The last of old Kirkstall Road, Leeds

Application to clear a sit along the old industrial corridor of Kirkstall Road in Leeds:

This site has had a couple of applications approved over the years, all of which have demanded a carte blanche site for the arrival of a few residential towers, The two industrial buildings shown above are part of the dwindling industrial street frontage of Kirkstall Road, which is currently being regenerated in a very anti-urban way. A sequence of isolated towers with no conhesive form are slowly making their way along the arterial corridors of Leeds.

The Dulux decorator centre is asking for a craft ale taproom (Kirkstall Brewery across the road, hint hint), and the street art on the film studio building is an indicator of the cultural presence already here. If you aren’t well versed on modes of heritage led-regeneraton, and don’t understand the value sense-of-place, you are not a very talented urbanist.

A new urban quarter that could be Leeds’ Brooklyn, is likely to become Brookside; buildings clad in the same material, with the same architecture, with absolutely no relationship to the existing context or the indsutrial history.