As a starter task for the analysis of the Curzon Street Station site in Birmingham the Strathclyde University Polyark II team were asked to form two sentences. One sentence pertaining to our thoughts, feelings and opinons on the city of Birmingham and the other about the Curzon Street Station site. These sentences were intended to act as a generator for a group discussion about possible stratgies for the site.
Below are my sentences/statments... more will follow as other members of the team post their sentences.
the city
"I personally believe that it speaks volumes to say that Birmingham's most 'iconic' piece of architecture is an amorphous, alien like, blue glowing lump of a shopping centre that sits a top a prominent hill, not quite knowing why it is there, what to do with itself or why people are so fascinated by it..."
the site
"Initally, my first thought about the site was that it was the central orientation point of a radial timeline. Standing in the centre of the site looking west towards the old Curzon Street Station and turning in a clockwise direction, an ordered timeline of building is apparent moving from the post modernist Corbusian high rises in the north east, to the 90's Wimpy esc developments in the south east and ending with the Futuresystems Selfridges building in the south west."
cedric price
"So that is another rule for the whole nature of architecture; it must actually create new appetites, new hungers - not solve problems; architecture is too slow to solve problems."
marc cairns