SUSO

Culturally Capable Capital?

Liverpool’s Look of the City scheme asks if the city is in danger of losing its identity.

W / Daisy Bell

Liverpool is a controversial Capital of Culture in 2008. To the average southerner, the impression is of scallies, crime and industrial smoke. But there's a TATE now, of course, a brand new shopping centre, and an influx of new clubs and restaurants. So has the UK's cultural capital successfully concealed traditional stereotypes? Or should it seek to conceal them at all?

Edge Lane, one of the main routes into Liverpool, is host to the highest number of boarded up houses in the city. In the council's Look of the City scheme (an attempt to stop tourists being put off by local dereliction), the houses have been revamped in a simple, cheap yet innovative way. The boards covering the windows and doors have been brightly painted with images famously associated with Liverpool. John Lennons, Liver birds and odes to Everton or Liverpool FC have been painted in green, purple, blue and red, turning the city's most poverty stricken streets into the brightest in town. A bad situation has become a celebration of Merseyside pride.

Unfortunately, the Look of the City scheme on Edge Lane is temporary. With a new £350 million budget, the council is going ahead with the Edge Lane Project, an expansion of this three mile route into the city centre. The painted houses, each a witness to Liverpool's recent history, will be bulldozed down. So despite the short term improvement there, the long-term 'solution' is one of modernity, space and, most likely, boredom.

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Categories Culture Tags Liverpool Architecture

By on 2/12/08

Skeletons And Closets

Opportunistic Favela-dwellers are relocating to central Sao Paolo.

Festival Emergences is an international festival dedicated to electronic cultures and emerging artistic forms. Based in Paris, it’s basically a mash-up of performing and visual arts, multimedia, design, architecture and electronic music. A presentation made by mOmentoMoNUMENTO at the annual event last week has got people talking. 

mOmentoMoNUMENTO is a joint project between Brazilian collective Coloco and the French experimental artists of Exyst (who we’ve written about before). In 2001, Coloco started researching a phenomenon known as ‘Skeleton Dwellings’. They observed, analysed and documented a group of people that were bucking a trend in Sao Paolo, Brazil. While most people were moving to the suburbs amidst economic unrest, war and the ups and downs of the housing market, a few opportunists seized their chance.

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Categories Culture Politics Tags Sao Paolo Architecture Cities

By on 7/10/08

Spin Towers

THESE BUILDINGS WILL NEVER LOOK THE SAME. NOT ONCE IN THEIR LIFETIME. David Fisher

Just when you thought the architecture in Dubai couldn’t get any more lairy, David Fisher came along. Yesterday he revealed what are probably the most extravagant building designs ever seen. These are the world’s first swirling sky-scrapers.

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Categories Design Tags Architecture Dubai

By on 25/6/08