Architect
Buildings also located at Five Ways include Philip Chatwin's Lloyds Bank (1908-9) and the Marriott Hotel (formerly the Swallow Hotel, and before that Tube Investments House), which was expected to receive a five-star rating when opened to rival the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Broad Street, however it was unable to achieve this. The building was built in 1957 to a design by Cotton, Ballard & Blow. It is now a Grade B locally listed building.
Five Ways is a major commercial area of Birmingham city centre. The area began to develop in the early 1960s when Birmingham's business centre expanded westwards towards Edgbaston, along Broad Street and the Hagley Road. Calthorpe Estates, the landowners, started various schemes to encourage highrise construction in the area and to develop it into a business centre. One of the first developments here was Five Ways Shopping Centre and Auchinleck House above it. It consists of a traffic-free piazza with ground floor retail, an indoor market area, a car park on the second floor and the 10 storey Auchinleck House, which is named after Claude Auchinleck, with office accommodation. Designed by J. Seymour Harris & Partners, it was completed in 1962. On the side of Auchinleck House was a mural by Trewin Copplestone which was illuminated at night. This was removed though another mural by Trewin Copplestone remains in the courtyard. Other developments in the near vicinity of Five Ways include Five Ways House on Islington Row, designed by Cotton, Ballard & Blow, and the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce building, by John Madin. Five Ways House was the location of the Ministry of Public Building and Works' library.
Other highrise buildings that were constructed later on include:
- Five Ways Tower (off Islington Row)
- Tricorn House (an office building adjacent to 1 Hagley Road)
- Metropolitan House (also known as 1 Hagley Road after its address; design by John Madin)
Read more about this topic: Five Ways, Birmingham
Famous quotes containing the word architect:
“Some violent bitter man, some powerful man
Called architect and artist in, that they,
Bitter and violent men, might rear in stone
The sweetness that all longed for night and day,
The gentleness none there had ever known....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“It was always the work that was the gyroscope in my life. I don’t know who could have lived with me. As an architect you’re absolutely devoured. A woman’s cast in a lot of roles and a man isn’t. I couldn’t be an architect and be a wife and mother.”
—Eleanore Kendall Pettersen (b. 1916)
“An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)