The Manchester Skyline For The New Millennium

THE MANCHESTER SKYLINE FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM

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HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT – The Site: Salford Quays

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THE ARCHITECTS – James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Daniel Libeskind

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THE BUILDINGS – The Lowry-1997/2000; The Millennium Foot-Bridge-2000; Imperial War Museum North-2000/2002

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EXPERIENCING TODAY

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CONCLUSION

Text and lllustrations : JOAQUIM MANUEL GRAÇA DA PAZ MANCHESTER - January 2007

THE MANCHESTER SKYLINE FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM -

HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT – The Site: Salford Quays

-Above: Archive photographs from the collection of Mike Dilger,who ran the White Lion public house in Castlefield

The Manchester Ship Canal, one of the last major canals constructed in Britain, was opened in 1894. Considered at the time, the largest engineering work carried out in Britain, it was planed to allow ocean-going ships to reach the city. Later in 1905 the largest dock no. 9 was constructed, being the docks then regarded as the fourth most important port in this country. This important connection to Liverpool trough the Ship Canal, was permitting then the local industry to better compete and distribute its production trough the rest of the world, and in that way contributing for the leading role Manchester had to play in the Industrial Revolution occurring. But lately the development of new and bigger ships, container ports and motorway links have made them obsolete, and in the later 1980’s, the docks were closed. From any disaster, for more dramatic they could be, something positive can always be found, and even death can be faced as the necessary turning point for the nature renewal. That seems to be a kind of rule, which can be applied to any other aspect of life or human activity, so, also Manchester, as a social organism took the opportunity found from the destruction caused by the IRA bombing in 1996, to start a new cycle of renewal. And, as a new century and a new millennium began, also in Manchester new ideas start arising in the horizon. So, it’s here where the renewal and the re-dimensioning of the image of Manchester starts taking place.The Salford Docks have now been redeveloped as Salford Quays, and bringing the renewal of the city to his maritime entrance, the area became with these two most interesting public buildings connected by the bridge, like the big outdoor of Manchester, linking communities from both sides, and turning the site from a busy working place to a pleasant relaxing public space attracting and welcoming more people. With refreshing city planning ideas still taking place, being extended from there through a global renovation of the image of the city for the new millennium, these buildings, amongst others new landmarks, like the Urbis and the newest Beetham Tower, by Ian Simpson, partially open as the Hilton Hotel in June 2006, are changing for ever the Manchester skyline. But the changes and the renewals always use to cause some concerning in more traditionalist minds, which, in the case, the architect, (one of the major responsible for the last changes of the Manchester architecture and particularly for the redesign of the city centre) answered, when talking at a conference in Manchester about his late creation , and in itself an expression of Manchester pride, as published by the local press, last December 2006 : “Manchester is only now just starting to take shape (…) we need to grasp this opportunity and go for it, and not worry about Victorian architecture.”

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THE ARCHITECTS :

James Stirling and Michael Wilford Sir James Frazer Stirling, born in 22 April 1924, in Glasgow, studied architecture from 1945 to 1950 at the University of Liverpool. In 1956 have found his first company with James Gowan and the best-know result of this cooperation is the Engineering Building in Leicester, noted for is technical and geometrical character. From 1963 he had managed the firm alone, but in 1971, Michael Wilford, who was working there since 1960, became also partner of the firm, and later in 1992, after the death of Sir James Stirling he was running the firm and has complete the Lowry Project as many any other projects realized posthumously, like the Staats Galerie in Sttutgart completed in 1994, which still being regarded as his relevant masterpiece, and for which has been called as master of styles. Awarded in 1981 with the renowned Pritzker Prize, being granted a knighthood in 1992 and since 1996 having an annual prize for architecture named after him, his concept of architecture was firstly regarded as brutalist and lately is considered as the leader protagonist of the eclectic postmodernism, or sharing the paternity with Charles Moore. He is known for his personal colourful approach and the use of regular, geometrical shapes and was one of the first defenders of architecture as an independent art, as himself states : “I'm not even sure whether I'm an English Architect, a European or an International Architect. (…) In England in particular there is a peculiar breath of scandal attaching to the pursuit of architecture as Art. (…) However, for me, right from the beginning the ‘art’ of architecture has always been the priority.” Michael Wilford was born in 1938 in Hartfield, East Sussex – England, and studied at the Northern Polytechnic School of Architecture in London. In 1960 joined the practice which James Stirling created in 1956. His work includes art centres, art galleries, museums and libraries all around the world, and has gain international renown and many of his significant public buildings have been awarded, including The Lowry Centre in 2001, as before the British Embassy in Berlin also has won the RIBA European Award. Michael Wilford is member of Royal Institute of British Architects, and many other Institutes around the world; has been lecturing since 1975 in many universities in United States, Canada, Australia and England, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Spain, Singapore, Brazil, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand and lately has being an external examiner at many UK schools of architecture. Daniel Libeskind Daniel Libeskind is one of the most prolific, interesting, influent and energetic architects of our times. Born in 1946 in Lodz , Poland, started studying music in Israel, but later has changed to architecture, becoming graduated in 1970 in New York and post-graduated in History and Theory of Architecture by the University of Essex (United Kingdom) in 1972. Soon after, opened his first office in Berlin-Germany in 1989, the same year he won the competition for the Jewish museum in Berlin, which has been completed and open to public in September 2001. In the meantime, he has produced the city museum of Osnabrück, Germany, The Felix Nussbaum Haus, opened in July 1998, and after that, in July 2002, the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, England, was completed and opened to the public. Being firstly awarded, in 1997 by The American Academy of Arts and Letters, his projects and awards are numerous, including in 2001 the Hiroshima Art Prize, and lately in 2004 for the London Metropolitan University and Imperial War Museum North.

The architecture of Daniel Libeskind has been classified as Deconstructivist, for instance by Jorgen Tietzin, or simply Post-Modernist by many others, but his “uncompromising otherness” is also referred by Charles Jenks, and probably himself will refuse this kind of theoretical limitation or reductionism about his work. He could be better understood as a conceptual architect and is for sure one of the best living defenders of architecture as art, for whom the exercise of architecture just make sense as an expression of the eternal aspirations of the human soul, and whose buildings become artworks themselves, and, as any other work of art, expressions of individuality, originality and invention, and not just an imitative application of an artistic style, because as himself states, his architecture is also a reflexion about the identity and destiny of architecture So, his work could be rather characterised as conceptual, in the sense they are three-dimensional translations of the initial ideas of the architect, they are intended to incorporate a meaning, so, the final work, like any other piece of art, is always auto-biographical and should express in some way his identity. And, to this kind of architecture it doesn’t makes sense no longer the type of categorisation used on past; this architecture is individual, it has personality, we could identify the individual style, but nevermore we could insert it in a kind of school or style as used to be done to what it was called Edwardian, Victorian or similar. Daniel Libeskind uses a distinctive architectural language, based in a minimalist use of colours, shapes and materials, but his minimalist purism is not merely abstract but combined instead into a conceptual language, which makes his buildings easily recognisable, and like the products from his conceptual Time/Memory/Writing machines, so they become like repositories of memory which the visitors can read walking trough the space. Following his own concepts, and still using the Courbusier terminology, we could say that his buildings act at the end as Machines of Hope, because, like himself said before, “you cannot be an architect if you are not a professional optimist”. -

THE BUILDINGS :

The Lowry – 1997/2000

The Lowry Project, which construction was financed basically by the European Commission and the City of Salford, includes The Lowry, the Plaza, the Digital World Centre, the lifting footbridge, access routes and transport infrastructure and is part of a wider regeneration project at Salford Quays.

The Lowry is a landmark Millennium building, started being constructed by James Stirling in 1992 and completed later after his death, by Michael Wilford from 1997 to 2000. Covering an area of 24.000 sq.m., includes galleries of the City of Salford’s Lowry collection, an interactive gallery for children, one lyric theatre and a courtyard theatre, the first with 1730 seats and the last one with 450, and many other facilities like bars, café, retail shops and hospitality suites. Having doubled the number of visitors expected, the project has now become a 'destination' in itself, providing a new focal point within the community, attracting more people to experience the visual and performing arts, and has already proved to be a catalyst for further economic regeneration of the Quays. The building has won several awards including the Royal Institute of British Architects Regional Architectural Award 2001, United States Institute for Theatre Technology-Honour Award-2001, and the Structural Steel Design Commendation Award also in 2001. The use of glass and metallic surfaces gives to the building a kind of immateriality by reflecting or absorbing the surrounding light, and it looks externally as a set of geometric masses, where the different textures of metal, combined with the glass, reinforces the same sense of diversity which can also be found in the interior, rich in vibrant colours and which creative details, break the regularity. But also this variety is noted in terms of internal organisation of space, which is easy to follow and keeps the visual relationship trough the floors as well with the exterior.

The Millennium Foot-Bridge - 2000 The lifting footbridge linking the Lowry with Trafford Wharfside and the Imperial War Museum was designed by W Middleton of Parkman Limited and the main engineering contractors were Christiani and Neilsen. Its span is 92 metre long, provides pedestrian and cycle access across the canal while permits the regular shipping traffic. Made of glass and metal, designed in elegant lines, its arched deck was floated 500m along the Manchester Ship Canal to be lifted into its final position, having a special barge sailed from Holland to facilitate this manoeuvre. It was completed in June 1999 but only open to public on 28th April 2000. The four tubular steel towers, which lifting mechanism is exposed and open to view by visitors, providing an attractive and educational feature, allows the deck to be raised 23 metres above the canal waterline when shipping needs to pass.

Imperial War Museum-North – 2000/2002 From very far, this building catches our attention expressing in the line of the horizon its personality, unity and originality by its distinctive shape and metallic surface like a blade aggressively pointed to the sky. The external shape of the building is intended to represent 3 pieces of the globe cut and intersecting horizontally and vertically, but also the land, the sea and the air, which, like the narrow angles of the plan, seem to be references to the tension, the confrontation and conflict implicit in every war. The out look of the building is austere and cold in terms of colour combination, and doesn’t invite anyone to come in; is isolated, as the access is restricted, looking more like a tank closed and well defended from the exterior, but it expresses a continuity in the relation between outside and inside, or paraphrasing Robert Venturi, one could say the building combines complexity and contradiction, in the sense that the apparently simple minimalist exterior contradicts the labyrinthic organisation of interior space.

However this spatial organisation, is very easy to follow and takes the visitor to cross the course of history walking around the central open space, being also involved in the atmosphere of the war, by sound, image and even smell, almost feeling the building trembling by the effect of the bombs explosions. So, it’s not just a simple static building to embellish a place, not only a translation of an idea or concept into a specific architectural language, not just an artistic building in any particular style but a building that establishes a dialogue with the visitor and poses questions which cannot be ignored by those whose lives became affected directly by the war and being a reminder for all the other ones. It’s a talking building and still saying we’ve been living in a constant state of war since the beginning of the century to our days…and reminding us that we all live in the same planet, this global village, which Earth became, our global house, which architecture is supposed to turn our home too, providing the right roof for it…

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EXPERIENCING TODAY

Since the first time I’ve seen this building, its enigmatic qualities started, like a sphinx, posing questions to my mind. The first one was related with the name: has the building the purpose to be an affirmation of the pride of British Empire, or it’s rather a claim against the absurdity of all wars committed against humanity? The answer I’ve left for the next visits, because I also wanted to cross the bridge and see The Lowry, which entrance and surrounding space is exactly the opposite: open and welcoming. So, when I return, after walk around the main internal space, I’ve start walking up the stairs, which had attracted me from the beginning, and here, the emptiness of the space, the rudeness of the walls, reminds me straight away what could be the feelings and the psychological atmosphere experienced by the prisoners of war.

It was at the same time an adventure, because I couldn’t previously know where will I arrive, what could I expect at the end… It was in some way an experience of fear, as well, that the difficulty of walking up reinforces… Then, suddenly, little holes start to appear in the walls and I could have a ray of light from the outside, like a ray of hope, which is confirmed on arriving at the open, airy and full of light top floor… At this point I’ve realised the labyrinthical qualities of the building, combined with the symbolic, even cabalistic properties I could presume in the intentions of the architect. When I’ve come out of the building the first proposition it came in my mind was: this is a talking building, and it talks very loud so you cannot ignore what it’s saying… I’ve came out with the strong impression of seen a different building, completely different than anyone I’ve seen before…and surprised at the same time, because

it’s apparent external muteness it was in fact full of meaning. And even more than that, the concept of public space achieved in the work of Daniel Libeskind is like the opposite of what the architects of gothic cathedrals were doing when building houses for the eternal architect of the universe, and now is being done for the living people of today. So, two different buildings, like the arms of a scale balancing opposite meanings: in one side, the joy, the sharing, the friendly relationship with other people, in a word, the celebration of life, as in the other side, the serious part of life, the dark side of reality, which we could never forget, because it makes the balance and values the other. -

CONCLUSION

With a technological revolution still occurring in our days, as a natural result from the global changes happening, also architecture is affected and seems to be loosing its national character or changing identity and becoming universal. Everything became global and it seems also very hard to find something we could call as the following correspondence to the previous Victorian, Georgian, Edwardian style or even British architecture. If this is a loss, a gain or just a change of character, that’s what the times to come will probably answer. Architecture, like anything else, seems to develop following cycles of action and reaction, and situated at the edge of XX Century these three buildings make and mark the transition between both centuries, in a kind of balance between past and present, carrying the sad memories from the past to value the joy of the present and the future days we hope. These seem to be the new ideas arising in the horizon, in terms of city planning for Manchester in the XXI Century, and embodied in glass and metal; how the future will grow exactly we cannot guess….for how many more centuries will we have to live in a constant war, we don’t know… But, we can hope, at least, that the architects of the future could bring new fresh ideas to build better, functional and beautiful buildings, but even more than that, we hope they could still have the audacity to build our planet as a home for humanity and to demand the right and the duty to live in peace with each other, in a global world where our differences doesn’t separate us, but could be factors of cultural enrichment, and where our complexity could coexist, in a place where we could face the future without fear, but with joy, as the children had expressed in their paintings exhibited at the War Museum, as we know they wish and deserve.

JOAQUIM PAZ – MANCHESTER, January 2007

Bibliography and Internet Sources: Manchester – Clare Hartwell Manchester Architecture Guide - Eamon Caniffe,Tom Jefferies Nouvelles Impressions d’Architecture - Daniel Libeskind Counterdesign – Daniel Libeskind Museum Ohne Ausgang – Thortsten Rodiek Complexity and Contradiction – Robert Venturi The Architecture of Humanism – Geoffrey Scott Architecture as Space – Bruno Zevi The Dancing Column – Esmond Reid The Greek Revival – J.Mourdant Crook The Orders of Architecture – Arthur Stratton Lectures on Painting – James Barry,Opie,Fuseli Modern Architecture since 1990-William J.R.Curtis-Phaidon 1996 Modern Movements in Architecture-Charles Jenks-1987 The language of Post-modern Architecture-Charles Jenks -1981 New Museum Architecture – Mimi Zeiger- Tames & Hudson – 2005 The story of Architecture of 20th. Century – Jurgen Tietz – Konemann –Cologne 1999 New Architecture-The New Moderns & The Super Moderns – Architecture Design –London 1990 www.penninewaterways.co.uk www.touruk.co.uk/manchester/salford.htm www.manchester2002-uk.com www.thelowry.com www.nwra.gov.uk/theregion/manchester/?page_id=11 http://www.vitruvius.com.br/entrevista/eisenman/eisenman.asp http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/ http://north.iwm.org.uk/ http://www.michaelwilford.com/ http://www.daniel-libeskind.com/daniel/index.html http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/vforum/02/monument_memory/index.html#danielLibeskind http://www.britischebotschaft.de/building/wilford.htm

“The idea that architecture and architects give birth at one and the same time to their affirmation and their negation, and therefore to the meaning and the contradiction of their logic, represents not only a central hypothesis of his work, but also the dominant paradigm in the majority of recent architectural historiography. –From contrast to analogy- Ignasio de Sola Morales in Lotus International #46-1985

“The first demand on every work of art is that it constitute one whole, that is fully pronounce its own meaning, that it tell itself, it ought to be independent”- Henry Fuseli- in Lectures on Painting