Thursday, April 5, 2012

Jumping Off A Cliff


A small piece of paper sellotaped to a graffitied sign is not how you'd expect a project involving £50 million to start, but it just did.

Swindon has been late to the game when it came to rebuilding the town centre. The lateness was compounded by the recession, but finally, things are happening. Two schemes, Regent Circus and the Union Square project at Fleming Way will begin within months of each other. 



The old Swindon College site at Regent Circus is possibly a great metaphor for regeneration. Sitting right at the bottom of Eastcott Hill, it marks the border between Old Town and New Town. Back in the 1800s, when these two areas of town warily-eyed each other, distrustful of the new people flooding in. The college building has sat as a buffer between them since the sixties. The established Old Town and the new young upstarts building houses from the railway works closer towards the hill.

The Regent Circus plan will get rid of the wall between Eastcott and the town centre and create a new space for leisure. The sixties buildings will go and the original Victorian college building restored for new use. 


I'm intending to photograph the work from start to finish.



Updates to follow!

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