Comment Scheme shows modern way to integrate the old
BIRMINGHAM’S Jewellery Quarter is a delicate townscape. Its dense and intricate built fabric is a direct expression of the economy of mainly small manufacturers of jewellery and precious metals which created it, and which it still sustains. It is covered by a conservation area designation, and the unusually intimate relationship between its industrial occupants and its buildings is one of the reasons why Historic England designates the conservation area as of outstanding importance on a national scale.
However, the fabric of the Jewellery Quarter is continually threatened. The manufacturing industry has been in gradual decline for decades. Over the past 25 years the growth in residential apartments has filled many of the gaps, but has also posed an economic threat to lower-value workshops. Some of the historic architecture is in poor condition, and there have been inappropriate new buildings inserted.
There is currently a planning application before Birmingham City Council for what would be the biggest-ever new development in the Jewellery Quarter, extending over four acres, and named Harper’s Hill. The proposal is to redevelop an area currently occupied mostly by the engineering business AE Harris, located between Graham Street and Regent Place, to the east of Vittoria Street.
AE Harris, which is planning to relocate out of the city, is in planning terms not in conformity with the Jewellery Quarter, both in terms of its engineering function and in terms of its building scale. Its big shed-like buildings are an exception to the fine-grained scale of the quarter. Its emigration will not be regretted.
This creates a unique opportunity not just to insert a new building into the quarter, but to create a whole new district in an outstanding conservation area. It is quite a challenge. In most respects the proposal, masterplanned and designed by Glenn Howells Architects, responds to the challenge admirably well.
It is a mixed-use development, organised into street blocks, which succeeds in maintaining and extending the grain of the older parts of the quarter. Not the least of its achievements is that, far from enlarging the size of the street blocks, which we have come to expect of many new developments, it actually reduces their size.
It does this by cutting a new street, to be called Harper’s Hill, through the middle of the site. This will start by continuing the line of Newhall Street, crossing Northwood Street, and arriving at Regent Place. (Harper’s Hill was the name of James Watt’s Georgian house, which stood in Regent Place, but was demolished in 1885). In addition, part of Northwood Street, which bisects the site, and which years ago was closed to the public, will be reopened.
These new streets subdividing the site together increase the development’s permeability. By this measure we mean the ability of people to choose from alternative routes on which to walk through the development, rather than having to walk around a large block which is an obstacle to movement.
Increasing permeability has an economic dimension as well. It increases the amount of building frontage within a given area, making it easier to include shops and bars on streets, as well as front doors to offices and apartments. The overall benefit is to make the development more legible, more convenient, and more enjoyable and safer for the user.
The division into small blocks also makes it easier to incorporate existing listed buildings into the new pattern, which the scheme does in two instances.
A remarkable statistic is that in the four acres, containing 320 dwellings, over 4,000 square metres of commercial space, and over 3000 square metres of retail space, there will be only 44 car parking spaces. This is a great vote of confidence in the principle of a pedestrian-scaled city. This is the new modern, in contrast to the old misguided car-fixated modernism which shaped Birmingham in the 20th century.
Although I am certain that when the proposal comes before the planning committee, there will be complaints from the usual councillors about the absence of car spaces.
So in many ways this scheme is an exemplary demonstration of modern urbanism.
There are, however, two areas where reservations should be recorded, and where I would expect questions to be asked by planners and the planning committee.
The first is the heights of the new buildings. The Jewellery Quarter Design Guide, which defines standards for new development in the quarter, and is an excellent document of its kind, says that building heights should not exceed four storeys, and in some cases should be fewer than four. This is to retain the intricate scale of the quarter. The Harper’s Hill development proposes new buildings up to five storeys, in direct contradiction of the Design Guide. There is a danger that the scale of this new district will be more like that of the city centre than of the Jewellery Quarter, no matter how good its plan.
The second issue is residential use. The site is within the Industrial Middle zone of the quarter, where most of the jewellery and precious metals manufacturing is concentrated. The conservation area guidance rules that new residential buildings will not be allowed in this zone, as new residential development represents a threat to the established manufacturing economy.
With a proposed 320 dwellings, the Harper’s Hill development will blow a huge hole in this policy, if allowed. The issue is, when the AE Harris site becomes vacant, whether the manufacturing economy is strong enough to fill it. It almost certainly is not, in which case a mixed use development is the right approach.
If this is the case, then the policy for the Industrial Middle zone is unrealistic, and should be modified. But would this put more manufacturing at risk? It is a difficult but vital question to resolve.
In many ways this scheme is an exemplary demonstration of modern urbanism
Joe Holyoak is an architect, lecturer and urban designer