Architectural beauty is in the eye of the beholder

When asked about what he thought of our little capital in an interview on a page not too far away (Page 9), Cruickshank replied: ‘I thought it was a really delightful town – a mixture of good quality early 19th century architecture – comparable to the back streets and main streets of Brighton or Cheltenham – stucco, neo-classical Greek revival with very good detail.

‘And there are some really charming later 19th century public buildings… a lovely mixture of Venetian Gothic and Renaissance-style.’

My friend from the north said it was the biggest dump he had ever been to. And he has been to Rotherham.

To be fair to my friend, he probably thinks a Venetian Gothic is an Italian heavy metal fan with a fondness for dark make up and a Greek revival was pop star Peter Andre’s comeback in 2004, and I don’t believe (although I can’t quite be sure) that he has spent too much time loitering in the backstreets of Brighton.

But one of these commentators sees St Helier through the eyes of an art historian and qualified architect who is regularly wheeled out by the BBC to engage in intellectual debate on the finer design points of buildings old and new in Britain and the world.

The other sees St Helier through the eyes of an ordinary bloke, the sort of bloke who wishes he had a Royal Square in his home town, and is rather glad he doesn’t have a Castle Quay.

And that’s the problem. It’s not that St Helier really is a dump, parts of it, in fact, are delightful.

But it is a rather confusing patchwork of a town, a town where you can find yourself standing in the St Helier of several hundred years ago one moment and in just a few paces be staring at an over-ambitious, over-sized glass-fronted monstrosity which someone, somewhere in an architect’s office, probably describes as ‘iconic’.

Of course St Helier has to grow, but it would be nice to do so gracefully, with care being taken to preserve the past while allowing new designs through the planning process only if they complement what’s around them.

And without any clear policy on what we want our town to look like – and apparently very little protection for what has been standing in St Helier for so long – it’s difficult to see how that is going to happen.

Take the spectacularly embarrassing goings on of last week, for example.

For a while it seemed half the Island was bogged down in a debate over whether it was really worth saving some of the oldest and arguably most architecturally important buildings in St Helier – buildings which the Co-op wanted to knock down to make way for shops, a car park, flats and offices.

And while all of this was going on, while The National Trust for Jersey pulled us one way and the Co-op pulled us the other before eventually offering a ‘compromise’ of saving two of the historic buildings, our Planning Minister decided it might be a nice time to announce that he’d like to list the bright white beacon of laughably mis-judged design decisions that is the dome roof of the Fort.

Yep, in a week where we could have lost more gems of Jersey’s past (a planning decision is still pending), the man in charge of shaping the Island’s landscape decided his priorities lie with saving, possibly forever, perhaps the strangest and ugliest roof in the land, an unsettlingly incongruous super-modern combo of waving white panels and a giant dome resting rather unnaturally on 200-year-old granite walls.

Why on earth this was built in the first place is beyond me, and why anyone would want to preserve it is even more confusing.

But confusing is a word which is never too far away when discussing St Helier.

We have a big orange hotel, a ruined church that has just been converted into an over-ambitious, over-sized glass-fronted monstrosity which someone, somewhere in an architect’s office probably describes as ‘iconic’ (but it was nice of them to keep the façade), a giant monolith of flats on a reclaimed piece of land that might instead have been used to build family homes and, worst of all, we have probably the only cinema in the world with a sea view. Just think about that for a second.

Seen from above, St Helier is a place that would make any self-respecting town planner wake up in a cold sweat.

But it’s not that the town is alone when it comes to bad planning decisions.

My former home city of Sheffield has had its once pretty city centre pockmarked with several new ‘iconic’ buildings, including a giant tower no one wants and a multi-storey car park which looks like a cheese grater. And many years back the council inexplicably decided to list a truly awful 1950s flats complex over-looking the city – a complex which became one of the most depressed and deprived areas of Sheffield and which has since been turned into trendy apartments simply by reconfiguring some of the flats and giving them a lick of paint.

Others have been carpeted with concrete and saddled with modern, luxury ‘city living’ flats which will one day undoubtedly slide back into a council-owned ghetto.

And then there’s that end of terrace house in Swansea that looks like Hitler, but that’s another story. Google it if you haven’t seen it.

But it’s the very fact that St Helier is a little town and not a big city that makes it even more important that those in power try so much harder to preserve what we have.

Take London, for example. You can admire the grandeur of the 200-year-old Palace of Westminster, and you can crane your neck and marvel at the glass towers of Canary Wharf. But these two are separated by a train journey, which subconsciously tells your mind that you are in two very distinct areas. St Helier is too small to have the benefit of distance, and for that reason the old and the ultra-modern will always sit uncomfortably close in this town.

Of course St Helier needs new buildings and no-one would argue that everything has to be built with a nod to the past. But there seems to be very little thought as to whether these new buildings are the right size and right design for an old seaside town.

Too much thought has been devoted to what it could look like, and not enough has been given to what it should look like.

And with every bad planning decision that is passed, St Helier moves further away from the town seen by Dan Cruickshank, and inches ever closer to that seen through the eyes of my friend from the north.

Richard Heath