November 3, 2005
Thursday Travesty or Triumph IV
Well, its been quite a long time, didn't expect to take quite this long to get my intravenous hookup back in, but sometimes when you disconnect the shock can really stick it to you. Or there could be some funkalicious connection issues with the covblogs server that annoy you.
Well, the topic this time was a bit harder to pick. I wasn't entirely sure what direction to go in, but I've settled on something a bit bigger than the past couple: the Bradford redesign, executed by the firm of one Will Alsop (Alsop Ltd -- good luck interpreting the website, if you can understand its form and function, please come back and let me know what you've discovered). At any rate, what we have here is a project that doesn't lack in ambition. Its a wild redesign of the city of Bradford in England; Bradford has a bit of history, as do most English cities, but on the whole is unremarkable (the Bronte sisters, shudder, appear to be Bradford's most famous residents).
Bradford's redesign attempts to seperate the city into four parts: The Bowl, The Channel, The Market & The Valley, each intended to have distinctive 'feel' and emphasis:
The theory behind the new districts is an attempt to reconnect Bradford with its historical linkage to waterways (Bradford being a corruption of Broadford)-- thus the Bowl features a massive lake, the Channel digs a long canal and attempts to inspire development along the new waterfront, and the Valley includes a restored wetlands habitat. The Bowl, where City Hall is located, is probably the centerpiece of his plan, and can be seen here:
The lake there is completely new and in the rather odd shape of a speech bubble. In the bottom left of the image, you can also see the "Sensory Garden", detailed in this first image (technically the Sensory Garden is in the Valley, so you can see that these districts are not seperated by any great distance):
I have also handily provided you with a detail of the Bowl as seen at the groundplane:
The wetlands portion of the project, which I believe is located in the "Valley" portion of the project, is a bit more traditional; it is included primarily for its environmental impact, but is also expected to provide a place for birdwatching and so on:
Should you care to explore Bradford's regeneration plan in more depth, the city has set up a rather detailed and excellent website here (you can even watch a film about the redevelopment plan). Aslop's plan was also featured in MoMA's "Groundswell" exhibition, which can be explored through the book version or visited at MoMA's website (requires flash).