Central Library, keep it, knock everything else down
The city council have said that whatever the result of English Heritage's attempt to get The Central Library listed, they still intend to knock it down. It's nice to have city planners with vision, but it's important to disagree when we think they're wrong. I do here.
This post is a slightly re-worked version of this one from Birmingham: It's Not Shit, as much as I don't like crossposting I think Josh in the comments there makes an important point about The Birmingham Post being where this debate is taking place. Sorry for the very rough 'artist's impression'.
Quite a few people have raised objections, which the council have decided not listen to, but so far I don't think anyone has voiced an opinion on what should be done instead.
One of the main arguments against keeping the library is that the whole 'paradise' development cuts one side of the city centre off from the other. People do see the divide as an effort to cross, the council is always keen to have events and focus in Centenary Square and these can be sparsely attended on occasion. It's a valid point, but knocking down the library and placing another building in its place (very probably one the public will have no occasion to use) won't solve that.
The council want to be able to see the Town Hall, they think the library cramps it -- but the beauty of the library is similarly cramped by truly horrible buildings.
So, lets open it up -- and knock every bit of Paradise Circus apart from the library down.
Get rid of the Copthorne hotel, Adrian Boult Hall, Paradise Place, and leave great a great expansive 'city space' with Central Library and the Town Hall as one end, the new library and ICC at the other. A huge place for shows, gatherings, meetings, tree ringed, maybe a couple of European-style kiosk cafés in the centre.
Let the council build their new library, we can use the old one for something else (in part perhaps all the books they're thinking of chucking, we need to store them somewhere, perhaps other records referencey stuff that needs the no-sunlight conditions).
Paradise Forum (the open atrium inside that is wasted by it needing to be a thoroughfare) becomes a huge contemporary art space, the new library is a digital library, with swathes of electronic access to whatever the future can bring.
The angular and structural central library stands as if Birmingham's Pompidu Centre in it's beautiful ugliness.
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Sounds like a good idea to me, it really is the attatchments to the library that cause most of its problems. The upturned ziggurat is fantastic if a little tired looking. It could be re clad in stone or something and become quite a landmark. How many other buildings this shape are there in the world? The only other one I know of is Boston City Hall.
And Boston City Hall has just been demolished, I believe.
The library is certainly one of the city's best modern buildings. Sadly, Brum has a very long and very undistinguished history of knocking down its best buildings from every period and I suspect the library will fall victim to BCC's wrecking ball just as so many other great works of architecture have in the past.
Cultural philistinism is perhaps Birmingham's defining feature when it comes to the built environment. In some ways though may be it is best to go with this 'tradition' and just knock it down. Constant change is what keeps Birmingham going. There has never been anything very beautiful about the city and therefore there is always the possibility of doing something new and exciting without fear of wrecking what's there. If the city had a bit more guts it could reinvent itself as a truly kitsch architectural playground - a sort of Dubai of the Midlands. It isn't actually that far off this at the moment. The hideous 'V Building' is strait out of Vegas and the assorted 'landmarks' and 'icons' (usually developer speak for cheap and tacky) proposed elsewhere should finally cement the city's reputation as the least sophisticated city in Europe. This of course, in no ways means the city will be unsuccessful. Just look at the booming metropolises of Asia - often hideously tacky and unplanned, but somewhere still exciting and hugely economically successful.
Boston City Hall has not gone just yet, but their campaign seems to be lost.
Today is the last day to say anything to the Department for Culture Media and Sport to support (or otherwise of course) English Heritage's bid to list the Central Library. Email them at enquiries@culture.gov.uk