Architecture minister Barbara Follett is to review English Heritage\u2019s decision to list Coventry\u2019s 1950s market building amid claims the listing threatens US firm Jerde Partnership\u2019s \u00a31 billion city centre masterplan. The circular 1957 building, designed by the city architecture department, was grade II listed in June on the advice of EH, which highlighted its ‘remarkable’ interior and rooftop car park. But following protests led by Coventry MPs Geoffrey Robinson and Jim Cunningham, Follett said she would look again at the listing.<\/p>\n
The city council is keen to proceed with redevelopment. It claims the majority of the 3,000 residents who visited an exhibition on the plans were broadly in favour of the biggest regeneration planned for the city in 50 years. Jerde\u2019s 20-year plan for Coventry includes a striking egg-shaped public building, 200,000sq m of retail space, new parks and residential and office blocks on a 66ha site. But Jon Wright, Coventry caseworker for the Twentieth Century Society, accused the council of being \u201ccomplicit\u201d in the incremental destruction of the city\u2019s original post-war masterplan.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cArchitecture from the fifties is still struggling to be understood. Coventry is utterly unique. There\u2019s no reason to think if cities like Coventry had been left as set pieces of post-war architecture, art and design they wouldn\u2019t, in 70 years\u2019 time, have come to be viewed on a par with Bath.\u201d<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.bdonline.co.uk\/story.asp?storycode=3148383<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Architecture minister Barbara Follett is to review English Heritage\u2019s decision to list Coventry\u2019s 1950s market building amid claims the listing threatens US firm Jerde Partnership\u2019s \u00a31 billion city centre masterplan. The circular 1957 building, designed by the city architecture department, … Continue reading