the brighton arena and the spa and winter garden.
black rock is a hideous hole, a mess of junctions and flyovers under which crouch ungenerous executive red brick quayside apartments and warehouse shaped franchised lesiure bunkers. drive throughs and factory outlet shops full of floral pottery and golfing goods. a bomb would be an improvement. but perhaps not a state of the art national centre of sporting excellence.
i must admit i much prefer the spa and winter gardens, it's a return to the original development of brighton from a fishing village to a place for promenading and taking the waters. and it re-establishes an architectural connection to the kemp town development, a connection that the marina development totally disregarded. the RH partnership seems committed to extending the volks railway, a splendid piece of victorian engineering - the first electric railway and now rather pointless....it doesn't go anywhere except the marina development and thats as inviting as milton keynes. but its only the inside of the development thats like that, its fragmentary and uninviting with the measly public space available made of ersatz 'village' squares. the beach the other side, black rock proper, is strange wild rock flats and rock pools under the sheer white cliffs. the breakwater itself is as impressive as any castle...a huge row of concrete barrels generating impressive smashing waves. and theres the boats - boats are just good. at first glance the winter gardens at least looks like an attempt to give a unified shape to some of it.
Posted by flambingo at September 25, 2003 04:53 PM
