Manchester, UK
Mission Title: Supercity - Will Alsop's Northern England
Mission By: Marta Fioni, Davide Bradanini
Mission Finished on Date: 25-06-2008
SCRIPT
- Travel from Leeds to Manchester along M62, then go interview Will Alsop at Urbis.
- Ask the architect about evolution of the Supercity, also in terms of institutional commitment and critiques. How likely to be realized his vision is?
- Have Alsop write you down a list of public places along the M62 that are used by people coming from different cities and go visit them on the way back to Leeds.
- Interview people everywhere you stop and ask them about the use they make of M62 and their experience of in
- between
- cities spaces. What do they think of the Supercity idea?
- Make your mission a road trip, getting footage of the highway and the changing cityscape.
TRAVEL BAG
Should we be aspiring to supercities or avoiding them?
Visions of "Supercities" look like sci-fi dystopias, choke with skyscrapers. Although verticality abounds in this vision, the “supercity” portrayed in the 2005 exhibition by controversial architect Will Alsop at the Urbis center in Manchester is a much slightly more horizontal vision than it's towering Asian megalopolises. The show explored the possibilities of an extended conception of city, hypothetically built around a huge communication node like the M62, a highway connecting the cities of Liverpool and Hull via Manchester and Leeds, creating a sort of urban wireframe sustained by common services.
The hypothetical architectural structures shown at Urbis, all marked by Alsop's colorful style, highlight a much more realistic future for the Northern English landscape than just the architect visions. If generally only a tenth of Alsop's designs become actual buildings, the whole area touched by M62 already appears to be connected so efficiently each city's services become available to people coming from others, making a Mancunian feel at home drinking in Leeds. The then Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott was pretty proud of this agile conurbation almost concurring with London's megalopolis status, but Alsop's vision have also been critiqued for its excessive globalism and it distinctly un-European vision for these Northern English cities.
