Images transformed to show what might have been

A GAGGLE of ladies eating candy floss, newylweds strolling out of the cathedral and a bi-plane flying over the city centre are giveaways that all is not as it seems in presentday Coventry.

Grey and drab scenes have been transformed into a whirl of retro-themed life and activity for a series of images showing the kind of city that was envisaged by post-war planners.

Architects and designers across the world took photographs of Primark-era Coventry and manipulated the images to turn grey skies to blue in visions of what might have been.

Far from being a wistful look-back, however, the Climax City project is also a comment on how future visions of cities as beautiful urban spaces often fall by the wayside. In Coventry’s case, the creatives each took a modern shot and reinterpreted the scene to reflect the optimism of the 1950s.

The snapshots for Urbanism Environment and Design (URBED), a Manchesterbased urban design cooperative, also formed part of the City Arcadia project where the council and Arts Council England invited artists to celebrate Coventry and its urban landscape as a place of innovation and new ideas.

Director David Rudlin said: “It is clear from talking to people in Coventry that many have mixed emotions about the city, particularly now that much of it is planned for redevelopment. The city centre built after the war attracted architects and planners from across the world who came to Coventry to wonder at its modernity and its bold vision of the future.

“This vision may now be a little tarnished and the city centre has not quite lived up to its promise. But before we sweep it away once more in a further comprehensive redevelopment we should try and understand what inspired the planners of the 50s, what worked and what went wrong. These images seek to take us back to the optimism of that time.” While life hasn’t quite turned out to be the rosy vision of maxi dresses and candy floss, that hasn’t stopped the creatives reimagining the planners’ original dreams in their retro futures.

There’s no hint of homelessness, crime or retail gloom in the ‘after’ shots, but with City of Culture 2021 on the horizon, maybe we can live in hope...