Had a couple of ideas today that are worth setting out for further development. Made mental notes about both. Have forgot the second.
One: now that the renovation of New Street Station is underway, what do we as interested and articulate citizens want from it? I see the contenders have been identified. Would it be remiss to draft a collective letter and post it to each of them, setting out our visions, expectations, and calls for dialogue? Given the less-than-inspiring level of consultation by Birmingham’s development and strategic agencies, perhaps it’s necessary for the interested public to make direct contact with designers. I wonder if BIAD would offer a hand in facilitating dialogue.
Addendum: Existing SketchUp Models of the area
Two: hope to remember this shortly. May have had something to do with access to information, prompted partly by the WikiLeaks debacle.
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Seems like a fine idea — although I’d prefer a portfolio of individual ideas (”city of a thousand…”, etc), which would also be somewhat more speedy and less time-intensive. Certainly the brief shouldn’t be to make anything like the ‘naff Bromsgrove shopping centre, circa 1974? images that have been released. Perhaps some creatives could do put forward ideas as graphics, instead of verbalise? It would be nice to think that the city would fling up a website where the public can download the basic 3D models in digital form, and one page of A4 outlining the main technical limitations in layman’s terms.
We seem to be thinking the same thoughts. I fell asleep thinking that it would be nice to provide a SketchUp model of the area around the station and ask people to contribute to a 3D Portfolio of shapes, masses, orientations and so forth.
For example, I’m thinking that the existing back end should become the main entrance, so that people come and go from several points along Stephenson Street. It would provide more opportunities for a grand entrance and plaza than an entrance from the Queensway. I am also imagining something like the copper-clad former Costa shop in the Bullring, but scaled up by a factor of fifty.
So where’s my SketchUp collaboration site?
The distinction between having a public portfolio site cf. a direct dialogue with designers is that with the latter there’s no chance of them pretending we don’t exist. Some mechanism for direct engagement is required. Not through third parties e.g. the council. The web facilitates this sort of direct engagement and it’s bound to happen, or may already be happening. We can put ourselves at the forefront of design dialogue in this manner.
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