Birmingham, UK

Why 'Bullring'? The site has always been the market centre of the town/city and somewhere under the new development and a long, long time ago, was a pen, shaped like a ring, in which cattle, perhaps sometimes even bulls, were kept. Visit the modern Bullring on a Saturday afternoon when lots of people are all crammed into a small space and it still seems a fitting name.

One thing which does annoy a few of us is that the definite article has been dropped from the name and the two words 'Bull' and 'ring', which work perfectly well separately, should now be elided. Not only is it not a word, but any sentence containing it is no longer grammatically correct. No-one leaves out “the” in a sentence like, "I'm going to [the] Bullring".

The developers would have us believe that this is no ordinary shopping centre. Their website, which contains a mass of information about the history, sets the scene nicely:

"Britain's second city has a long history as a leading centre of trade and market innovation. Its earliest transformation, in the 1200s, from an agriculturally insignificant village into one of the greatest industrial cities in the world, earned it a reputation as 'The city of a thousand trades'. Birmingham's importance has been forged and fashioned by its own people. It is not a site of strategic defensive importance, and has no castle, port, or river. The city emerged solely as a result of its ability to craft, manufacture, and trade goods."

Not that it's perfect. Two years ago, there were a lot more licensed premises applications posted around the building site than there are drinking opportunities today. The developers and planners might have made more of the nightlife potential. St. Martin's Square is accessible 24/7 and has some giant glass cube water features, so maybe more bars will gravitate there in time.

A few un-let or unfinished retail units stood empty for a while, but it's pretty close to full now. There are no fewer than three lingerie shops.

Shame there aren't enough escalators then. [The] Bullring is shaped like a kidney bean with St. Martin's church in the concave bit and the Rotunda by the convex bit. The complex slopes 19 metres from the Rotunda side to the St. Martin's side and the design takes this into account. There are three levels, all accessible by paths for those who don't like steps. The two sides have a department store each (Debenhams and Selfridges) but there are only two escalators for each side serving each level. People are actually queuing to use the escalators. The trick? Well, many of the stores span two levels and have their own queue-free escalators. There are steps and lifts too, but only at the very end of each half of the kidney bean because the middle has been severed on the top level to allow the 'historic' view of the newly refurbished St. Martin's church to be returned to the city.

Overall, the architecture is an odd mixture of ultra-modern (all the glass), shanty town/earthquake area (the green corrugated roofing), and Chinatown (some odd green structures). I wasn't initially sure about the long-lasting appeal of the Selfridges building, but it looks quite cool next to the newly cleaned St Martin's and compared to the rest of the rather dull Bullring architecture and each change of weather brings out a different reflection.

The curvy building has a skin of 15,000 spun aluminium disks. From the train, its rounded, 3-D form looks like a wave or a space slug depending on whether you are a fan of the architecture or not. It was designed by Future Systems (also responsible for the space-age media centre at Lord's Cricket Ground), and is based apparently on a chain mail Paco Rabanne dress, no less.

[The] Bullring has already had a positive impact on Birmingham and the wider West Midlands region but, more than that, I think it has taken a tiny, baby step to improving other people's perception of the region and the city. What more could you ask of a humble shopping mall?

Back to Postcards