birmingham / the city / the site

the city


"Not Shit?, A truely captavating, cosmopolitan, multi- cultural city? Embracing a blend of traditional and contemporary living, from its architecture to its eateries and canals. Birmingham is the quintessential modern city...."


the site


“Curzon Park?, a railway viaduct, an area of existence through demolition. A ‘blast zone’ of concrete which highlights an area of war. An area of layers yet to be unearthed, an umbilical between periphery and city for a vision of a new future....?


cedric price


“Technology is the answer....but
what was the question?” Cedric Price, 1998


Steven Byrne

the city / the site /

the city.
Rich with people, but what culture is it rich in? Much joy in walking the streets, great variety of many shops, watching the people watching people. Probably shouldn’t say ‘defeated’ that such buildings like Selfridges is allowed to be pinned on the Birmingham map, but instead, ‘what next?’

the site.
It’s quiet, a pleasant sort of quiet, a step-aside quiet and not a step-away quiet. A quiet that when upon the site one feels not solitude/abandonment but instead like a library within a city. Maybe its the location where its within the 'boundary' of the highways, maybe its because you still hear traces of movement like the sound of trains slowing down and speeding up. This silence is read as an expression of patience and tolerance.

ng pui san

the site -
Come visit the apocalypse, only five minutes walk to the Bullring.

the city-
Who said Birmingham doesn't have anything to offer... it' good enough for that spaceship that sells the Westwood and Ferragamo... they didn't land in London... thats all I'm saying...

[Britain],"a generous repository of buildings for nervous minds rather than a three-dimensional manifestation of a current optimistic civilisation."

Dave Buchan

the site/

Is this Birmingham Central Park?!"

the city/

"you should visit - STOP-GO - the concert hall - STOP - Renee Fleming is singing - GO - she's the finest - STOP-GO - performer ever to grace the city."

birmingham / the city / the site

the city /
Car nous sommes où nous ne somme pas. (For we are where we are not). Pierre-Jean Jouve

the site /
The lumbering skyline of Birmingham, composed of pointless shiny things, round white towers and post-war blocks, bounces for a second time across the dark, dirty water of the car park; it's cold.

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." - Cedric Price, 2000

Cameron Burt

birmingham / the city / the site / cedric price

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

transit I / birmingham

Below are a selection of photographs which document the journey of the University of Strathclyde Polyark II team from Glasgow to Birmingham and the subsequent exhibition and lecture presented to the Birmingham City University Polyark II team.

Birmingham City University (BCU) is Strathclyde University's partner school of architecture for the Polyark II experiment.

The travelling exhibit on consisted of five containers based on the conceptual idea of a suitcase that would transport all necessary documents, models, equipment and presentation materials for our lecture in Birmingham. The containers also preformed a secondary function in that acted as the 'stage' for our exhibition, with each of the five containers creating a space to exhibit different forms of group work. The containers were branded with the University of Strathclyde Polyark II team logo to further establish a group identity for the exhibition and catch peoples attention and imagination en route.