Coventry Phoenix Initiative

The Masterplan by MacCormac Jamieson & Prichard integrates public art into a meaningful whole

Of the urban designers practising in the UK, Richard MacCormac has been the most consistent champion of collaboration with artists in the public realm. As well as contributing to symposia and conferences MacCormac has undertaken practical projects, demonstrating the actuality as well as the potential for the integration of art and urban space. His most recently completed work is Southwark underground station on the Jubilee Line Extension, where Alex Beleschenko's curved wall of blue-grey glass forms a counterpoint to MJP (MacCormac Jamieson Pritchard)'s subtle Piranesian vault-like interior.

The Coventry Phoenix Initiative masterplan pushes such collaboration further and includes a key role for Robert Rummey Associates, Landscape Architects. The initiative involves the masterplanning of a route through Coventry's central city area and draws in work by several artists, many of them internationally famous, drawn from a list prepared by Vivien Lovell. MJP and the artists have been involved in an intense series of collaborations which MacCormac hopes will be a 'surprise, beyond people's expectations'.

Masterplan

The masterplan was initiated by the City Council in 1997. MJP won a limited competition with proposals which included major art works, although at that stage the artists had not been chosen. The brief set by the City Council was for a metaphorical journey, starting from the Cathedral which had been bombed in the second world war and was redesigned by Sir Basil Spence, through the periphery of the city centre, to the prospective future, represented by a Garden of International Friendship. The theme of the journey is that of reconciliation between history and the prospective future, already poignantly expressed by Spence's postwar decision to leave the shell of the bombed out cathedral and to build the new one alongside it. As MacCormac points out, the Cathedral itself had already set the scene for joint working between the artist and architect with Graham Sutherland's tapestry of Christ and John Piper's windows forming an integral part of the rebuilt cathedral's design.

Coventry Phoenix Initiative Masterplan   Cook Street Gate Connected to City Hall Garden of International Friendship Millennium Arch leading to Millenium Place Bus Station Sainsburys Priory Place Britannia Hotel Blue Coat School Interpretation and Multi Faith Centre Cathedral

A key role in the collaborative nature of the project has been taken by Vivien Lovell, who has been responsible for facilitating the choice and management of the artists. Lovell was director of the Public Arts Commissions Agency (PACA) for a number of years and first established herself through her work in Birmingham and the remodelling of Centenary Square (see UDQ no. 54). The process of choosing the artists has been delegated to a Forum, representing different interests in the city, who selected artists from a long list drawn up by PACA. MacCormac feels that Lovell's genius has been to see the potential for the artists selected to work in particular locations and amplify the sense of place.

Possession of Space

It seems likely that once the project is completed that comparisons will be drawn with the re-modelling of Birmingham city centre, given the location and leading protagonists. MacCormac thinks that lessons have been learnt from the Birmingham experience, although of course he was not personally involved. The spaces in Coventry will be tighter and more dynamic and the intense collaboration between urban designer and artists will mean that the art works themselves will possess and shape the newly created spaces, rather than be placed within them.

The works will also be more site specific, through this process of integration. This theme is central to MacCormac's evolving view on art and architecture where he suggests that artists are extending the range of architecture by engaging with the subject matter of site.

He talks of artists opening up the 'psychic archaeology' of place, getting beneath the obvious physical responses to a site. He argues that artists are able to penetrate the characteristics of a place in a way that cannot be anticipated and are able to make 'something new - and quite unlike other places'.

The Route

Priory Garden and Priory Cloister

The spaces which will be created in Coventry form episodes on a route. The route starts from the Cathedral precinct and Holy Trinity Church, a medieval church which was untouched by the war. An archaeological dig has exposed the site of the medieval priory over which two new spaces will be formed: the Priory Garden and the Priory Cloister, between which a new multi-faith interpretative centre will be built.

The priory has provided the inspiration for the first art work which walkers on the route will encounter, an interpretative work by Chris Brown. The medieval cloister has been recreated on the site with pleached trees to the design of Dominic Scott of Robert Rummey Associates. The artist David Ward will light the perimeter wall of the cloister with blue light and project images from the Hubble telescope - a glimpse of the sublime.

Priory Place

Priory Place and the route down to Millennium Place will open up pedestrian access through areas which have been blocked by service yards and multi-storey car parks since the 1970's. The route moves from the cloister into the triangular enclosure of Priory Place bridging over the water installation devised by the artist Susanna Heron which consists of shallow slowly moving water, a four-metre high water fall and rills which allude to the streams which run beneath the site. The route traverses the water on a bridge-like ramp.

Water Feature, Priory Place. Artist Susanna Heron

The pincer-like shape of the space is consequence of the Sainsbury supermarket deciding not to move, so defeating the original idea of a terrace-lined boulevard running north/south. Instead the two triangular public spaces are linked apex to apex by steel arches, standing where there are currently cross roads. The arches mark an important intersection of pedestrian routes linking the cathedral precinct to Millennium Place and the bus station and suburban housing estates to the retail areas of the city.

Millennium Place

Time Zone Clock, Millenium Place . Artist Francoise Schein

The steel arches open out into Millennium Place, which will provide a new open-air exhibition area for the Museum of British Road Transport. At the time of the initial proposal it was anticipated that the Museum would be re-built with financial support from the Lottery. This has not been forthcoming and it is only the entrance to the museum which will be rebuilt. The artist Françoise Schein has designed what should be a stunning art work for Millennium Place, which alludes to Coventry's history as a centre for clock-making. The work will consist of a 'clock' based on the time zones of the world, represented by linear LED displays set into the pavement. The LED displays will be arranged radially with about 1500 'lights' making up the twenty-four time zones. They will be slightly raised from the paving so that walking on them will feel like the ridges of sand on a beach after the tide has gone out. Each linear display lights up as the sun rises over the time zone it represents so that by midnight the entire display is illuminated. Then at ten to one in the morning the displays will all switch off so that the Place is in complete darkness for ten minutes, before the first time zone comes on at 1.00 am.

The north boundary to Millennium Place will be defined by a radial wall which will also form the new frontage to the museum. Adjacent to the entrance to the Museum a sandstone ramp will lead to a bridge. Cantilevered out from the ramp and made of coloured acrylic will be the People's Bench by Jochen Gerz, a German artist whose past work has been involved with the theme of memory and of reconciliation. Gerz's idea is that visitors will be able to buy a little steel token like a coin. The token must be inscribed with two names, which could be, say, the visitor and spouse, partner, relative or friend. It will then be glued into a pre-drilled hole in the bench. Gerz anticipates that people may come from all over the world to leave a memory of themselves in the glittering, south facing bench. He is also planning, in a space adjacent to Millennium Place, an obelisk of glass surrounded by texts about people's reactions to past enemies. Gerz wants to provoke and challenge people's prejudices and capacity for reconciliation and part of the subject matter will inevitably focus on relations between England and Germany. This installation will be called the Future Monument.

People's Bench, Millenium Place. Artist Jochen gerz

Ramp and Spiral

View from Northern Entrance, Garden of International Friendship, MJP Architects, Kate Whiteford and Robert Rummey Associates

The last part of the journey ascends the sandstone ramp, where aerial views of both Jochen Gerz's and Françoise Schein's work will be visible. The ramp becomes a spiral which is then transformed into a bridge which spans over the medieval city wall and leads to the Garden of International Friendship. The spiral is an innovative structure by Dewhurst McFarlane which has no central supports but is anchored at both ends of what is effectively a 14m diameter cantilever. Dampers will prevent a 'wobble' factor. The steel structure of the spiral and bridge is enclosed in an installation of glass which form the balustrade rather like a tulip in section, and will appear incandescent at night. This work is being designed by the artist Alex Beleschenko. The high level bridge takes visitors through the tree foliage of an existing landscape, Lady Herbert's Garden and brings them down onto a platform in the Garden of International Friendship, designed by Dominic Scott and recently opened. The sandstone wall adjacent to the platform directs the viewer's gaze back to the city centre, to the spires of St. Michael's and Holy Trinity. The platform also provides a view down into the Garden and the final artwork, made of chippings and hedging, takes the form of a fragment of a vast medieval maze which has the appearance of having been unearthed. The artist is Kate Whiteford. The fragment of maze, which alludes to the lost Priory is enclosed by a curved wall inscribed with newly composed Coventry carols by the poet David Morley.

Conclusions

In commissioning this masterplan and associated artworks Coventry City has been exceptionally bold in moving beyond conventional conceptions of public art to more interactive installations which are integral with the urban and landscape design. One of the obvious questions which arises is how populated and active these new spaces will be. MacCormac points out that they connect already important destinations in the city, the cathedral and the Museum of Road Transport but he, and the city council, do not under-estimate the need for the City to manage the new spaces and animate them with festivals and cultural events. Drawing people in will be essential as the site is on the periphery of the city centre and, apart from newer higher density housing and retail being designed by MJP around Priory Place, is not in a high density district. The funding for the project came from the Lottery with £10m from the Millennium Fund and £10m from the City itself. The masterplan has evolved over the three years and, ironically, unforeseen difficulties with land assembly at the centre of the route have led to the adoption of a sequence of spaces which are more lightly focussed and more likely to be successful in the long run. At the time of writing work on both ends of the route had been started but completion of the whole route will not be achieved until 2003. Until then we await, with anticipation, the regenerative effect and the amplified image of Coventry which the scheme promises. #