Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
1
Introduction
In a global market, the local is often sacrificed to the ‘national good’ and
‘interstitial’ places like the interiors of aircraft play a more prominent part
in people’s lives. We also live in an age dominated by narcissism and
privacy, exemplified by the gated community.
Project Direction
I know life through moments lived and, like many expect towns and cities to
declare equivalent moments, in what American architects Colin Rowe and
Fred Koetter once described as a “collage city”. I think that the
momentous-ness of urban environments is episodic. We treat it like
watching a film, editing out the bits that we don’t wish to see. Sometimes,
the moment is a profoundly human one, perhaps a place where divisive
boundaries are crossed. At other times, it is a pompous and brilliantly
superficial, like the over-formal presentation of haute couture: “The Chanel
bag with the inlaid silver chain”. Sometimes it is found. At other times, it is
constructed: a scene painted by the Dutch painter Pieter de Hooch.
Sometimes, it is a natural expression. At other times, the result of artistic
intervention, such as artist Robert Smithson inserting mirrors in to the
surface of a desert plain.
In his book The Concise Townscape, writer Gordon Cullen viewed ‘place’ as
an issue of the position of our body in its environment, an art of relationship
that “When you go into a room you utter to yourself the unspoken words “I
am outside IT, I am entering IT, I am in the middle of IT.”…no sooner do we
postulate a HERE than automatically we must create a THERE.”
2
When developers Chris Brown and Roger Zogolovitch, regeneration and
design advisors to The Castleford Project first joined me in the town, they
noticed that there were key connections in the town that were severed, for
instance between the town and its waterfront. These connections were
manifest in intersections left to rack and ruin or soulless, poorly landscaped
public realm with no relation to surrounding buildings – ‘Space Left Over
After Planning’. To make or remake these spaces would be to improve the
town’s quality of life and begin to extract value from some of the town’s
underlying assets, such as its location close to a regional capital. It would
also begin to help the town have edited highlights. It might begin to
encourage a sense of HERE and THERE.
We were aware of the rise of the idea of landscape as urbanism, of the role
of open spaces in redefining the modern city; the frustration and lack of
delivery associated with development programmes led by master plans; the
linkage between revaluing and reprogramming public space and economic
revitalization; and the fact that “Nearly every significant new landscape
designed in recent years occupies a site that has been reinvented or
reclaimed from obsolescence or degradation, as cities in the post-industrial
era remake and redefine their outdoor spaces.” Some of these spaces are
existing civic ones, like town squares. Others are abused, polluted or
exhausted sites. Some are topographies, newly sculpted. Others are
rationalised pre-industrial commons, where residents play or cultivate crops
on urban/semi-urban landscapes. Many are at junction points in the town,
places of passage and encounter.
My initial interest in public space had been inspired by artists like Mark
Rothko, Giorgio de Chirico and Piero della Francesca. Then I discovered
American sociologist and filmmaker William H. Whyte and his investigations
in to why some small urban spaces work for people, and some do not. Then
the thought of Bernard Tschumi, the Swiss designer of Parc de la Villette in
Paris, that “Architecture is defined by the actions it witnesses as much as
the enclosure of its walls.”
3
The project team prioritised design excellence, a key emphasis of the
executive team at City of Wakefield. We worked on the principal that no
one knows the detail and aspirations of communities better than the
inhabitants themselves and devised ways in local people could become
intrinsically involved in the process. We also emphasised multi-disciplinary
professional engagement to mirror the multi-faceted nature of
contemporary urban problems.
Two years on, as a result of the support of the community and commitment
of City of Wakefield to the Project, the following has been achieved:
4
Improving Castleford as a Place
The Carlton Lanes shopping centre dominates the civic centre of Castleford
while the surrounding streets, including Carlton Street (the ‘High Street’),
have suffered from economic decline and need new life pumping back into
them. One Project that has emerged is the rejuvenation of Carlton Square
itself – a popular but cluttered, run down space that is the notional civic
heart of Castleford.
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3 Transforming Tittle Cott Bridge
Just south of the market’s existing location is the delightfully named Tittle
Cott Bridge. It is in fact a narrow, run-down subway under the railway line
immediately to the east of Castleford railway station. Despite its
diminutive proportions, it is the central pedestrian link between the
southern half of the town and the town centre, which are divided by the
east-west route of the railway line. Not only that, but it provides
immediate access from a large popular car park on the south side of the
line to Carlton Lanes shopping centre on the north.
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riverside destinations or points of fresh departure. There is a ‘gap’ site on
the south bank just east of the mill and weir which could be the site of a
discrete Project. There may be other opportunities on the north bank
where there is a pedestrian right of way along the river bank. Visual links
from the river to the town centre would help re-establish and reintroduce
the key relationship between the town and the original reason for
Castleford’s existence, which is of course the river.
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11 Developing a pocket park strategy for Wilson Street
At the western end of the town centre, west of Church Street a series of
terraced streets run south and north off Wilson Street. Demolition and
dereliction have left a series of empty plots and people are angry that the
external environment of the area has fallen into neglect. These plots
provide opportunities for inserting ideas that regenerate these sites while
introducing animation and restoring a stronger sense of community to the
area. There are also opportunities for restoring/reviving degraded
passageways. Within Koetter Kim’s early ideas for Castleford it has been
suggested that the town centre needs to restore its former residential
densities and streetscapes. The Wilson Street area is seen as a potential
model for how other inner areas could accommodate new homes and create
new urban lifestyles at the heart of the town.
12 Cutsyke Projects
Cutsyke is a tightly knit suburb of Castleford just to the north of the M62,
composed predominantly of purpose-built semi-detached and terraced
council housing. Some houses have large gardens. There are large
underused neglected public spaces and the area is in need of substantial
revitalisation to prevent further decline. The local community, assisted by
Groundwork, has been very active in seeking schemes that stop this decline
and provide the kind of facilities people have expressed an interest in.
Notably these include sorting out the allotments to the south of Cutsyke
Avenue and developing a tri-partite playground to provide opportunities
for local young people on a site adjacent to a Groundwork community
garden that is about to enter construction. There is a clear need in the
area for some private gardens to be improved and items such as bus
shelters and local routes to be upgraded. Increasing social problems
associated with decline mean Cutsyke has a pressing claim for help with
regeneration. Designers will find input from the community and from
Groundwork helpful and essential.
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The Designers’ Response
9
As befits a quintessentially British and also object/interiors-orientated firm,
the market stalls are a key to Hudson Architects’ scheme. They have
developed the design of these in association with the Royal College of Art
and B2 Consultants.
The stalls are permanent pieces of street furniture; the canopies unfold
during the day to shelter market tables and then fold up overnight. Lighting
is embedded in the stalls to provide task lighting during the day which -
when closed - makes the stalls glow.
10
Town Centre: DSDHA
For the subway that is a key entry point in to the town centre, architects
DSDHA have reviewed the experience of travelling through a narrow tunnel
and sought to create a new public space to the south side.
Deborah Saunt and her team are inspired by the ideas of urban sociologist
Ray Oldenburg who writes about the importance of informal gathering
places and how bars, coffee shops, general stores, and other "third places"
(in contrast to the first and second places of home and work), are central to
local democracy and community vitality. In Saunt’s words, these are
“alternative infrastructures” that make towns desirable social and
economic places, in contrast to the “short-lived rape and plunder” of the
leisure/retail model on the periphery of the town.
With lighting artist Martin Richman and engineer Jane Wernick, DSDHA plan
to create a new public place whose focal point is a sculpted seat, stratified
with references to the town’s material history.
11
‘Castleford Bay’: Mc Dowell + Benedetti
With Arup Water and Alan Baxter Associates, architect Renato Benedetti has
been developing the concept of a floating or fixed structure which connects
the town and its water space and ‘Duck Island’ to the North.
Essential to the scheme is a Belvedere on the north bank and a new public
promenade to the south.
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Benedetti believes that in cities, it is the public spaces that are the
infrastructure and objects such as bridges act as “the soft connecting
tissues”. At night Benedetti plans to turn ‘Castleford Bay’ in to a magical
place, realising a ‘string of pearls’ in light.
Sarah Wigglesworth is best known for her house in London which uses a wide
range of innovative materials including straw bales, sandbags, gabions and
quilted cloth – an attention to the stuff of architecture which won her the
RIBA Sustainability Award 2005 and she is bringing to a new studio and
dance complex for the Siobhan Davies dance company.
“For too long architecture has erected a defensive wall around itself,
technically refining matter and twiddling with form in the deluded belief
that this alone is enough. It is time to cross over these self-defined walls
and engage with wider cultural forces.”
13
She has also developed a series of designs for seating and fishing follies at
strategic points adjacent to the waterside and connected with plans laid out
by Hudson Architects and McDowell + Benedetti. Three of these will be
constructed within the context of The Castleford Project.
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Village Green, New Fryston: Martha Schwartz
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Cutsyke Playforest: Estell Warren Landscape
The original concept for the scheme came from the youth section of the
Cutsyke Community Group in an action-planning event in Autumn 2003. The
group wanted a climbing experience that was exclusive to local young
people, a playful place that that they could call their own. The forest is now
under construction.
At The Green, Ferry Fryston, the community and landscape planner Phil
Heaton of Parklife are creating a new play space. In conjunction with the
new Friends of the Green group, Parklife has run many design events,
including ‘Parties in the Park’ attended by thousands of local residents. In
part, this approach is informed by Heaton’s unwillingness to let design be
dictated by manufacturers of equipment or furniture. This is a political
position to creating places for play that is a reaction to the constraints
imposed upon and expressed in many play schemes in the UK.
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The plan is to create a new
entrance to the Park and a play
space at its centre: a soft
landscape keyed to Heaton’s
favourite aesthetic of moonscapes
and volcanoes. He is designing the
scheme in collaboration with
Oyster Park Junior School and
Yorkshire based, metalworking
artist Chris Campbell.
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Urbanism and the creation of an Event Space
They epitomise a generation tutored in the merits of public space and the
value of design intervention, pioneered by the likes of architect Cedric
Price, 60s imagists Archigram and ‘The Cambridge School’ of architectural
design – ideas expressed in initiatives like the Urban Task Force and
Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment.
All are against sprawl and understand that urban flight leaves in its wake a
fractured community and faded sense of spirit.
All understand the value of planting an idea and believe that genuine
communal value is the standard against which urban change should be
considered.
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In an early phase of design development, Gehl and Gemzoe advised
architectural teams on movement in the town. In their analysis, they
encouraged the Project to celebrate certain values in their design, values
espoused by American sociologist William H. Whyte and expressed by the
organisation he founded in the United States, Project for Public Spaces:
“Four key ingredients make for a great place: Accessibility, Activities,
Comfort and Sociability.” In one of Whyte’s immortal phrases, “What
attracts people most is other people.”
In many cases, the designer has approached the site as an ‘event space’.
Some have simply arranged objects in a given space, be it the cairn that
features at the centre Martha Schwartz’ open space design or the oversized
rocks that edge and define Parklife’s play space. Others have sought to
create objects that provoke new activity.
On one level, site as ‘event space’ is simply responding to the brief for the
design competition which asked for permanent ‘objects of enchantment’.
On another, in the nature of their approach to site, the scale of their work
and the work’s creation of its ‘own’ space, the designs express themselves
and their site as an environmental installation.
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Intervention of Visual Artists
In the catalogue accompanying the show, Clare Lilley of the Sculpture Park
drew attention to the relationship between Winter & Hörbelt’s work and the
idea and reality of crossing, viewing and occupying space. She connected
their ‘behavioural space’ with the idea of a social sculpture. “Their walk-in
structures both reveal (enclosed space, views) and filter (surrounding
space, views) and they are made complete only when entered and used.”
20
Carlos Garaicoa
Carlos Garaicoa was born, lives and works in Havana, Cuba. In 2006, he will
visit Castleford and in a one-month residency, create an artwork for display
in the town. He visited Castleford for research purposes in early 2005.
21
Interested in urban planning and the architectural social fabric of the city,
Garacoia often illustrates his utopia in large installations using various
materials, such as crystal, wax candles, and rice-paper lamps.
The city is there, waiting for you…Over time she grows, becomes more
complex, fugitive….This web of experiences affects, contaminates, reflects
upon, and is projected onto the city’s architecture and urban planning, her
temperature and airs, her skies and stars, her buildings, corners, texts,
languages, and peoples.
22
Creation of an Art Space: 2 Sagar Street
We knew that the measure of a successful town or city rests with its people,
the strength of their attachment to a place and their ability to join forces in
the ongoing process of regeneration.
23
The Castleford Town Centre Partnership acquired the lease of a derelict
furniture store at a key, strategic location on a street connecting the town
centre with the waterfront and lend use of the site to the Project. The shop
was refurbished as an exhibition space and community venue.
Opening in September 2003, the site has since hosted events that have
attracted over eight thousand people and become a bridging point between
the dream and reality of the town and its regeneration. The location has
hosted exhibitions of the work of sculptor Henry Moore, a son of Castleford,
organised by the Castleford Heritage Group and supported by the Henry
Moore Foundation; several exhibitions of visual art by graduates of the Royal
College of Art, London, Moore’s former school; several architectural
exhibitions related to our programme of work, design workshops, dance
nights, formal council meetings and quirky local creative events, such as
artist and writer Brian Lewis and Harry Malkin producing sixty-seven
artworks in twenty-four hours in celebration of their sixty-seventh birthday
and in passing tribute to They Shoot Horses Don’t They.
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The connection between the Project, local culture and regeneration reaches
beyond offering artists an exhibition space. It is about identity.
The most powerful and exciting amenity group in the town, the Castleford
Heritage Group, had always been interested in the theme of marking
history, underlining the covenant and contract between past and present.
The arrival of the Project offered a moment when a proposal for a piece of
work could be put together. The first trail, themed to the life and work of
Henry Moore and created by artist Harry Malkin and writer Ian Clayton is
now being developed with local people and will be delivered in 2006.
“In Castleford, there are what are called sand holes. They’re caves where
the sand has been excavated and run into the side of certain hillsides,
quite a long distance, and you can get lost in them. As boys we would
take a reel of cotton many yards long and go in to the caves. But one
wouldn’t go further than the cotton because it was dark. The caves
always had this fascination for me, these holes did.” – Henry Moore,
1973
The Project has coupled this dynamic, didactic approach to expressing the
town and its past with a dynamic, expressive attitude towards its identity in
the present. We have done this in two ways: direct creative work and
educational initiatives.
25
Anderson is a graduate in graphic design and fine art – as well as a tutor at
Camberwell College of Art - who mixes gallery shows with corporate identity
work and interior design with outdoor installations. So alongside his type
work for commercial clients like Moschino and Nike and interiors for
restaurants and bars, Anderson constructed an installation around the coast
of St Lucia in 1998, painting culturally significant numbers on coloured
wooden poles – not unlike Garacoia’s work with numbers on walls in Havana.
26
In Castleford, Peter collected memorable opinions, at times abstract
comments on the town stated by local people at public meetings in clubs,
pubs, through street surveys and at ‘action planning’ events in 2003.
27
Working in collaboration with the designer, teachers at the school have set
students projects, asking them to visualise their idea of the present space –
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- and participate in the final design, such as the creation of this
artwork for a mural to be created at a main entrance to the Green. In
effect, express what they want from the world about them.
29
Self-Actualisation and the Art of The Castleford Project
However, the extent to which such a creatively rich process has been
devolved and taken up by the community is important.
It suggests that the town is not a vulnerable place that has lost its ego,
sense of place or pride: and that’s why its inhabitants, by espousing high
quality architectural design and art are not, behaving like “patsies for
quantum leaps and architectural acrobatics.”
Certainly, to an extent, when one talks of art and culture, the real subject
is money. But something less manipulative and more honest is also going on,
an idea which was best expressed by the artist Paul Klee: “Art does not
reflect the visible; it renders visible.”
In every which way, The Castleford Project has sought to heighten and
differentiate the town and its self-image. It has done this in several ways,
such as re-awakening the community to its role as client, personalising each
project, working on a localized scale, ensuring the appointment of a series
of designers and artists capable of realising a customized design.
This suits an idea of the civic in which the public realm, our outdoor living
room, becomes an opportunity for self-actualisation, in which 'dead' space
lives as an enabler of change and an opportunity for people to self-design
their identity. Whether that change is true or false, art is an invaluable
device by which the viewer can be presented with an image of enhanced
creative capacity, another kind of artificial mirror that allows people to call
a landscape and its creation their own.
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A Note on the Author
For over thirteen years, David has made documentary and factual television
programmes for BBC Television, Channel 4, Channel Five, ITV, National
Geographic Channel (Europe), CNN (Atlanta) and WNET (New York).
Highlights include films on human rights abuses in West Africa, the death of
rock star Michael Hutchence and single editions of Omnibus, The Late Show
and Dispatches.
Barrie ran a similar project for the BBC on the space beneath the iconic
cloverleaf road interchange known as ‘Spaghetti Junction’ in 1990: a project
shown in a special single edition of BBC Television’s The Late Show.
David takes a special interest in the role that the media can play as an
instrument for democracy and the added value that it can leverage from its
ownership of a licence or brand.
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