LIVERPOOL'S HISTORIC WATERFRONT MY ARSE

I had a wonderful day yesterday meeting Ken Martin, whom I first met 30 years ago when he was the Head of Liverpool Polytechnic's school of architecture.  This time we were discussing a show of my paintings we are planning for his gallery, View Two, in Mathew Street.  Much more about this later, I expect.

It was a day trip - I went to a football match at Tranmere, and also took a ferry trip from Birkenhead to Liverpool.  I was brought up on the Wirral: the ferries are in my blood, and I have sailed on the Snowdrop (ex-Woodchurch) since it came into service in the early 60s.  

While waiting at the Woodside terminal for the Snowdrop to pull in, I looked across at the Liverpool waterfront.  I have written and lectured about the Liver Building.  When it was built it was a vulgar imitation of a Chicago skyscraper - but now it is a symbol of the city, and for me it is therefore a symbol of home.

But its vulgarity is nothing compared to that of the collection of new buildings that line the waterfront, and which populate that crass shopping complex called Liverpool 1.  Look at this picture on which I angrily scored the lines on my tablet on site:

What is it that some contemporary architects have against horizontals and verticals?  Why is each one of those new buildings frantically trying to out-vertical its neighbour?  (If you want to see how dignified the architecture of horizontal and vertical can be, just look at my previous post).

When I stood there, I felt ashamed to be an architect from this place: this is mediochre architecture by mediochre architects (or maybe cast-off money-earners from good ones).  There's little that's subtle or clever about that wretched Museum of Liverpool, and the thing by the ferry terminal (to the left of the picture) must be demolished.

The trouble is, people think this sort of trendy-this-year-shit-the-next architecture symbolises Liverpool's regeneration.  But we know that down-at-heel cities commission offcuts from signature architects' portfolios.  These buildings don't symbolise regeneration - they symbolise the low-point in this wonderful city's recent past.  Now it deserves some good architecture.