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New Towns

Started by Captain Crunch, May 30, 2020, 04:16:18 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

vainsharpdad


Shops - with a tower block on top, I think.
The Get Carter Car Park was contemporary with this, mind.

idunnosomename

amazingly the os 25" is missing for that square so i admit defeat. sure some local can work it out tho

assuming it's here?
https://www.google.com/maps/@54.9749807,-1.6081538,95a,35y,277.88h,61.3t/data=!3m1!1e3

edit yes the get carter car park was in gateshead of course

Sony Walkman Prophecies

Quote from: Captain Crunch on June 02, 2020, 05:17:55 PM
To my shame I only recently found out Prince Charles is not only a massive thicko but also an interfering prick.  I've always had a bit of a soft spot for No.1 Poultry but didn't realise the site was once earmarked for an amber tower designed by Mies van der Rohe.

Full story and pics.

And just because I now can't get enough of unbuilt city plans.

They should have just left the gothic building that was there (a bank, I think) well alone. It don't think it was worth demolishing for the PoMo monstrosity that currently sits there, and I think the Van Der Rohe effort is only marginally better. Neither design has aged well.

Incidentally, there's a Mies Van Der Rhode copy just around the corner (8 Bishopsgate) that's just been torn down, so I don't think a genuine one @ Bank would have lasted much longer anyway.

Re: Poundbury. Although it comes in for a lot of flack, I've got a soft spot for it. The same people who mockingly call it derivative are quite content to coo over Victorian architecture, and almost all Victorian architecture is mock-classical, mock-Tudor, mock-something. In an idea world we'd have ornamental elements from past styles incorporated into more modern designs, which is slowly starting to come back in again (see: Chelsea Barracks, Arundel St. apartments) but until then reboots of yesteryear is fine by me. At least no one is still making concrete boxes.

idunnosomename

the mappin and webb building that is SO 1870s that got demolished for the pet project of life peer Peter Palumbo, Baron Palumbo



it's not amazing but it wasn't worth demolishing for what it was replaced with

of course next to it is Lutyens' Midland Bank which is gorge. And then you've got Soane's bank of england which was mercilessly gutfucked in the 1930s

buzby

Quote from: vainsharpdad on June 02, 2020, 11:16:38 PM
They did try and turn Newcastle into a sort of Brasilia-Style city. T. Dan Smith wanted concrete walkways to make it a 'City in the sky'. Which obviously involved knocking down some of the finest architecture in the North East. Him being a corrupt shit put a stop to that, but not before he did a fair bit of damage.
I have friends up there and I've always been fascinated by what was allowed to happen to the city centre in T. Dan's era. I was up there a couple of years ago for the Great Exhibition of the North and was delighted to find thay had put the city archtect's planning model of the city centre out on display in the Central Library as part of it.

Liverpool had a similar model that used to be on display in the foyer of the old City Architect's office which showed all the unbuilt plans for what they wanted to do. We had a similar network of proposed elevated walkways (called sky bridges, part of the 1965 Shankland Plan for the redevelopment of the city centre) that were mean to connect all the major buildings at first floor level, of which only a small proportion were built:

The map also shows the route of the proposed Liverpool Inner Motorway, which thankfully never made it past the planning stages, unlike Newcastle's. The first walkway went up over James Street in 1970, but almost all of the walkways that were built were torn down in the 90s and 00s, and the only evidece of them ever existing being mismatched filled-in gaps in the walls of buildings at first floor level. This was the bridge that crossed over Old Hall St. from Moorfields Station:

Here's the filled in hole in the station wall after it was demolished:

The other entrance to Moorfields Station (the one actually in Moorfields) was built at first floor level but the bridges to connect to it were never built, so you have the strange situation where you have to go upstairs to enter an underground station:


The last to go was the bridge that crossed The Strand, the 6-lane dual carriageway that cuts the riverfront off from the rest of the city (it was built in place of the elevated section of the LIM that was planned to go along that route). It was demolished in 2007.


One of the other things that was part of the Great Exhibition of the North in the Baltic gallery was the plans and models for Ryder & Yates' Tyne Deck proposal from 1969, to pave over the river at the quayside and build a new civic centre and auditorium there:



The Culture Bunker

Quote from: buzby on June 03, 2020, 09:56:22 AMThe map also shows the route of the proposed Liverpool Inner Motorway, which thankfully never made it past the planning stages, unlike Newcastle's.
The excellent Pathetic Motorways website says at some point there were plans for this in Manchester - the Mancunian Way was to be part of the Southern section of a network of motorways that would have circled the city centre, as well as featuring motorway grade routes heading away from the city towards the South, East and North West.

https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/manchester_inner_ring_road/

Not quite sure how it would have all worked out if they had managed to knock all that together.

Bazooka

Quote from: idunnosomename on June 02, 2020, 11:53:41 PM
spice zombies really seem to have diminished last year or so. saw one at the bottom of the big fancy retail street in leeds basically shitting himself couple years ago. it really is horrible stuff

Not surprising, Spice is really high in fibre.

idunnosomename

The spice must flow (out of your arse)

Paul Calf

Quote from: NattyDread 2 on June 02, 2020, 12:53:43 PM
Yes, that went sometime in the '90s. Our band played there once at some local battle of the bands type thing. My sister saw Ice T and Bodycount there. Big rave venue too.

In the early 90s one of my favourite things to do in Edinburgh was to sit in Waverley Station on a Saturday or Sunday morning and watch the dayglo hordes come in.

I was too poor to afford ecstasy[nb]I was too poor to afford more than one cup of coffee[/nb] at the time and was hoping for a contact high.

JesusAndYourBush

Quote from: idunnosomename on May 31, 2020, 02:20:43 AM
dear jim could you fix it for me

Oy oy oy, gimme 'nother fix!

buzby

Quote from: Clatty McCutcheon on June 02, 2020, 12:34:52 PM
There used to be Livingston Forum too? IIRC it was just a big concrete hangar though - probably took advantage of the fact that Edinburgh lacked a big concrete shed type venue like the Exhibition Centres in Glasgow and Aberdeen.
Closed in 1996 and demolished in 1998 apparently, to make way for the McArthur Glen Outlet Village.

It had been built by David Murray in 1977 to house his Livingston Bulls basketball team. He then bought Rangers in 1988 and the English basketball team the Kingston Kings, moving them to Glasgow and renaming them Glasgow Rangers. They played against each other in the 1988-89 UK season of the new UK-wide basketball league finishing first and second, but then Murray had a falling out with the league over wanting to have both teams use the Forum as their home ground on alternate weekends, so he wound them up and concentrated on football. Kingston moved back down south, and Murray gave the Forum to the LDC for free.

They started putting on more gigs there, but running a music venue was outside their experience so they called in the Edinburgh promoters the Demarcos to take it over. Jon Gaunt (the talk radio DJ) knew the Demarcos as he had been hiring their leisure centre in Edinburgh to put on Fringe events every year as part of the Tic Toc Theatre Co-Op from Coventry. They had just gone bust, so the Demarcos contacted him and asked him if he wanted the job running the Forum for them, and part of the deal was the LDC woudl give him the choice of a house in the town to live in rent-free for a year. Gaunt took up the offer and the Demarcos started to turn the (now Marco's) Forum's fortunes around. (for instance, the LDC had started hiring it out for rave nights, charging the promoters £700. Gaunt looked through the books and saw how much money they were taking and told them the price was going up tenfold).



H-O-W-L


vainsharpdad

Quote from: idunnosomename on June 03, 2020, 01:12:18 AM
amazingly the os 25" is missing for that square so i admit defeat. sure some local can work it out tho

assuming it's here?
https://www.google.com/maps/@54.9749807,-1.6081538,95a,35y,277.88h,61.3t/data=!3m1!1e3

edit yes the get carter car park was in gateshead of course

Yes that's right - it's the building with the Evans Cycles label on it. I think it's a clothes shop downstairs.

Quote from: The Culture Bunker on June 03, 2020, 10:17:43 AM
The excellent Pathetic Motorways website says at some point there were plans for this in Manchester - the Mancunian Way was to be part of the Southern section of a network of motorways that would have circled the city centre, as well as featuring motorway grade routes heading away from the city towards the South, East and North West.

https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/manchester_inner_ring_road/

Not quite sure how it would have all worked out if they had managed to knock all that together.

When I lived in Luton, the place had an inner-city ring-road. It's quite an achievement to make that place less pleasant, but fair play to them - they managed it.

@buzby

I hadn't seen those images before - thanks for sharing.

Ambient Sheep

For a couple of weeks now, Talking Pictures TV has been running a little 20 minute film from 1974 called Dial-a-Bus in Harlow, about a pioneering scheme as the title describes.

I actually remember seeing the leaflets about this at the time as a kid, sadly being in a little village outside the town I never got to try it.  Anyway, on first glance it has some nice footage of vintage Harlow if nothing else.

Its last two showings for now are tomorrow, Sun 5th July at 20:05, and Wed 15th July at 16:35.

Freeview/YouView 81, Sky 328, Virgin 445, Freesat 306.

Gurke and Hare

Since this thread started with Stevenage, I thought people might like to see this Postcard from the Past off of Twitter today. Fine Fare!


Captain Crunch

There's a new book on New Towns - New Towns: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth.  Bit pricey for an impulse buy but might be worth keeping an eye on. 

Shoulders?-Stomach!

QuoteOne of the other things that was part of the Great Exhibition of the North in the Baltic gallery was the plans and models for Ryder & Yates' Tyne Deck proposal from 1969, to pave over the river at the quayside and build a new civic centre and auditorium there

Not much to say other than...yikes.

Neomod

Quote from: Gurke and Hare on November 13, 2020, 09:53:23 AM
Since this thread started with Stevenage, I thought people might like to see this Postcard from the Past off of Twitter today. Fine Fare!



Ahh, such oversaturated optimism where the sun is always shining.

Lovely stuff.

Fr.Bigley

Quote from: Gurke and Hare on November 13, 2020, 09:53:23 AM
Since this thread started with Stevenage, I thought people might like to see this Postcard from the Past off of Twitter today. Fine Fare!



Man, I'd love to take a shit off that 10 meter board/clock tower. I can hear the splash aready and the local population bleating "this is all fucking wrong, this".

shiftwork2

Quote from: Gurke and Hare on November 13, 2020, 09:53:23 AM


I took a minor detour into Stevenage a few months ago partly as a result of this thread.  This area is undergoing some building work but the clock is visible.  Obviously didn't seem as positive as either this postcard or 'Mulberry Bush' makes out but it's definitely one of the more interesting new towns.

Blue Jam

Whatever happened to Blair/Brown's plans for "Eco Towns"? Did the Tories nix them or did anything get built before they got back in?

dissolute ocelot

Quote from: Blue Jam on November 16, 2020, 01:44:08 PM
Whatever happened to Blair/Brown's plans for "Eco Towns"? Did the Tories nix them or did anything get built before they got back in?

"Who killed the eco-town?" The Architects Journal reckons they were totally unrealistic: you can't just chuck down 10,000 houses and expect nobody to mind. The most advanced proposal was Rackheath NE of Norwich (wikipedia); there were a lot of problems, not least difficulties upgrading the railway and the feeling that building a massive new dual carriageway might not be all that "eco". St Austell in Cornwall was one of the other more advanced but there were complaints about traffic, environmental damage, and all the other things an eco town shouldn't do. Now the Tories are desperately planning how to relax planning guidelines, but they're unlikely to get around the immutable law that Conservative voters don't want a new town near them.

Blue Jam

Thanks for that DO, that was an interesting read.

Camp Tramp

Interesting to see Cramlington and Newcastle in here, I worked in one and lived and worked in the other.

I spent all my time in Cramlington at Manor Walks, where I used to work the first time I went to Uni. I wasn't aware that there was more to the town than the shopping centre?

Rolf Lundgren

Quote from: Gurke and Hare on November 13, 2020, 09:53:23 AM


Stevenage hasn't changed a great deal from that picture. The clock tower is still there and those buildings look roughly the same. That supermarket is now a Starbucks on the corner and Woolworths is Wilko's.

Having grown up around there, I'm surprised by the love for Stevenage town centre in this thread. It's reputation hasn't been great over the years though I think it's exacerbated by being surrounded by very pretty places in Hertfordshire which also engenders a snobbishness. Stevenage and Hatfield are very much considered the ugly sisters. I've always had an admiration for the place but well aware of it's faults.

Considering it was all carefully planned out, the centre is a cold, hard mess. It doesn't quite join up the way it should with precincts of shops leading to emptier and emptier lots that tail off into concrete nothingness. The square pictured above should be a lively hub of stall holders, public seating and buskers but always feels empty. There's little sense of leisure with virtually no restaurants or pubs. There's one Wetherspoons in what was once a lively area before they all packed up. All the eateries are your chain brands in the Leisure Park and the independents and pubs worth going to are 10 minutes away in the pleasant Old Town.

They've recently built loads of apartments in the town centre which has done little to improve the look and due to the proximity to the station it's effectively becoming a commuter bubble, full of people who don't care about the town thriving. I do feel it gets a rough ride from people but creating a bit of life and community in the town centre itself would go some way to making people feel prouder to live there.

Captain Crunch

Quote from: Rolf Lundgren on November 19, 2020, 12:36:30 AMHaving grown up around there, I'm surprised by the love for Stevenage town centre in this thread. It's reputation hasn't been great over the years though I think it's exacerbated by being surrounded by very pretty places in Hertfordshire which also engenders a snobbishness. Stevenage and Hatfield are very much considered the ugly sisters. I've always had an admiration for the place but well aware of it's faults.

I'm just a tart for flats above shops done well.  Stevenage:



But then look at Chrisp Street which is – I believe – widely praised:



Captain Crunch

In other news, John Grindrod (Concretopia) has updated his reading list, some interesting looking books mentioned here:

https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/grindrod

Shoulders?-Stomach!

#147
I really like developments where there is some built in shade/cover from the rain.

I think that's the nicest thing I can bring myself to say about these precincts otherwise.

Once the buildings themselves show their age, when shopping habits move on and big anchor businesses set up shop in out of town retail parks and shopping centres it sets off a spiral of decay. Uncared for and unloved (largely) spaces become gradually more poorly maintained and vandalised leading to lighter footfall, more vacant lots in repeating decline. Some of them are simply not thought through, for example The Moor in Sheffield leads nowhere, so there is a fundamental problem in that when you reach the end of the strip the city centre seems to stop, it is poorly integrated and just a dour depressing place to be. And that's not even the worst shopping area in the centre. They gave it a facelift a few years ago but you can tell it has been done on the cheap and it has the vibe of a place most of the city's residents overlook even exists.

The most hateable thing about the era for me is the flipside of what a lot of brutalism fans love. With optimism came naivete and penny pinching, leading to fairly adventurous projects done poorly, drastically reducing their lifespan while lumbering owners with a legacy of maintenance costs. By contrast the structure of most new buildings you see erected these days, bland, expensive and bureaucratic, looks functional and durable, like they will be in place for many decades.

Stevenage does have a sporting hall of fame on the walk from the station to the centre.

Which is nice.

studpuppet

Quote from: A Hat Like That on November 25, 2020, 05:18:07 PM
Stevenage does have a sporting hall of fame on the walk from the station to the centre.

Is it just a stretched picture of Lewis Hamilton lying on a chaise longue?