News / Architecture
‘Another city signing up for middling towers speaks of a lack of imagination’
Among the stated ambitions of Bristol mayor Marvin Rees are the the reintroduction of powerboat racing to the docks, and the construction of a multi-billion pound underground railway network that may or may not connect to the 3,500 new homes that he wants to build around the Cumberland Basin within the new ‘Western Harbour’.
Rees also wants to “build up” and architects have already upped the dimensions of their buildings in order to reach the mayor’s lofty dreams.
In his inaugural State of the City address, Rees spoke of his desire to introduce taller buildings to Bristol. “I want Bristol’s skyline to grow,” he said. “Years of low level buildings and a reluctance to build up in an already congested city… is something I am keen to change.”
is needed now More than ever
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Now, a leading architecture critic has warned that Bristol and other UK cities should not allow new towers to ruin historic skylines.
Writing in the Observer, Rowan Moore said that “British cities are facing the development pressures that, all around the world, push for building high. The tsunamis of skyscrapers in the Gulf and south-east Asia send out waves that wash the banks of the Avon and even inland Norfolk.”
Moore added that “planners, objectors and developers tend to agree that tall buildings can be intrinsically fine things. What matters, they all say, is that they are well designed and in the right place.
“The precise meaning of this bland statement is unfortunately also the thing on which no one can agree – it becomes an increasingly threadbare banner under which planning battles are fought. Projects with ever more vaporous claims to be well designed and in the right place end up getting approved and built.”
When it comes to Bristol, Moore cites blocks of 22 storeys in the Redcliff Quarter, 26 storeys at Castle Park View on the site of the former ambulance station and 21 storeys at St Catherine’s Place in Bedminster as “plans already in the pipeline (which) are not encouraging” – with “blocky, seen-them-before designs”.
St Catherine’s Place will include 232 new homes in a 21-storey high-rise, a cinema, a gym and restaurants
But all is not lost, with the draft policy Urban Living calling “for many reasonable things” according to Moore, such as a “high quality public-realm” and “urban greening”, as Bristol tries to house its growing population.
The policy says that tall buildings should, among other things, “have a positive impact on the socioeconomic health of the wider neighbourhood”. They should not “have a detrimental impact on the city’s historic environment”.
“This is much better than nothing,” says Moore. “But it is not detailed planning strategy. If the principles are seriously enforced, Bristol could conceivably show everyone else how to build tall in a city with a large number of listed buildings.
“But its general statements recall those that appeared in the early years of London’s tower boom, which in the event proved flimsy defenders of quality.”
Developer Ron Persaud, of Change Real Estate, said that he “listened carefully to the aspirations of mayor Rees to implement a new policy for Bristol to ‘build up’, to see attractive, taller and ambitious buildings within the city”, adding four additional storeys to the tower at the centre of Redcliff Quarter
Moore added: “In all these struggles certain arguments recur, one of which needs to be nailed for good and all. It is said that tall buildings bring prestige and identity, that they express energy and ambition.
“There is almost no evidence for this alleged glamour: if it was true of 1920s Manhattan, the sight of yet another city signing up for middling towers speaks more of lack of imagination.”
Main image: artist’s impression of Castle Park view courtesy of Chapman Taylor
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