The redeveloped Brindleyplace area of Birmingham brings together homes, offices, shops, leisure facilities and public spaces with a strong sense of identity and history. Designed by John Chatwin.
Its pioneering status is linked to the scheme's incorporation of Birmingham City Council's admirable urban design principles. Consequently the city has gained a new urban neighbourhood, set around a clear network of streets and public spaces enclosed by striking new buildings, as well as the refurbishment and conversion of a Victorian school.
Canalside housing, offices, cafés, bars, a health club and shops create high levels of activity around the elegant Central Square, with its award winning butterfly-roofed glass café providing a central focus to the public open space network, and the more sedate Oozells Square.
Inventive land assembly, creative funding packages, speculative and leveraged development undertaken in the context of tumultuous property-market conditions have been the background to Brindleyplace's success. Underpinning it is the City Council's unwavering commitment to urban design principles, adopted in 1990, which has created high quality design that goes hand in hand with commercially viable, privately funded regeneration.
