Comment Pop-up idea is long-term winner
to the insecurity is to build cheaply and temporarily.
This tendency now has a formal classification: pop-up architecture. It appears, often on peripheral or leftover sites, maybe offering food or entertainment.
A temporary installation frequently comes with a brave or novel architecture: pop-up architecture is typified by a willingness to take risks in design, if not in expenditure.
This can bring with it an element of delight : maybe more often than with more permanent and more expensive architecture.
There is something dynamic and organic about spontaneous and transient architecture, treading lightly on the earth, which appeals to the senses.
These thoughts are prompted by Hawker Yard, a streetfood installa- tion which has recently appeared on Pershore Street in Birmingham, between the Arcadian Centre and the markets. It has been developed by the streetfood entrepreneur Duncan Stanley, on a leftover and neglected bit of land.
In the centre of the site stands a two-storey roofed but open-sided structure built from galvanised scaffolding poles, containing tables and benches built from timber, on plywood floors. Around it are the food stalls in shipping containers. One walks between them on a crunchy beach of pebbles, under paper lanterns hanging overhead.
It is a minimal and unpretentious installation, but is it architecture, qualifying for inclusion in this column?
Yes it is, although no architect was involved, and the structure was built by a scaffolding contractor. It is architecture because it creates urban space, and makes a place where there was no place before.
I am writing about Hawker Yard in the context of temporariness, although Stanley describes it as Birmingham’s first permanent streetfood outlet.
But the idea of temporariness is relevant, because Hawker Yard, if successful, will not stay in its present form. It will develop and change, and add other parts to itself.
This dynamic kind of process is sometimes problematic for the planning system, which is set up to deal with buildings whose future is more or less fixed and predictable: they politely stand still.
Hawker Yard, by contrast, is a bit like a South American favela. In a favela, an initial investment of space and fabric is made, to secure the plot. As money becomes incrementally available, the building is extended and improved. Rural development in this country was not so different, up to the 19th century.
Stanley intends Hawker Yard will be augmented and extended over time, as circumstances change and the business develops.
The containers could become two-storey, and connected by roofs. No architectural watchdog is going to object to changes, because although this is architecture, it is quite unselfconscious in its character, a sort of industrial pop-up vernacular.
In the city centre, Hawker Yard joins the well-established Digbeth Dining Club, which occupies space underneath and next to the railway viaduct opposite the Custard Factory, as another excellent example of streetfood pop-up. Unlike some other post-recession phenomena, these venues add to the diversity, vitality and economic health of the city.
Birmingham’s culture is generally conservative, and dominated by big brands. It’s getting better, although examples of enterprising and independent counter-culture have to be sought out. We could do with more of them.
Mind you, the counter-culture has to continually guard its independence, and be aware of the danger of being co-opted by big business. I note with interest that later this month property investment managers are using Hawker Yard as the venue for the launch of the big residential development happening across Pershore Street, on the site of the old ice rink.
The developers will perhaps gain some street cred from being in Duncan Stanley’s enterprising installation. It will be breezy – the invitation advises the suits to wrap up well. Joe Holyoak is a Birmingham based architect and
urban designer
It is a minimal and unpretentious installation, but is it architecture? Yes it is