Close encounter is a tall order
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presence to the University of Birmingham.
There is a big difference in height between HSBC and the older bank, but the latter has sufficient architectural gravitas to hold its own and not be overwhelmed.
HSBC comes close to, and conceals, the utilitarian side elevation of the Municipal Bank, and respectfully continues its building line on Broad Street. This is good urban behaviour.
The difficulty is with Alpha Tower. Alpha Tower is the most elegant modernist tower that we have in the city, and accordingly it is listed at grade II.
But viewed as a piece of urbanism, it is disastrous. It was conceived as an elegant, freestanding, isolated object, its angular shape capable of being viewed from all sides.
But a city cannot be made from freestanding objects. A few, which possess a civic importance and symbolism, like the Town Hall or the cathedral, can be accommodated.
But ordinary buildings like offices and shops have an obligation to form close relationships with their neighbours and collectively make an urban fabric; if not physically joined together, then at least being close enough together to enclose the public space of streets and squares.
Shaping coherent public space is the primary obligation of urban buildings.
HSBC, by standing squarely side by side with the Municipal Bank, will contribute a bit more enclosure to Centenary Square, once it is regained.
As a public space, it was always insufficiently enclosed, with its edges generating little activity.
On the other side of the HSBC building, Make have tried to establish a relationship with Alpha Tower.
But it is impossible. Alpha Tower has no interest in having a relationship with another building, or with enclosing external space. It is an object that stands in space, not a building that makes space. It is aloof, anti-street, and anti-urban.
Those of you who knew Alpha Tower from before the Arena Central development will remember the hostile space in which it stood.
It had no purpose other than to stand in to look at Alpha Tower, and it was one of the most windswept places in the city centre; on a stormy day one often had difficulty standing at all.
The residential building to the south of Alpha Tower currently being built by Dandara has the same problem as HSBC, and possibly succeeds even less in establishing a satisfactory relationship. Alpha
Tower gives its architect, Stephen Hodder, and Make Architects with 1 Centenary Square, an insoluble task. What of the HSBC building itself? Externally it is a sober block framed in a grid of precast smooth concrete panels, whose colour relates quite well to the Portland stone of the Municipal Bank.
Facing Centenary Square, the grid is flat, but on the long side elevation behind the Municipal Bank, which will face a pedestrian square, the verticals and horizontals of the concrete grid are bent into a basket-weaving pattern, as if intersecting each other.
Why do they do this? It is unclear, unless it is to offer the square a slightly more animated surface. It seems rather arbitrary.
But it is a lot less arbitrary than Make’s other prominent building in Birmingham, the Cube. There the excessively-busy façade reduces architecture to urban wallpaper, just two-dimensional pattern-making.
The three-dimensional form of 1 Centenary Square is complicated by layering three blocks of different heights – seven, ten and 12 storeys – on to each other.
The stepped composition is an enlarged version of what the neoclassical bank next door does. This effectively reduces the dimensions of the building, in particular as seen from Centenary Square, where a three-storey glazed entrance porch is recessed into the seven-storey block.
Make have made a businesslike building for big business. It’s not exciting, but it does quite a sound job on a difficult site. When the chaos around it is eventually removed, it should assume a solid presence on Centenary Square.
Alpha Tower has no interest in having a relationship with another building...
Joe Holyoak is a Birminghambased architect and urban designer