Journal

Burning bright

February 2006 Issue

Do you remember where you had your first kiss? Chances are it will be forever etched onto your mind. On a recent trip to Coventry's city centre, I discovered that the place where I first kissed a girl doesn't exist anymore. It is buried somewhere under Priory Place – one of five brand new public spaces that collectively go to make up Coventry's Phoenix Project. This £50million redevelopment scheme, winner of an RTPI award in 2004, has been designed to: reflect a time line spanning 1,000 years of history and project into an unknown future, as a celebration of reconciliation, of artistic endeavour and unique to Coventry1. Landscape Architects and Urban Designers Rummey Design Associates (RDA) worked in partnership with Architects MacCormac Jamieson Prichard and a carefully selected group of artists to take what had become a fragmented and run-down part of the city centre and "reclaim it while playing careful attention to the history of the site".2 Armed with a notebook and my baby daughter in her pram (to test out the user-friendliness of the site) I walked through the various spaces of the project. As I experienced each of these places I asked myself two questions: are the narratives of time, memory and reconciliation evident? and what is the quality and variety of "experiential interest"?

Discuss this article

Would you like to read more? To receive your copy of the Landscape Institute's award winning journal subscribe today.

Subscribe now