Friday 29 July 2011

Urban design... not.

Hanley Tesco pathway

In Hanley, the huge new Tesco super-hyper-megamarket covers acres of territory just outside the town centre. For all the tens of thousands of pounds spent on the building and its environs, the architecture is plainly uninspired; and I guess that comes down to money. Fair enough.

Yet this pathway, along one of its sides, linking the supermarket back to the town centre, drives me to despair , because it is such an example of total lack of regard for our environment.
It could have been a wonderful corner, or vista, or community 'piazza', but it ends up being unfriendly (in my humblr opinion).

This side-pathway was a positive chance for Tesco to show some real urban, creative imagination in the design of a small but self-contained, redundant space - but they came up with this dull...virtual nothing. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

4 comments:

  1. They have gone for the low maintenance, easy to hose out model, haven't they? I thought the squiggles on the left were graffiti, but on closer inspection it appears to be slightly more artistic versions of an quasi-asian script.

    Greenery would have required trimming and watering etc.

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  2. Yes, I agree, greenery would have been labour intensive, so i don't blame them for that. The squiggle was the closest they got to blue-sky thinking (tho this squiggle is used elsewhere in the city - not sure why exactly).

    I guess what bothers me is that this little corner could have been turned over to an urban design group or even placed out to a public art competition, but certainly just more imaginatively approached. And they missed the opportunity.

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  3. The really sad thing is that this could be almost anywhere in the world (I live in Sweden).

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  4. What a lovely, meandering path!

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