Our trends in the North
How sweeping changes transformed Newcastle for better or worse. Tony Henderson reports
Two transformational surges have shaped the Newcastle of today.
Developer Richard Grainger, working with the architects including John Dobson and Thomas Oliver and town clerk John Clayton, pulled Newcastle from its medieval past by creating a striking new centre during the 1820s-30s.
The area around Grey Street, Blackett Street, Grainger Street, Clayton Street and Eldon Square together with Grey’s Monument, the Theatre Royal, the Royal Arcade and the Grainger Market was described as a ‘City of Palaces’.
The next sweeping change arrived in the late 1960s-70s with city council leader T Dan Smith’s largely concrete vision of Newcastle as a Brasilia of the North.
Casualties included chunks of Eldon Square and the 1832 Royal Arcade commercial and shopping centre, while the Central Motorway East, in tackling the traffic challenge, formed a barrier to the city centre.
But the new Civic Centre and the Byker Wall estate won international acclaim as the urban transformations of the 1960s and 1970s left an indelible, if much contested, mark on Tyneside.
So is another shift in the evolution of the city on the cards? If so, when and on what scale?
Now Concrete Dreams, a programme running until next June, is exploring the ideals and aspirations that drove the transformations and the ways they continue to shape how we use and understand today’s city.
How can we build upon their legacies and should we remake Tyneside once again?
The venture is based at the Farrell Centre at Newcastle University - a public centre for architecture and cities which opened in 2023.
The centre was instigated by award winning international architect-planner Sir Terry Farrell, who grew up in the city’s Gosforth suburb and graduated from Newcastle University.
The centre’s mission is to involve a wide audience with the forces driving urban change and where people can learn about Newcastle’s past and debate its future.
Sir Terry, who has donated £1m and his personal archive to the university, has played his part in shaping how the city looks, including developing the Newcastle Quayside masterplan, designing the International Centre for Life, and reshaping the Great North Museum: Hancock.
Concrete Dreams comprises an exhibition, installations and events programme, geared towards exploring the ideals and aspirations that drove transformation and the ways they continue to affect the Tyneside of today.
Underpinning the project is : how amid the many current challenges – from air quality to housing provision – can we build upon the legacies of previous change and remake the city once again? And do we want to?
The Farrell Centre’s Brasilia of the North project, running until next June, starts with an evolving exhibition exploring the ideas, personalities and social, cultural and political climate that underpinned the aspirations to transform Newcastle into a north European equivalent to the futuristic new Brazilian capital city.
Exhibits include the six-metre-long Newcastle city model first created in the 1960s to imagine the city’s future, the original architectural model for Gateshead’s Trinity Square ‘Get Carter’ car park, a Metro cube featuring the typeface by designer Margaret Calvert, and maps, books, drawings, photographs and films.
Artist and researcher Paula Strunden also presents the installation Alison’s Room, until December 20 - a study of the architect, Alison Smithson (1928–93), who, with husband Peter Smithson (1923-2003), became key figures in post-war British architecture, having studied at Newcastle University in the 1940s.
The installation combines influential designs by the Smithsons – who were instrumental in the emergence and development of concrete Brutalism in the 1950s.
Events include speakers on October 24 exploring the topic of T Dan Smith – Hero or Villain, which will examine the motivations and legacies of the local politician.
Taking part will be historian and adult education lecturer John Griffiths, whose PhD thesis was Mr Newcastle. The Career of T Dan Smith, and John Pendlebury, Newcastle University Professor of Urban Conservation.
Smith remains one of Newcastle’s most controversial figures. As leader of the city council in the early 1960s and then as chairman of the Northern Economic Planning Council, he led many of the most transformative projects of that era.
From slum clearances and destruction of old Eldon Square to the building of the Central Motorway many of projects Smith instigated and oversaw were highly controversial at that time.
Vertical Cities on November 28 will explore the separation of cars and pedestrians with traffic buried in tunnels or elevated on flyovers, with pedestrians on skywalks or submerged in underpasses.
Although often emerging from a vision to make cities more functional, these ideas have since become discredited, although they continue to shape Newcastle and Gateshead.
Farrell Centre director Owen Hopkins says: ”We are exploring the transformation of the 1960s-70s and the circumstances in which ideas emerged for housing, civic buildings, transport and planning, which has had a profound effect on Newcastle and Tyneside. how these developments shaped the city and how we use it today.”
Read more: Review - Saint Maud at Live Theatre
While developments such as the Civic Centre and Byker Wall have gained international recognition “mistakes were made and things were done which were regrettable”.
New challenges include providing housing which meets people’s needs, decarbonisation, managing traffic and how the Central Motorway could be reimagined to become less of a barrier on the eastern side of the city
Another issue is shifting shopping patterns and their impact on the city centre. “Grainger Town is one of the most architecturally distinctive areas of any northern city,” says Owen.
“We need to be continually remaking the city, not by sweeping big areas away but more of a case of constant renewal and rejuvenation.”
A public lecture titled Living, or Dying? The Future of City Centre Retail will be staged by the Northumberland and Newcastle Society on October 23.
The event at the Miller Theatre, Royal Grammar School, Eskdale Terrace, Jesmond, begins at 1.30pm until 5pm. Tickets are £10 for members and £15 for non members.
It will feature speakers Leo Fenwick, of the department store’s founding family who is director of strategic partnerships, and Newcastle architect Tim Bailey of xsite Architecture.
They will examine the changing face of the retail sector and the impact on buildings and landscapes.
Topics which Tim Bailey will touch on include the move to online shopping, creating city and town centres which offer events as well as shopping, using heritage buildings to add character to centres, holding markets and creating areas for small outlets.