prologue
Indeed, the city sometimes resembles someone struggling out of heavy, dirty working clothes and hastily changing into glitzy leisure wear.
Hellen Mills. In: Half Forgotten Streets: Architecture and Amnesia in Manchester (Rud: 2002, p.33)
On the morning of June 15th 1996, a bomb set by the IRA in the back of a lorry exploded in Manchester City Centre. According to the news of the moment it was the most powerful explosion on British mainland since World War II. The lorry was parked over Corporation Street, between the Arndale Centre and the Marks and Spencer Store at the moment of the blast. The power of the explosion and the location of the bomb generated a massive damage in the commercial heart of the city, losing as much as the 70% of the city centre’s retail area and with a reconstruction cost of approximately half billion pounds (Holden, 2002).
Since years before the bomb attack, Manchester city was undergoing a intense process of urban regeneration. After the final collapse of the industrial economic base of the city during the eighties, there were several initiatives to revitalize the economy of the city trough urban regeneration projects, which combined the construction of emblematic buildings, new urban services and bids to attract new business to the city.
This project aim was to give Manchester a new place in the global economy, centered this time in the cultural production and consumption, rather than the old industries: this is to create Manchester as a post-industrial city. However, one of the main characteristics of these initiatives was the fact that they were leaded by a combination of private interests (mainly real state developers and retail business) and local public agencies, which helped to gain public funding for many of the initiatives. This is what Peck and Ward (2002) call “the entrepreneurial turn” of Manchester regeneration. This turn was especially visible during the projects for the two olympic bids by the city.
Then, we must realize that for the moment of the IRA bombing, this “entrepreneurial turn” and the public-private institutions that represented those interests were well established and functioning. The reconstruction of the city’s main commercial area must be understood in this particular context. This photo essay tries to explore the nature of the urban landscape directly created by this reconstruction process. By this, we try to understand the role that the architecture and the new architectural spaces play in the construction of Manchester as a “post-industrial” city.
The essay follows the narration – and the point of view – of the subject, who walks trough the rebuilt Corporation Street, from Market Street to Cathedral Gardens. The photographs were taken between the 20th of October and 15th of November 2008.
references
BBC Manchester 2008 (web based resource). http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/features/Manchester_bomb/ on December 10th 2008.
Holden, Adam. ”Bombs sites: the politics of opportunity” p.133-154 In: Peck, Jamie and Kevin Ward (ed) 2002. City of Revolution. Restructuring Manchester. Manchester University Press, Manchester.
Peck, Jamie and Kevin Ward. “Placing Manchester” p. 1-17. In: Peck, Jamie and Kevin Ward (ed) 2002. City of Revolution. Restructuring Manchester. Manchester University Press, Manchester.
Rud, Natalie (ed) 2002. Fabrications. New Art and Urban Memory in Manchester. UMIM Publishing, Manchester.
