the beauty in architecture is about the spaces in between the buildings
High Point Tower, Bradford
Years ago, I took a temp job at the Yorkshire Building Society, something to tide me over until I went off to university. I was to help out on a special project of some sort, something to do with the integration of a mortgage book they’d just bought and needed to deal with quickly. The job was based at the then head office building on Westgate in Bradford, a vast, hulking brutalist concrete vessel that brooded over the cityscape.
On my first day, I walked around looking for the door. It struck me then that there were very few openings, that the ribbed concrete slabs plunged downwards and met the pavement with a latent ferocity that seemed unassailable. There were vast, tall walls at ninety degrees to the ground, with a small entrance carved out of the mass and hidden well.
Inside were big open plan floors that people nested in on dark wood desks, a hierarchy of chairs according to seniority and status, a mass of paper, the air thick with cigarette smoke and the torturous clack of dot matrix printers and fax machines.
The history of High Point is inexplicably entwined with that of the Yorkshire Building Society. It was built in 1972 specifically for the Society, and it’s position at the top of town, on a hill was chosen purposefully. Mutual building societies saw themselves as paternalistic organisations, and the siting of the tallest building in Bradford on the highest point of the city was no mistake. High Point was meant to be seen, and was meant to be felt. The channeling in the concrete, and the long, thin windows were to represent rivers of gold, of wealth, flowing down from the Society into the city. It was a building that had an arrogance that matched that of it’s initiators.
And the Society was an arrogant place. It was elitist and cold at times. It knew best. I caught the tail end of this hard regime, with its stupid rules about wearing jackets at all times everywhere, before it mellowed out under the excellent leadership of the late David Anderson, but I remember distinctly the Fifth Floor, an otherworldly place with thick carpets, hushed corridors, large, private offices and huge windows, the antithesis of the narrow cracks afforded to the other floors.
One of my jobs was to take files for the really big mortgages up to the Fifth to be signed by an executive. It was a nerve-wracking experience, cautiously knocking on a closed door, waiting to be summoned, and then being forced to stand there clutching a file whilst the Big Cheese in question relished taking a ridiculous amount of time to finish off whatever task he was doing, fully aware of the presence of this terrified teenager at the end of his desk. The one benefit of this was that I got the chance to use the executive lift, because yes, there was an executive lift, and an executive garage, entrance and dining room.
Naturally.
Times changed, and the Society moved on. It wanted to be modern, wanted to expand, and it couldn’t do that in a brutalist building squashed into a triangular site at the wrong end of Bradford.
We left Westgate (we knew it as Westgate, not High Point Tower) in about 1997 for a purpose built, modern head office building on the outskirts of the city. I was involved in the move of the Society’s mortgage deeds from Westgate up to Yorkshire Drive, working all night to check them out and check them back in again, in the right order, on the right shelves.
We were gone.
Westgate limped on for a few more years as a back up data centre, visited nightly by computer operators who swapped back up tapes and got out as quickly as possible, and then we left it behind completely, writing the value off in the books and transferring ownership to who knows where. We’d left behind the concrete and steel, the wind and the dark, windowless floors.
My temp job turned into a permanent one that turned into a career in Yorkshire Drive, and then BroadGate in Leeds, another shift of head office functions driven by expansion and ambition.
High Point Tower still remained, a quiet power dominating the top of town and the city itself.
That presence has always troubled the city, splitting people cleanly between those who’ve grown fond of the concrete and those who see violence in its fabric and want to see it pulverised. Bradford Civic Society recently hosted a fascinating debate on the subject of whether to raze or save the building, and I’ll pull from some of the arguments voiced here. Suffice to say, it stirs emotion.
Nobody knows what to do with it. Rumour has it that the current owner makes decent money from the simple fact that High Point is very high, and is therefore a perfect spot for phone masts.
It’s brutalist in the most direct sense of the word. Big, bold, lacking finesse, perhaps, deliberately imposing. It isn’t the finest example of it’s type, but nor is it the worse. It has a sister across the road in the form of an ugly market hall and car park, but the surround is a mixture of typically Bradfordian sandstone Victoriana interspersed with some terrible throw-away buildings here and there. I’ve always felt it to be out of place and jarring, a building that doesn’t quite work in its own space.
High Point stands out. It sits on a little island, surrounded by roads on all sides, its northern flank creating a vortex strong enough to knock people off their feet, a compact site that burst heavenwards, physically and stylistically cut adrift.
Much has been said of the way that high point addresses the street, how it integrates into the environment, or rather, how it doesn’t, because it really doesn’t — the street meets concrete head on. Nothing but wall. You have to cross a road to get close to it, either the perilously busy Westgate, or across a frankly perplexing junction at the other side that sends cars flying at you from three directions at once.
The panel at the Bradford Civic Society debate talked at length about the nature of the street, and how streets are more important than buildings. Vijay Taheem, an architect and lecturer at Huddersfield University commented strikingly that “the beauty in architecture is about the spaces in between the buildings”, and this is a key theme of modern regeneration projects, the most successful of which concentrate on creating places and spaces, streets and environments in which people can naturally meet in community. Small squares, alleys, streets, places of intimacy and enclosed, functional space around which communities will grow, communities that will bring buildings with them.
I suspect, and am quietly proud and hopeful as a result, that Bradford understands this concept — the magnificent City Park is testament to that, a wonderful, flexible, playful space of hope and opportunity, worth every penny spent on it and more. City Park has become a resource and a focal point, it’s changing landscape of fountains and ponds challenging people not to smile.
High Point does have merit.
It’s of a certain style, and it’s a child of Bradfordian architecture of the early seventies. Bradford has made the mistake of being quick with the wrecking ball too many times before, and whilst it’s hard to describe High Point as a beautiful building, it does have a certain grace to it that’s worth recognising and preserving.
No, this isn’t the best example of brutalism in the country. No, it isn’t a match for the Roger Stevens Building at Leeds University, or many of the building in, say, Sheffield, but it’s played a particular part in the history of this city, stood atop it’s skyline for so long, that it would be rash to raze it to the ground.
Some caution is necessary before reaching for the dynamite.
I have no answer for what to do with it. The possibilities are endless, but all will need commitment and determination to enact.
And yet, people are divided on it’s fate, the calls to save it rising steadily against the familiar roar of those who see it as a carbuncle to be obliterated.
What would happen if somebody came along with an idea so striking, so audacious that it had to happen? Some plan for High Point that preserves the solid core of what makes it such a dominating part of the landscape and flips it into something of utility and purpose? This may be a case where the city needs to disagree, but commit.
Is Bradford ready to do that?