Cultural or What!

The period of consultation was only 16 days. Get your comments in. See link below.

East Suffolk Council have announced their plans for the Battery Green car park and surrounding area.

The design team are Norwich-based architects Chaplin Farrant and Hemingway Design.

On Wednesday 4th October they presented a small exhibition showcasing the plans for us, the potential users, to examine.

It's not hard to think this is a Good Idea.

They've called it a Cultural Quarter. I think it means providing a space which celebrates and stimulates creative arts and encourages the rest of us to enjoy the results.. What's not to like about that?

The variety of space and buildings is considerable, even retaining part of the old multi-story car park, an example of brutalist architecture (essentially concrete in straight lines utterly devoid of visual variation or decoration), popular for many decades.

Trying to figure out exactly what's going on over the whole site is quite difficult. I've made Google Earth labeled photo which is roughly the same viewpoint as the plan.

Essentially, the middle of the current building housing ex-Wilco is coming down. The current East Suffolk Council building (Marina – not the theatre) is being redeveloped. The most eastern part of what is the fortress-like multi story car park is being re-purposed and re-designed. A new cultural centre will be built. A new 'food hall' will be built. And a 'Civic Square' created in the middle of it all, to echo the old Battery Green Park (see the maps to understand where that was originally).

You can see all the descriptions by the designers and architects here you can now view and comment on the proposed Cultural Quarter designs. They are obviously keen to have our comments – send them to thinklowestoft@eastsuffolk.gov.uk before 20 October 2023. This is a very short period and so too late. BUT I RECOMMEND IGNORING THE CUT-OFF DATE AND GET YOUR COMMENTS IN!

As ever with attempts to create artificial paradises, planners and designers like to categorise and separate and then group and connect. Here we have a performance and community building, a restaurant/food area, what they call 'culture and place-making' , and a more traditional leisure complex with the emphasis on active competitive indoor sporty-type activities, and a open space linking the whole lot together. The open space is likened to a 're-instated Battery Green Park. 

Battery Green Park was in place until the 60's, when it disappeared under new roads and car parks. I've published maps showing its original location.

Overall, my opinion is this is very much worth supporting, but it will be much improved by constructive criticism.

But the language!

My main criticisms are for the language used to present the Cultural Quarter Plan.

At the exhibition there were easels holding boards (These are what you find on the ESC site) displaying pictures and explanatory notes – trying to explain what you're looking at. 

To do this properly means using a visual and written language that most of us – the users – can easily understand.

The drawings – they are, well, OK.

But the words? Words almost fail me. An extraordinary mash-up of planning, architect, and culture languages which fail in every respect – apart from managing to confuse, anger and repel the reader. Talk about being talked down to!

Still, it's possible to get the drift. But it shouldn't be like this.

John Ellerby