Scandinavian Dreams

Hammarby Sjöstad

There is a polarity in our image of Scandinavia reflecting the extremes of light and darkness of the Nordic year. On the one hand, Ingmar Bergman – introspection, angst and darkness, and on the other Social Democracy, dappled sunlight shining on a well ordered, egalitarian welfare state – an ideal we can only dream of. In planning, architecture and design the latter image has been dominant since the 1930s when Sweden in particular emerged as the model 'third way' between fascism and communism. In the post war period British public housing was much influenced by Swedish ideas of design and mass production, although key elements like landscape setting and local facilities were usually omitted on cost grounds. The most famous exemplar is Byker by Ralph Erskine who spent much of his working life in Sweden.


Nordic Noir

More recently Scandinavia has tired of its wholesome image and is seeking to project itself as edgy, punk and post industrial, at least partly reflecting the real impact of globalisation. If like me you were hooked on The Killing you will know the darkness both literal and spiritual of winter in Copenhagen. And Wallander tells us that Malmö, just across the Oresund bridge is as dangerous as any British inner city, with life (or death) there recently imitating art. Whatever you do, don't jog in the woods near Ystad.

But on a sunny summer day Stockholm feels like the best place in the world, the most beautiful and liveable city. Built on a series of islands where Lake Malaren meets the Baltic, water is everywhere. The buildings from the 'Age of Greatness' through National Romanticism and Swedish Classicism to Modernism are wonderful -  an intensely urban place but always close to nature. It is difficult to take Nordic Noir too seriously on a sunny day and there is a lot here to learn about waterside regeneration.


Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen


Townscape not carscape - Copenhagen

But as I discovered on a recent trip in freezing March to Copenhagen and Västra Hamnen in Malmö, it is not always a sunny day. Lesson one for waterside regeneration. The great thing about Copenhagen is how coherent its urban structure is – not a grid but a consistency of scale and permeability. There are shopping malls and motorways around the edges but the city never seems to be fragmented. It has been rediscovering itself as a pedestrian focused city now for over 40 years following the approach of Jan Gehl and others. The results are very impressive- is full of animated public spaces and cycling really is the norm. You don't need lycra.


Subtle form and texture - Copenhagen

There is a lot of pressure for new housing (as we know from The Killing) but the Danes tend not to go in for grand solutions, rather reinterpretation of the traditional tenement form. Regeneration along the inner harbour (Sydhavnen) has been fairly organic. There are many new apartment blocks but they fit very much into the existing structure. The most dramatic interventions have been the conversion of redundant silos.


A courtyard which is not a car park - Copenhagen

A good example of the Danish approach is at Sluseholmen on reclaimed land in the old port area. This is very high density but the buildings are low by British regeneration standards, ranging from 7 stories on the harbour edge to 5 stories along new canals and 4 around the internal courtyards, which include small gardens for ground floor apartments. The landscaping of the public (note no gated communities) green space is fairly minimalist but there is great emphasis on playspace. On a cold day you notice how well sheltered you are from the wind. The apartment structures are clad in eclectic mixes of materials and fenestration. Although the variety is a bit too deliberate it is certainly not mechanical. Some blocks have basement parking and there is also street parking, but the dominant transport is the bikes, which are everywhere. Houseboats line the sheltered waterfront. In some ways like the Greenwich Millennium Village, it really benefits from its more human scale.


Iconic, organic Västra Hamnen


Allotment modernism - Västra Hamnen

Malmö since the Oresund bridge is almost part of metropolitan Copenhagen but it is also a post industrial city much more like its British provincial counterparts. Västra Hamnen was a heavily contaminated industrial port area. Regeneration here comes with a capital R. The centre piece is Santiago Calatrava's Turning Torso, which is certainly spectacular as engineering with 9 twisting cubes rising to 190m. It has put Malmö on the regeneration map, but perhaps the more interesting regeneration of Västra Hamnen is the low rise housing between the Turning Torso and the sea.


Bracing esplanade - Västra Hamnen

The Esplanade here faces west towards the Sound and the fury of the storms which I experienced first hand. The seafront is lined with mostly 5 story apartment blocks which have balconies and spectacular views towards Copenhagen, but equally shield the housing behind from the wind. The Esplanade is mostly a tiered boardwalk and on a sunny day could seem a bit too utilitarian. The housing behind is grouped around an organic network of lanes and water courses (SUDS). The layout evokes the traditional pre-industrial Swedish towns and is very practical in creating intimate and sheltered spaces. Many of the houses are faced in wood and have gables consciously evoking Swedish vernacular with its richly detailed low wooden buildings. Overall the building styles are rich and extraordinarily diverse. Some of the houses are only 2 stories and there are lots of little gardens, especially running down to the watercourses. The landscaping is very low key and the overall impression is of a quite scruffy, lived in area – certainly not a place where your lifestyle is constrained by formality. It is almost hippy. There are however more conventionally Modernist apartments and terraces around the perimeter. It is all very heterogeneous, but the looming Torso tends to dominate many of the informal villagey views, which is unfortunate.


Shelter and variation  - Västra Hamnen

Behind the artifice of the organic vernacular Västra Hamnen is very cleverly planned. There is a very sophisticated waste disposal/collection system and the car parking is really well handled. Some parking is provided on the shared streets and yards but it is never dominant. There is car parking below some of the apartment blocks but you just don't see it. Most parking is on the periphery next to the Torso where there is a shopping centre, but there are also local shops and cafes. Needless to say public transport is efficient and integrated – you can use your Danish train ticket on the bus in Sweden. (Where did we go wrong? Actually I know the answer but it is a long one.)


Stockholm's answer to Cardiff Bay


Dappled sunlight

Stockholm in a glorious July is a different world, but it too has had to deal with industrial decline. What was the industrial port area of Södra Hammarby Hamnen is about 6 km from the commercial heart of the city. It is separated from Södermalm island, the working class heartland of Stockholm, by one of the many channels linking Lake Malaren to the sea. Globalisation left most of the factories derelict, except for Luma, the interesting 1930s co-operative which brought cheap electric light to the working class and is now a business centre. Here then was a fine waterside site but heavily contaminated and with poor links to the central business district.


High density (without being dense)

The City and Harbour Authority owned much of the site and the City of Stockholm took a strong leadership role and initially at least a long term view. It was willing (and able) to invest in the site including decontamination and infrastructure to enable the masterplan to be delivered. The expectation was that this investment would be paid back later through land sales. The scale of the project – 9,000 homes and 10,000 jobs – was clearly big enough to make it a 'grand project' and so important to the future strategy for Stockholm. Interestingly the City wanted to have an international exemplar to put Stockholm on the regeneration map. The development began in the late 1990s and is now about two thirds completed and expected to be finished by 2015.


The natural and the built environment - Hammarby Sjöstad

Hammarby Sjöstad set out from the start to be an exemplar of sustainability and is realising these objectives. This is helped by a long term strategy Sweden adopted in the 1970s. Overall the development achieves 80% renewable energy and extracts a high proportion from heat transfer. It also produces biogas which is  used for City buses. Broadly speaking the development has half the water use and carbon emissions of comparable inner city Stockholm developments. Landscaping is of very high quality. There is lots of open space including an extensive hilly park, courtyard gardens, playgrounds everywhere and water features to play in. However the specification for the SUDS which should provide water for the water features was over optimistic and so water has to be pumped.


Hierarchy, order and view - Hammarby Sjöstad

The masterplan for Hammarby Sjöstad has deliberately extended the high density apartment typology of inner Stockholm into a more suburban district. A key feature is the 'high street', a spine shopping street with the tram running along it and with on street parking. The tram was fundamental as it links the development to the metro (Tunnelbana) and the wider integrated public transport network. However the Regional Transport Authority did not initially want to provide the tram and the City had to build the infrastructure without the certainty trams would ever run. The RTA then wanted a high degree of segregation which would have negated the masterplan concept of a mixed use 'high street', but eventually the current highly successful shared use approach prevailed.


Cycle friendly - Hammarby Sjöstad

From an English perspective it is striking that nearly all the homes are apartments. Along the 'main street' these are as high as 8 storeys but the norm is 4-5 stories. Each block has its own private green space usually in an inner court and mostly including playground. Some ground floor flats have a small private garden, which is a particularly attractive feature. Virtually all have big balconies mostly with views of the water. About two thirds of the residents own cars and about half are in basement car parks, the rest on street. Nowhere do cars dominate the design – the street parking is always incidental and car use co-exists with pedestrian and bike priority.

There is no 'shopping centre' and no large supermarket but there are small supermarkets and a variety of shops and cafes. Some café/shop pavilions are also provided along the waterfront. There are about 50 outlets in all, but (at least in the summer holidays) it does not give the impression of a lively high street or café scene. Many residents shop at a nearby retail mall (outside the City boundary). There are a lot of social facilities including 3 schools and surprisingly even a church. Significantly there are nearly a thousand children living in the area.

The housing is roughly 60% owner occupied (leasehold) and 40% social housing via the equivalent of RSLs, of which there are many providers. There is no obvious distinction between private and social housing but the blocks are not usually mixed. Clearly the quality of the environment and lifestyle has proved commercially popular.


Lake City


Tiered bathing circle - Hammarby Sjöstad

Sjöstad means Lake City. At Hammarby the relationship of the high density housing to the water, both the sea inlet and the Sickla canal and the way this 'captures', creates and frames views really impresses. The introduction of natural reed beds is especially attractive and contrasts with so much very hard waterside public realm in British regeneration. Board walks and pontoons provide access over the reed beds to the water, including a tiered bathing circle - a really imaginative feature. The water quality is now very high, hence the reeds and the bathing, but a few decades ago it was quite polluted. The views over the water give the impression of lots more open space than is actually the case. A really nice feature is the free ferry for pedestrians and bikes which links Hammarby Sjöstad to Sodermalm, now used in 24% of all journeys.


So what?


Boardwalk fun - Hammarby Sjöstad

There is no doubt that Hammarby Sjöstad has been very successful and displays an exceptionally high standard of design, public realm and sustainability. The CABE study draws out the key lessons. These are the importance of a strong design ethos and masterplan providing for a mix of uses able to sustain a community. Appointing a number of developers who then work with different architects on individual blocks is extremely important to ensure diversity. The 'parallel sketches' process for each neighbourhood, where four architectural practises draw up proposals within the masterplan framework, and the City take the best elements from each to finalise the neighbourhood plan is fundamental as is a well resourced and highly skilled client team capable of making careful judgements about design quality.

However it would be mistaken to see this regeneration project as straightforward or easy to deliver. New Conservative administrations at the City and at the national level have squeezed public funding and meant there is pressure for early sale rather than the original long term approach.

It is also worth noting that the redevelopment of the old industrial port area of Årstadals Hamnen, a few kilometres to the west has not followed the example of Hammarby and is much more like the hard edged, high rise examples of London Docklands.


You can do it if you really want to!


Spot the car

Hammarby Sjöstad and Väster Hamnen are large projects but comparable to many planned Waterside areas and 'Sustainable Urban Extensions' in Britain. The big difference is in the role, leadership and vision of the City authorities and their ability to control outcomes through ownership of land. In Sweden the city takes the lead in spatial masterplans. In Britain the planning process has retreated to cosy statements of the bleeding obvious in the Core Strategy and waffley policies without any clear concept of the spatial outcomes. It is defensive and reactive, leaving developers to control masterplans and dictate what happens in whole quarters of our towns and cities – not only the buildings but even more important the streets and social spaces. Planning is used as a covert form of taxation driving up development costs. This is an almost Faustian pact which results in over development, poor public spaces, poor design and the smallest new houses in Europe. I think we have got it wrong.

It is fascinating how often Hammarby Sjöstad in particular is evoked and illustrated in 'concept boards' for developments in Britain but when it comes to the actual proposal the apartment blocks are twice the height, the mixed use, social facilities and high quality public transport have all but disappeared and the whole thing has been designed from the car parking space outwards.

However English cities could nevertheless follow the Scandinavian model if they really want to. Perhaps Mr Pickles is unintentionally giving them the opportunity. Out of the chaos a new order may yet emerge. Let us hope so – at least we can dream.


Thanks to Björn Cederquist of Stockholm City Council and Oliver Schulze and colleagues from Gehl Architects for their invaluable advice.

References
www.hammarbysjostad.se/
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110118095356/http:/www.cabe.org.uk/case-studies/hammarby-sjostad
P. Carolin: The Swedish influence on post war housing in Britain (in C20th Soc publication Housing and the C20th Nation)
O. Hultin and others: Architecture in Stockholm
Arkitekturmuseet: Architecture in Sweden
O. Lind and A. Lund: Copenhagen Architecture Guide
Copenhagen X: New Architecture in Copenhagen
J. Gehl and others: New City Life
J. Gehl and L. Gemzoe: New City Spaces

Rochdale Pioneers

Bandstand brackets, Broadfield Park

Rochdale is an archetypal Lancashire industrial town – or is it? Set in the Pennines and built along the steep Roch valley, from the streets of Rochdale the moors are always in your view. But where are the mill chimneys? Nearly all are gone, as are most of the mills. However church spires still provide vertical emphasis, now joined by many minarets. Dramatic scenery is the backdrop to Rochdale. This is stunning countryside of mountains, moors and picturesque stone built small towns and villages. The Pennine Way runs just east of the town along the Yorkshire boundary.


The backdrop to Rochdale


Sturdy independence

Officially Rochdale is in Greater Manchester. Whilst the town has always been in the orbit of Cottonopolis, only 10 miles away, it is really quite a separate, independent minded place – the home of the inimitable Mrs Duffy. Rochdale was one of the earliest industrial towns, beginning with woollens and later cotton spinning, bleaching and dyeing. However it peaked early. Its population was already 80,000 in 1851 and yet is only 95,000 today, although the population of the  Borough including surrounding townships is about 200,000. Whereas Manchester reinvented itself in the late C19th as a commercial centre and now the fun capital of the north, Rochdale experienced a slow relative decline from its zenith over 100 years ago. However the town has adapted to survive and it is perhaps not a coincidence that Gracie Fields, who defined the spirit of resilience in the last Great Depression with ‘Sing as we go’ and ‘Wish me luck as you wave me good-bye’, came from Rochdale. More recently Cargo Studios has been described as one of the eminent recording studio of the post-punk era. Joy Divison's "Atmosphere" should also read "Made in Rochdale". But while the Tony Wilson style music myth making is welcome here, the impresario's late flirtation with Urban Splash is thankfully not.


The town that invented the Divi

Two things particularly mark Rochdale’s historical importance – its absolutely stupendous Town Hall, more than the equal of Manchester, and the Rochdale Pioneers. This was the first co-operative, established in 1844 and which started the hugely significant Co-operative movement that is today just about the most positive, ethical and sustainable force in the high street and in finance.


More important than the Hacienda 

The Co-op headquarters are in Manchester around the wonderful CIS tower (1962) which exemplifies the optimism of that era. You reach Rochdale from the adjacent Victoria Station, recently voted the worst in Britain although it still retains traces of its former glory. Under-investment in Manchester’s fragmented rail network is a national scandal and serves to isolate Rochdale. The train from Victoria is fairly clapped out but if you are lucky only takes about 15 minutes.

Rochdale station is out of the town centre which is down in the valley. Metrolink trams are being extended via Oldham to Rochdale and will connect the Station with the town centre and bus station – a good bit of planning if long delayed. However at present the area is a construction site. Before exploring the centre it is worth looking at some of the terraced housing close to the station, as housing renewal is one of the big themes of Rochdale.


Deeplish revisited


A playground born of demolition 

After a decade of massive housing clearance and rebuilding the government in 1966 published the influential Deeplish report, which explored the possibilities for improvement of older housing in an area just south of Rochdale station. This effectively changed national policy with an end to large scale clearance and the invention of ‘General Improvement Areas’, which envisaged large scale public intervention to upgrade traditional terraced streets. Deeplish today looks like a very pleasant mixed inner city suburb. However the area immediately west of the Station around Tweedale St illustrates some of the failures as well as successes of area improvement over the last 40 years.


Old slate roofs and new back yards

You will quickly notice that the terraces and streets are much more varied than you might have expected with subtle differences in the quality of building reflecting social and economic distinctions. As Ena Sharples says in the first ever Coronation St episode recently re-screened: ‘Esmeralda St – that’s very bay window’. The best terraces, usually with bay windows and little front gardens look very pleasant indeed. Other terraces have been given a make over, sometimes with render and others, strangely, by re-facing the original Accrington with poorer but softer toned bricks which have not weathered well. Original windows and doors, usually finely detailed, are mostly replaced by crude PVC. However it is remarkable that the attractive slate roofs largely survive. In most towns this important unifying element is usually destroyed by a jumble of different replacement concrete tiles.


Social history and detail

Part of the GIA mantra was selective demolition to allow for new houses and to create play space and parking areas. You can see this clearly south of Tweedale St. Some terraces were even knocked down to provide longer gardens for retained terraces. There are pockets of new housing within the context of the terraced streets from the 70s onwards, some of it fairly successful. There are also undeveloped gap sites and a pervasive air of neglect, with rubbish everywhere (this sadly is a feature of Rochdale) and social problems evident on the streets.


The exception to the rule?


Trafalgar St

Comprehensive area improvements gave way to individual house improvements in the Thatcher era. However there is evident continuity between GIAs and the Pathfinder Housing Market Renewal strategy introduced by Prescott. In many areas neighbourhoods have been wrecked and decent houses destroyed by Pathfinders but Rochdale may be the exception. Here it seems like a continuation of a reasonably successful long term programme. For example at Trafalgar St in Wardleworth, just east of the centre OMI Architects have reinvented the terrace on a steep site as striking groups of linked houses with 2 storey bays and living areas grouped around private external spaces. With Sure Start, new health facilities, training and youth projects, some aimed at the large Asian community there is real evidence of the last government belatedly beginning to make a difference in very deprived neighbourhoods. Rochdale has done excellent work with local communities in developing what are effectively Neighbourhood Plans and new housing schemes such as Dale Mill in Hamer. This has been designed by Proctor and Matthews and was highly praised by CABE. It will be scandalous if the community is now left in the lurch by Pickles and Shapps.


Nye Bevan v Lansley


God help us

Around the incipient square for the new Metrolink tram stop in front of Rochdale station there are some interesting buildings. St John Baptist Catholic church is a huge basilica of 1924 with a concrete dome and windows below evoking Aya Sofya – very impressive but Pevsner says reactionary for its date. Opposite is the Fire Station of 1933 with a fantastic campanile looking positively Hanseatic. Now empty it could make a really interesting conversion including shops and cafes to animate this arrival space. Also facing the square is Nye Bevan House, a new Health Centre by Nightingale Associates bringing together an impressive range of health care. Attractive, light and crisp if not especially distinctive architecture it is an excellent advertisement for the NHS and in the tradition of the Finsbury Health Centre. No doubt Lansley will soon rename it Crapita House.


Down but not out


Identity and local history: scheduled for demolition

Following the tram route you reach Drake St which curves down the hill into the town centre. This used to be one of the main shopping streets but is now almost like Detroit. A few fine buildings survive amongst the vacant shops like Trafalgar Buildings with its fabulous art nouveau metalwork crown and the proud stone Champness Hall of 1925. Kenyon Street, leading off Drake Street, was home to Cargo Studios where Peter Hook unveiled a blue plague in 2009. When will English Heritage move in? Hopefully the new tram will help revive this area but by itself this will not be enough. Much public money has been squandered on big ego and big price tag ‘regeneration’ projects in the big cities while places like Drake St rot – an extreme example of the impact of supermarkets and changing retail patterns. The nearby Asda off Dane St is claimed locally to be the ugliest in Britain, but actually it is just typical of the genre.


Municipal enterprise C21 style


Coming soon: music heritage and tram routes

The Metrolink terminus will be at Smith St at the bottom of Drake St. To the north are the unlovely 1960s municipal offices known as the Black Box and the bus station with multi storey car park above – all a bit grim. You have to admire Rochdale Borough’s chutzpah at this time of public sector cuts in pushing ahead with an ambitious redevelopment scheme which will provide new council offices and a library. This will be opposite on the south side of the Metrolink terminus next to the River Roch. Designed by Faulkner Browns with (they say) excellent environmental credentials, its sinuous form follows the river. Building work has just started. There will also be a new bus station. The plan is to then replace the 60s structures with an extension to the Wheatsheaf shopping centre behind. This is an excellent idea in principle which, together with the new civic offices and library, could create a lively new square around the Metrolink terminus, but all depends on the quality of the design and its street frontage activity.


Bygone Rochdale


Self harm - The Wheatsheaf Centre

The present Wheatsheaf Centre, although gross and insensitive to its surroundings fortunately has little visual impact on Yorkshire St, the main shopping street of the town with its jumble of friendly red brick Victorian buildings and alleys. However the Exchange Centre further down the street has a much longer frontage and is a visual disaster. Although some thought has gone into its mass and geometry, the buildings are over-scaled and hideously assertive with an oppressive mass of banal pink facing blocks, witless fenestration and a horrible canopy. Needless to say the shopping centre is incapable of providing shops which relate to the fall of the street.


The Exchange Centre: a visual disaster 

The Exchange Centre is an impenetrable barrier between the centre of the town and the fantastically named Toad Lane where you will find the original Pioneers shop of the first ever Co-op. This is currently being renovated as a museum. Next to it is the marvellous Baum pub retaining an advertisement for Irlam’s tripe on its façade. Opposite is St Mary, originally of 1740 and remodelled by Ninian Comper in 1911 completing an attractive little enclave between the ring road and the back of the Exchange Centre, with its long and tedious car park elevation dressed in yellow brick with red edgings and absolutely ridiculous pediments. It is best to walk around the shopping centre as you will get lost inside.


Urban opportunity


Treating the street layout with charm and respect. 

Along the valley of the culverted Roch between the new civic offices and the Town Hall is a series of attractive spaces. Currently largely dominated by traffic and parking they could be redesigned to create a really exceptionally heart to the town. The sequence of public spaces starts with the new Metrolink square which is a huge opportunity. West of this is The Butts, an irregular shaped space but with some really good buildings including a wonderfully gutsy cinema, now the Regal Moon pub. Others include a narrow fronted Edwardian hall with a fine tower (also a bar) and several good banks - the RBS being a convincing 1913 interpretation of Georgian. Just up Yorkshire St are more good banks with Lloyds dating from 1708 with delicate pilasters and the Yorkshire from the 30s with massive stripped down columns above a granite plinth. The Butts looks like a market place and a market here could really help animate the area and revive Drake St. (The market is currently buried in the Exchange Centre.)


The Bronte-esque St Chad

Packer St leads to the parish church of St Chad with a square tower set on the hill behind the Town Hall. There is a wonderfully dramatic flight of steps up through the graveyard, all very Bronte-esque. The medieval origins of the church are disguised within the Victorian rebuilding. Packer St has good buildings including the millstone grit Flying Horse Hotel and a sophisticated palazzo which looks like a London club. My favourite however is the 60s Koko Lounge with 3D guitars and saxophones on the fascia. This could be a really pleasant square with the Town Hall opposite and the vista closed by the church on the hill but is actually one big car park.


Seven Sisters


Movement and power 

In front of the Town Hall is Memorial Gardens, a first rate space from which you can appreciate one of the other great sights of Rochdale – the Seven Sisters. These are 16 to 20 storey blocks of flats to the north on College Bank above the river. They are strikingly sited and are a counterpoint to the grand civic buildings on the Esplanade. As Pevsner says they are ‘well and crisply designed’. They speak of confidence and ambition. They make Rochdale feel like a big city. To either side of the gardens are interesting modern buildings including surprisingly the Brutalist tax office which almost seems to float above its podium.


Rus in urbe


Civic Rochdale

The Esplanade, with public buildings set in gardens and the parish church behind also in a park, is a fine feature of Rochdale and makes it quite distinct from other towns. Dominated by the Town Hall it includes at the east end the neo-classical Post Office and at the west end the Elizabethan style Library of 1883 and the Art Gallery and Museum of 1903, with elaborate panels of figures connected to the arts. It is a pity that the dominant parking intrudes into the relationship between gardens and buildings.


Stupendous Past


The Great Hall

The absolute tour de force of Rochdale is the Town Hall. The only competitors can be Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds, all much bigger cities, and nearby Bolton. Designed by Crossland, a Yorkshireman, it was completed in 1871 and opened by John Bright, the Radical local M.P. It is therefore contemporary with Manchester and the tower was rebuilt by Waterhouse in 1883. The style is Gothic but as Pevsner says ‘such as no Gothic town hall could ever have been’. The exterior is a riot of turrets, stepped gables, fleches, steep pitches and arcades. The interior is if anything even more exotic. You enter through a vaulted hall which leads to the grand flight of the staircase hall. On the upper floor is the Great Hall with a hammer-beam roof, which really lives up to its name. The lavishness of decoration throughout recalls Burges at his wildest. A truly amazing experience.


Town hall reception


Look to the future


The new linked houses: terrace-detached?

So here is a town with a great past. What of the future? Medium sized towns like Rochdale are particularly at risk in the current recession. Overshadowed by glitzy Manchester it struggles for investment. The spending cuts also target the industrial north and will undermine the evident improvements to social, educational and health facilities over the last decade. The abrupt ending of the Pathfinder programme is a big problem.

But Rochdale does have a lot of assets. Its position next to the huge green lung of the Pennines will be increasingly attractive in a more sustainable future. The recent re-opening of the Rochdale Canal (rather grander than the name implies and linking the trendy lofts of New Islington to Yorkshire) helps to open up access to this countryside. Rochdale also needs to capitalise on and to protect its historic built environment which is very fine. It is disappointing that the magnificent St Edmund church in Falinge is on English Heritage’s list of the 10 most important buildings at risk.


First rate townscape in the depths of the dale

The town actually has good motorway links with quick access to dynamic Manchester and Leeds. Will Alsop’s M62 City may have been barking (have you seen the traffic?) but the concept of towns specialising in a bigger economic framework is only a re-interpretation of the Cottonopolis system, or indeed China today. The impact of the M62 is already very evident in the location of new offices (outside the town centre) and the development of massive distribution parks. These confidently designed behemoths actually look good in the grand scale of the Pennine topography, so different from the ‘don’t look at me’ shedscape of so much of the M1.

Osborne’s unexpected approval of the Manchester Hub scheme, which means that Rochdale will at last be linked to the main line Piccadilly station and Manchester Airport is a significant step forward and will definitely improve Rochdale’s national connectivity. (With Crossrail being bankrolled for £15 billion and Thameslink for £5 billion the half a billion for the Manchester Hub scheme is hardly generous.)


Yes we can


New Labour acknowledges the old: Nye Bevan House

Rochdale needs confidence and leadership. The two things go together. The town has shown confidence historically and in the recent past, for example in building the Severn Sisters and more recently schemes like Nye Bevan House. The Borough certainly seems to be providing leadership in its ambitious approaches to community renewal and in town centre regeneration. The new civic complex, far from being a waste of public money, actually gives the opportunity for qualitative improvements to public services and the reinvention of the town centre as an attractive social place. Perhaps Rochdale needs to be even bolder in its approach using good urban design to bring together the best elements of the town to make a really exceptional place.


Re-emerging civic Rochdale

Above all the government must support Rochdale to continue its largely successful strategy for neighbourhood renewal. This is real regeneration – not big and shiny projects but long term, concerted and people focused. But there is one thing Rochdale could do – should do as soon as possible – tackle the pervasive problem of litter and rubbish which is everywhere in the terraced streets and degrades a town which otherwise has a lot to be proud of.

Thanks for help in researching this blog to Rochdale (but Man United supporting) lad Grant Butterworth and Mrs Jones-the-planner whose Marland ancestors originated in Rochdale.

N.B. The Baum was perhaps the best pub on our journeys so far.

Swansea Bay Ospreys

Swansea, California

Swansea – the second city of Wales – the Sheffield or the California of Wales? Possibly both. There are similarities with Sheffield. Each has a majestic location. Both grew around metallurgical industries, although Swansea copper declined much earlier than Sheffield steel. Each is a city of two halves – post industrial to the east but lovely suburbs to the west giving onto glorious countryside. Both city centres were bombed in the war and rebuilt in a style inimical to Simon Jenkins. Both have traces of a more gracious Georgian past. But Sheffield does not have Swansea Bay, rightly compared in its grandeur to the Bay of Naples. And if Sheffield can be proud of the Arctic Monkeys and Richard Hawley, Swansea has Dylan Thomas.

I came late to this subversive Swansea roaring boyo with his intoxicating painting by language. If you are not into poetry try his short Swansea ghost story 'The Followers'. Of course young Dylan and Swansea didn't get on; 'this town has more layers than an onion and each one of them will reduce you to tears' was his aphorism, or something like that. Now he is canonised in the Dylan Thomas Centre.


Seaside town glamour - Oxford St

Growing up in Cardiff, Swansea actually seemed glamorous. Maybe not the mythical place imagined in the League of Gentlemen – 'will heaven be like Swansea?  Yes, only bigger' - but it was on the way to the Gower, which has THE best beaches. The view of the great sweep of Swansea Bay with big mountains behind and the huge scale of heavy industry was exhilarating.  Driving into Swansea today there is still this sense of excitement, of scale, activity, drama, big scenery.

Swansea is a big port but it is also very much a seaside town. It has a revitalised waterfront and sandy beaches right next to the city centre. The beaches stretch in a gentle arc 10 kilometres to Mumbles Head with a continuous cycle and jogging track at times running through sand dunes and pine groves. On a sunny day this could almost be California.


The end of the line


William the tele-communicator 

Swansea has something of an end-of-the-line feel about it. By train you approach down the Tawe valley. This had been hideously polluted by the copper industry and the restoration of what had become a lunar landscape has been a quiet achievement of regeneration.  High St station was rebuilt in the 1930s and has the remains of GWR elegance, as does the Grand Hotel opposite. However High St leading to the town has very evidently lost that function. It becomes Castle St and at Castle Gardens you will find the impressive remains of the Norman castle with an elegantly arcaded parapet.

Castle Square is a big hard landscaped space trying to hold together very disparate elements. Looming behind the Castle ruins is the hulking BT tower, not improved by retro-fitted mirror glass. To the side is the intriguing and elaborate stone façade of what looks like a very early cinema. A grand curved Edwardian block on Castle St, rebuilt after the blitz, adds some dignity as does the dull St Mary's Church diagonally opposite. The rebuilt shopping streets to the west are fairly anonymous but the most amazing thing is the faux half timbered edifice on Caer St, actually built in the 1950s.


Bay City


From high finance to vertical drinking - Wind St

The thing about Swansea is the close relationship of the city centre to the sea and the docks, quite different from Cardiff. Wind St leads out of Castle Gardens towards the docks, lined with fine pre-1914 buildings for banks and commerce. You could read a lot into the transformation of Wind St from finance to vertical drinking. Virtually every bank is now a pub, some with amusing names like 'The Bank Statement' and 'Idols'. Although Wind St might be hairy on Friday or Saturday night, at least this is a new function for a very important street that had lost its original raison d'etre and become very run down.


The Brighton of Wales

A dual carriageway separates Swansea from the sea but although this is noisy, inconvenient and ugly it is not terminal. A redesign, slowing the traffic and getting rid of the subways, would hardly be ground breaking but has not happened here yet. Beyond the subway is a really interesting area – the remnants of Swansea as an elegant Regency seaside resort ('the Brighton of Wales') with gracious terraces showing daring fenestration. The Assembly Rooms are on Cambrian Place. The old Guildhall on Somerset Place, a Corinthian palazzo of 1848, has been remodelled and extended as the Dylan Thomas Centre. Around Adelaide St are fine commercial buildings associated with docks like the Harbour Trust building of 1902 by Seward (of Cardiff City Hall and presaging its design). Close by is the imposing Greek revival Royal Institution of 1841, now Swansea Museum. The potential square between these fine buildings is spoilt by the thundering dual carriageway and low grade developments beyond.


Urbane turn of the century commerce


On the Waterfront


Waterfront Museum: Modest and human - cf the Millennium Centre

However, behind the Royal Institution is the very pleasing and rewarding Waterfront Museum. This is a marriage of a converted warehouse shed on the South Dock quayside with a 2005 extension by Wilkinson Eyre. The original building of 1901 is simple, in dark red brick with Lombardic gables and a cast iron colonnade. The new building takes the form of 4 blue glass pavilions fanning out from the entrance atrium to embrace a central courtyard between the new and old buildings (strangely inaccessible). Almost Japanese in its delicacy and precision it is ideal for this seaside location. The immediate paving and landscaping cleverly reflects the form of the building. The exhibits on Welsh maritime and industrial history are refugees from the Cardiff Bay museum which was demolished for the Mermaid Quay shopping centre; maybe a reflection on relative values.


Clough Williams-Ellis: you should be living at this hour


When postmodern whimsy worked - Marine Walk

The Maritime Quarter around the South Dock is certainly a vindication of the City's vision and enterprise. After the dock was closed in 1969 the Council acquired the whole area and initiated one of the earliest and most attractive waterside regeneration schemes in Britain, begun in the early 80s. Although the evocation of brick warehouses is a bit thin and relentless and some of the Po-Mo apartments are very in your face, nevertheless the totality is lively and effective. The best bit is Marine Walk which actually faces the seafront. The houses here are really delightful 3 story stuccoed terraces with playful Regency references, interesting and amusing reliefs on many of the buildings and whimsical public art. It is all very reminiscent of Portmerion and streets ahead of any other maritime development in Wales. The latest phases around the dock are bigger scale, sleek and rather cold. Meridian Quay, at 29 stories the tallest building in Wales, has been nominated for the Carbuncle Awards but actually it is much better than any of the many towers in Cardiff Bay, with its curved profile vaguely evoking a lighthouse.


Newtonian theories à la El Lissitzky


Always use your post-code


When is a roundabout a pleasant square? When the traffic is tamed.

The SA1 development at the Prince of Wales Dock on the other side of the River Tawe is Swansea's riposte to Cardiff Bay. However unlike Cardiff Bay it is very well connected by a new sail footbridge which makes it a functioning part of the city centre. An unnecessary but at least modest barrage keeps the Tawe always at high tide, and like the Maritime Quarter this is crammed with boats. The Cork car ferry which docks here towers above the pleasure craft. Few quayside buildings survive but they have been renovated and integrated into the scheme, including a corrugated iron Norwegian seamen's church, companion to the one at Cardiff Bay. None of the new offices or apartment blocks are much to write home about (not easy to tell which are offices and which is housing) but as an ensemble they have coherence. There are even some quite attractive and sheltered public squares which are actually being used. The whole place has much more of a sense of liveliness than the (much bigger) Cardiff version.


A bit of a muddle


Units of Swansea modern

Back to Castle Gardens and the shopping centre, mostly rebuilt after the blitz. This is not exceptional like Coventry but rather the standard formula. Swansea already had a grid and this was the basis of the new layout with shops along the main streets such as Oxford St and Kingsway. They are low, 3 or 4 stories, horizontal but not uniform; in fact quite friendly and heterogeneous. The interest may be limited to the ephemeral details but some of this is very good, like the Kardomah Café with its beautifully curved brick elevation, mosaic fascia and relief of a coffee worker. Quite a lot of older buildings survived the blitz and were retained in the rebuilding, mostly small scale although there are some magnificent survivals like the baroque Mond Building (1911) and the Carlton Cinema of 1913 (now Waterstones), both by Ruthen.  The rebuilt Market Hall is a simple but huge hanger stuffed with stalls and teeming with life. Here you can buy Laverbread, a Swansea speciality made from seaweed and delicious fried with bacon.


An unpretentious and very public transport terminal

The market leads to the spacious, light and open new bus station. Beyond is the ubiquitous and anonymous Quadrant shopping centre. Between this and the dual carriageway is a mega-crap Tesco with rusting metalwork and a massive open car park - right in the centre of the city. Not good.


Lets move to – Sketty


Hilly seaside suburbia

Stretching westward above the bay are the delightful Victorian suburbs of Uplands and Sketty, with long stucco terraces along and sometimes up the contours. There are also squares, crescents and secluded villas, Georgian and later. Parks, views and excellent local shops all make this very des res. Dylan Thomas was born here near the wonderfully evocatively sounding Cwmdonkin Park.

Along the seafront just west of Tesco's are holiday boarding houses like Eastbourne and about as run down. Singleton Park is now home to Swansea University. Singleton Abbey is really a neo-classical villa of 1784. The University buildings are a compact and unremarkable group off Mumbles Road, mostly by Percy Thomas circa 1960. Perhaps the most interesting building is the Taliesin Arts Centre by Peter Moro, much later than Nottingham Playhouse and quite unlike it with an irregular polygon form and oblique angles.


The Mumbles


Spring comes early

The wooded Clyne Valley separates metropolitan Swansea from Oystermouth and the Mumbles which are quintessentially seaside and fun. Oystermouth has its own castle on a motte dating from the C14th. Villas appeared in the late C18th and in the C19th the sea front was developed, culminating with Mumbles Pier of 1898. In the post war period there has been much new housing, beginning to impinge on the Gower peninsula proper beyond Mumbles Head. The Gower is a perfect and varied landscape in miniature with breathtaking cliffs and bays – exceptional by any standards and does need strong protection against development.


Mud and sand


Glorious sand, mud and civic pride

Returning to the city centre along Swansea Bay you may see the great expanse of mud and sand exposed at low tide – a sight too shocking for Cardiff. Flocks of sea birds wheel and feed. If you are lucky you may see migrating ospreys which give their name to the Swansea rugby team.


Swein's Island


Responding to modernism, not countering - Swansea Guidhall

Along the axis of Mumbles Road you will see the magnificent campanile of Swansea Guildhall on St Helens Road, rather off-pitch from the city centre. Designed by Percy Thomas (now with the prefix Capita) it was built in an earlier Great Depression partly as an expression of confidence and no doubt in riposte to Cardiff's imperial civic centre. The initial impression is of monolithic white stone blocks of almost totalitarian inspiration; it could be a power station in Metropolis. However this is essentially a classical response to modernism. There are 4 blocks around a central courtyard; the council chambers, administrative offices, courts and the Brangwyn concert hall. The towering campanile is very subtle and has interesting details like boats emerging near the top. The building is obviously highly influenced by Scandinavian precedents.


Norse origins and Mesopotamian longing

What a contrast between the magnificent asceticism of the external composition and the extravagant detail of the interior – Stockholm Town Hall meets the Odeon. Through the cathedral-like entrance the grand staircase with coffered vaulted ceiling leads to the Council Chamber. The Norse origins of Swansea are evoked as Swein, the reputed founder of the town, makes his grim appearance in keystones. The Council Chamber is modelled on an antique temple to Apollo, with almost overwhelmingly sumptuous decoration.


Gesamtkunstwerk - Guildhall ceiling 

The Brangwyn Hall is notable for Sir Frank Brangwyn's tapestries, originally meant as a war memorial for the House of Lords but rejected as too optimistic. They are almost Gauginesque in the riot of colours showing different races (of the Empire) living in harmony together and with nature – a bit much for their lordships before the war and probably still today. There are prominent art deco lighting fixtures. The ante-room has beautiful cream and gold friezes and medallions on dramatic themes including a charming Commedia del'arte group.


Too optimistic for the House of Lords


Two of everything


Dogged seaside brutalism - County Hall & Library

The Guildhall is a staggering building, too little known or appreciated. Although still in ceremonial use many of its functions have transferred to newer civic buildings which seems very extravagant. Opposite it is the 1985 Crown Courts faced in Portland stone and with a strong central emphasis, really quite good of its kind. County Hall and Library built in the early 80s is just west of the Maritime Quarter next to the beach – few other bureaucrats can enjoy such an enviable position. It is a white concrete aggregate 4 storey complex of angled wings set in sand dunes and pine trees on the seaward side (and car parks on the landward). Apparently highly unpopular with locals it actually looks pretty cool.


Metropolitan Alexandra Road

Back across the shopping centre on Alexandra Road are other important buildings.
The old Library and College of Art (1886) in red brick and stone has a long Italianate façade. It is now part of Swansea Metropolitan University which provides life for this area and uses for its older buildings. Opposite is the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery of 1909 also red brick and stone. Although not large it is well composed and monumental. There is an exciting 1973 extension of a concrete box above a recessed glazed ground floor, which works well with the Edwardian building. The Gallery contains a fine collection of Swansea porcelain. In the angle to Orchard St is the old Police Station, a confident Baroque building of 1912. Alexandra Road with its grand beaux –arts buildings and plane trees is quite metropolitan, although spoilt by the thundering one way traffic. The newish Police Station tries to jolly up its dullness with a dramatic corner curve of blue glazed brick and a strange art work about police technology.


'An ugly, lovely town'


A beautiful jumble - Clifton Hill

Over 50 years ago Dylan Thomas described Swansea as 'an ugly, lovely town'. Despite all the changes (it was made a City in 1969 when Charles became Prince of Wales) this still holds true today. No-one could accuse Swansea of being a handsome town. It has some fine buildings and salubrious suburbs. The maritime developments are a success, especially compared to Cardiff Bay. But the city centre is disappointing and fraying at the edges. High St desperately needs reviving.  The down-at-heel 'Regency' quarter needs careful repair and stitching together with the city core and the maritime areas. The thundering dual carriageway which isolates this area needs to be tamed as does the one way race track along Alexandra Road. Above all Swansea city centre deserves more than developments like Tesco and the Parc Tawe retail park. But Swansea has two aces to play – its superb natural location and its livliness, friendly Welsh character and palpable presence.

A lovely city.

N.B.
A good hearty dinner was served at Queen's Hotel, the local CAMRA pub of the year 2008

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References:
J. Newman: The Buildings of Wales – Glamorgan
P. Howell & E. Beazley: Companion Guide to South Wales