The inaugural North East Festival of Architecture held across Newcastle and Gateshead, took place this month.
The nine-day festival, started June 14 and wrapped up June 22, welcomed audiences to explore buildings and places as well as participate in the mostly free event listing that educated visitors about new and up-coming architecture, urban design and place-making.
As part of its event list, the North East Festival of Architecture included a notable discussion by Jake Edgley, of Edgley Designs, a London-based architect whose main focus is in the relationship between buildings and their environment. Will Alsop, a prominent designer who has been central to the Middlehaven regeneration project in Middlesbrough, also took the podium, as well as speakers from architects, Urban Splash and property developers, Quintain who argued that quality design and architecture with a contemporary edge is the key to driving regeneration in the Tees Valley area. A series of workshops at the Laing and Shipley Art Galleries, as well as the Ouseburn Valley, engaged and stimulate the eco-designers of the future, aimed squarely at occupying and engaging the younger visitors of the festival.
Organised by Northern Architecture, and heavily backed by Newcastle City Council, Gateshead Council, RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) and local firm FaulknerBrowns Architects, the festival carried on from the success of special architecture weeks held in the region over the past eleven years.
‘We chose to focus this first festival on the major hub of the North East – Newcastle and Gateshead,’ said Andrew Guest, Northern Architecture director. ‘Both places are increasingly seen as one, but take dynamically different approaches to development. The North East Festival of Architecture aims to go behind the scenes of the development that is taking place, and create opportunities to understand the processes that are shaping the North East of the future.’
Neil Taylor, of festival sponsor FaulknerBrowns Architects, said, ‘As architects, we are concerned not only about the buildings that we design, but the landscapes in which they sit. The Festival is all about raising awareness of the quality of the environments in which we live, work and play, and FaulknerBrowns is delighted to be part of an initiative which encourages people of all ages to contribute to this debate.’
While the festival’s focus is on celebrating what’s current in terms of architecture and modern design, people are encouraged to explore the surrounding areas and learn more about the historic roots of the region.
Newcastle itself has an extensive neoclassical centre, largely developed in the 1830s by Richard Grainger and John Dobson, and recently extensively restored. The layout of streets in the town centre is still from original medieval times, and narrow laneways, or chares, still exist mostly along the riverbank, and are traversable only by foot.
Heading out of Newcastle, the Tyne Gorge bridging Newcastle on the north bank with Gateshead on the south bank, is well known for number of remarkable bridges, including the Tyne Bridge of 1928 which was built by Dorman Long of Middlesbrough, and Robert Stephenson’s High Level Bridge of 1849, the first road/rail bridge in the world. The first bridge placed here was in 120AD, where the Romans constructed Pons Aelius or ‘Bridge of Aelius’; Aelius being the family name of Emperor Hadrian, who was responsible for the Roman wall built along Tyne-Solway Gap.
Crossing the Tyne, one will notice that much has changed in nearby Gateshead since literary great Samuel Johnson, while travelling through the area with James Boswell many years earlier, described the town as “a dirty little back lane out of Newcastle”. Newcastle & Gateshead Quayside, no longer the coal industry hub of Northern England, is now a thriving, cosmopolitan area with an abundance of bars, restaurants and public spaces.
Recently, Newcastle and Gateshead linked together under the banner “NewcastleGateshead”, to spearhead the regeneration of the north east. Large-scale regeneration has replaced former coal shipping premises with imposing new office developments; an innovative tilting bridge, the Gateshead Millennium Bridge was commissioned by Gateshead and has integrated the older Newcastle Quayside more closely with major cultural developments in the area. The bridge was built in 2001 and was the recipient of the James Stirling Prize for Architecture in 2002.
Other major cultural developments include the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and the Sage Gateshead, a Norman Foster-designed venue for music and the performing arts that opened December 2004. Not to be missed is the Antony Gormley-designed Angel of the North, one of Britain’s largest sculptures, measuring 20 meters high with a 54 meter wing span.
