Season of rituals and mellow fruitfulness

Sidestepping 'issues' for this post.

Just enjoy – as I hope – this collection of images of the open space (not) of this public park (not) that just goes on maturing and growing. I am sure someone in the Civic Centre is thinking what to 'do' with it as I write these words.

Des Res

The Observer's perspicacious (look it up yourself) architecture critic, Rowan Moore has cast his gaze over the newcomer development on the Lower Ouseburn. Link to the full article here.

My own thoughts, following a viewing when the project was still being built, was less adulatory. In fact I found quite a bit more to quibble over than Mr Moore ... Those windows.

Still, the thrust of his comments and criticism are useful considering how much more to come there may be.

Some highlights from the article.

Sweeping his gimlet eye around the local scene Moore regards the apartments built next to The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.

"Papery and stumpy at once, their vertical accents and white-beige-russet palette pay vague tribute to the noble ex-flour mill that contains the Baltic, but succeed only in diminishing it and themselves at once. Perhaps mercifully, this development makes no attempt to mimic the shapes that the Sage cuts, but edges nervously alongside, like the nerd next to the big blonde on the dancefloor. "

When I saw a model of the proposal for the Baltic, the associated private dwellings were well below the Baltic's height. I suspect in the excitement greed over came them. Mr Moore is quite right. The result weakens the whole.

"Up on the hill is a space in the sky once occupied by Trinity Square car park, made famous in the 1971 Michael Caine classic Get Carter and demolished to the bleats and lamentations of critics, less so from the local population. This time the bleating critics were right, at least architecturally speaking: the brooding, magnificent car park has been replaced by a development of student accommodation above a Tesco: stacked-up boxes like shipping containers without the romance, over which curved roofs crawl like big grey slugs."

That about nails it for me.

Do read the rest of the article for yourself.

Pathway to the future?

One dear friend who knows the patch of urban green space I call 'Battlefield' laid out a plan some years ago for the future – or what might be done to enhance the prospects for this part of Ouseburn.

The old paint factory site had as yet nothing on it; some local youths exploited it imaginatively, creating a skateboard space and decorated some found large pieces of concrete with spray painted heads like a polychrome Easter Island. I took some photographs and posted them on these pages.

My friend's idea was simplicity and sympathy combined. Use some of the space left by the paint factory for recreation, say, skateboarding ... Then create pathways down the valley into Lower Ouseburn, linking emerging areas of creative arts, the successful Biscuit 'franchises', and already developed creative and leisure enterprises in the Valley below.

He did not speculate in vain. The proposed five blocks of student flats have resolved into two – including one just off the main site – and there are no signs of preparation on the remaining paint factory site. Other investors have seized on the student housing market (a.k.a. bubble) dotted about the paint factory like pieces on a chess board. Other schemes are building elsewhere in the city, the latest on John Dobson Street and the old Oxford Dance Hall (a night club in recent years) on what is left of New Bridge Street. Saturation anybody?

Landscaping the remainder of the paint factory site looks much more of a possibility if I am correct.

Intriguingly, some work has been taking place in and about the interstices of Battlefield and the paths along and down into the Lower Ouseburn:–

Newly constructed (sic) pathway connecting the road way to paths running beside the East Coast Mainline Byker Bridge. Part of the fencing has been removed and a hardcore base laid. September 2015.

East Coast Mainline Byker Bridge. Grade II Listed structure. September 2015'

Hedge laying! A traditional form of management. September 2015'

Newly established low seat (very!) made from old railway sleeper (tie).

The long closed public footpath through the 'back door' of the old paint factory site has been re-laid and is about to be restored. Public Rights of Way are very protected and should be defended against all comers (i.e. Nicholas van Hoogstraten ...)

Finally, a fine harvest ...

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.