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Victoria Square

Birmingham

Victoria Square

Design process

Birmingham City Council's (BCC) draft City Centre Strategy (1987) and the Highbury Initiative (1988), both of which centred around the imbalance between accessibility and environment around and within the Inner Ring Road.

Consultants Land Design Research's subsequent 'Pedestrian Movement and Open Space Strategy' proposed a vision of connected streets and squares, and the City Centre Design Strategy (Tibbalds Colbourne Karski Williams) completed the BCC policies for streets, squares and buildings.

The most significant opportunity to provide an authentic civic space at the centre of the network of streets and squares was identified as Victoria Square. It was then a busy traffic junction (part of Paradise Circus) but was included in the £6.5m Phase 1 pedestrianisation package (1993) to provide the main 'pedestrian spine' across the city centre. Thus, for the first time, it became traffic-free.

This project was the first of three main civil engineering contracts to be undertaken as part of the overall pedestrianisation package.

As client, BCC's Planning Committee created the brief, established the project's relationship to the City Centre Enhancement Programme and set the budget. Their Landscape Practice Group sketched out the scheme design and developed the concept with client officers and politicians.

At concept design stage, Arts Council's public art advisor, Rory Coonan, was appointed to co-ordinate public art commissions, with artist Dhruva Mistry as lead artist, £600,000 being allocated for public art works and artist's fees. Approximately half the total £3.7m project cost was subsequently reclaimed through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

In early feasibility stages, engineers advised and assisted in the traffic orders and related public inquiry, and after Committee scheme approval, design team lead was handed over to the City Engineers for detailed design and supervision of works, while the Landscape Practice Group took on an advisory role. Public consultation was started at design stage, and continued throughout construction, through Access for All, a body representing the views of interested parties, including building 'frontagers'.

The construction contract, advertised in the European Journal, was won in an open competition by Italian company Impressa Castelli, which was supported by mostly local UK subcontractors on 44 week contracts.