Brighton and Hove council will decide today whether to go ahead with Frank Gehry's plans for two bold towers on Hove seafront. The council is split down the middle with conservatives voting against and labour for. The deciding vote rests with a green party councillor. If the planning committee don't approve this for the next stage, it will put Brighton and Hove off the skyscraper map forever. If they do approve it, then the city will have two of the most exciting towers (albeit quite small) in the UK if not the world, and will become a magnet for other developers.

http://www.theargus.co.uk/the_argus/news/NEWS2.html

All large seaside towns need a boost in development and regeneration. Brighton is a particularly tatty version of a seen-better-days place.

250ft arent skyscrapers, but Its still great news for Brighton and will definately attract other developers to the city. Maybe Britains answer to the likes of Miami :rofl:

There was an article in the Sunday Times about them yesterday :cheers1:

All large seaside towns need a boost in development and regeneration. Brighton is a particularly tatty version of a seen-better-days place.

Brighton is not tatty, maybe ten years ago but now it looks and feels more like a thriving european city, if you want tatty try coming up to the west midlands town (its not a city) of wolverhampton where I currently have the misfortune of living in, this place is Tatty with a capital T, Brighton is no more tatty than any other city of similar size.

Regarding the development of the King alfred, I have e-mailed green party councillor Keith Taylor to try to persuade him to vote for it this afternoon as he is undecided and the whole project will most likely rest in the outcome of his vote as 6 labour councillors will vote for, 6 conservative councillors will vote against, then you have lib dems who will vote against, so it is upto the green party to vote for it otherwise the scheme will be rejected.

In a recent article in the Argus Keith Taylor said he wants to follow his heart and vote for it as it will be a magnificant facility for the people of Brighton, but he has concerns about the infrastructure of the site.

Lets hope he follows his heart ...

Well good news the council voted for the development yesterday and now the project moves on to the next stage, labour all voted for it and the greens and lib dems voted for it too, only the conservatives voted against, I didn't expect lib dems to vote for it so this is good news the result was 9-6 in favour.
This project will be one of the most unique and exciting developments in the country, Frank Gehry rules!

good news :cheers:

Cool news. Whats the timetable now?

Excellent news. This is very inspiring architecture :cheers:

All large seaside towns need a boost in development and regeneration. Brighton is a particularly tatty version of a seen-better-days place.

i dont think you could call brighton tatty. Blackpool a most definate yes. But Brighton is attractive, trendy and cosmopolitan

:)

Some parts are, but other bits are a bit naff. The council are completely crap and incompetent unfortunately. There is a lot of development going on at the moment, and once they're all complete, Brighton will be up there with the best again. But Blackpool it aint. You wouldn't get the likes Paul Mccartney living here if it was anything like Blackpool. Tom Cruise is going to buy one of the flats in this development apparently.

The Hove end of Brighton seafront is a bit of a dump. This should help boost the area a bit, hopefully.

Dont wanna sound like one but...
My views of the sea wont be affected as there's buildings already there to the east of KA but shit loads of peoples' will be & the protests have already started. And i cant say i blame them.
It does need redeveloping but there are other much more suitable sites in brighton for big towers like that.
It WILL create a huge traffic & parking problem & turn the area from being pretty chilled out into just as frenetic & up its own arse as the brighton side of the sea front.
As for bit of a dump?I dont see how listed georgian terraces that HAVE to be repainted every 4 years is a dump.(brunswick etc)
However, in time Hove might change from being 'circa 1980 West Hampstead-on-sea' to 'Ladbroke Grove-on-sea.' which could be good.
Or it could turn into miami which is crass, souless, ugly & vile in every respect exept the weather
Its gonna be submitted for planning this winter & & if building starts in 2007 is due to be finished in 2012.
And by then I'll be sooo fucking old I wont give 2 flying fucks if Tom ras clat Cruise is me neighbour or not..
Though, & this is true; the cafe by the lagoon DID get vegi bangers in 'cos Mrs Mcartney asked them to & all us local vegis got to have them on da menu too.So who sez celebs is baaad for the locals...
Ites dread.

Great news for Brighton and Hove, architecturally this will be a landmark, a great sports facility and more housing which is good for the city.

Brighton certainly has some tat, but it also has so much character, fine streetscapes, a variety of neighbourhoods, parks, architecture, seaside follies, the sea, the downs - and above all its a city full of life. Blackpool is a great resort in many respects but it doesn't begin to compare as a city to live in.

Dread. Don't get me wrong, I love Hove, that's why I choose to live here, but if you came here for the first time and walked along the sea front and saw the West Pier, the band stand. some of the sea front buildings that need more than a lick of paint, then your impressions wouldn't be completely positive.

I kind of agree with you on the towers being a mixed blessing. The area is quite chilled at the moment, and these towers will make it much busier. Also, I use the King Alred gym, badminton courts and pool at the moment, so I'll be a bit stuffed when they start to demolish it.

That area by the bandstand at the moment is rather depressing but it will be restored soon along with redesigning and landscaping the area from the bandstand to the Peace statue, also embassy court which was a nasty eyesore this time last year has been restored to its former glory. look at the transformation of this fine art deco building:

From this:http://www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk/images/embassy_court4.jpg
http://www.imagesbrighton.com/images/2462-112.jpg

To this:

http://www.imagesbrighton.com/images/2632-83.jpg
http://www.imagesbrighton.com/images/2632-70.jpg

I can't believe its the same building. Shows what a lick of paint and bit of elbow-grease (ok maybe slightly more than that ;))can do to an area.

In principle i am against these towers as i like the city as it is with a lowrise sea frontage but i am getting a bit desperate for a Gehry project (I dream of one replacing Mondial House) in England now so i'm all for it. :)

Brighton boy, can you explain to me the council obsession with boules? We now have two stretches of prime seafront area dedicated to this obscure French sport. Surely the bandstand would have been a bigger priority than the walled boules ground.

Brighton boy, can you explain to me the council obsession with boules? We now have two stretches of prime seafront area dedicated to this obscure French sport. Surely the bandstand would have been a bigger priority than the walled boules ground.

lol I Guess they're trying to keep the old people happy, but yeah the bandstand should have been done up long ago, it's been rotting like that for over 20 years.

btw boules is actually an English game, but can someone post renders of these towers as i cant remember them.

Exiting times ahead for Brighton and Hove I reckon. I lived in Hove for two years (a couple of streets behind the King Alfred site) before I moved into Brighton only one week ago. Loved Hove to bits and especially liked to walk along the front at all times of the year and admire the stunning regency buildings. I wouldn't change them for the world. But the King Alfred area of the seafront is a disaster. What were the people that built the current monstrosity thinking of? The Frank Gehry design is a fresh, smart and dynamic approach to providing a state of the art leisure centre with much needed affordable housing too. It will also mark a clear line and a suitable contrast between the beauty of the hove seafront east of the KA and the dross to the west, towards portslade. It may also help in encouraging the smartening up of the area to the west. Yes, it is a contrast to the area but its not out of place. A benedorm hotel block it certainly aint. It shows true class that is in keeping with the rest of the seafront to the east because it shows innovation, imagination and daring - Something that Brighton and Hove are well known for.

I actually prefered the original design for the 37 storey buildings, the designs of which would have put Hove on the world map, but alas the NIMBYS weaved their evil web of militancy and got their way to reducing the height!

Still, what we have on offer is still of excellent quality, of inspiring design and is well worthy of Hove. Yes, there are some infrastructure issues but I understand that part of the proposal is to provide separate access roads into the complex. Also, the council has to earmark £1 million for sustainable seafront transport to ensure the thousands of expected visitors will be able travel to and from the sports centre without the surrounding roads grounding to a halt.

By the way... think its Brad Pitt who wants to get an appartment there (He is also involved with the designing of the building) not Tom Cruise!?

Welcome to the forums BrightonBreezy, nice to see people on here from Brighton and the south as most people on here seem to be from the northern cities or London.
Yes Brad Pitt is designing a restaurant inside one of the buildings and may buy one of the apartments, should be interesting to see if he's actually any good at his design work.

I agree with you I think Brighton has some very exciting times ahead, I have high hopes for the redevelopment of the Brighton Centre myself as the council have already said a tall building will be considered on the site, and I will be glad to see the back of the Brighton centre building and the adjoining kingswest building.

The new jubilee library (which has already recieved awards for it's design) and jubilee square development is also looking quite promising and should make a fine public space with some good bars, shops and restaurants opening shortly.

Cheers Brighton boy! Good to be on the site... Been watching it for a while now, mostly seeing whats going on in London but not posted anything before..

Its nice to see things are moving forward in our own back yard at last.. Its all so painfully, friggin slow getting anything through planning though.

Yes, Im exited about the plans for the Brighton Centre and think its exactly the right spot for the right sort of scraper... Maybe a Beetham!? This site has got loads of info on the project and clues to what we might expect..

http://www.urbanpractitioners.co.uk/brighton/

The marina will allso be an area to watch. Plenty gonna be happening there... Along with the land by the station (where a Beetham was recently denied planning permission.. although not that bothered about that cos I thought the designs were very average)

Shame on me cos Ive not even been to see the new library yet! :bash: You got any renders of the rest of the development at jubilee square or is it just a case of getting my ass down there to see whats going on!? lol..

Yeah there's a few images that I have found, there's a nice modern glass building going up at the entrance to the square, there's a pic of it here: http://www.jubileestreet.co.uk

I've also found a render of the new myhotel boutique hotel which will front the square:
http://www.artsteam.co.uk/images/myhotel.brighton/myhotel.1.jpg

And the library:
http://www.lcearch.com/images/bnlibrary.jpg

If you want to get down there yourself the main entrance (from new road) is still blocked off so you have to walk as if you're going to the prince regent swimming pool and turn left, or you could just take the north road entrance at the back.

If you want to see what the new development looks like you can go to the jubilee library (the building above) and see a scale model. The picture below shows the taller tower. There's also an article in todays argus about Brighton's future and business leaders and council members all agree that the only way is up and that people will just have to put up with high density developments like this since there's no way they are going to build on the downs.

http://www.theargus.co.uk/the_argus/news/NEWS10.html

Do love it here. Just been for a long walk along the seafront watching the kitesurfers and windsurfers. Best place to live in the UK.

http://tinypic.com/donne0.jpg

Two universities
Two airports (Shoreham and Gatwick)
The sea
The green rolling hills of the South Downs
Surrounded by picturesque Sussex villages
The largest Marina complex in Europe
A Royal Palace
An award-wining library
Some of the finest Regency terraces and squares anywhere
England’s largest arts festival
One of Britain’s largest celebrations of diversity (Pride)
One of the finest examples of early Modernism (Embassy Court)
The most restaurants per-head in the UK outside London
A lively gay scene
A lively clubbing scene
A conference centre used by all major UK political parties
A nudist beach
The first public electric railway in the world Volks railway)
A grid pattern of grand tree lined avenues (Hove)
The biggest Frank Gehry project in the UK (soon hopefully)

All of this, and less than an hour from London!

What other city offers all that?

Now we need something like that but 150m plus with two 100m twins around Canary Wharf - that would seriously kick ass :yes:

Cool.... :okay:

Thanks for the info about the Jubilee development guys..... Will def take a trip down there this weekend! Good summary pmun... Makes ya proud to be part of our fab city!

Good news about the expansion of Brighton city airport (shoreham) today in the argus:

Economy to take off with airport plan
by Sara Wallis

The preferred contractor to run Shoreham airport is planning to turn it into an international hub offering commercial flights all over Europe.

The Erinaceous Group plans to provide hundreds of jobs under a redevelopment which is expected to bring millions of pounds into the local economy.

The company will build a new railway station and park-and-ride if Worthing Borough and Brighton and Hove City councils, the airport's owners, agree to appoint it as the private sector partner to operate and develop the airport.

The blueprint includes the introduction of commercial flights to the UK and European destinations, including Paris, Edinburgh, Amsterdam and Dublin.

There would also be a visitor centre, aviation academy, business park, leisure services and mixed commercial activities on the airport's southern perimeter.

The airport, which has recently been rebranded as Brighton City Airport, would transfer to the new operator from April next year on a 150-year lease.

Erinaceous says it wants to begin with a five-year improvement programme of existing facilities at that stage. The company has proposed to protect the jobs and existing employment conditions of the airport's 27 staff and says it will not need to build new runways.

Danny Roberts, of business organisation Sussex Enterprise, said: "This is fantastic news for Shoreham and the local economy.

"If these plans go ahead, it would mean hundreds of job opportunities, as well as a significant increase in overseas travellers and visitors using the airport.

"Obviously, this will bring a huge economic boost to the area and impact a wide variety of industries while allowing the airport to develop much more commercially."

But some residents living near the airport are not seeing the news as a positive step.

Shoreham resident Martin Allen, 58, said: "The development to the airport will mean an increase in traffic. Although they are talking about building a station and say most of the traffic will be along the A27, there is still a question of traffic on the coast road.

"On the positive side, I think anything that can increase the economic well-being of the area is good."

Fantastic, I shall look forward to flying off to the continent from our own shoreham airport!
Good to see that they will build a new train station and park and ride too.

And bad news on the PR front for Gehry's proposal...


Give these people an inch and they take a city

Frank Gehry should be told to scale down his two 'Prescott' towers, or Hove will suffer the fate facing London's skyline

Simon Jenkins
Friday September 16, 2005
The Guardian


Walk west along the Brighton seafront. Ignore the horror of the conference centre. Ignore the sad carcass of the doomed West Pier. Ignore the detritus of half a century of dud town planning.
At the old Hove boundary your spirit starts to lift. At stately Brunswick Terrace order is restored. Brunswick Square washes inland on a tide of billowing stucco, one of the noblest squares in England. At Adelaide Crescent is a crescendo of architecture and landscape which surpasses anything in Bath. Hove by the sea is, in Betjeman's words, a rare English town one could safely call "her". It is lush and beautiful.


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Now lift the eyes west again and imagine two large "Prescotts" punching you in the face. (A Prescott is a tower sited anywhere that takes the deputy prime minister's fancy, like the 50 storeys he has just approved by the Thames in Vauxhall.) The two Hove towers, one of them of 25 storeys, are intended to crown a £250m development on the seafront. The Brighton and Hove council leader, Ken Bodfish, says the towers will make Hove "the city of this century". I assume that is what the citizens want it to be, though that would be news to me.
So far so local. But these are no ordinary towers. Their significance lies in their being designed by a truly inspirational architect, the Canadian Frank Gehry. To have a building by Gehry anywhere in England would be an honour. (We have only his small Maggie's Centre clinic in Scotland.) He has recruited help from the sculptor Antony Gormley. He even acknowledges a contribution from his "apprentice", the architecturally inclined actor Brad Pitt. Hence the local joke that the building is already "the Pitt's".

I would give much for a work by Gehry. I would have sacrificed the Tate Modern's Bankside power station for his Guggenheim in Bilbao, which actually cost less. I would certainly sacrifice the South Bank's concrete wilderness for his Disney Hall in Los Angeles. His exotic use of shape, colour and material can be exhilarating, and mercifully he hates large sheets of glass. Certainly Brighton could use a Gehry.

That does not mean any Gehry, anywhere. A building is art in the most public realm. A small building's client is a street. A tower's client is a whole city. Every citizen is entitled to a view on whether and where it should be built. Most of Gehry's work is a sophisticated set of interlocking planes, often influenced by marine themes. They can be uplifting, funny, clever, intelligent.

The Hove towers are plain silly. They are like crumpled balls of paper laid on top of each other, clad in a faintly sick sheath echoing the collapsing World Trade Centre. Gehry describes them as evoking "the movement of an Edwardian lady's dress on the seafront", reinforcing my view that whatever architects do, they should not speak.

To most of Gehry's work there is a logic and a discipline. The Hove towers appear to have none. Even so, their peeled-back surface and chaotic outline would not matter were the development merely low-rise. The adjacent, ground-hugging King Alfred sports centre looks exciting and should be built. The towers are a different matter. They are a scream, not a murmur. They yell out over Hove, demanding attention.

We have lost the language of regulating city buildings. The catastrophe of the point blocks about to mushroom across London is a tragic reprise of what happened in the 60s and 70s. Every vista, however dignified, is to be filled with a glass spike, pyramid, shard, wedge or tube. London's skyline will be left looking like some banal children's playpen littered with geometrical toys. The towers show no respect for their immediate surroundings, let alone to the horizon. They are architectural museum pieces using the city as showroom and scrapbook.

Such a museum was once curated by planning. Yet in British cities planning has lost its traditional battle against power in thrall to money - mostly John Prescott in thrall to the construction lobby. In London, the days when Very High Buildings (VHBs) were meant to be clustered away from residential or historic areas are over. Architects and developers hate clusters for the simple reason that other VHBs are hellish to be near. They want theirs isolated and visible from afar. They no longer know how to converse with streets or neighbourhoods. They know only how to punch them in the face. Environmental design is the notorious "turd in the plaza".

Bernard Levin pleaded that an architect be shot every year, pour encourager les autres. This was unfair. Architects are about work. If they claim to be about art, then someone else is paying. The fault for bad buildings lies in those whose task is to control them in the public's name, to reject the bad and promote the good. It is they and those to whom they answer in government who should be shot when an outrage occurs.

Good planning is the ultimate sign of a civilised community. Without it there would be few old buildings left in Britain's city centres. The whole of inner London would be a Bodfish dream, a "city of this century". We know exactly how it would have looked because it was actually designed in the years after the second world war by planners such as Abercrombie and Buchanan. It was to be a city of concrete decks and towers, a Stalingrad-on-Thames. Give these people an inch and they take a city.

Look at what they did when given Brasilia, Canberra, Cumbernauld and Milton Keynes.

The vistas along the seafront at Hove should be a national monument. It was here in the 1820s that the architects Charles Busby, Amon Wilds and Decimus Burton set out to create by the sea a more splendid version of Nash's contemporary Regent's Park in London. They succeeded.

Nothing should intrude on that splendour. The view east into central Brighton has already been desecrated by lumpy flats, a barracks of a conference and entertainment centre, and a wrecked pier, all winning Brighton any prize for "crap-town" council. But the marvellous flanking estates of Kemptown and Hove remain pristine. They are the glory of southern England.

Gehry's genius is not diminished by being told to scale down his design, to remain within the visual envelope of his site. He has reduced it once already. If the masterpieces of Busby, Wilds and Burton do not presume to offend his work, why should he presume to offend theirs? The Tate does not put Rothkos in the same room with Turners. Prescott would not site his towers in Parliament Square or his executive estates in Dovedale (yet).

Even the most philistine mind has some residual DNA that can tell the ugly or the inappropriate from the beautiful. It knows to cry nonsense at the trite maxim that "beauty lies in the eye of the beholder". There is such a thing as a public aesthetic, which is why we go to such lengths to save great art. Yet we care so little for art's most public form, townscape.

Modern cities are getting like zoos containing nothing but elephants. Hove still has birds of paradise. Why stamp on them?

simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk

Why is he calling them 'the Prescott Towers'? John Prescott has nothing to do with these unless it goes to a public enquiry (God forbid!)... Maybe he is getting confused with B&HA stadium at Falmer!?... Poor little lost soul! :pet:

Thats all Im saying on the subject... Hes article warrants an entire essay answer but Im not doing it now cos its Friday evening and Im off out to get drunk! lol! :booze:

You have to laugh at Simon Jenkin's article, wan't much the same said by many critics when the Royal Pavilion was remodelled as an Indian/Chinese folly by the Prince Regent? Even the glorious terraces and squares had their critics in their day!

The most important decision of the year should be announced this Tuesday (or so the rumours say). John Prescott is expected to announce whether Brighton and Hove Albion are given the go-ahead for the Falmer stadium. My F5 button will get quite a bashing that day. I don't think I shall do much work. Here's hoping it goes the right way.

On another point, does anyone think Beetham will re-submit their plans for the tower in the New England Quarter?

On another point, does anyone think Beetham will re-submit their plans for the tower in the New England Quarter?

I'd put money on it, although with the current decline in prices in property in Brighton and a potential oversupply of new builds (New England Quarter, West Street, area round the library) it may not be for a while...a very long while if the property market continues to fall as much as it did last month in Brighton (2% fall in September alone!).

I think their original design was deliberately a total minger submitted with the intention of smoothing the way for a shorter better designed version which will cause everyone to say "Oh that's so much better, yes please" whereas before they might have been a bit cooler. But like I said, don't expect construction to start for a while, even if a plan is submitted unless they sell half of it to hotel before building...then it might go ahead. Got to admit, it's prime location, and one of the few spots in Brighton that could weather the coming financial storm, but Beetham may become very exposed if they haven't sold the majority of their current developments 'off-plan', so that may be a reason for them to hang back.

btw, here's a pictures I took of the model in the Jubilee library for the Gehry designs. It's totally split the community. You're either very for, or very against. I hate the colours, but othewise I like it:

http://tinypic.com/estb3d.jpg

ohh dear... they look like jelly on a plate, wibble wobble. Just looking at that picture with the sguiggles and shapes makes me naushious! :(

I think it is beautiful and unique, absolutely love it.

Two universities
Two airports (Shoreham and Gatwick)
The sea
The green rolling hills of the South Downs
Surrounded by picturesque Sussex villages
The largest Marina complex in Europe
A Royal Palace
An award-wining library
Some of the finest Regency terraces and squares anywhere
England’s largest arts festival
One of Britain’s largest celebrations of diversity (Pride)
One of the finest examples of early Modernism (Embassy Court)
The most restaurants per-head in the UK outside London
A lively gay scene
A lively clubbing scene
A conference centre used by all major UK political parties
A nudist beach
The first public electric railway in the world Volks railway)
A grid pattern of grand tree lined avenues (Hove)
The biggest Frank Gehry project in the UK (soon hopefully)

All of this, and less than an hour from London!

What other city offers all that?

And soon to be a fabulous sports stadium at Falmer if the NIMBYs don't succeed with their judicial review plans.

Don't worry sussex albion, the chances that the nimbys will succeed is next to zero, they would have to prove that somehow the government was breaking the law in giving planning permission for falmer.
Brighton finally will have a football club to be proud of! :)
Premiership here we come!