A New Kind of Bleak. Owen Hatherley
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by Peter Freeman in the centre of Middlesbrough, called ‘Spectra-txt’ – a steel column with twinkling lights that can be controlled by text message. It is, apparently, inspired by Blade Runner, as the story goes that Ridley Scott himself was inspired to create his twenty-first-century Los Angeles by the sight of the Wilton skyline – dozens of pipes and towers, neon-lit and topped by flares. That’s one local context which neither Alsop nor Egeraat cottoned on to.
Billingham itself is instantly recognizable by its skyline of concrete cooling towers, many of them still belching away – but the town itself is memorable, in its severely depressed way. It’s a private-sector New Town sponsored by a benevolent corporation, which should make clear how the state and the corporation were hardly at odds in the Keynesian settlement; but here, unlike at Middlehaven, we find not the public sector doing the work and spending the money that elsewhere private capital would pick up, but the reverse – a private company helping to create social housing and a local centre. Like all company towns, the result is a little uncanny, with that persistent hint of not-right. The station itself is basic in the extreme, a concrete shelter and bridge, leading to small houses and bungalows. After a little while, though, you find the planned town centre, created to accommodate ICI’s post-war expansion. Designed by local architects Elder, Lester & Partners, it is the space age coated in pigeon shit. The buildings are often fabulous, after you squint away the layers of filth. A brave new world all of its own, trying to ignore Huxley’s patrician concerns about a sterile and functional modernity.
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