Leeds, England
Mission Title: Commodity Exchange - Leeds Corn Exchange
Mission By: Franz Bourgeois, Alba Acuña Carlos
Mission Finished on Date: 29-05-2008
SCRIPT
- Visit the Corn Exchange.
- Highlight Victorian architectural features and the contrast/dialogue with the outside environment.
- Hang out at the pubs in the area and ask the people about the recent conversion from mall to restaurant, and the effects on the community life.
- Visit the Bridgewater Place.
- Experience public spaces around it, tape the atrium, go up to the top.
- Discuss with someone who lives or works (or both?) there what the status of the tower is to the area it sits in and how does it shape relationships between people.
- Give impressions about the different nature of the two places and their use, the vertical business living and the ground
- level trading.
TRAVEL BAG
How does service architecture affect the city space?
Formerly renowned as an industrial center, the city of Leeds has experienced sundry changes of economic fortune in the last half-century. From wool capital to dot-com node, the university town has witnessed the swift de-materialization of work more than others. A good example of the way the city of Leeds has experienced a shifting from primary and secondary economy towards services would be the Victorian Corn Exchange building. Formerly dedicated to agricultural trade, it was converted into a shopping centre in 1985 and now – with big disappointment for the emos and goths who used to hang out there - turned into a gastronomy center with gourmet food restaurants moving in.
As land-adhering architecture is being converted from trade to leisure and taste, vertical buildings are sky-rocketing in several areas of the city. The tallest so far, Bridgewater Place, hosts parking lots, offices and a lot of houses creating one of the most distinctive landmarks in the area and saluted at its opening by an extraordinary edition of BBC's Look North program. With a quarter of the city's workforce employed in financial and business services, the cozy physicality of corn and wool has been replaced by ultra-modern structures like this, making workspace less public and social.
