Sheffield's buildings, old and new

These are some of the buildings in Sheffield that caught my eye, both old and new:

Above is the City Hall, a concert venue.    

Below is Sheffield's Anglican Cathedral. 

The Millennium Gallery (below), opened in 2001, has art, craft and design exhibitions. It also holds two permanent collections: the Ruskin Collection of beautiful books, art, minerals and natural exhibits collected by the Victorian writer John Ruskin in order to inspire Sheffield's workers;  and an exhibition of Sheffield metalwork: the cutlery, flatware and tableware for which Sheffield was once famous.  

A Ferris Wheel reflected in the glass of a shopping centre:

Modern offices and apartments:

Finally, a ten-storey steel-clad structure that turned out to be ... a car park! It's known locally as the Cheese Grater, for obvious reasons. Why build a boring car park when you can have one as stylish as this?

Sheffield's Winter Garden

Opened in May 2003, as part of the regeneration of Sheffield's city centre, the Winter Garden is the largest temperate glasshouse to be built in the UK in the last 100 years, and is the largest urban glasshouse in Europe. It is also one the largest structures in the UK to be made of 'Glulam': glued laminated timber (specifically, larch). Climate-controlled and home to over 2000 plants, including huge tree ferns, it has retail units and cafés around the perimeter, making it a pleasant place to sit and relax. 

City of Poetry

It's quite a steep walk up to the city centre from Sheffield's railway station, but the route is interesting, passing through part of the campus of Sheffield Hallam University. Some of the buildings have artwork and poetry on them, which is rather nice. The Owen Building holds these lines by the former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion; 'What If..?', written in 2007 for a literature festival. 

   "O travellers from                                                                    

     somewhere else to here,                                                          

     Rising from Sheffield Station                                                   

     and Sheaf Square

     To wander through the 

     labyrinths of air,

     Pause now, and let

     the sight of this sheer cliff                                          Your thoughts are like

     Become a priming-place                                            this too: as fixed as words

     which lifts you off                                                       Set down to decorate

     To speculate                                                              a blank facade

     What if..?                                                                   And yet, as words are too, 

     What if..?                                                                   all soon transferred

     What if..?

                                                                                       To greet and understand

     Cloud-shadows drag                                                 what lies ahead - 

     their hands across                                                     The city where your

     the white;                                                                   dreaming is repaid,

     Rain prints the sudden                                              The lives which wait

     darkness of its weight;                                              hidden as yet, unread."

     Sun falls and leaves the 

     bleaching evidence of light.

And this is in the Winter Garden. I couldn't find the author but some sterling detective work by John at the wonderful http://bystargooseandhanglands.blogspot.com/ has identified this as a poem called 'Twinned with Mars' by Roger McGough. Thanks, John. 

Cutting Edge abstracts

The water cascading over the Cutting Edge sculpture (see yesterday) was quite mesmerising, so just for fun I took some close-ups. I have boosted the saturation somewhat and the results are quite pleasing. 

Sheffield's wall of water

One of the first things you see when you leave Sheffield's main railway station is an enormous, curving wall of steel with water cascading over it. It's called 'The Cutting Edge', a 90m long sculpture by the design team Si Applied, made of Sheffield steel and glass that directly references the city's history of steel manufacture, metalwork and silversmithing. It was installed when Sheaf Square, the area around the rail station, was redeveloped as part of a series of projects to regenerate the more run-down parts of the city. Sheffield suffered badly when its heavy industry, in particular steel making, largely closed down in the 1980s due to competition from abroad. The city is, however, experiencing something of a revival in recent years, thanks to astute management by the city council and innovative research projects in the local universities in collaboration with local businesses. 

Leaving the station, as you look back, you see behind it the (in)famous Park Hill flats, built in the late 1950s to accommodate families displaced by slum clearance in the city. They, in turn, became very run down but were controversially Grade II* listed in 1998, meaning they can't be demolished. After a long time of standing empty, a project has recently been started to renovate them. 

Welcome to Sheffield

Considering it is only about an hour's drive or train journey away, in South Yorkshire, Sheffield isn't a city I know very well. I must only have visited half a dozen times, mostly for work and with little opportunity to explore. The Yorkshire Photographic Union, of which my camera club is a member, held their annual exhibition there last month, so I decided I'd go and see the show and take the chance to look round the city centre too. It was a very warm, bright, sunny day so there were lots of people enjoying the Peace Gardens by the Town Hall.

One of the interesting features of the city centre architecture is the way modern glass and steel buildings are being blended, quite successfully it seems, with the traditional old Victorian buildings and some remaining sixties concrete blocks. It feels an exciting, friendly and vibrant place and there seemed to be lots of young people around. There are two universities. It's one of the top ten most popular student cities in the world and one of the cheapest to live in too, which is part of the reason many students remain in the city after graduating.