BACK TO THE FUTURE

Brighton & HoveNovember 2011

The long awaited go ahead for the Astoria’s redevelopment was given by Green Party-led councillors on September 21. It obviously helps that international architectural firm Conran and Partners has created a uniquely eco-friendly vision for the old cinema site in Gloucester Place that includes an exciting new arts and media quarter for the city.

It’s also hoped the striking new building for site owner H30 Media is set to play a crucial role in the ongoing regeneration of the North Laines and London Road area.

Indeed, Conran and Partners has a reputation for innovative and stylish designs creating significant landmark buildings in cities across the globe, and the major architecture and design practice, which opened its Brighton office in 2008 in Queens Road, is known for bringing back to life, and usefulness, prominent city landmarks.

Yet Sir Terence Conran’s firm has also provided plans to help save Saltdean Lido, which entail keeping the pool open and heated, and providing an ice rink in the winter. The Save the Lido Campaign, backed by Conran, has remained steadfast in its opposition to a proposed redevelopment by the leaseholders and has been pushing the council to commence legal proceedings and sell the freehold to the residents.

Conran’s support would ostensibly seem at odds with its more radical redevelopment at the once-Grade II listed Astoria. Would there not be a conflict of interest here, supporting one building and getting rid of the other? This is the big question we put to Paul Zara, director at Conran.

“Quite a lot of people have asked me in Brighton why we are trying to save Saltdean Lido while happily gaining planning approval to knock down the Astoria Cinema,” Zara responds. “Well it’s simple: One is a good building and one is not. The Lido was built as the heart of a new community – with a library, a grand ballroom, cafe, and rooms to hire. The Astoria Cinema was knocked up in a few months as a big entertainment shed. It served its purpose and was, like so many cinemas, wrecked by conversion to a bingo hall decades ago. There’s almost nothing left worth keeping.”

Zara has a point, perhaps the Astoria was not the most aesthetically pleasing of buildings either. We also mustn’t forget that Conran did the successful conversion in 2002 of the former Evening Argus newspaper building in North Road; was pivotal in the restoration of the Embassy Court apartment building on Brighton seafront and was instrumental in sustainable schemes such as the Atalanta Apartments in Bevendean and the St James Street Mews complex, giving Brighton its first green roofs.

According to Conran and Partners the new offices will include locally-sourced materials, natural ventilation, solar shading to prevent overheating, and earth ducts to provide cooled air in the summer and preheated air in the winter. The plans also embrace rainwater harvesting to provide grey water for use within the new building. “Not all old buildings are good,” Zara continues. “Our proposals for the Astoria give the city its greenest office building, which is why the planning committee approved it. Deputy Leader of the Council Amy Kennedy called it ‘a 21st century building for a 21st century city’. We owe it to our towns and cities to design the best buildings we can, to create the listed buildings of the future.”