When Downtown, Look Up - No.1

Bridge Street and Church Street

Next time you are walking up Bridge Street and Church Street getting depressed as you look at the closed shutters and 'For Sale' signs, take time to lift your head.

See if you can locate some of these 'architectural details' (yes I am a geek!).

Answers on a postcard!

Maybe there is HOPE for our town yet...

Knowledge Vs. Experience

I really struggled at university.
 
The large proportion of our course was project based. We were given a brief and a site and we had to go away and design a building.

My problem was I had never laid a brick in my life, let alone built a whole wall.

My mind couldn’t get past this fact. My thought process would go something like this:

 

‘OK, I’ve got to design a four bedroom house for a young couple.’

‘Right, OK, no problem. Who is this young couple?’

‘Augh, they are just imaginary. But the brief says that he’s into weight lifting and she owns a couple of horses.’

‘OK, that’s a four bedroom house with a gym and paddock then.’

‘So what about the site?’

‘Well there’s a nice view to the west.’

‘OK, big window to the west then. Great. Let’s start drawing.’

‘Hold on a second there. You’re not seriously going to start drawing yet are you?’

‘Well I thought it might be a good idea.’

‘But you’ve never actually built a house.’

‘Yeah, but I’ve lived in one all my life and I’ve seen lots of them. And anyway I’ve read up on how to build one so it should be OK.’

‘Yeah, but you’ve never actually built one with your bare hands. What gives you the right to think you could tell someone how to build a house?’

‘Well, I’ve read about brick laying...’

‘But you’ve never actually laid a brick?’

‘Yeah, but...’

‘Have you even ever lifted a brick?’

‘Well...’

 

So I decided in the holidays to get a job with a builder and start to get a bit of experience laying bricks.

I went to a local builder’s yard and they told me to turn up at a site in the town the next day. So I quit my job at Burger King and turned up the next day.

The foreman didn’t really know what to do with me. At the time I was built like a rake and I’m sure he looked at me and thought ‘This guy won’t last long’.

And he was right.

He set me to clearing some rubble and to be honest it killed me. After the 10 o’clock tea break I scarpered. I didn’t even tell anybody that I was leaving. I went straight back to Burger King and did what I was best at: mopping floors and cleaning toilets.

So I returned to university having still not laid a single brick.

One local architect I really admire is Mervyn Black. He left school and became a joiner. From there he worked up through the trade and eventually studied architecture as a mature student. He built his own house in Templepatrick and counts the beautiful Irish Linen Centre in Lisburn among his many designs.

What I admire is the man’s experience. He can actually relate to a joiner on site in a way I can never. He knows what it’s like to be on that site everyday struggling to make sense of the architect’s drawings and bringing his ideas into reality. That is something I will never have.

I read a book recently called ‘Pillars of the Earth’.

It’s a fictional story of a stone mason in the middle ages struggling to find work and support his family while holding on to this dream of designing and building a magnificent cathedral. What struck me was that there was no ‘architect’ in this story. It was the stone mason himself who drew out the plans, elevations and sections. And he was on site everyday overseeing the work.

Maybe today the idea of taking the time to work your way up through the trades to eventually become the designer is too costly or inefficient but I would like to suggest that knowledge rather than experience has been given too much emphasis. This is not to say that head knowledge is important- the two go hand in hand. But perhaps we need to rethink the route we take from the drawing board to the site.

At 35 I don’t have the same conundrums in my head that I used to as a student. I’ve laid a brick or two as well. Still haven’t built my own house. Maybe I will after I’ve experimented... I mean experienced a few more builds. I might even go and sign up for a joinery apprenticeship someday.

The Death of Downtown and Some Proposals for Pop-Up Property

I work on Linenhall Street in Ballymena. I enjoy working in the town.  I can pop out at lunch time to grab a coffee with a friend. I can go into the Tower Centre to pick up some odds and ends. On a nice day I can sit in the memorial garden and eat my lunch. I’ve even gone into ‘The Braid’ and had a look round the latest exhibition.

Our offices are not particularly striking. The paint is peeling and discoloured from exhaust fumes. The original sash windows resonate to the engines of lorries as they wait for the lights to go green. The roller shutter is never completely concealed behind the stainless steel ‘archway’ over the door as it was designed to.

Twenty years or so ago the ground floor was opened up to create a spacious reception area with some quirky offset columns and beams painted in primary colours. The original archway, which provided access to the yard behind the main building, was enclosed to form a lobby and partner’s office. The lobby was clad in fabric panels. One of these is a concealed doorway to the partner’s office, like something from a Scooby Doo cartoon. To this day I’m still not sure of its purpose.

Further into the building lies the print room. Poems have been composed for this room. The bare plaster that cries for a lick of paint; the electric blow heaters that cough and splutter as they try desperately to bring the air temperature above the legal working limit; the window frame so rotted that a 2 by 4 has been put along the sill to prevent the single pane of glass from slipping out.  

Once our office was a different place. Started in the 1950s by Messers McCutcheon and Wilkinson it was the main firm in the north east. Designs were drawn up for numerous buildings in the area including The Seven Towers Leisure Centre, Ballymena Academy and Ballymena Rugby Club. There were sister offices in Coleraine and Kilrea. We acted as ‘Building Control’ for the north-east many years before the council took over.

Now the state of the building reflects the mood. We struggle to compete with the ‘big boys’ from Belfast in tenders. We enter design competitions and see no fruit from our labours.

But yet as some of those ‘big boys’ are laying off many staff no one at McC&W has lost their job. The work trickles in and somehow we survive.

Perhaps it’s because we have to queue to use the one computer that has internet access. Perhaps it’s the level of the salaries. Or perhaps it’s the fact that that window frame has not been fixed since I started working there ten years ago. But I have to be thankful.

At lunch, when I leave the building under the stainless steel archway, the first thing I see is ‘The Braid - Ballymena Town Hall, Museum and Arts Centre’. It towers four stories high, over the other older buildings lining Linenhall Street. A set of grand curved steps leads to a paved terrace in front of the modern patented glazed wall which forms the front of the new building. Behind it symbols of the towns past and present are displayed, suspended in the four storey atrium.

Our office carried out the feasibility study for this building. A firm from Belfast designed and administered the building of it. We used to joke how that firm should have employed us to do their site inspections. Office 6 on the first floor had a fabulous view over the building site.

Walking further up Bridge Street, past the original town hall, the streetscape changes sharply from that of an exciting, cutting edge town, to something very different. The ‘economic crisis’ is illustrated by the numerous ‘To Let’ and ‘For Sale’ signs that decorate Church Street. One of the biggest units on the street used to be home to Woolworths. My favourite music shop, ‘Gracenotes’, shut its doors just a few months ago.

I got my first camera from Dick’s Chemist in Church Street when I was about 13. It was a Zenith and to be honest I didn’t quite understand how to use an SLR. Now the shop lies vacant and is slowly crumbling into a state of disrepair.

Church Street is not the only street with this problem. Even Wellington Street, the ‘main’ street in Ballymena has suffered. A year or two ago Easons shut its doors, which was very inconvenient for me as it meant I couldn’t cut through to the Tower Centre anymore. Thankfully a few months later the Pound Store opened and my traditional route was re-established.

Sam’s, the shop were ever kid was taken to try on his first suit, fell foul of the crash too. When the guys in Trevor Keys had their place flooded by burst pipes they very gladly moved over the road to one of Sam’s units. Of course they still left a void on the other side of the road. But at least they got proper heating.

I was on the phone to a builder a month or so ago and he explained to me that they had decided to demolish one of their buildings in town. It’s actually the corner unit opposite ‘The Grouse’. The main reason was rates. They reckoned it was more economic to knock down their building than pay rates on a vacant unit.

That conversation actually scared me. It’s bad enough having ‘To Let’ and ‘For Sale’ signs peppering the town but what if every landlord took the same attitude and decided to knock down their property. Ballymena would become a ghost town.

In the summer I read an article about some Architect students who were doing a project in the Sandy Row. When they meet with some community groups one of the community leaders put forward the idea of a Pop-Up Studio. Basically the community leader knew a local landlord who had a vacant unit in the area. He agreed to let the students use his unit as their studio.

The students converted the unit and used it as their base. Tutorials took place there. Exhibitions of the student’s proposals were displayed. Local residents called in to give their opinions. Finally the end-of year reviews were held there.

‘In Sandy Row it was hoped that opening one shop front might start a trend along the street frontage. The hope is that vibrant and creative shop fronts, whilst not necessarily being used as retail outlets, can still enliven a street and attract visitors to the area.’    Perspective, July/August 2011, p.51

Heartened by this creative example of the re-use of vacant units I would like to propose a Pop-Up Festival for Ballymena. This festival will happen over a week with numerous events taking place in ‘Pop-Up Property’- vacant units and empty sites throughout the town centre.

Here are some ideas of possible Pop-Up Property:

Pop-Up Business. We all had to run a mini business in school. What if the school pupils actually took over a vacant unit for a week to make the experience one step closer to reality?

Pop-Up Gallery. Similar to the idea of the Architect students in Sandy Row, a unit could be used to display the work of some young and amateur artists. Maybe some of the professionals could get involved too.

Pop-Up Theatre. A vacant lot is converted into a stage showing various plays by local theatre companies.

Pop-Up Cafe. Local catering students take over a unit to serve their latest delicacies to the public.

Pop-Up Playground. Ball pools, swings and slides right in the town centre.

Pop-Up Graffiti. Ugly gable ends of buildings decorated with tasteful well designed graffiti art.

This list is not by any means exhaustive and I’m sure many other people will have other ideas.

The week of events will finish with a Pop-Up Concert. I would propose that the best venue for this would be the old Wellington Street Presbyterian Church which has laid vacant for a number of years now. I think this would be particularly appropriate as its hall was part of the old Flamingo Dance Hall which hosted such bands as The Rolling Stones, The Small Faces and Pink Floyd.

So there it is. A meagre attempt to kick start Ballymena town centre.

If anyone’s interested let me know what you think.