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For some it is a modernist masterpiece for which “any other city in the world would give its right arm.” For others, it is a concrete carbuncle that should never have been installed in what was once Manchester’s most luxurious square.
Work was scheduled to begin Monday to demolish the only work by Japanese architect Tadao Ando in the UK after skeptics won the battle over what has been called Mancun’s Berlin Wall.
Built in Piccadilly Gardens as part of plans to renovate Manchester after the 1996 IRA bomb attack on the city, Ando’s concrete monolith immediately divided opinion.
Like the statue of Mary Wollstonecraft in London, the structure offended conventional aesthetics. For every architecture student who adored the clean lines of Japanese minimalism, there were many members of the public who complained that the structure was an eyesore that provided too much camouflage for the drug dealers lurking in its shadows.
More recently, it has served as a canvas for protests against the government’s treatment of the north of England during the Covid pandemic, having been painted with the gnomic phrase: “The north is not a Petri dish.”
In 2014, the Manchester Evening News launched a campaign to get rid of the wall, after three-quarters of its readers said they hated it. Older Mancunians recalled the plaza’s former life as the flower-filled “sunken gardens” that degenerated into a haven for drug users.
The structure was also accused of Piccadilly Gardens being rated by TripAdvisor as one of Manchester’s worst tourist attractions.
That year, the city council announced plans to disguise it with vegetation, saying it would be too expensive to demolish it. There were also complications about his property, with part of the structure, a pavilion containing a restaurant, being in private hands.
But earlier this year, the council announced a change of mind, saying it would in fact tear down the independent element of Ando’s job.
Councilmember Pat Karney, a spokesman for the city center, was so pleased that he said he would mark the demolition date in his journal.
“This is the news that everyone in Manchester has been waiting for: part of the wall is collapsing. I’m going to mark it on my calendar, ”he said. “This is just the first part of what will be much bigger plans to make Piccadilly Gardens the vibrant and welcoming space in the heart of the city that it should be.”
But anyone wanting to witness the drama of a wrecking ball crashing into the structure, or planning to bring their own hammer to chisel out a souvenir, will be disappointed to learn that demolition will be an incremental, overnight affair.
Preparatory work was due to begin Monday, and work to dismantle the wall would begin only later this week, a council spokesman said. Since the structure is right next to the tram line, work will take place between 1 a.m. M. And 5 a.m. M. When Metrolink is not working. It will take several weeks as the wall was built over several key utilities that will need to be carefully avoided.
“Ideas for the broader improvement scheme are being developed and will be shared with the public and companies to assess their views towards the end of the year,” the council said in a statement.
Eddy Rhead of the Modernist Society, a group that champions 20th century architecture, said: “There are fundamental problems with Piccadilly Gardens and they will not be solved by tearing down the wall.
“It is very easy to use architecture as a scapegoat for many much bigger problems, and it is very easy for politicians to stand there and blame architecture instead of doing something about it.
“Anyone who knows anything about modern architecture knows that Tadao Ando is a world-class architect. Any other city in the world would give its right arm for a piece of Ando’s architecture. “
