Screenshot: pity the Albertans

Proof that I had every reason to laugh at my wimpish friends in Edmonton who thought it necessary to remote-start and pre-heat their car while I was there in November (when it was barely below freezing). This is from last night’s news bulletin in the city.

Kelham Island

Some time last week, I found myself savouring a mid-afternoon pint of Oyster Stout at the Fat Cat on Alma Street, on Sheffield’s Kelham Island. The pub (a multi-award winning CAMRA favourite) is an unmissable stop on any back street tour of Sheffield. Opened in the very early eighties, and joined a few years later by its own brewery out back (the Kelham Island Brewery), the Fat Cat is free house perfection. Two cosy rooms, each with a fireplace, and what could the smallest bar in Sheffield to squeeze in at least a dozen beer pumps. The menu is also pretty special, with good value home cooked food and numerous vegetarian dishes. I didn’t have time to continue with a fair sample of the twenty-something ales that were on tap for the weekend’s Winter Ale Festival, so I engineered another little visit a day or two later.

The area around Kelham Island features some of Sheffield’s most interesting historical industrial architecture. Broadly speaking, the closer you get to the city centre along the River Don, the less original industrial buildings remain. The further you walk towards Hillsborough the more youwill find, including a number of warehouses and factories that are still occupied and in commercial use. Around Cornish Street and Green Lane, however, a number of new residential developments are appearing, some slotting elegantly into the grand old brick warehouses and factories; others rudely inserting newly built monotonous and monotextural apartment complexes. The steel and polycarbonate cladding panels and the plastic glazing units of these speculative builds sit awkwardly in this little neighbourhood, which is exactly half way from viable industrialisation to complete ‘regeneration’ as a residential community.

Crossing the Penistone Road at Dixon Street (click on any of these photos and then ‘Map’ to see where they were taken) I passed living, breathing and heaving warehouses. A bright red forklift truck briefly blocked our passage down the otherwise deserted street, as a lorryload of cardboard packaging materials was unloaded into a warehouse built almost one hundred years ago. It’s sad to walk these largely empty streets, knowing that the factories that once employed thousands are now used primarily for storage or non-labour intensive industrial work.

Some of the more desirable mill buildings next to the River Don (like those above) have already been converted into apartments and offices. But other buildings, including same beautiful saw-tooth-roofed warehouses, have yet to be re-used. In a studio project last year that took me to Selby in North Yorkshire, I was troubled by many of the discussions we had about the preservation of old industrial buildings. While these grand old brick buildings are beautiful because of their scale, quality of construction and frequently elegant architectural detail, in many cases their abandonement is the very proof of their inability to be used. Only so many industrial buildings in Sheffield can be converted to loft apartments, and many others simply don’t lend themselves to conversion.

Upon seeing the River Don for the first time, many visitors or new residents of Sheffield express surprise. We have a river? Why didn’t anyone tell me? Where are the riverside walks and coffee bars?

Sheffield’s relationship with the water that flows through it is, of course, not entirely coherent with most masterplanner’s dreams of regeneration and waterfront living. The 2007 floods reminded many residents of the new riverside apartments why this area remained largely industrial for so long. The river provides a powerful surge of near continuous power, but it comes with a number of cautionary conditions.

My affection for Sheffield tears my emotions. There can be no return to the heavily industrial past that caused these buildings to be built. But what are we going to do with these beautiful spaces?

Peaking through the tightly chained gates does inspire dreams of covered markets, modern art galleries and flexible contemporary dance spaces. But how many Tate Galleries can this country viably support?

I retired to the pub to consider this and the Independent crossword. More photos from a windy day in Sheffield are here.

Snapshot: James on CCTV

They’re watching me, I’m sure of it. Or maybe it’s just Studio 9 paranoia.

Snapshot: Wheelie Bins

A windy day in Sheffield, a few hours after the dustbin lorry passed down my street.

Glasgow

Although I didn’t blog about it at the time, I was briefly in Belfast and Glasgow two weeks ago. I might have been more lucid or verbose about it, but it was pissing down with the rain the whole time and it was hard to find the lyrical (or alcoholic) inspiration to write.

The cold and damp early weeks of January make a good time to travel. Last year it was Québec and Illinois. This year, reduced means and different priorities sent drew me to Northern Ireland and Scotland. I would have liked to have wandered further afield, perhaps deeper into Ulster or north from Glasgow into the Highlands. But as things go it was a fruitful eight day break from Sheffield, just in time for deadlines and work related pressures to begin to build in my absence.

Belfast was wet, but when the sun shone it did at least reveal the same beautifully ugly city I know and love from a few (pre-blogging) years ago. Glasgow, however, was just consistently wet, with very little opportunity to redeem its reputation in my rain soaked eyes. That’s not to say that I don’t love the place - it has the same undeniable gritty draw that Sheffield has in places - but I was not enamoured with the dampness that was soaking up both trouser legs every time I stepped outside.

If you find yourself in Glasgow and you need someone to go to escape the rain, may I recommend the excellent retrospective of the work of Glasgow architects Gillespie, Kidd & Coia at the Lighthouse. The exhibits are beautifully curated and designed, and the exhibition features an impressive collection of ‘artefacts’ and original drawings from the architects. A particularly clever inclusive was a case featuring books and magazines that would have been in the office at the time of many of the firm’s major projects, acknowledging that architects are profoundly influenced by the work of other architects, but almost always via printed images. One of the more amusing cases featured a selection of original letters addressed to the firm by just some of the correspondants who could not spell the company’s name. The exhibition ends on 8 February 2008.