Unmasking the City.

p5 - City Appearance p9 - Shadows

p12 - Mystery p17 - Old Over New

p21 - Big City Big Dreams

p25 - Over The Rainbow

CITY A

PPEARA

NCE

What are the essential requirements for a city to keep

improving? Industrial structure?Accommodating citizens?Typical buildings? City appearance? The answer might be all of them above, but city appearance will influence many factors such as the

environment, citizen satisfaction, living in comfort and the rate of employment.

When I see the city the main thing I see is rubbish. Most of us throw our rubbish away in some secret place without a second thought – broken bottles, tins jagged from being opened with a large knife,

food scraps, rotting and maggot-ridden rubbish lay every-where. Imagine, then, having to pick up that rubbish from outside homes and businesses, for hours every day, and the endless dan-gers of disease, cuts, slashes, and potentially lethal blood poisoning.

On the other hand, rubbish is very harmful to our environ-

ment. It poses dangerous risks to our land, water

and air. Landfills over-filling with garbage

destroy profitable land and take

many years to regain the

nutrients and the

land

destroyed. Sewage water poured into oceans poison fish and other marine wildlife. Emissions that come out of cars limit the amount of air and oxygen we have to breathe. As you can see rubbish is harmful to our envi-ronment. Also, not many people would en-joy exploring a city, which is full of rubbish. So, it will block the development of the travel indus-try. As we know, the travel indus-try is the best way for growth the in economy of the cities. Howev-er, who would like to visit a city

with rubbish and flies? This means that the government

should invest in a waste collector. We should not

have thrown rubbish

every-where not to mention hide them in some indiscoverable place.

Everyone wants to live and visit places that are clean, fresh and healthy. A city with poor san-itation, bad odours and waste matter all over the place does not attract good people, investors and tourists. Such cities tend to have poor living standards.

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shadowsAs we all know, light is

the most subtle spiritual element in architecture.

Of all the sensory experience, the light is able to arouse the people of the most intense emotional factors, a beam of light can arouse the feeling of happiness and ecstasy, also can arouse serious and the feeling of fear.

The light atmosphere scale and rhythm of the limited space. In a particular religious atmosphere, can trigger the innermost soul directly to listen to the sound of music. The shadow of the building is the best interpretation.

In general, the more the high contrast of light and so on the person touches will be strong

at the same time. However, contemporary architecture in create an atmosphere of joy often ignore the importance of shadow and dark.Using the light to model a building must have two conditions, one is a good light environment, the other one is the sun incidence angles. In general, the sunlight is strong geographical location, is more advantageous to run to create the form of architecture. In additionally, putting resourc-es into building language thinking mode should be also considered. Light is a mystery and wonder-ful thing, human should know the language of light in order to beau-tify the living environment of people’s life quality.

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IKON‘An Internationally acclaimed contemporary arts venue’

GallerySpecialist art and book shop 1 Oozells St

Birmingham

B1 2HSFree Entry

Open Sunday to Tuesday 11am - 6pm

COFFEE POD CAFE

WWW.CPC.COM

MYSTERY

Secrets lie beneath the battered deteriorating surface’s as the wild fabric

begins to unwind it’s dark past.The sun glimmers through the splintered windows by the crack of dawn, peaking it’s way through all the streams of tangled tree roots.Shutters swing in the breeze,

hanging on by rusted hinges. The paint faintly chipping

away. Birds hovering across

the edged floor. The air decomposing the layers

of bricks. Nature finally settling in and all

contrastive creatures finding that perfect

spot. It sits amongst

trees that are dead, standing over a yard

o ve r g r o w n with weeds.

W h y was it

abandoned? Is it making the city look ugly? How do the public percieve it?

With a population of 7 billion people, it’s hard to imagine that any place in the would could be abandoned. Each one with an eerie past and an uncertain future.

Abandoned buildings are interesting to explore and to look at. Its mysterious in a way because you never know what you’re going to find in there. I’ve always been fascinated by photographs of decaying buildings because it makes me think about the history of the building.

When I look at abandoned buildings I like how it has a paranormal and eerie feel to it. I think that most of them have a connection to the spirit world in some type of way because there are stories about them being haunted, people seeing ghosts on tapes and hearing noises. Abandoned buildings mostly come from the olden days, tragic things might of happened to people in them.

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Eventhough real- life urban explora-tion and building infiltration can be dangerous, challenging and even illegal people are still curious whats in there or the history or the place.

These abandoned buildings aren’t appre-ciated highly by todays society be-cause they look at it as a piece of junk because it’s not pretty, but they don’t look deeply into the beauty of it.

If you look at every aspect of abandoned buildings you will see that they look so fairytale like and enchant-ed.

Analysing abandoned buildings also makes you read a lot into the photo, even not knowing where it is. My photography is showing an unconnected and

withdrawn world with these buildings. Im combining my sketches with my photographs to

make it surreal and abstract. I’ve been observing the buildings while drawing mostly using line drawing techniques to make patterns what I feel from the

buildings. I’ve always found modern ruins to be an interesting combination of stimulating and calm. They appeal

to the desire to explore any place that’s hidden away or uninhabited. They inhabit a funny place between nature and culture, in that they’re built by humans

but have lost their cultural facade.

old

over

new

It’s strange to think about our surroundings and how what we see now was very different to

what we would have seen back in the days where Birmingham was still being rebuilt after the Blitz in the 1940’s. Buildings, statues and houses were demolished by the war and may have become parts to other build-ings or maybe there are still bricks lying around some where.

When you think about it, Birming-ham is an easy enough place to get lost in but to hide away would be much harder. With an estimated one million and three hundred thousand people living in Birmingham in 1950 com-pared to the current population estimate of around one million and ninety thousand people, you can see how hiding in this city isn’t so easy.

Nothing would be forgotten but maybe stories and memories will

old

over

new18

The places you see in the photo-graphs are areas that I frequently pass by.

To compare Birmingham from the older days to current I tend to think of my Gran, Edith.

Edith would make her way from Stechford most days into Birmingham City centre where she would work a 9-5 job. Having tak-

en a similar journey each week my-self, I often daydream about what it would be that Edith was seeing as she gazed through the window on the bus to work.

“Have I sat in the exact same seat as Gran and looked upon

the same sights as she had sixty years ago?”

To look at photographs of then and now, the changes are visually apparent in fashion, design and in the growth of the city but the lives of people like Edith and the foot-steps that she had taken, may well be hidden forever.

Credit to older photographs by John Ball (www.jlb2011.co.uk)

Birmingham is a city with a split reputation of either the shopping capital of Europe

or second rate, lower version of London. It is a city hidden somewhere in the west midlands that suffered great industrial decline in the second half of the 20th century. According to the Indices of multiple deprivations Birmingham has been one of the most deprived local authorities in England and just behind

Liverpool and Manchester in terms of deprived ‘core cities’. You only have to take a walk around the city to see a myriad of industrial ghosts left to waste away in the backdrop. However over the next decade this will all change. The ‘Big City Plan’ is an exciting development covering a lot of the city, set to completely redesign Birmingham’s city centre. At a cost of approximately £10 Billion the aim is to increase the core city centre by 25% with 5 key areas of improvement including transport, way of life and the creation of Jobs. It also leaves even more room for each of the seven quarter to evolve in the future.

Several of the key improvements have already been completed and well received including the Bull Ring shopping centre, now the busiest in the UK, The new Birmingham Library, the coach station and the redevelopment of the rotunda. Work is currently underway to bring together Eastside and the city centre after removing the dreadful ‘concrete collar’ a concrete and steel millipede of dual carriage way restricting the city’s growth had left new empty land yet to be filled.

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carriage way restricting the city’s growth had left new empty land yet to be filled. One of the biggest and most challenging developments is still underway and has been since 2010, turning what was voted ‘Britain’s biggest eyesore’ into a futuristic and functional station that can cope with today’s high demand and that will be able to cope in the future. This will include a new concourse, new façade and entrances and a completely refurbished shopping centre to be named Grand Central Birmingham.

The city will also be introduced to a new tram line

allowing the city to circulate even better, It will bring Snow hill and the Jewellery Quarter together with the heart of the city and New Street station and will connect to the already existing line to Wolverhampton further increasing connectivity and growth. A look even further into the future will

see the construction of High Speed 2, a new station on Curzon Street that will cut journey times to London

to just under an hour.

The snow Hill scheme surrounding Snow Hill station is one of the larger mixed use developments bringing a whole

new use to the area, 2 new office blocks, an acclaimed 5 star hotel and a 137 metre tall residential tower, it will also see some of the roads perestrianised making a friendlier and more welcoming environment to this new buisiness section of the city.

Overall I think the sceme is very ambitionous and will definatly bring Birmingham out of hiding and will further cement its place on the map as a top destination for economy and culture. Even though when I was moving here and I told the people around me after their initial startle they questiononed ‘Birmingham?’ I will now tell them of the great city it will become and

how I am definatly here to stay and watch it go from vision to reality.

over the rainbow

The Rainbow Venues are located the South of Birmingham in Digbeth,

near the custard factory and just out of town and they hold diverse entertainment.

Ever vibrant Digbeth is the music centre of Birmingham.With a variety of parties held in all sorts of hidden venues. In the daylight these venues look like normal empty warehouses but come midnight they open to the public and unleash an underworld for music fans. These venues are all unique and hold something new so there is always something for everyone!

Within the Rainbow Venues there are a mixture of different clubs including; Lab11, Suki-10 and TRMNL - Techno Event. This

TRMNL event recently hosted a 24 hour rave where all the money went to charity so these clubs do not just host parties for people to get drunk at.

These hidden warehouses and pubs are often seperated into different rooms. They hold cellar parties, beach parties and street parties. These places are a home for ravers every weekend where the quiet empty warehouses become a new a place after midnight.

These warehouses allow all types of people to come to their events. In Digbeth colour, sex and nationality really doesn’t matter. Its such a diverse place people won’teven look twice.

If you walked past Digbeth in the

day you’d just think it was an empty place full of street art but by night it is a brand new place with the same street art outside but there is as much inside. There is a definite contrast between how it looks by day and how it looks by night.

Inside the venues there is graffiti everywhere which matches the outside of Digbeth and links in with the subculture overall.

With its colourful and bright décor you’d think this venue was on Hurst Street not in Digbeth which makes it even more interesting and unique!

a q&a with

gemma heighway

When did you first go

to the rainbow

venues?

I first went to the rainbow venues when I moved to Birmingham four years ago, I

have been addicted since! *laughs*

Was it hard to find the

hidden

warehouses?

I remember trying to find one of the venues the first time I went, I got lost!

They are definitely well hidden, you only know where you are going if you’re a

regular!

Do you prefer that they

are hidden?

Yes! I love that they are hidden! It means that only certain types of people go

there, you see the same faces every time and make really great friends. Some-

times I see new people and its lovely to have a change too.

Which venue is your

favourite?

Any of them except Suki-10, never go to Suki-10!

Do you like the

graffiti in the

warEhouse?

I really love the graffiti. I love how some of the warehouses just look

boring on the outside and turn into a whole new world on the inside!

Do you enjoy your

time there?

Of course I do! I have a really great time there. It’s a place I can go to

escape from reality of my work and day to day schedule. If I didn’t enjoy

I wouldn’t go so much. *laughs*

a q&a with

gemma heighway

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Tours run at 1.00pm every Saturday from the Custard Factory.

Visit www.cityofcolours.com for more information.

.90 minute tour.

.40 artists.

.digbeth.

city of

colours -

birmingham

street art

festival

LUCY LIAM MICHELLE

GRACE BRITTANY VINCENT