The challenges of taking over Alsop’s The Public

1 February 2008

Why has the construction taken so much longer than expected?

It’s been very complicated. We’ve had to scaffold the interior three times in total. You wouldn’t normally do that, but this building contains a series of objects surrounded by voids.

There have been three building contracts. Originally it was a traditional contract with the contractor taking the risk. But after Alsop went into receivership, Galliford terminated that contract by agreement, and it only came back on the basis of a construction management agreement, where the client would take the risk.

That’s the only basis on which the project can be finished. It was seen by contractors as a very risky thing to try to complete. I don’t think any contractor would have taken it on on a traditional basis, where they would guarantee it would be completed by a particular date.

What’s been the hardest part of the project ?

Because of its long timescale, the people have changed and there has been a lack of continuity.

We’ve had four separate clients during the entire project, and 12 planning supervisors. Everything stopped three quarters of the way through the process, so we had to negotiate for the essential contractors to come back, and non-essential contractors such as decorators were retendered.

The client also wanted to make cost savings to bring it back into budget.

Have you made any significant changes from the building’s original brief?

Initially the client, The Public Building Ltd, didn’t want us to examine the logic behind what we were building. We were never asked to examine and audit the building from first principles; it was always a matter of providing the missing information for particular areas of the building.

But after the project went into administration in March 2006, the client disappeared, and PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Sandwell Council appointed arts and regeneration company DCA Consultants to work up a new business plan.

At the same time, we worked with DCA to produce a new brief because a lot of the uses had changed over the years. Parts of the original organisation no longer existed, for example, the family learning centre has been dropped.

Which is your work and which is Alsop Architects’?

It’s difficult to explain to people in a very simple way what we did and what Alsop did, and it’s a bit pointless to go around the building pointing to things and saying, “I did this and he did that.”

The envelope is all Alsop’s design and we haven’t changed anything. The interiors contain a whole series of sculptural objects. Alsop designed a series of shapes and worked out what to put inside them.

Alsop is completely responsible for the concept, the structure and envelope, and the general disposition of things within the space.

We’ve been responsible for the detailing and in some cases the complete design of some of those things that happen inside.

What technically has been your biggest challenge?

It’s been sorting out The Sock and the space called The Cave on level three, which is entirely our design.

The Cave had always been planned for the building, but the budget we got was a 10th of what the original design was going to cost. It had been originally proposed as a triangulated metal cladding system inside and out, and over 20m long. It required a steel portal frame which was very difficult to get into the building because it uses very large pieces of steel, so that was one problem. Then it was clad with metal panels both inside and out, so there were two layers of cladding. It got to a stage on site where the oak flooring was going down and nobody had designed it. All the designs were way over budget.

So then I was asked to look at it. We didn’t have time to work up a detailed solution, so we put in posts to form the perimeter of The Cave, and later I had to work out how to clad it and put a roof on it. We’ve ended up with a very lightweight, blackout fabric roof which is stretched across a steel frame with a curved tubular steel perimeter. There’s a plasterboard partition underneath it. By simply curving it three-dimensionally, we’ve tried to make it so that it’s not simply a wall with a lid on it.

It does become a sculptural object within the space — so it reads as an entity in the same way that The Sock does.

It’s been reported that The Public is about £12 million over budget. Is that right?

I don’t know what the final cost will be.

But you’ve had to save money because costs were spiralling out of control, weren’t they?

There were large areas where the client was looking at making cost savings to bring it back into budget.

One of the first things we did was the cladding for The Sock, the interior space at the north-east of the building that will contain two temporary art galleries.

We inherited a steel frame that engineer Adams Kara Taylor had done to support a metal cladding system Alsop had designed which was unaffordable, so I had to work out a new method of cladding the frame.

The Sock has a secondary steel frame inside it, so we had to work out a solution to deal with it.

Were you concerned at any point about the built quality?

Yes. There was a period from November 2004 when Alsop disappeared — there was no architect involved for a while, and nobody was running the contract. There didn’t appear to be a detailed design solution for the events space. At that stage, it was completely cost-driven.

There have also been issues with intumescent paints, screeds, partitions, and problems with materials. Some of those issues happened after Alsop disappeared, but had it finished in 2006, it would have been a very disappointing project.

How did you finish the events space?

We are creating a new space by cladding the walls in plasterboard and inserting a floating ceiling. A lot of the work we’re doing entails working with very tight budgets, so we are just trying to be as inventive as possible with very simple materials.

There were reports that a laminated glass pane to a jellybean window had been smashed and it cost up to £40,000 to fix.

How much did it cost?

I don’t know exactly how much it cost. We’ve replaced two panels of glass at high level, which includes the previous one. We think an air gun pellet may have done it.

It isn’t easy to replace a piece of glass because the cladding is in three layers and the outside layer has to be completely removed to take out the pane of glass. The glass is all square panes. The outer skin overlapping forms the curves, so you have to take the outer skin off to take out a square sheet of glass.

The cost is in getting access and taking off the outer skin of the facade. If you’re doing curved windows, there’s only a few ways you can do it. At Selfridges in Birmingham [which Flannery worked on while at Future Systems], we took the opposite approach. The glass there is in front of the facade, with gutters around the facade, so it’s very easy to take off a piece of glass and put it back again. But the detailing is really expensive there, whereas here the detailing is fairly economical — but it’s more expensive to replace it.

So when it finally opens, what will visitors see?

The main attraction is the gallery. The majority of it will be a permanent exhibition with a series of international artists commissioned to produce completely bespoke works. There are then two temporary exhibition spaces which are within The Sock.

The idea behind a lot of the permanent artworks is that people will take an identity around with them using radio frequency identification tags which they will hang around their necks, so the exhibits will recognise people and they will react to people and what they do at each exhibit.

“We are just trying to be as inventive as possible with very simple materials”

At the end of the gallery experience, there will be an area called “Make” where people can create things to take away based on their visit. That might be a DVD, CD-rom, a t-shirt or mug.

The other main public function is the events space which is on the ground floor at the opposite end of the building to The Sock. It’s a multi-function space for meetings, conferences, seminars, rock gigs and concerts, but it doesn’t work as a theatre because the fly tower cannot take significant structural loads. The brief for it wasn’t very clear when we inherited it, so we’ve concentrated on the uses that will work.

Charting a decade of public problems

King's dream

The germ of an idea for an arts-led cultural venue for West Bromwich began with Sylvia King, a former teacher who started the Jubilee Arts Trust in 1974. King had

a vision for an attention-grabbing building containing more than 10,000sq m of galleries, studios, workshops and meeting rooms that would be placed in the centre of the depressed West Midlands town of West Bromwich. A competitive interview was held to realise this vision, and in July 1998 nine practices were interviewed and five shortlisted, including Alsop Architects.

Alsop approval

Will Alsop won the job. Outline proposals were drawn up in 1999, with a planning application submitted in February 2000; approval was granted in June of the same year. Alsop had negotiated relocating the building, which at that time was called the c/PLEX centre, into the heart of West Bromwich on the site of a former bus station.

Detailed proposals were produced between February 2000 and March 2001, and by October 2002 the total project cost of £39.4 million was approved. The main funders were Arts Council England (46%); European Regional Development Fund (21%); Advantage West Midlands (10%); Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council (18%) and New Deal for Communities (5%).

Name change

Finally, on May 28 2003, the project, now called The Public, began on site as a traditional contract with Galliford Try as main contractor and Richardson Roofing, which is still working on the project, responsible for the building envelope. The client was renamed The Public Building Ltd.

Alsop crisis

In October 2004, Alsop’s practice was forced into receivership.

New architect

In November 2004, Solihull-based Flannery de la Pole was appointed architect.

Around the same time, Atkins, which was taken on as project manager and quantity surveyor, brought in Atkins Architects.

Work continued on site but costs soared. Atkins Architects withdrew from the project in December 2005 on account of tensions with the client.

Delays and demands

By March 2005, an additional £12.3 million was being sought and the first phase contract was terminated owing to insufficient information. The project was seriously delayed, so there was no chance of meeting the opening date of June 2005; a new date of spring 2006 was set.

Then in March 2006, building work stopped as the project went into administration, with Price-WaterhouseCoopers acting as administrator. Sylvia King and 13 other members of staff were made redundant, The Public Building Ltd ceased to trade, and all existing contracts were terminated. Davis Langdon replaced Atkins as project manager, and has been retained.

Council steps in

Arts Council England, Sandwell council and Advantage West Midlands continued to provide additional funding to complete the project.

In October 2006, Sandwell council took over from the administrators and became the client.

Under way again

The final phase began on site in May 2007, and The Public is due to open to visitors this summer. Sandwell council confirms that the construction cost of The Public currently stands at £51 million.