Why shouldn't Gehry be allowed to Brighton up the neighbourhood?

Why shouldn't Gehry be allowed to Brighton up the neighbourhood?


The trendies love it, but many Hove locals feel a renowned architect's new scheme for its Regency seafront is too big and bold, writes Jon Robins

Sunday December 17, 2006
The Observer

Here's a no-brainer for you: a council stuck with an unloved, rundown 1960s-era recreation centre at the end of an otherwise attractive Regency promenade and a world-class architect eager to transform it into an iconic residential complex, complete with state-of-the-art sports facilities paid for by the developers. So where's the problem?

If that's an oversimplification of problems that surround Frank Gehry's plans for the redevelopment of a rusting eyesore on Hove seafront, many in Brighton believe it's not much of one.

Gehry first expressed an interest in November 2002 in reviving the bit of Brighton front where, architecturally speaking, everything runs out of steam, as did Richard Rogers and Piers Gough (who is adviser to the project). It is tempting to characterise the interminable debate over the £290m development of the King Alfred centre as a stand-off between Hove's blue rinse brigade and the metropolitan trendies of Brighton.

The latter would love the kudos of having the architect behind the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao leaving his stamp on their patch. But what do the residents of Hove think? After all, they are going to have to live, literally in many cases, in the shadow of the new 22-storey building with 751 apartments, not to mention that £48m sports centre.

'It's an absolutely massive overdevelopment,' complains Valerie Paynter of the anti-Gehry Save Hove campaign, who lives in front of Hove station, just down the road from the site. 'We're talking ugly stepsister in Cinderella's shoes.'

David Smale runs the Coriander restaurant on Hove Street, a few minutes' walk away. 'It is fantastic. I'm completely gung-ho about the project,' he says. 'Brighton has a real chance to be taken up a few notches.'

Supporters are conscious not only of an opportunity sliding through their fingers, but the message this sends out. Earlier in the year Tony Mernagh, executive director of the Brighton and Hove Economic Partnership (BHEP), said the bureaucracy involved in the planning process would 'guarantee no serious investment will come near Brighton and Hove for another 15 to 20 years'.

Richard Coleman, a Brighton-based architect who worked as a consultant townscape expert with Norman Foster on Swiss Re's 'Gherkin' in the City of London, has set up a support group called Hove Up to make sure that those who want to support the development have a platform to do it from. 'There is a danger that if the project stalls any more it could die,' he says.

Coleman complains that conservationists are making too much of the architectural heritage in what he describes as 'a pretty poverty-stricken area of Hove, in terms of culture'. 'It used to be a tiny village at the time that Brighton expanded its parish with its Regency architecture. Frankly, it was a one-street town and it still seems a little lost.' He describes the plans as 'a substantial development on what is a very substantial site'. 'It is the right thing to do,' he says. 'It is a very big building, but Hove can take a very big building.'

It is the scale and the boldness of the plans that have unsettled locals. The initial designs were for a cluster of four 38-storey towers, since reduced to 22. The architect said he was inspired by a picture of Edwardian ladies with their dresses billowing as they walked along the blustery seafront. The flowing dress effect will be achieved, apparently, by a trellis over a layer of glass; 'the light will blur the mass and the trellis will probably be white painted steel,' he explains. Less kind critics have called it 'a couple of trannies caught in a gale' or even 'a crumbled fag packet'.

The original designs failed to impress those guardians of our public space, English Heritage and the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, which felt they failed to ensure the building would be seen as an integral part of Hove. Another concern was that the perimeter buildings were too drab, and even supporters concede they were 'rather Soviet'. Under the revised plan, they are going to be 'Gehryfied': a bit curvy and smaller. Both English Heritage and CABE are now onside.

'Yes, the plans are dramatic and it will clearly be a landmark,' predicts Simon Fanshawe, the Brighton-based broadcaster. 'People will see it as they fly into Gatwick and Heathrow, which will be rather fun.' And what does he think of the design? 'I like its deckchair quality. Gehry's buildings are always very playful. It really makes me laugh when people say they want to preserve the tradition of "Regency Brighton" when, for a start, there is this bit of a Liberace right bang in the middle - the pavilion.'

The BHEP's Mernagh is more pragmatic about the proposals: 'If Brighton turns down £80m of community benefit - £48m for the sports centre and £30m of affordable housing - on a site only worth £11m, and, on top of that, rejects a world-class architect there, other cities will question our sanity.'

· The council is due to consider revised plans after Christmas.