Annual lecture​: Reinvention across the Pennines

BY GEOFF HUGHES
​
Alex Whitbread, a partner at Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, gave the Society’s annual joint lecture with the University of Huddersfield School of Art, Design and Architecture. 

His talk, on March 3, 2020, in the University’s Charles Sikes Building, was entitled A Decade of Reinvention across the Pennines: A Perspective from FCBStudios.

Alex covered a wide range of developments across the North, ranging from dramatic new city centre schemes in Leeds and Manchester through to complex redevelopments around heritage sites from Stoke to the South Bank of Leeds. 

An excellent presentation showed the range of techniques used by architects when master-planning a major new development, as at Kirkstall Forge, near Leeds (above) through to modelling potential future building combinations and designs with their differing impacts on sightlines. 

The talk concluded with examples close to Huddersfield and mentions of the key role of integrating transport, primarily improvements in rail transport, into new urban developments.