futura2000
07-02-2008, 17:39
Hello Sheffo!
I am an 'artist' of some sort whose artistic practice focal referencing point is Sheffield City in the context of bland architecture in the New Town Regeneration.
I am currently in the middle of a proposal by which I'm redesigning new architecture to replace the new bland buildings that are popping all over the city. Unlike normal architects though, I am by passing the normal obsessions such as form and technique and going straight to the heart of it. I want to make the designs to have soul and be a real flaneur that creates the sublime city space.
This is where you guys come in, originally from the Donx, I have no knowledge of the intricate secrets Sheffield holds.
What interesting myths lie in the heart of sheffield? What memories do you have that are associated with the city? What great places used to exist but is now a department store or something.
ANYTHING! For example; I just recently learned that the Forgemasters makes Nuclear war heads and there is this ace building in Attercliff that looks all ghetto-ish and run-down but inside it's perfect and made out of Marble through a dodgy Polish link 100 years ago - where we traded the marble for some steal - and Queen Victoria opened the factory up. But now it's just a disused space in the middle of Attercliff.
Anything like! It could be a romance that happened in the Peace gardens, or something spooky that happened in the "hole in the road" etc. Or it could be about the fake city made out of lights in the wartime.
Anything. I want this to be the core of my inspiration.
Here is a piece of writing which started the idea, this might give you a sense of where I am coming from, and why I am doing it.
Thanks guys, anything would be greatly appericated!! :o)
///////////////////
Sheffield is a city of complex chaos and a complicity of beauty within. A grey, wind swept city-town sat on the top of 7 hills glitters in the sun with it’s new buildings consciously made out of steal. Flat buildings with no windows. Tall buildings that are faulty. Buildings that are both bold, concrete and flat show that “the new-town” social design was here in the 1970’s. Big brave ideals fluster the surrounding land but all it shows is dashed hopes. Those bland Luxury apartments that no one can afford and every city has, now dominates its skyline. Here the common spirit is individualism, the city a mass of accumulated small actions. In Sheffield, anything goes so long as its making money for someone. Infringe that right and a world of trouble falls on your head. Those who survive the chaos moan, but know how to handle it. Architects and developers are always trying to unpick its muddle of a mess – trying to handle its unruly, gap toothed post-war skyline and they wished, how they wish, that it looked like it were Venice. But every time they do that, it seems to just get knotted back up again. It’s like Sheffield loves being a rebel, and everybody does indeed love a rebel. Sheffield has very rarely looked beautiful but it has an inside splendour that both its people hold and the old factories that dot around the city tell of. A truth, and a belief once existed here. But where has it gone we asked? With Meadowhell churning revenue away from the cities centre for the last 10 years, and The poor Moor being badly “re-generated” making the market having to move themselves else where and the cheaper stores are all closing down – because no one wants to see a working class community anymore. The castle market got flooded from the repercussions of Global Warming and anything that exists on West Street that doesn’t have a bar of some sort, I can guarantee, won’t exist in the next five years. Sheffield is unique but has always wanted to conform and this millennia it seems to have got its wish at long last! A packet of fags and a friend’s pregnancy scare and this is high school all over again. Popularity never works. It’s an ideal people are taught to like but secretly hate, because after all, that is how a capitalistic dynamical world operates. To be loved comes from conforming and thus no chance of revolutions that could upset the status quo of the Fat Cats counting their millions of dollars. I am, going off the point, but what’s new? I have started to loose hope in the powers that be, for some creative input into the architecture that is being built. Sheffield’s plan of unwittingly killing everything that Sheffield is best for seems to be inaction. What ever happened to the inviting and imaginative proposals at the Venice Architecture Biennale of 2006? A plan needs to be executed to help this imaginative expression of formal variety of architectural aesthetics. Just like the V.A.B 06 said, “ it will be remade from light, out of sound, out of words, out of images, out of stuff. It will be.” Bypassing architects normal obsessions with form and technique. It’s a city of sounds and stories and of course memories.
I am an 'artist' of some sort whose artistic practice focal referencing point is Sheffield City in the context of bland architecture in the New Town Regeneration.
I am currently in the middle of a proposal by which I'm redesigning new architecture to replace the new bland buildings that are popping all over the city. Unlike normal architects though, I am by passing the normal obsessions such as form and technique and going straight to the heart of it. I want to make the designs to have soul and be a real flaneur that creates the sublime city space.
This is where you guys come in, originally from the Donx, I have no knowledge of the intricate secrets Sheffield holds.
What interesting myths lie in the heart of sheffield? What memories do you have that are associated with the city? What great places used to exist but is now a department store or something.
ANYTHING! For example; I just recently learned that the Forgemasters makes Nuclear war heads and there is this ace building in Attercliff that looks all ghetto-ish and run-down but inside it's perfect and made out of Marble through a dodgy Polish link 100 years ago - where we traded the marble for some steal - and Queen Victoria opened the factory up. But now it's just a disused space in the middle of Attercliff.
Anything like! It could be a romance that happened in the Peace gardens, or something spooky that happened in the "hole in the road" etc. Or it could be about the fake city made out of lights in the wartime.
Anything. I want this to be the core of my inspiration.
Here is a piece of writing which started the idea, this might give you a sense of where I am coming from, and why I am doing it.
Thanks guys, anything would be greatly appericated!! :o)
///////////////////
Sheffield is a city of complex chaos and a complicity of beauty within. A grey, wind swept city-town sat on the top of 7 hills glitters in the sun with it’s new buildings consciously made out of steal. Flat buildings with no windows. Tall buildings that are faulty. Buildings that are both bold, concrete and flat show that “the new-town” social design was here in the 1970’s. Big brave ideals fluster the surrounding land but all it shows is dashed hopes. Those bland Luxury apartments that no one can afford and every city has, now dominates its skyline. Here the common spirit is individualism, the city a mass of accumulated small actions. In Sheffield, anything goes so long as its making money for someone. Infringe that right and a world of trouble falls on your head. Those who survive the chaos moan, but know how to handle it. Architects and developers are always trying to unpick its muddle of a mess – trying to handle its unruly, gap toothed post-war skyline and they wished, how they wish, that it looked like it were Venice. But every time they do that, it seems to just get knotted back up again. It’s like Sheffield loves being a rebel, and everybody does indeed love a rebel. Sheffield has very rarely looked beautiful but it has an inside splendour that both its people hold and the old factories that dot around the city tell of. A truth, and a belief once existed here. But where has it gone we asked? With Meadowhell churning revenue away from the cities centre for the last 10 years, and The poor Moor being badly “re-generated” making the market having to move themselves else where and the cheaper stores are all closing down – because no one wants to see a working class community anymore. The castle market got flooded from the repercussions of Global Warming and anything that exists on West Street that doesn’t have a bar of some sort, I can guarantee, won’t exist in the next five years. Sheffield is unique but has always wanted to conform and this millennia it seems to have got its wish at long last! A packet of fags and a friend’s pregnancy scare and this is high school all over again. Popularity never works. It’s an ideal people are taught to like but secretly hate, because after all, that is how a capitalistic dynamical world operates. To be loved comes from conforming and thus no chance of revolutions that could upset the status quo of the Fat Cats counting their millions of dollars. I am, going off the point, but what’s new? I have started to loose hope in the powers that be, for some creative input into the architecture that is being built. Sheffield’s plan of unwittingly killing everything that Sheffield is best for seems to be inaction. What ever happened to the inviting and imaginative proposals at the Venice Architecture Biennale of 2006? A plan needs to be executed to help this imaginative expression of formal variety of architectural aesthetics. Just like the V.A.B 06 said, “ it will be remade from light, out of sound, out of words, out of images, out of stuff. It will be.” Bypassing architects normal obsessions with form and technique. It’s a city of sounds and stories and of course memories.