Four RUIN typologies (Colomina 2014) at Little Underbank

from Beatriz Colomina, http://www.world-architects.com/en/architecture-news/insight/2014_Venice_Biennale_Monditalia_550

 

Actual ruins were reported in Little Underbank on 21 November 2013. There are further signs of decay in some of the other buildings in Little Underbank, Royal Oak Yard and Great Underbank. The water channelled into the valley site requires a vigilant approach to conservation. Part of Royal Oak Yard is still in use as a public dump, possibly from the persistence of folk memory, as it appears on early town maps as a public lavatory (just opposite the Egerton Arms) and was probably equipped with ductwork directly into the Tin Brook below.

 

“Derelict building collapses and crushes parked car in Stockport”

 

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/stockport-building-collapse-owner-lucky-6334581

 

Little Underbank 2017; unconstructed heritage in one shot; fly- parking in a medieval route, building collapse, false shop fronts, inappropriate signage, window bars and faux heritage parking posts, rubbish bin and the damage done by a full size diesel circuit bus that provides shopper access to nothing at all.


Future Ruins is given a battery graphic icon to imply that, like batteries, the power and energy of certain recent functional structure is running down. The facings and fabric at the Adlington section of the Merseyway Car Park are 47 years old. The changes in car use and the necessity of such colossal in town structures in now in question.

The issue of the style needs of the town is largely narrative. There are sections of the site which have exercised architects and planners since the 1950s. These debates will always focus on heritage, conservation and the shifting arena of aesthetic.

These structures, despite their incidental charm, offer little defence against the momentum of post millennium masterplans. Ironically it is listed heritage monument time that may be running out.

 

Non inhabited fabric is the third of the Radical pedagogies. The audit of vacant property at the time of writing is generating a justifiable unease amongst the few shop traders still working in the Little Underbank zone near St Petersgate Bridge. The vacancy rate is near to 50 percent, but this fluctuates. It is too high to be viable and does not compare well with the state of occupancy in the adjacent Merseyway shopping centre which seems to enjoy the advantage of comprehensive traffic free pedestrianisation. This happy state is achieved only by having deliveries and other essential road traffic access from the historic Underbanks area, particularly the hard hit is the White Lion hotel and its car park. The role of the Underbanks as central to the provisioning of the safe Merseyway experience has demoted the area and consigned it to secondary status, with inevitable political repercussions amongst Little Underbank stakeholders. A key initiative for the regeneration of the historic town centre which ran between 1997 and 2005 was the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) project undertaken by the local authority. The plan overlooks the significant area of the historic town that has been sold to private parking agencies.

Unsold is the fourth paradigm offered by the Monditalia workshop. There is a body of extensive media response to this problem and the “Portas Project” has featured on national television. Stockport is frequently presented as a cause celebre for urban renewal. MBC reports and new initiative websites work hard to counteract the failure to sell or let town. The CPO status of a few units have received the bizarre “Potemkin” shop window vinyls to mitigate the sense of abandonment to a visitor moving too quickly to notice the deception.