Originally Posted by
Waterways
Brunswick Quay Tower was one, however the city politicos turned it down. A Liverpool man and company too - Hargreaves the Matalan man. A billion pounds worth of investment snubbed. Then the knock on effect a high quality development brings - so probaly twice that figure.
We have that in the Three Garces - already there.
Or what silly planners and politicos want. There have been countless very high and high quality proposals for Liverpool over the decades, yet apart from the second Beetham and the Metro Cathedral, no new buildings stand out in the city. In 1951 There was a proposal to build a 50 floor plus building in the old Custom House site. Turned down flat and the design emerged in New York as the Pan Am building - a NY landmark. The low rise tat that was built on the site in the late 1960s was appalling and eventually was demolished after a short time. Vison? The city is devoid of it. Yet only 100 years ago the city oozed confidence and originality. Nothing stopped the city from innovating.
What do expect when every proposal has floors lopped off and years of planning delays. The developer then starts to see that they cannot maximise the potential of the site and cuts back on quality. Brunswick Quay had lengthy delays and came to nothing. Developers see this, and see Liverpool as no-go area and take their money somewhere else. A city still poor and turned down world-class designs and investment, is a seen as a do-nothing stuck-in-the-past place, unable to make any firm decisions on its own future.
The fashion of the time, like any other time - although you have a point about how they are at ground level. Then the developers cuts back at ground level because his original design had 25% of the floors lopped off by planners/heritage, etc.
Unless you have a brilliant original designer, buildings that stand out cost. Unity is no run of the mill building, being a little different.
Some truth in that, however point to the planners/heritage people. Many developers do want to have high quality building that sell and command high rents. They are constantly turned down, so they take the easy way out.
Liverpool in the late 1800s/early 1900s built some high class, advanced, high quality buildings that are still around. They didn't have the constraints of the developers of today.
We have the three graces, true, but we should have something exemplary and modern too. And as for the sameness of what's being built... it might be the style of the time, but it's much more uniform than it ever has been in the past. partly because modern buildings are less highly detailed. put technically there are fewer degrees of freedom for buildings to differ from eachother. So if there are only a few 'rules' which developers follow then all there buildings will look the same.
As for planners... I don't see why we should believe that someone who has done 4 years of study and has 20 years experience with Liverpool should be told by some financier in London who has never even seen Liverpool, how many storeys a building should have.
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It's not the planners' fault it's more the developers. I work with many on a day to day basis (on the developers side I might add, I don't work for the council), trying to encourage them to improve their designs. They like to have the input of myself and my colleagues but they ignore it in the end, as to actually improving the quality of design and creating an original building, they just aren't interested. To the board members of the big developers, architecture isn't beautiful, money is beautiful. They put out all these b/s arguments that to follow ours/the councils/CABE's/EH's design recommendations aren't economically feasible. Give me a break, they don't build things to such low profit margins that to improve the design would take the profit away. We're talking about making a 100% profit on the development which, if recommendations were followed would be cut to about 90% I believe they should be required to make their financial plans publicly available to prevent them using this argument and then some of their rich pickings can be tapped in the public good.
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