenging. From the railway station (built in 1962 with simple confidence, a very clear plan and big slab roof) your route across the sunken ring road is quite pleasant and feels like an extension of Greyfriar Green.


Reason, light and space at Coventry station

From this attractive open space you get a good view of the three medieval spires of Christchurch, Holy Trinity and the old Cathedral which still dominate the skyline of the city at least in the historical imagination although competing with many modern towers and slab blocks. Warwick Road looks like a lost bit of Leamington Spa but you meet New Coventry at Bull Yard.


Precinct Shopping


Maintenance and providence

This is a handsome little square at the entrance to 'Precinct Shopping'. The new buildings have a satisfying rhythm of vertical fins recalling Moro's Nottingham Playhouse, and there are interesting murals and reliefs – quite a feature of Coventry. The square looks out to the spire of Christchurch, a grand Methodist Hall and the stucco of Warwick Road. It would be a much more attractive place if less cluttered with gimmicky distractions (another feature of Coventry) and if Warwick Road were rethought as a city street rather than a Colin Buchanan wet dream.


Jolly moderne: coming to terms with a jingoistic past

From Bull Yard you follow the confused Hertford St, pedestrianised and in part arcaded, which opens up to the back of Broadgate House. This was designed by Sir Donald Gibson, the City Architect responsible for the post war plan and is thoughtfully composed with interesting reliefs at the first floor level. However the siting blocks the route into Broadgate Square and a big ground floor extension spoils the composition. Pevsner was very sniffy about Broadgate House but the façade to the Square is actually rather jolly with a coat of arms, minimalist clock and a carillon.


Godiva shows her back to the Catheral Lanes shopping centre

The Square is the heart of the new planned city. Lady Godiva sits on her horse in the middle, fenced off against indignities. She faces what was the Leofric Hotel (named after her husband) but now more prosaically a Travelodge. The show piece curtain wall department store enclosing the north side is now Primark. The block paving design of the square is really rather a let down and much more could be made of this space despite the bland 80s Cathedral Lanes (sic) shopping centre which in reality moons its servicing backside towards the Cathedral.


Gibson plan


Spot the anti-planning ethos of the 1980s

Gibson's plan for the New Coventry was published as early as 1941. The centrepiece is the Shopping Precinct which was the most radical reconstruction of any British city and Europe's first pedestrian shopping area. It takes the form of a cross with the east – west axis between the old Cathedral spire and a new 22 storey tower. The Upper Precinct which is on two levels opens off Broadgate Square and is in a Festival of Britain style with warm brick and stone detailing. The Lower Precinct dominated by the tower and also on two levels is slightly later and has a series of low gables. It contains some very interesting features including the circular Godiva café in the centre (very Mod), electric artworks under alternate gables featuring Coventry industries like ribbon and clock making, and a magnificent mural by Gordon Cullen depicting the development of Coventry from prehistoric times to the reconstruction. Swinford Way to the north is closed by a less elegant tower with a pyramidal hat. Market Way to the south is punctuated, or rather visually blocked by the more recent insertion of a clunky tower.


Godiva Cafe, similar to the Kornhaus Tavern

The Gibson plan for the Precinct has been compromised by many subsequent alterations which have basically sought to make it more like a standard indoor centre. The insertion of a crude ramp from Broadgate Square to the upper level shops although practical (they never traded well) spoils the set piece entrance and vistas. The bog standard West Orchard Centre pushes itself right out into the Upper Precinct with escalators in a crude and ugly glass enclosure that amazingly actually shuts out the upper level Precinct shops and ruins the axial view. The Lower Precinct has been completely glazed over and, if less poorly executed, it still spoils the original conception. Repaving too has been done in a loud, fussy, standard way. Despite all this the Shopping Precinct retains a character, attractiveness and sense of place which eludes most later shopping developments.


Fantastic imagination – the circular market


Hated by American novelty architects of glib pastiche

The siting of the 1958 circular market in the backlands of the Precinct is strange but it is a feature of the Gibson plan that the pedestrian precincts are almost a stage set with big open areas behind in which are inserted early multi-storey car parks as well as servicing and the market. It looks like a sci-fi spaceship with a car park on top. Inside are Socialist Realist murals and a handsome round clerestory. The market is lively and seems to work well but although listed is threatened by demolition as part of a crass redevelopment plan for the Precinct, of which more later. Beyond the market is the quirky City Arcade, a 50s reinvention of the Victorian original with angled shop fronts and interesting small shops. This leads you to IKEA Plaza.


Swedish Grace IKEA style

You will have already spotted this vertically stacked IKEA across the circular market and had an 'Oh my God' moment'. However this is a bold attempt to accommodate new retail demands in the centre and not unsustainably at some god-forsaken motorway junction. Although (maybe appropriately) bulky it does have some interest in its mass and relationship with the street. It is a pity the Swedish national colours expressed in the cladding are quite so strident. Also it looks uncomfortably large next to the fine C14th red sandstone church of St John Baptist and the adjacent enclave of timber framed houses. 'Medieval Spon St' as the tourist signs call it sadly looks like a down at heel Disneyland full of gap sites, pubs and takeaways.


This is Ikea plaza and nothing else 

Coventry – twinned with Stalingrad

Coventry was the first city to twin and its first twin was Stalingrad. Strong links were made with other cities devastated in the war including Dresden and Belgrade. Corporation St, rebuilt in a restrained style as a tree lined parade of shops, leads to the rather self effacing Belgrade Theatre. This was the first of the post war theatres to open (1958), but not the most successful. It was designed by Arthur Ling who succeeded Gibson as City Architect. It has recently been extended by Stanton Williams in an elegantly austere way.  However Belgrade Square is actually dominated by the blank but screaming new Premier Inn – far worse than anything IKEA could imagine.


Flimsy but intricate - The Belgrade Theatre

An insignificant entry south of Belgrade Square brings you back to the Precinct and hence to Broadgate Square. This illustrates a problem with the planning of the Precinct – it does not relate well to the surrounding streets. In fact despite the open plazas it is as internally focused as any modern shopping centre and this has been exacerbated by later changes. The successful long term future for this exceptional development will depend on resolving this problem.


The internal focus of the precinct


Civic sense

High St, which largely survived the blitz and contains some grand 30s banks, leads to the long range of the Council House - Edwardian red sandstone mock Tudor with Arts and Crafts detailing.  South of Earl St is the new civic centre (1960) in pre IKEA Swedish style, with a very pleasant courtyard. Later phases are also quite successful, although the informal gardens on Little Park St are something of a lost opportunity to create more of a civic space in front of the Council House.


Civic Centre

East on Jordan Well the 50s Herbert Museum and Art Gallery has recently been extended by Pringle Richards Sharratt with a lovely new curved roof glazed atrium creating a new relationship with the Cathedral precinct. The entrance garden with its rusty metal artworks is very effective. A sign requesting donations reads 'Free for 50 years – help us keep it free for the next 50'. The Big Society aka the Cuts makes you weep.


The Herbert Museum extension


The new industry of Higher Education


The Art building

In the 60s Coventry was evidently too rough for the new University of Warwick (which is found half way to Kenilworth) but the Poly became Coventry University with a big campus to either side of the ring road abutting the Cathedral. This adds a lot of vitality to the city centre but basically the campus is a lot of big blocks with no real focus or coherence. The first to be built was an 8 storey curtain wall job along Cox St, which Pevsner describes as 'splendidly long and uncompromising'. Even more uncompromising is the Sports Centre which bridges Cox St - metal clad but with gothic flourishes looking as terrifying as Eisenstein's Teutonic Knights in Alexander Nevsky. The Art and Design building opposite is a real bruiser while the William Morris building makes the mistake of smothering the identity of the original attractively functional factory which it has massively extended. The library with a dozen or more San Gimignano like towers close to is strange and rather disappointing.


Better than Selfridges

Millennium aspirations


Brutal Britannia

North of the University Fairfax St is bridged by the spectacularly brutalist Britannia Hotel. The hard-man image is however softened by a nice little square with a grand flight of steps up towards the Cathedral. At the end of Fairfax St is an amazing sight – the Whittle Arch, commemorating the inventor of the jet engine and looking like a Martian machine from the War of the Worlds. It identifies a rather bleak plaza in front of the Transport Museum. The view from the plaza is as uncompromising as anything in the old Soviet block but it is actually right next to suburban housing, which is screened off by a visual Berlin Wall. The arch is part of the Coventry Phoenix initiative which has created a series of new public spaces and public artworks to the city centre. So too is the spiralling Glass Bridge which links the hard plaza to the green of Lady Herbert's Garden. This is certainly not practical and actually exaggerates the visual and groundscape confusion of this area rather than reinforcing the remains of the old town wall and the very strong pedestrian desire line.


How not to build a plaza and walkway


The value of good planning and design

Back down Trinity St you find the comfort of Edwardian half timbering, which Pevsner found comical, with the miraculously preserved Holy Trinity behind. To the north is the very interesting Priory Gardens around archaeological artefacts, with more extensive remains in the new visitor centre which has big windows onto a very pleasing formal gravel garden. This is also part of the Phoenix initiative and includes the best artwork – the Water Window. Beyond this is a crisp new courtyard development of restaurants and bars.


The new Cathedral and the resurrection of Coventry


Choir stalls

The Cathedral is immediately east of Holy Trinity. Although the medieval structure was gutted, leaving only the gaunt shell and spire, a lot of the adjacent buildings in streets around Bayley Lane survived, including the incredible C14th St Marys Guildhall. The relationship of Basil Spence's new Cathedral to the ruins is inspired. It is placed orthogonally so that the old nave acts as a foil and foyer to the new Cathedral and both old and new buildings frame a superb view of Holy Trinity. The bare open space of the ruin is deeply moving.


Nave

Basil Spence's cathedral is actually quite small but because it is such a complete and uniform composition, including the superb furnishings and art works, it does not feel that way. It is a modern reinterpretation of Gothic with slender columns and the semblance of a ribbed vault. Because the walls are saw toothed, on entering through the great glazed front they appear unbroken and plain, but when seen from the chancel light floods in through the slits of full height stained glass windows. The whole is dominated by the huge Graham Sutherland tapestry of Christ over the altar and there are many other exceptional works including the wonderful Chapel of Gethsemane with its Byzantine like angel and crown of thorns screen. Although not religious, the Cathedral evokes a very strong response in me.


Blackened former stairwell to the rood screen? 


Coming to terms, or not?

The Cathedral is an obvious symbol of the resurrection of Coventry after the war time destruction and its reputation has grown since it was consecrated in 1961. However the idealistic or brutal re-planning of the city centre has been much more controversial. It was so from the start – there was always a strong groundswell against Gibson's vision. The City had actually started the destruction of the medieval streets in the 30s and Gibson famously welcomed the bombing as making redevelopment easier.


The final triumph of Good over Evil - at Coventry

Coventry really is at the very epicentre of the dichotomy about how England sees itself, its past and its future. The destruction of the old town is still felt as a loss, a wound which will never heal because the future is so uncertain and the world that has been lost was so reassuring. But this is nostalgia for cricket on the village green, not Wigan Pier which the welfare state sought to eradicate and for which Coventry was a standard bearer. The war was our finest hour and is deeply engrained on the national consciousness. However the post war sense of progress and self confidence is now seen as part of the narrative of failure and decline, the loss of empire.


Gordon Cullen 

So it is with Coventry – the boom Motown of the 50s which busted in 80s, famously captured by the Specials in 'Ghost Town'. Coventry has massively lost confidence and turns its back on the exceptional post war rebuilding. Many would probably have preferred a reconstruction on Warsaw lines. I have not seen Warsaw but smaller scale reinventions in East Berlin are surprisingly effective. However these were societies that had been shattered as well as cities. Coventry's and Britain's experience was completely different and it is that post war spirit which the city really needs to celebrate.


It's a confidence thing

The Council thinks that Coventry has a poor image and is falling behind Birmingham with its dumb Big City Plan. After a period of some sensitive and interesting enhancements to the city centre a bizarre redevelopment plan for the shopping centre has been commissioned from Jerde, a LA based 'visionary architects and urban planning firm' (their description). This includes an 'iconic' egg shaped library, a roof top city park and yes millions of sq ft of shops. Its current status is unclear on the Council's fantastically obtuse planning web site, but basically it looks dreadful, disingenuous and silly - very bad news indeed for Coventry. There must be lots of opportunities to extend the retail offer of the city centre without the destruction of its unique assets. However this will require a more radical approach to managing traffic and buses which are still quite dominant despite the mega ring road.


Severn Trent

Other big plans are also afoot. An Allies and Morrison masterplan has been approved for a big and rather standard issue looking series of office and residential blocks linking the station with Greyfriar Green across the ring road. In the meantime some sensible developments are materialising like the big but quite handsome new Severn Trent HQ next to the civic centre by Webb Gray with (they say) exceptional green credentials. So a lot of change is being planned. Coventry needs to be very careful what it wishes for. It is not for the faint hearted but my advice is to see this exceptional city before the next blitz!

N.B. A good light ale and Coventry batch, were had at the Gatehouse Inn, Hill St.

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References
N. Pevsner: Warwickshire
J.B Priestley: Journey through England
G. Stamp: Britain's Lost Cities
D. Kynaston: Austerity Britain 1945-51
D. Kynaston: Family Britain 1951-57
Coventry City: Urban Design Framework

Urban Impressions: Leicester City

Sod the Clock Tower - this is Leicester

Leicester has a bit of an image problem – it hasn't really got one. Located somewhere between the Home Counties and The North in that most ill defined region, the east midlands, it is probably the least known of our big cities. And it is a big city – with a population of about 500,000 in the conurbation it is the 10th largest in England. But in both its character and its scale the city centre is disconcertingly uncertain if it is that of a big city or not.


Salisbury Road, the Leicester approach to history

Leicester has not always had a good press. Even W.G. Hoskins, the famous historical geographer long associated with the county, starts his description in the Shell Guide: 'Leicester is at first sight a totally uninteresting Midland city… It is indeed a desert of hundreds of acres of little red brick terrace houses put up in the last decades of the C19th (and) estates put up in the 30s and after that more modern sprawl for miles around.'

However it is actually a very interesting place, quite distinct from its rather anonymous hinterland. With its long history, very evident, at least if you look for it, its late expansion, clean industries and relative prosperity right through the C20th Leicester is very different from the big northern industrial cities. The nearest comparison is to Nottingham although without its Drama Queen of the Midlands stuff – Leicester's character is more subtle.


Festival of Britain detail, St Matthew's Estate - now a home for people from Somalia

Writing in the 60s Ian Nairn found Leicester's character difficult to define but he appreciated the quiet understatement of the city and praised its broad minded tolerance – a characteristic which has been important in its relatively successful transition to what will soon be the first majority non white city in the country.

Edge-city sprawl

It was the sprawl of Leicester and its impact on the countryside around which disturbed Hoskins. Although one of England's most historic cities it does its best to hide this. Your approach from the M1 is particularly depressing. Around Junction 21 is the huge edge-city of Fosse Park, a dark counterpart to the city centre and predictably just outside the City boundary. It takes its name from the Roman Fosse Way with the park bit presumably referring to the sea of car parking and token shrubbery around the boring out of town shopping complex and dreary offices which have done much to weaken the city centre economy.


Elevated concrete walkway between the bleeding stumps


The bleeding stumps of Leicester's history

The dual carriageway along the old Fosse Way leads you into the city centre at St Nicholas Circle, a huge roundabout and underpass constructed in the early 1960s. In the middle of the roundabout is the Holiday Inn looking almost Californian and suitably accessible only by car. This was the centre of medieval Leicester which until then had been a remarkable survival. It was wiped out quite casually as was the custom at that 'brave new world' time - a massive tragedy, bitterly recorded by the eminent local historian Jack Simmons.


Brutalism amid the ruins, cf. London Wall and Southampton

The slender elevated concrete walkway across St Nicholas Circle is now a period piece – an interesting memory of how the future was meant to be. It links the bleeding stumps of Old Leicester. To the north are extensive Roman remains and many artefacts in the excellent Jewry Wall museum. This is housed in a thoughtful building of the 1960s, cloister like with recessed arcade, which embraces the Roman remains with Jewry Wall itself and St Nicholas (Anglo-Saxon nave and Norman tower) to the east. It is a pity the long view is spoilt by naff new flats with curly blue roofs.


The historic enclave of The Newarke

To the south is St Mary de Castro founded 1107 with a wonderfully picturesque (rebuilt) tower together with the historic enclave of The Newarke. This is picture postcard stuff as long as you screen out the hideous cheaply built student flats nearby. The view of St Nicholas with Jewry Wall and the Holiday Inn may in time achieve iconic status.



Suburban delight

The old A6 road from London gives a much better introduction to the city. You approach through leafy Stoneygate, surely one of the pleasantest suburbs in England with many Arts and Crafts inspired villas including houses by Ernest Gimson, a Leicester man and one of the leading figures of the movement. Closer in is the slightly bohemian suburb of Clarendon Park. Past Victoria Park, London Road leading down to the Station is quite a grand street, although a bit scrappy in places. Leicester University is to the west. New Walk, a unique promenade laid out in 1785 and lined with (mostly) very handsome buildings, links the University area with the city centre – a masterstroke of planning.


One of many unique terraces along New Walk


A multicultural city

The route into Leicester from the north along the old Fosse Way is also interesting. Belgrave Road is a lively high street full of Asian shops and restaurants and unlike so many high streets not ruined by traffic and the dominance of highway engineering. It works really well and there are fantastic lights for Diwali. Sadly it is severed from the city centre by not one but two inner ring roads with flyovers.


Leicester arrival


An inviting port-cochere, but the road engineering is less than welcoming

The initial impression on arriving by train at Leicester is disappointing. The station was rebuilt by British Rail at its nadir and is lacking in presence, that is until you step out into the amazingly grand and long porte-cochere fronting London Road – 1892 by Trubshaw for the Midland Railway, with fine brickwork, faience lettering and a domed turret. This is used for taxis and 'executive parking' which is I suppose appropriate but passengers have to pick their way though the cars or scuttle down a little ramp to reach the street. Surely this impressive space should be renovated and converted to provide a stunning foyer for a big city station, as has happened in Trubshaw's Sheffield station.

The grand façade of Leicester station flanks no civic space but a massively over engineered junction of the inner ring road. Opposite are blank and apologetic 1980s offices (brick with turrets) that look as though they ought to be in Leeds. At least the hateful subway under the ring road has recently been replaced with a decent pedestrian crossing.


No Mean City


Leicester, Marylebone

Once you reach Granby Street it is immediately apparent that you are in a city of very impressive late Victorian and Edwardian buildings. The finest is the worryingly vacant former Midland Bank designed by Joseph Goddard (1870) in C13th Gothic style. Goddard was one of the big names who shaped Leicester's architecture. He also designed the fairly absurd Clock Tower at what was the epicentre of the city (at least until the Highcross shopping centre opened recently). Nearby and off the main street facing a modest square (a very typical Leicester understatement) is the delightful Town Hall (1875 by local architect Francis Hames) in a vaguely Queen Anne style.


Turkey Cafe 1901 by Wakerley

Leicester clearly flourished at the turn of the C20th and there are some fabulous art nouveau buildings including the Turkey Café on Granby Street (1901 by Wakerley), a riot of glazed terracotta. Coronation Buildings on High Street is a baroque Edwardian extravaganza by the same architect. Nearby is a domed former chemist shop with faience advertisements still in situ. As you investigate the streets to the west and then the north of the Town Hall the Georgian, medieval and finally Roman origins of the city are clearly revealed.


Fantastic Leicester Market


Market Place South

Streets like Friar Lane retain a coherent feel of the pre industrial townscape and in Silver Street or Cank Street you could be in a market town like Newark. The outdoor market is magnificent and huge, like something in Flanders. The permanent market structures limit your appreciation of the Market Place as a space but this is a price worth paying for the vibrancy of the market, surely amongst the best in the country. There is also a big indoor market built in the early 1970s looking remarkably like the Haymarket Centre (see later). The internal levels are a bit complex as at Sheffield Castle Market, which does not help it to function well.


Industrial zenith


Little Germany in Leicester

Leicester's industries were clean, unspectacular and diverse – its factories fitted comfortably into the town alongside the terrace houses, very different from cities with heavy industry. Many are modest, even utilitarian, structures but satisfying in their proportions and simplicity. Often they have terracotta flourishes at entrances. There are much grander factory buildings including the stunning Corah works at St John Street. A very fine cluster is found between De Montfort University and the Royal Infirmary (the distinctive iron frame Luke Turner factory of 1893 and the beautiful 1913 cream brick Harrison and Hayes building). Rutland Street is the nearest Leicester has to a commercial quarter like Little Germany in Bradford. It is now the Cultural Quarter (of which more later). Note particularly the extraordinary 78-80 Rutland Street (1923) with strong American influence.


Restored  former warehouse with Philadelphian origins


Alexandra House, "one of the finest [warehouses] in the country" - Pevsner


Sustainable town to Environment City

With few natural features to constrain it other than the River Soar (partly canalised as the Grand Union), Leicester developed as a very compact town. Its distinctive red brick terraced streets, often dominated by grand Board schools, churches and factories, are a very impressive urban morphology, although this has not always been appreciated. Harold Nicholson who was a local MP recorded 'We passed through Leicester and I gazed out on that ugly, featureless city, thinking how strange it was that I had for so long been identified with those brick houses with their iron railings and their clean little steps'. Even at the time this was a patronising view. The 'desert' of red brick terraces was in fact highly successful and has proved very adaptable. In our terms a very sustainable town and Leicester became Britain's first 'Environment City'.


Planning vision and bitter reality 

Leicester's heyday was the 1870s to the 1930s and this is very evident from the extraordinary flowering of the architecture of these years. With the outstanding exception of Stirling's Engineering Building at the University - one of the most thrilling structures in Britain - the architecture of post war Leicester has been a disappointment.


The rear of the Engineering Building embracing the former Lunatic Asylum

This was not for want of plans. Leicester was one of the first cities in the country to set up a Planning Department in 1962 under Konrad Smigielski. He put forward visionary plans for rebuilding the city centre with high level walkways and a monorail but little came of them. The City Engineer and Surveyor got there first with his plans for three ring roads and as we have seen the most destructive parts were then already under construction.


Ring road disaster scything through the historic fabric

The British Association 1972 publication on Leicester comments 'A walk in the central area … would give the impression that the city had undergone a recent bombardment by enemy action'. Leicester had actually escaped significant wartime damage. In the 60s Leicester seemed a go-ahead place and the Lee Circle multi storey car park, formerly with a Tesco and bowling alley beneath, is a reminder that there was some innovation and drama in the planning and design of that era. However the quality of most of the many 60s buildings is beyond banal.


Sculptural drama of the Haymarket Centre

The most impressive structure of the 1970s is the powerful office tower next to the Station, now a hotel but rendered ridiculous by painting the concrete blue and Lenny Henry purple. The two curved blocks of the New Walk Centre, one of 14 stories, are an impressive statement. The Haymarket Centre, clad in strident red brick, was for long reviled but now with hindsight looks quite impressive, especially in the sculptural drama of the main entrance. The integral theatre reached by the grand flight of steps is now closed, replaced by the Curve.


How to survive Mrs Thatcher

Corah & Sons former hosiery works - still impressive despite the decline

Leicester, a manufacturing city, was clobbered by Mrs Thatcher. The first major regeneration initiative was at Bede Island (between the Grand Union and the Soar). This had been the Great Central Railway (destroyed by Beeching - it would have provided a ready made HSR line to the north). The new offices and accommodation for De Montfort University are pretty bland and the new housing is particularly disappointing, as is the central open space – you couldn't call it a park.


Work, rest and sigh - Bede Island


Highcross and high living


John Lewis, as viewed from All Saints churchyard

Under Blair the Leicester Regeneration Company was set up which commissioned a more ambitious master plan for the city centre, inevitably involving themed 'quarters'. Quite a lot of this has been successful, especially the Highcross Centre. This extended the dingy Shires Centre with a whopping John Lewis store - an enormous shiny box designed by Foreign Office Architects and linked by a bridge across the ring road to another huge box - a car park dressed with some flats. Viewed from the churchyard of the Norman All Saints (marooned in the Waterside area and desperately waiting to be regenerated) the new store looks stunning. It is not quite so wonderful from the hostile ring road. There is a clever open square with posh shops and restaurants between the new store and the Shires which has added a cosmopolitan buzz to the city.


Reclaiming the streets


Pedestrianisation has been successfully extended

The awful ring road at least allows much of the centre to be pedestrianised and the City should be commended for its recent very excellent repaving designs with high quality materials and street furniture, which really lift the place. The planners are also grappling with the ring road legacy, although the recent Magazine Gateway scheme is a bit half hearted. This medieval gateway was surreally left in the middle of the ring road but this outrage has partly been redeemed by closing one carriageway to enable a new square to be created which re-unites the Magazine with the Newarke. It also provides a new focus for the formless De Montfort University campus but the layout and design is disappointing, still too deferential to highway demands and sadly not actually using the Magazine as a pedestrian gateway. Also the new Business and Law building is very blue and very dominant.


Tempering the ring road but failing to make use of the Magazine


Smooth Curve


Curves

The Cultural Quarter around Rutland Street is quite a success with its centre piece the Curve Theatre by Rafael Vinoly fitted cleverly onto a tight site and making a virtue of its constraints. The Phoenix Film Theatre on Midland Street by Marsh Grochowski suffers from being subsumed within a block of flats beyond the coherent townscape in the wasteland towards the ring road. The Office Quarter nearer to the Station shows some signs of success with the quite elegant Colton Square development. However the office market in Leicester is now mostly (and most unsustainably) out at the motorway junctions – thanks to Mr Pickles' predecessor and soul mate Nicholas Ridley.


Dragging the man of commerce out of the business park and back into the city


The curse of Unite

Plans for city centre housing have not fared so well. Although there are plenty of new apartments these are mostly the usual mean, standard designs piled far too high and without any place-making or quality public space. Even worse are the many hideous blocks of Lego-like student flats with their horrible cladding and gormless small windows. Many are strung out along the ring road reinforcing its dislocation and anomie - as bad as anything put up in the 1960s and a very bad call for Leicester.

Freeman's Meadow - the best new housing scheme in Leicester

As in most cities the market has not cracked how to deliver high density family housing in the centre. The best and really quite creditable scheme is Freeman's Meadow, next to Bede Island. This is an attempt at modernism, although arguably pastiche modernism, but provides a humane environment, with some quite good landscaped areas. Other schemes along the Waterside have not materialised, despite the temptation of the location - Reiss and Carluccio's just across the ring road in Highcross.


Contrasts and contradictions


Opposites attract at the bottom of New Walk

Leicester is a place of surprising contrasts especially between the market town scale of much of the city centre, the big city fin de siècle buildings and the monstrous insouciance about scale and context that characterises most of the new building around the ring road. Similarly there is a telling contrast between the confidence and exuberance of the early C20th buildings and the shoddiness of so much post war stuff and between the exceptional coherence of the streetscape in the core (south of High Street) and complete lack of any attempt at urban structure and design around the ring road.


So much interesting stuff to see


The refurbished cultural quarter

Many people dismiss Leicester as boring but it is a fascinating city although one that does not reveal itself easily. The place is stuffed with interesting buildings and I have only been able to highlight a few in this short blog. Although this does not do justice to the diversity and interest of architecture and planning in Leicester I hope I have illustrated some of the more important aspects of the urban character and context of an under-appreciated city which is well worth exploring.

Further blogs are planned looking at Leicester's universities and the Leicestershire hinterland 50 years after Ian Nairn's famous journey along the A5.

N.B.
A dazzling selection of beers and good food were served at The Pub, New Walk.

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References:

N. Pevsner – Buildings of England: Leicestershire
W.G. Hoskins – Shell Guide: Leicstershire
W.G. Hoskins – The Making of the English Landscape
G. Brandwood and M. Cherry – Men of Property (The Goddards)
B. Beazley – Postwar Leicester
N. Pye – Leicester and its region
Leicester City – The Quality of Leicester