Halls of Academe

The progress on the new Halls of residence for our two universities goes on apace.

The earlier student accommodation buildings around Shieldfield were of steel girder frame construction with brick and cladding; these two latest developments in Clarence Street and off Stepney Bank (see slideshow) are both 'modular' build where factory built 'units' arrived on site and were craned into place, stacked up like containers aboard ship. Locked together (I assume ...) these were then covered by a facade. Ripe lavender for Clarence Street, a more burly post-modern industrial stone and rust on the Stepney Bank Glassworks site, where much brick has also been deployed. Neither of these 'Halls' appears to be 'owned' by either University as exclusively for their students so far as I can judge.

The recent problems with the Chinese economy does not seem to have dented the market; but I have a slight feeling it will.

Whatever happens, this corner of Newcastle will not be left unaffected. Nearby long term residences (see Shieldfield 'piloti' flats and lovely 60s era terrace home) have had to make adjustments to this sudden influx. The rise and rise of student numbers now will have a substantial impact on the local Shieldfield district. Hopefully, a highly beneficial one.

It never rains but it pours ...

I have a new camera. Like the old one but it fights my bad shake. I have been meaning to catch up with developments around the patch of open space I call 'Battlefield' and when the combination of new camera and sunshine came along this week I rushed out to be greeted by a sudden grey sky and then steady rain. A newly privatised post person wearing a bright red anorak and shorts puffed up alongside me in my temporary rain shelter and asked if I knew where S– House was. It was in the 60s era part of Shieldfield, one of the bits of urban planning bequeathed to the city by T. Dan Smith. I was no help. Everywhere here looks the same.

Except it doesn't. The experimental architecture style ('Pilotis') of building an horizontal tower block has now acquired a sort of retro chic feel; the trees that were so optimistically planted miraculously survived and thrived. This part of Shieldfield actually works from inside. The frontage onto Portland Road is dire however. Some contemporary 'cover the sins' Baboon Blue paint has been applied to the concrete 'feet' of the block, but as with all such 'community' initiative paint jobs, merely serves to warn; you are now entering a high dependency area.

The rain fell, my mood changed. There is after all, something about reflections; and rain is something, whereas grey sky is rarely much more than.

The next estate to this part of Modernist Shieldfield is pure model village arts and crafts. Nice spacious front and back gardens, neat layout and even a Chestersonian public house. Nearby some nice detailing that later notions of civic building shunned; a porthole, a gracious entrance now lost to a couple of plastic looking 80s 'bijou' suburban doors. But no matter; a 'chippy' among some local shops and a few more well grown trees. I noticed how there were still unruly bits; the overgrown, the 'gaps' no one had bothered with and the accidental clumsiness of the unfinished that gives somewhere a sense of a place.

Out in the rain I took a couple of shots of the Smith Era council flats. Here King Charles I played golf when a prisoner of his 'fellow' Scots before being sold to the English for cash. A small green was renovated with success a few years ago. This too has maturing trees and now seats someone might want to sit on. Once described (by that smashing architectural critic, John Grundy) as "the worst view in Newcastle", overlooking the notorious Central Motorway, this revisited green space now conveys a sense of entering a community, rather than simply a tired piece of nothing green grass, waiting to find a purpose.

A new student block is rising up. It bagan in the spring with a series of metal containers – just like the ones featured so often on the news about people hitching a ride to somewhere better than where they were. These are now being covered with a facade of bluey green plastic by men laced together high up in cradles in yellow hard hats. Is that five or six such blocks now? It's hard to keep up. Soon this area will be all students – business students apparently ... How will that change perceptions of Shieldfield? Because it must. And what happens when the Higher Education bubble bursts?

Across the most dismal road in the whole of Newcastle, New Bridge Street's approach to Byker, dismal turns to Stepney Bank. This steep hill inclines rapidly to the Lower Ouseburn  of which, more another time. Here on the edge of one of the most interesting areas in inner city Newcastle, another huge student accommodation project is under way. Like the previous block mentioned on the other side of New Bridge Street, a quarter of a mile away, this project is a complex of 'container' building on a bigger scale on a physically tighter site. Here the containers now slotted into place are being covered by a skin of brick. This scheme is adjacent to a long established city community of early 60s period flats; it is going to be interesting to see how 'town and gown' fare living close together.

One loss in all this has been the Star and Shadow cinema. It closed down earlier in 2015 and the building it occupied is now due to be re-developed. More student dwellings complete with all 'mod cons'. I suppose cinema means less if you have 50 mbs broadband in your 160 GBP per week (inclusive) cubicle.

Erasing the past

I recently visited the Olympic Park at Stratford, London.

Our attempts to reach the Park via the canal towpath ended in barriers. Instead we had to negotiate the last few hundred yards on foot past Olympic investment opportunistic apartment buildings. The canal lock and neat cottage was the only certainly pre-2012 feature we saw.

Still used.

Our first definite sighting of the Park was this imposing structure from the distant road where we left the bus.

The ArcelorMittal Orbit by Sir Anish Kapoor

Apart from Kapoor's mangled tower – as if someone had tried to turn the Eiffel Tower into V. Tatlin's 'Monument to the 3rd International' ...

Vladimir Tatlin's Tower

... the rest of the vast space that lay in baking sunlight in front of us was pure corporate entertainment unscape; a scene devoid of history. All previous occupation of the site, whether it be distant Anglo Saxon's hunting the banks of the Lea, medieval eel fishers, Cockney kids out swimming, railway history, – any history at all – was no where to be seen. The site was as blank as a piece of A4 paper.

Zaha Hadid's fine London Aquatic Centre stood up to scrutiny; on an horizon dominated by the frankly mediocre 'cake tin' architecture of modern edge-of-town retail parks, it had a lovely sense of scale and grace; even slightly inscrutable.

The London Aquatic Centre by Zaha Hadid

I somehow doubt Hadid can be faulted for the coloured pencils along the canalised River; it helped that a Sedge Warbler was scratching out it's tuneless song from the emergent reeds in the foreground. The sound of something unplanned, adventitious and promising that in due time this otherwise soul less place might acquire a life.

Within three days we were mooching around an entirely different re-claimed site over looking the Tyne at Dunston. The contrast illustrated something important.

Obviously the organisers of the London Olympics had to deal with a range of problems and issues that far, far exceed those that Gateshead has in re-inventing the Dunston Staithes. No meaningful comparison is to be made I will grant. Yet, in their different ways these two examples express something about the way re-development could embrace history rather than banish it. In accepting the story of the past in what remains, the depth of our understanding of place is held in mind for the future.

Dunston Staithes

A housing development overlooking the river and the Staithes is a truly uplifting example of how old industrial land can be re-developed and enhanced by built history.

Dunston Staithes slideshow (off site link)

If you visit Dunston Staithes do try the Staithes Café. Recommended.

Between the showers

I nipped out to post a letter – yes, crazy old man, I still write (or type, my handwriting is so bad) letters and use stamps.

It was a day of low grey to charcoal skies and sudden clear blue horizons and streaming window panes glinting with beads of rain.

Battlefield lay across the street. Suddenly it looks fantastic. It is as if the trees have suddenly broken free and stand taller than I have ever seen them.

After the rain.

I went for a stroll and took a few photographs. Beside the old paint factory site I heard warblers calling. Garden Warblers? I shall have to check. Very musical in a limited way. Then Chiff Chaffs, another woodland species. People came and went and only one cyclist tried to break the land speed record.

Footpath no more?

The old footpath down to Shieldfield Lane is still blocked. Will it be re-instated? It would serve students in the new halls of residences with a short cut to their nearest Post Office and off licence.

Wood or Garden Warblers?

I began this blog to try to place on record something of a counter weight to the storyline being pumped out by the Council and prospective privatisers of open space* that this was a 'threatening place' rather than a resource and green lung for a city, an important link in a chain of green spaces leading from the distant Green Belt through the city to the banks of the Tyne. Despite the threats, the reality is the ground beneath is infill and so cannot accept the kind of developments some hoped to put in place. The original threat was to build offices over the former paint factory site and use the green space as a car park for – wait for it – thirteen hundred cars. Tarmac to replace grass.

Though I deplored the tree felling that preceded it, the creation of the cycle way does I think remove many threats, though some remain. I felt the tree felling went too far and the subsequent re-planting too small in scope. Ten years seem to have been a long time in this transformation. I think it safe to say a new way of looking at the environment and the growth of green awareness have played a part. The 'big business is good' way of doing things has left people cold, thankfully.

The space is well used. It could be more so, particularly as a venue for large out door events in summer. Joggers and dog walkers (mostly very responsible), parents with small children and just strollers going to the shops, use the space well. A friend pointed out how some land could be used to create a green way down to the Lower Ouseburn behind the old paint factory, ducking beneath the bridges to Stepney Bank. Combined with another cycle route, this has much to offer. In the last decade much has happened in Lower Ouseburn and the creation of a 'student city' around Portland Road would seem to suggest a synergy might be easily made.

Meanwhile the trees thrive, the migrant birds are here for summer and the days are long.

Slideshow here. (Off site link)

* The space I call Battlefield is not official designated as 'Open Space'. It could, following recent legislation passed by the previous Coalition government, be sold off in whole or in part. It might be possible to build on parts of the site, though much was created by infilling part of the Lower Ouseburn dene by an equally short sighted Council in the 19th century.

Leazes Park 12th May 2015

In Loving Memory of Cliff and Dolly Potter.

Leazes Park May 2015