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Posted by Michael Bulatovich on January 21, 2007, 12:13 pm
>
>> On 21 Jan 2007, Michael Bulatovich wrote
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ..
>>>>>>> The rejected tower. Brunswick Quay on the menu:
>>>>>>> http://www.saveliverpooldocks.co.uk/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We've seen the link to what scant documentation there is on
>>>>>> this thing earlier in the thread.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I live in a city with a few tall mistakes, and been to others
>>>>>> with them, so I'm sensitive to the issues of tall buildings
>>>>>> where they meet grade. I haven't seen anything but 3d
>>>>>> renderings from great distances, and they don't convince me
>>>>>> of anything important.
>>>>>
>>>>> That was my assessment too.
>>>>> Long distance pretty pictures won't convince the masses.
>>>>> John has a problem with accepting that fact.
>>>>
>>>> The governments chief architect said the site was ideal for a
>>>> tall building. On a bend in a river, near where an escarpment
>>>> falls away, water on two sides - the river and the docks. It
>>>> "is" a very good site indeed for a tall - if you walked around
>>>> the site you would see why. The more iconic the tower the
>>>> better. A golden opportunity lost.
>>>>
>>>> The site is on reclaimed flat land. The Liverpool dock estate
>>>> was built into the river, not cut into the land.
>>>
>>> That's not a license to put up any tall building, surely.
>>
>> And it's certainly not a licence to not bother with critical
>> details (like how it works at grade).
>
> http://i12.tinypic.com/48pnuj6.jpg
>
> The red lines are around three infilled docks - Toxteth, Harrington and
> Herculaneum. The parallel sheds are old transit sheds that were on the
> quays, the docks have been filled in creating a large land mass between
> the sheds. The triangular white shed to the north of the red line is the
> site, near the river locks. To the south of the site is the infilled
> Toxteth Dock. To the north of the red line is Brunswick Dock which is
> filled with water. The site will have water around it on three sides. It
> think it meets grade very well. Some of the sheds were scheduled for
> demolition.
I'm not asking you to make a case for the project, and I don't want to be
the voice of opposition to it, but a satellite photo doesn't make the case
for the building any better that does a 3d montage from a mile away, IMHO.
When reclaiming abandoned, formerly industrial, wastelands there is often a
contingent that will argue that 'anything is better than what's there now".
This is not the forward thinking that you need to build cities. This is
'urban panic'.
Each large building affect everything that comes after it, and if you make a
really big mistake, it'll take generations to correct it. I'm not sure you
understand what I mean about the relation to grade, and I'm not sure I
understand what is so important about the first tall building going up in
this area having to be 'iconic' (whatever that means.) Successful cities are
made primarily of successful 'fabric'- individual bits of building that
share numerous values and attitudes towards the public realm. Within that
fabric, opportunism exist to make building that are special, either because
of the site, the purpose, or the vision of the designer, or any combination
of these. To try to start out making icons might set in motion a 'higher,
louder, faster' dynamic which has ruined a number of young North American
cities. You don't want to live in wall-to-wall special.
From what I've seen there is nothing particularly 'iconic' about that
design. It's *big*. Is that it? It's office space for rent. That can't be
it. At the urban scale, as a piece of sculpture, I've seen worse, but this
is only a very small piece of the puzzle. It doesn't seem to possess any
detail that can't be rendered at 1:500.
What, for example, are they finely texture brownish blocks to the right of
the red rectangle? Are those rowhouses? I hope not. That big blank podium of
this design would require some serious transitional elements not to complete
dominate that fabric.
Another question: Is there a published plan for the redevelopment of the
area including massing? How does this project fit into that plan? How good
*is* that plan? If someone is now prepared to pile that many floors on one
site, it may be that a patient attitude to the pace of development would be
prudent, as there will surely be others who might do a more sensitive
reading of the spirit of the place. Have you got any direct stake in this
thing?
--
MichaelB
www.michaelbulatovich.ca
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