Vibrant is a word no one ever used about Eastgate. Perhaps that’s why the wrecking ball was set loose on the place. Seems like the whole of Leeds city centre has gotten itchy lately with a rash of vibrantosis, and every new bar, restaurant, concept shop and bike rack is now routinely touted as the ne plus ultra of vivacity. You can’t put up a brolly on Briggate these days without it being, at the very least, effervescent.
This is not a bad thing. At least in architectural terms. Eastgate was dull, solid, dependable. Bourgeois at best. The closest it ever got to vibrant was Boxing Day 1981 when someone turned the jukebox up far too loud in Hoagy’s and the regulars conga’d up to the gas showroom singing Wizard’s I Wish it Could be Christmas Every Day, causing a traffic jam all the way back to Bramley. That was the last time I allowed dad to take me on a bender.
What is replacing Eastgate is much better. Strikingly beautiful. I’d even go so far as to say Victoria Gate was vibrant even. As a building I think Leeds is getting a bloody good deal. I am looking forward to seeing it open.
I’ll probably never go inside, however. The hoardings surrounding the demolition describe the development as “high end, aspirational retail”. I’m more an arse end, aimless, skint type. I’m not the targetted demographic, so I’ll probably just gaze admiringly at the terracotta and wonder where the nearest decent pub is now they’ve demolished Hoagy’s.
And, though I happily admit I love the look of Victoria Gate – it’s not just another glass box, it’s a thrilling piece of 3D theatre – I’m not sure they are selling it all that well. I passed the shop on Vicar Lane this afternoon where there was obviously an information/consultation event a while ago and read the boards in the window.
These metaphors don’t mix. Even Heston Blumenthal couldn’t get them to work together. Textile/turbine? Come on now, whoever wrote this jibber-jabber thinks we are gormless. Why not just say, we are building something beautiful, a genuine addition to the city’s architectural treasures, rather than to drag in all that tenuous heritage guff? Who cares that it (doesn’t in the slightest) look like it was woven? Who would even recognise the turbine reference? Just build the bloody thing!
What’s even worse than the blather about drawing on Leeds’ textile and cloth heritage to “create a building with texture” (when did you last see a building without texture? Who writes this stuff? And why do they believe we take them seriously?) is the repeated insistence that this is a “civic” development. No. It is not. Well, not unless the word “civic” has gone through the proper therapeutic protocol and undergone some serious surgical semantic reassignment. Victoria Gate is a shopping centre. And there’s nothing wrong with that but let’s not fool ourselves there’s anything civic about it. Civic is just a buzz word some PR lackey has picked up at a council briefing session and managed to liposuction every ounce of meaning out of. What Sir Reginald Blomfield originally planned for the Headrow and Eastgate was civic – he was designing a city. Building public space. Making living streets. What Victoria Gate is up to is just a private development. “Aspirational” simply means you have access to a credit card and no retail inhibitions. Sod the rest of you poor bastards. Let’s not pretend.
The saddest bit of this pitiful PR prattling is that they spell Blomfield’s name wrong on the shop window boards, and then there’s this piece of blatant idiocy on the website: it continues the design principles established by Sir Reginald Blomfield in the 1920s by creating a new ‘bookend’ building for the scheme … just how does it continue the design principles established by the good Sir Reginald Blomfield? Well, by demolishing half the bookends of Eastgate, obviously … but then, Sir Reg’s stuff wasn’t exactly vibrant.
After a morning’s busy but largely ineffectual psychogeogging in Armley last weekend, I repaired to the centre of Leeds for a lunch which could only be described as artisanal. After a detour to inspect Sour’s grilles at the back of the Yorkshire Bank HQ (which rather left me underwhelmed; perhaps I couldn’t visualise the album cover) I set out to spend an afternoon of vibrant shopping (in actual fact it turned out to be no more than a business-like 15 minutes in the only two shops in Central Leeds still worth patronising – Jumbo Records and Waterstones – where I had the good fortune to acquire, respectively, 2 CDs: “Calypso: musical poetry in the Caribbean 1955-1969” and Toumani and Sidiqi Diabate’s eponymous new release, and Prue Shaw’s new book, “Reading Dante”). Thus fortified, it was time for a visual update on matters down at the bottom end of Eastgate; the bookend having been demolished, would the whole stack of “books” have come tumbling down after it?
I must agree with Phil that from a purely visual aspect the plans for the new development look adventurous and encouraging, but a word of caution: I was very excited, a few years ago, when I first saw the planner’s projection of Bridgewater Place on a large hoarding near the carpark on Swinegate. It looked heroic. The execution failed miserably to match the vision however; the reality turning out much diminished and altogether meaner than the idealised Manhattenesque projection. So I think it’s probably wise to withhold judgement on Victoria Gate until the shopping centre and car park are completed (though I agree that the signs are encouraging aesthetically speaking).
The word which irritates me most in the promotional bumph for the scheme is “upscaling” rather than “vibrant”. The latter has a decent pedigree even if it is being cheapened and dulled by incontinent and ill-directed usage but the former is a horribly inelegant neologism which pronounces everything in a sort of piercing treble with no grounding bass – all tricksy melody and no rhythm, lots of expensive glitter but little real value. For those who collect this sort of thing, the ghastly word also appears on the hoardings surrounding the Hilton Hotel build at the top of Cookridge Street.
Hey grumpius those vents are the biggest sound cabinets you’ll ever see.
Much better than a two stack Marshall
I’m on stage in front of them with me air guitar.
You just need more imagination.
Sour
My only complaint about the Blomfield scheme is that they’re not demolishing enough of it. The road to the ruinous “Motorway City of the 1970s” started on the Headrow and Eastgate in the 1930s. Knock most of it down, narrow the streets back, but leave the Light as a warning to anyone ever tempted to call their financial institution “permanent”.
What would you leave? I grew up going to the cafe in Lewis’s every Saturday so I’m rather attached to the place. And the pair of banks on Vicar Lane are rather lovely. A couple of great pubs too, especially The Horse and Trumpet. But agree that both ends just sprawl into motorway hell.
The Permanent is the new Browns.
matt edgar – What was so “ruinous” about “Motorway city of the 70’S” – the inner ring road made the “walkable city centre” those urban designers rave about today.
What you do want – to re-open briggate and the Headrow to through traffic just like they were in the 1950’s with narrow streets to encourage the flow – yeah great
The inner ring road means you can ONLY walk round the city centre. Walking anywhere else requires a degree of masochism to get there by running across four lanes of traffic (Sheepscar etc).
I’m pretty sure Matt doesn’t want to reopen Briggate and The Headrow to through traffic but instead kick ’em further out of town since most of them aren’t stopping but passing through. The loop going through City Square is just daft. Traffic whizzing off the motorway suddenly finds itself driving through the middle of what should be more like Millennium Square – a place for people travelling at people speed.
Ali could not be closer to the truth in her comment about the loop past the station & through City Square. We cant miss the chance to use the ‘south bank’ redevelopment to re-route more traffic out of the city, and enhance the walk from the station into the city.
It looks like the architects stopped designing just when they should have put on some Gaudi glasses and got going. Blatantly a left brain designed building.