Critique of Liverpool 1, 2009

The site was once marshland with a tidal pool. Originating from the Welsh words LIer pwll – `place on the pool’, or Lyrpool, the riverside settlement became Liverpool. King John had a castle built in the 13th Century by the Earl of Derby to protect the new port of Liverpool. It was at the end of Castle Street and overlooked the Mersey and the pool. Thomas Steers planned and built the world’s first commercial dock in 1709 on the site of the pool. Pool Lane led to it and Liver Street is still there. The castle was demolished a few years later in1715, and now the Victoria Monument stands in the centre of Derby Square where the castle stood. The Luftwaffe fire bombed the area in 1941, and Bluecoat Chambers, built as a charity school in 1717, survived but injured. While the burghers developed Chavasse Park and a ground level car park economically and pragmatically, Bluecoat was lovingly restored and expanded back to its role as a major arts centre. The shell of the imposing neo-classical Custom House that stood facing Salthouse Quay and over the original dock was later demolished rather than restored and so offered the chance for the city to connect visually to the Albert Dock beyond Strand Street.

With no hindrance from transport infrastructures below ground, The BDP masterplan intelligently establishes connections to the existing physical spaces and street patterns to the north, east and south. This connexity also engages several existing buildings, many of which have been sensitively adapted to new uses. St John Street is reconnected via the new Custom House Place while focusing on the John Lewis store, Paradise Street remains essentially the same, and Manesty’s Lane is redirected to the new Paradise Place to allow for a servicing cul-de-sac off Hanover Street. More tricky to handle is the open connection across the multi-lane Strand Street to the Albert Dock. This challenge is at the pedestrian level and spatially critical.

Beyond the obvious moves linking to the non-orthogonal mediaeval grain, BDP’s masterplan carves a major quasi-oval space – an unusual gesture which informs the shape of the new elevated Chavasse Park, but leaves awkward shapes for planning the car park below it. Was this shape to encourage a family of crescents or simply a postmodern line for other architects to follow? It seems to be the latter ­ with the curving One Park West residential building occupying the sunny side and pointedly wishing to be taller, smarter, sharper as the development bowsprit ­ but rather reminiscent of a washed out blue-grey curtain-walled office of the`60s. The Hilton Hotel, still to be completed, arcs towards Strand Street, and uses the fashionable two-storey-high windows alternately displaced to camouflage its scale and structural grid. It is then strangely topped by an exposed regular, almost neo-fascist three storey columnar frieze. These two large buildings, not related other than by a notional line, seem to want to reflect the scale of the earlier port architecture – which includes Regent Street architect Arthur Davis’s contribution to the Cunard Building – while creating an asymmetrical entry from the world heritage Albert Dock. The eye is led to the ugly tower of St John’s and Radio City.

But the wind comes in too, and the space seems ideally shaped to funnel a southwesterly right through into Paradise Street, while the offer of a sunset across the Mersey from Chavasse Park is free. The resurrected Chavasse Park is an important lung within the development, but the interpretation seems mannered, absent of enclosure or oasis, it labours to integrate despite some imaginative planting around its edges. Is it able to evolve and change? The urban park or square is vital to ease the pressure on the shopping ritual. Here is where one might also find a crèche ­ and would Studio Three Architects’ playful pavilion be suitable, or does the potential rental income from brasserie/café/gallery dictate its future occupier?