What Will Become Of The Bradford Odeon ? The old Odeon cinema in Bradford city centre has been closed for about six years, the building is getting tatty, plants and small trees now grow from its cracks and crevices and scores of pigeons dwell behind its broken windows, but, something is afoot....... Bradford Council have unveiled an Urban Regeneration Plan with the idea of turning industrial Bradford into some sort of Venice of West Yorkshire. It doesn't matter about the lack of canals either, they're going to dig their way to the Leeds-Liverpool, grab a shovel everyone. Plans on display at the National Museum of Film and Photography show the three competing plans for the developemet of the 'New Victoria' cinema. Casa Mela Aaargh, MY EYES, MY EYES! Ok, so someone went a little mad with the colour palette here, but, erm, well at least it retains the old Odeon/New Victoria towers to help maintain a bit of the heritage. Bradford Pivot The architects Dyer say this about their proposal..."Our aim is to create a sustainable building with a strong identity providing the city centre with a mixed- use venue to shop, relax, learn, live and work. The pivot reflects the scale of the new public space known as ‘The Bowl’ while respecting the surrounding architectural heritage. It compliments the composition of the new buildings while creating a visual reference. The lower floors provide active frontages to strengthen the public realm and a feature window creates the gateway to the college. The residential accommodation sweeps up from the height of the Alhambra to an office tower with a public restaurant at the summit." What the bloody hell are "active frontages to strengthen the public realm " ? And how in the name of Priestley does this glass monstrosity claim to be "respecting the surrounding architectural heritage." ? Th building is just horrible, a bog standard, modern, thoughtless, ugly, nasty, prefab looking thing, but, if you think this is bad, just look at what Carey Jones Architects have come up with...... (Oh, by the way, Pivot, shit name as well.) New Victoria Palace God name, shame about the building. This is by far the dullest and least inspired of the three proposals, it is quite astonishing in its dullness, it would blend seamlessly into any city in the world, you would walk right past and the building would never, ever impinge on your conciousness because it is so incredibly dull. Looking at how bad these proposals are, can you just imagine the ones that were rejected ? Good Lord they must have been bad. I'll be casting my vote for Casa Mela as it retains a small portion of the charm of the original building, the other two are hollow, soulless constructions that will look dated almost as soon as they are built. Why is it that architects are unable to design nice looking buildings anymore ? Give them a job and they all say "Oooh, I know, let's make it all out of glass." As a bit of architectural relief from these carbuncles, here is one of my favourite buildings, St. Pancras Rail Station in London (now being converted into expensive apartments).