Victoria Gate: Not Everyone’s Taste

A sordid cathedral

Cathedrals of sordid aspiration – with added heritage poppycock. Walter Grumpius takes a look at the Victoria Gate development …

Over the weekend I stared at the sites of the promised vanities. Which will open its doors first: Bradford’s glorified flea market in the Westfield depression or the high-end tat fest at Victoria Gate in Leeds? Which one will reach most effortlessly for the vapid and platitudinous? Will either of these cathedrals of sordid aspiration contain a bookshop?

Ah yes, the heritage bit

I’ve already written about the imminent addition to Bradford’s vibrant retail profile, so shall concentrate here on the lotus-eaters’ paradise envisaged for Leeds. At the moment, apart from the pile of rubble and enclosing fence where once was the Union Road car park, and the scaffolding and Christoesque draperies on the buildings at the bottom of Eastgate, one’s notion of the future of the Victoria Gate development has to be derived entirely from the published – but clearly not competently edited – scheme.

I’ve read it so you don’t need to bother (and I wouldn’t).

The first word that engages from this dishearteningly illiterate sludge is ‘heritage’ as in ‘a flagship John Lewis store with a striking façade drawing on Leeds’ textile heritage’. Not done yet, the word appears again regarding the design for the contiguous multi-storey car park which will ‘draw on Leeds’ textile heritage and through the use of twisted fins create an illusion of a woven fabric’. Interestingly this source of inspiration is contradicted two sentences later where we are told of ‘the fins taking inspiration from the dynamic geometry of wind turbines’. Weaving and wind turbines are all the same kind of thing of course. Aren’t they?

Inspiration, you feel, is at its most fecund when it seeps from many sources. So to looms and turbines we can add ‘taking inspiration from the architectural character of the Bloomfield [sic] buildings’. It is good to note that Sir Reginald Blomfield is receiving a (thrice-misspelt) name check. However, looking at the artist’s projections for Victoria Gate, I have to admit I am struggling to recognise those points of inspiration.

But let’s go back to ‘heritage’ and credit that the planners have soaked themselves in Leeds’ textile past and from this immersion could derive designs which are drenched in that heritage. Will the understanding of our textile heritage show? Or will it all just add up to a gormless Minerva-style redaction?

Actually what is the point of deferring to heritage at all? Let the textile heritage stand on its own two feet; there are plenty of mill buildings in Leeds. When creating the new, the important thing is to consider the immediate built context – the buildings in the vicinity – and the perspective from different viewpoints. Forget the dewy-eyed ‘drawing on heritage’ poppycock, the important thing is: will the new buildings get on with the neighbours? That is not to require uniformity or similarity but harmony.

It’s a knack; buildings can be radically different but harmonise perfectly – think for example of two of the most perfect developments in Leeds: the Woodhouse Lane Car Park and its lovely-from-every-angle neighbours, the Broadcasting House suite. They adorn and enhance each other and the buildings around glow in the reflected radiance. How will Victoria Gate look in juxtaposition to the Playhouse, Quarry House, Kirkgate Market, the bus station or down the prospect of the Headrow, and how will the neighbours look alongside it? I sense that the Victoria Gate scheme will lack tact, manners and restraint and will be all arrogance and braggadocio.

It is important when considering these developments not to get too sentimental about what has been, or will be, lost. Leeds’ Millennium Square, subject of some recent criticism hereabouts, replaced a quite unlamented car park. The buildings around Forster Square in Bradford demanded demolition, whatever monument to ghastliness arises in their place in the Westfield Sink. And no matter what prodigy appears at the bottom of Eastgate, there should be no tears wasted on the demise of the repugnant Millgarth Police Station or the repellent Union Street car park. Good riddance.

Union Street carpark, as was

So what will appear? The illustrated projections are a lot more instructive than the written scheme but I’ll attempt to make sense of the latter. Essentially, a four-floored John Lewis department store will front the development, phase one of which – due for completion by autumn 2016 – will also include twin arcades linking Lewis to the Victoria Quarter and a multi-storey garage for 800 cars where the police station currently stands. The John Lewis store will ‘draw on Leeds’ textile and cloth heritage [yawn] to create a building with texture’. Perhaps the intention is to clad it in worsted. You can’t help feeling that this constant harping on about textile heritage is part of a desperate strategy to identify a unifying signature for a scheme of such disparate components.

The John Lewis building’s façade ‘has two distinct elements’ (count them):

‘plinths’ – ah, plinths, yes
‘architectural detailing on the upper floors’ – architectural detailing on a building! whatever next: dental detailing, ontological detailing?
‘an iconic Place to Eat Restaurant on the top floor with a view over Eastgate’ – I can scarcely contain myself.

Enough already. I’m aware that Culture Vulture readers’ tolerance of sense-free drivel will stretch only so far and, before snapping their patience entirely, am keen to bring to them the words of the property director of John Lewis, a cove named Jeremy Collins who writes: ‘Leeds City Centre dominates the regional catchment, and is the natural location for a full-line flagship John Lewis Department Store. Victoria Gate complements the established Victoria Quarter and will provide the affluent catchment with a premium quality shopping destination’.

Christo on Eastgate

Apart from speculating on what a full-line flagship is, it’s that word ‘affluent’ that leaps out. Social inclusion is clearly not part of the mission statement. The website blurb expands on Collins’ words thus: ‘Victoria Gate represents a huge opportunity for retailers with £540m additional sales available from the highly affluent catchment areas such as Harrogate, Ilkley and York as well as further attracting the city’s fashion conscious shopper and the strong population of wealthy students’. These are presumably the same students who will be graduating from their studies with £27,000 each of debt. So they’ve been spending it all in John Lewis; the scallywags!

It is at this point in the scheme, as the prospect of unfettered access to an economy ‘worth £52 billion per annum’ starts to dawn on the writer, that his words begin to slip completely the leash of meaning. The text continues with a kind of gushing vacuous abandon, ‘Leeds ranks fourth in terms of potential upscale shoppers in the UK’. Come again? What in the name of vibrant retail is an upscale shopper? How do you qualify? Why is Leeds ranked only fourth in the world of potential upscale shopping? And how on earth is this potentiality measured? How do they know it is fourth?

It’s probably best to move away from this dadaistic word-slop and instead walk round the skirts of the site itself where you will see the artist’s projections on the enclosure hoardings. These are not entirely contemptible. Indeed, as with the Trinity Centre, there are two separate judgements to be made here, socio-economico-politico-ideologico-ethical on the one hand and aesthetic on the other. Does Leeds need another retail circus? I cannot conceive of a single reason why I might want to go there for an afternoon of vibrant shopping – indeed the very idea fills me with a soul-sapping taedium vitae – but I daresay the potential upscalers are already planning their opening day strategies.

A Victorian critic such as John Ruskin would have argued that aesthetic judgement cannot be divorced from serious moral purpose and that such a purpose is logically impossible to predicate on an enterprise like Victoria Gate. Therefore it must be worthless aesthetically. But I am less fastidious. I enjoy looking at and walking through Trinity and have even patronised one of its kitchen stalls in a fallible moment. I like what Trinity has done for its neighbourhood and therefore am predisposed to retain an open mind about Victoria Gate as a piece of architecture. But please, no Minerva or other fatuous applications to Leeds’ textile heritage!