ps60
September 1st, 2005, 12:04 PM
The latest wacky Will Alsop plans look set to hit Bradford with a big splash thanks to his masterplan for rejuvenating a large portion of the city centre next to the City Hall with the centrepoint being a man made lake.
Time hasn't been kind to Bradford which has been left behind by its sexier neighbour Leeds, but the council have commissioned an ambitious masterplan to overhaul virtually the whole of the city centre and drag it kicking and screaming from the Victorian flatcap image into the 21st century.
Central to Alsop's vision is a man-made lake called The Bowl from which various points of the town are connected together. The Victorian City Hall backs onto this new addition turning it into a waterside property. The lake itself is shaped like a ying with the land portion the hall stands on being the yang, an almost philosophical statement of water and earth.
The lake will feature boating and quays and be connected into the canal, most impressively will be a 15,000 square metre office building cantilevered over the water extending half way into the centre of the pool. It's intended to be the main showcase for the new look Bradford.
Many of the buildings in the master-plan back directly onto the lake as if spokes from this central wheel creating new areas of the town with this centre as well as opening up new views along their streets that not only overlook the lake but hit City Hall directly.
There's a great variation throughout in the buildings to emphasise this isn't another monotonous block by block design such as the one that so blighted Bradford in the 1960s.
A water channel which is an extension of the existing canal links the central area to a largely residential zone called The Channel which will provide waterside housing that has proved so popular elsewhere in the U.K for thousands of people near the centre of the city and bring in what should be some urban life. It also improves existing parcels of land drawing Forster Square Retail Park inwards, and extending the Broadway outwards as well as creating 20,000 square metres of conference space.
The existing retail core will be redesigned to give a more village like experience in an area dubbed The Market along Manningham Lane and the northern edge of the city centre with emphasis also placed on building new health and social facilities as well as enhancing the area as a second retail quarter and 220 new homes. With their historic links to the textile industry Bradford hopes this zone can also be the location of a new National Textiles Museum.
The Valley is planned around the Thornton Road corridor where the new work will aim at bringing more of the countryside into the centre of Bradford complete with a wetlands centre not to mention a number of gardens. The area is currently full of old abandoned warehouses, many of these will be restored to their former glory and used for housing and offices.
One highlight is a new public park complete with overhanging glass canopies that cover portions of it like magic mushrooms - a truely organic experience for anyone who visits them not to mention effective cover for rainy days.
Bradfords finer Victorian buildings in their reddish hue of stone will survive but most of the more modern buildings look set to meet the demolition ball and although the designs may be fairly far out now, Alsop tends to produce more avante garde work during the design phase that then becomes more conservative as it becomes more likely to be built as shown by Palestra in London.
Alsop's plan has not be without criticism. Some commentators see him as trying untested ideas that run the risk of failing as the big modernist ideas of the sixties did, that criticism is hardly suprising given the modernist streak that runs through much of Alsop's town planning.
There's also been raised eyebrows at what exactly has happened to the roads in Bradford as Alsop's plan seems to have them missing from large chunks of the area it covers.Whilst the idea of public transport and pedestrian movement is admirable traffic has to go somewhere and this will simply shift congestion to other parts of Bradford unless there is sufficient investment in public transport, it makes Alsop's plan highly impractical on one level without this additional money to modify large chunks of the transport network outside of the development area to handle these diverted traffic streams.
This is evidenced by his ideas for Middlesborough, another fairly large city that is in desparate need of new investment where he essentially plonked his designs in the middle of a park and then seduced the desparate to be get on the map local council with the computer graphics.
The natural of these comments shows just how untested Alsop is in masterplanning large projects despite his reputation as an excellent architect for individual buildings, particularly after the fate of the Fourth Grace in Liverpool.
With any early Alsop plan what we see isn't what we will finally get - this is hammered home by the constant use of the word "could" rather than "will" in the plans, but it's always an exciting and interesting experience that's bound to provoke a wide range of reactions in everyone who looks at it as well as test to the limit the theory that "build and they will come."
The Bowl Bradford Centre regeneration
http://skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/327AlsopPlansWackinessForBradford_pic1.jpg
The Channel
http://skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/327AlsopPlansWackinessForBradford_pic2.jpg
The Market
http://skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/327AlsopPlansWackinessForBradford_pic3.jpg
The Valley
http://skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/327AlsopPlansWackinessForBradford_pic4.jpg
From Skyscraper News 22/6/05
Time hasn't been kind to Bradford which has been left behind by its sexier neighbour Leeds, but the council have commissioned an ambitious masterplan to overhaul virtually the whole of the city centre and drag it kicking and screaming from the Victorian flatcap image into the 21st century.
Central to Alsop's vision is a man-made lake called The Bowl from which various points of the town are connected together. The Victorian City Hall backs onto this new addition turning it into a waterside property. The lake itself is shaped like a ying with the land portion the hall stands on being the yang, an almost philosophical statement of water and earth.
The lake will feature boating and quays and be connected into the canal, most impressively will be a 15,000 square metre office building cantilevered over the water extending half way into the centre of the pool. It's intended to be the main showcase for the new look Bradford.
Many of the buildings in the master-plan back directly onto the lake as if spokes from this central wheel creating new areas of the town with this centre as well as opening up new views along their streets that not only overlook the lake but hit City Hall directly.
There's a great variation throughout in the buildings to emphasise this isn't another monotonous block by block design such as the one that so blighted Bradford in the 1960s.
A water channel which is an extension of the existing canal links the central area to a largely residential zone called The Channel which will provide waterside housing that has proved so popular elsewhere in the U.K for thousands of people near the centre of the city and bring in what should be some urban life. It also improves existing parcels of land drawing Forster Square Retail Park inwards, and extending the Broadway outwards as well as creating 20,000 square metres of conference space.
The existing retail core will be redesigned to give a more village like experience in an area dubbed The Market along Manningham Lane and the northern edge of the city centre with emphasis also placed on building new health and social facilities as well as enhancing the area as a second retail quarter and 220 new homes. With their historic links to the textile industry Bradford hopes this zone can also be the location of a new National Textiles Museum.
The Valley is planned around the Thornton Road corridor where the new work will aim at bringing more of the countryside into the centre of Bradford complete with a wetlands centre not to mention a number of gardens. The area is currently full of old abandoned warehouses, many of these will be restored to their former glory and used for housing and offices.
One highlight is a new public park complete with overhanging glass canopies that cover portions of it like magic mushrooms - a truely organic experience for anyone who visits them not to mention effective cover for rainy days.
Bradfords finer Victorian buildings in their reddish hue of stone will survive but most of the more modern buildings look set to meet the demolition ball and although the designs may be fairly far out now, Alsop tends to produce more avante garde work during the design phase that then becomes more conservative as it becomes more likely to be built as shown by Palestra in London.
Alsop's plan has not be without criticism. Some commentators see him as trying untested ideas that run the risk of failing as the big modernist ideas of the sixties did, that criticism is hardly suprising given the modernist streak that runs through much of Alsop's town planning.
There's also been raised eyebrows at what exactly has happened to the roads in Bradford as Alsop's plan seems to have them missing from large chunks of the area it covers.Whilst the idea of public transport and pedestrian movement is admirable traffic has to go somewhere and this will simply shift congestion to other parts of Bradford unless there is sufficient investment in public transport, it makes Alsop's plan highly impractical on one level without this additional money to modify large chunks of the transport network outside of the development area to handle these diverted traffic streams.
This is evidenced by his ideas for Middlesborough, another fairly large city that is in desparate need of new investment where he essentially plonked his designs in the middle of a park and then seduced the desparate to be get on the map local council with the computer graphics.
The natural of these comments shows just how untested Alsop is in masterplanning large projects despite his reputation as an excellent architect for individual buildings, particularly after the fate of the Fourth Grace in Liverpool.
With any early Alsop plan what we see isn't what we will finally get - this is hammered home by the constant use of the word "could" rather than "will" in the plans, but it's always an exciting and interesting experience that's bound to provoke a wide range of reactions in everyone who looks at it as well as test to the limit the theory that "build and they will come."
The Bowl Bradford Centre regeneration
http://skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/327AlsopPlansWackinessForBradford_pic1.jpg
The Channel
http://skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/327AlsopPlansWackinessForBradford_pic2.jpg
The Market
http://skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/327AlsopPlansWackinessForBradford_pic3.jpg
The Valley
http://skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/327AlsopPlansWackinessForBradford_pic4.jpg
From Skyscraper News 22/6/05