Will Alsop’s Master Plan For Middlehaven |
Wednesday, 25 April 2007 |
The skeptics that we are, we get a bit suspicious
when talk of big plans starts sounding a bit too promising. Words like
word-class, cutting-edge, sensational and head-turning just don’t do it
for us. But we’d like to make an exception with the dreamers in
Middlesborough (in North East of England) whose grandiose plans to
revive the Middlehaven docks and the redundant waterfront are actually
starting to become reality.
Practically gushing at their own daring, the town leaders unveiled an agreement between the Tees Valley Regeneration
and BioRegional Quintain, one of the UK’s biggest developers. The
agreement will apparently bring £200m of investment to Middlesbrough
plus 1,000 new jobs; 750 homes designed by top architects, shops,
stylish bars, cafés and restaurants and a luxury hotel.
This will also - or so we hope - mean that the master plan of the daring architect Will Alsop will start to materialize in the form of some of the crazy “Meet-the Robinsons-esque” new buildings we’ve seen in the plans.
Alsop
is the man who has designed, for example, the Palestra Building, the
Peckham Library and the Ben Pimlott Building at Goldsmith College – all
in London – Hotel du Department des Bouches du Rhone in Marseille, and
the Sharp Centre for Design in Toronto. He’s known for fun, playful
buildings with strong colors, unusual shapes and angles.
And we
are not the only ones noticing the Middlehaven plans. In March, a team
led by Tees Valley Regeneration, developer BioRegional Quintain and its
architects Studio Egret West
emerged as a winner in the “big urban projects” category at the MIPIM
(Architectural Review) Future Projects Awards, against other
short-listed projects Plot-Scape in Bursa, Turkey and the massive
redevelopment of the King’s Cross Station area in London. By Tuija Seipell
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