Birmingham’s vision for its future already seems outdated | Opinion

Birmingham’s relentless urge to self-destruct continues. The threat to James Roberts’ 1962 Smallbrook Ringway building is still unsolved and continues to grab the headlines. The campaign group Save Smallbrook (of which I am a member) is now seeking a judicial review of the planning committee’s approval for the redevelopment on the basis that the carbon consequences of the demolition and redevelopment of the Ringway building were not adequately considered in the decision. We are waiting for the judge’s decision: in the meantime we are raising money to pay for the review.

But across the city centre, another fine concrete building from the same architectural period is also under threat. 1 Lancaster Circus was built in 1958, designed by architects J. Alfred Harper and Son, as the headquarters for motor and cycling retailer Halfords. It takes up an entire block, and its 200-foot-long, six-story main elevation faces Lancaster Circus, the most intricate intersection on the city’s inner ring road, now mostly dismantled.

Beneath a large roundabout, the tunnels carry traffic to and from the A34 to Walsall, and above the roundabout a curved underpass carries traffic to and from the A38(M) and Spaghetti Junction. It’s all symbolic of the car-crazy city of the 1960s. The mayor’s stated intention is to remove the three-level intersection and replace it with something more pedestrian-friendly, but there’s no specific proposal yet.

Between the A34 and A38 is 1 Lancaster Circus, a sober and urban piece of modern street architecture. It just needs the streets put back together. Halfords moved to Redditch in 1971 and the building became the first and only home of West Midlands County Council during that brief pre-Thatcher period of local metropolitan regional government.

Birmingham City Council then took over the building and housed the planning and highways departments until, already under financial pressure, the council vacated the building in 2022, shrinking its post-Covid office space, with more staff continuing to work from home. The building is in good physical condition and could easily be converted to new economic uses: if necessary by cutting an atrium into its deep plan.

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Sama Developments proposal for 1 Lancaster Circus

Source: Stride Treglown/Sama Evolutions

The footprint of the Sama Developments proposal

Source: Stride Treglown/Sama Evolutions

It is now owned by Sama Developments, which claims to be a Shariah-compliant developer, whatever that might mean for the urban form. They propose to demolish it and replace it with two independent student accommodation towers. This is typical of the fragmentation of the city fabric that is happening all over the city center and beyond.

Developers are encouraged to build high-rises by city council planners because tall buildings are considered to convey civic and commercial prestige. There are people who support this wrong policy. I occasionally read online sites like SkyscraperCity, whose subscribers are impressed by new tall buildings. They have an interest in architecture, but it seems to be limited to one dimension: their only criterion for good architectural design is height – if it’s tall, it’s good.

The existing building 1 Lancaster Circus is in the form of a street block which has the capacity to become part of a restored urban pattern based on street and square. The main southern elevation could successfully address a square of similar size, which could replace the current highway jungle.

Across the flyover is another handsome building designed to address the streets, the Grade II listed 1935 Central Fire Station, successfully converted into student accommodation by Bob Ghosh’s former practice, Kinetic. It is the triangular perimeter block in the foreground of the aerial view of Sama Developments. It provides a model for what should happen to its neighbor 1 Lancaster Circus.

Instead, we have a proposal that would destroy a solid, reusable modern building, with all the carbon-releasing consequences, contrary to Birmingham’s net-zero policy: a building that has the capacity to be part of a civilized street fabric. .

This type of material is being promoted in the current Our Future City core area strategy document, which I previously wrote about in BD. It proposes that Birmingham become more like European cities such as Lyon, Brussels and Budapest. The central areas of these towns have a medium-rise fabric predominantly of streets and blocks of approximately six storeys (height 1 Lancaster Circus). They are also relatively free of tall towers and are popular places to live.

But Our Future City, at the same time, contradicts itself by including absurd CGIs showing isolated tall buildings emerging from the jungle of trees: like surreal fragments of Le Corbusier’s La Ville Radieuse, but a hundred years too late. One of the CGIs actually shows a future Lancaster Circus, and instead of the existing building #1 there are… two towers standing among the trees.

Each of the CGIs is thoughtfully titled “This concept image is an artist’s impression to stimulate discussion. It is not a proposal or a fixed plan”. This disclaimer is naive. Why would you include imaginary images of parts of the city in a policy document if you don’t want them to be seen as illustrating the planners’ preferred vision?

Sama Developments and their architects Stride Treglown took the picture literally and reproduced it in the form of a development proposal, perhaps understandably. But it’s a 100-year-old picture of a utopian city of the future that 50 years ago was proven not to work. It is a bankrupt view.

>> Also read: Is Birmingham’s vision for a greener, high-density city center achievable?