Beware sci-fi designs (From Gazette Series)

Beware sci-fi designs

SIR - By chance I saw a copy of your paper last week and the letter about the design of your new library, saying that you should go all out for something more 21st century, saying modern architecture can fit with and complement classic buildings.

The glass pyramid outside the Louvre and the Centre Pompidou in Paris were mentioned - fine, but these are in well spaced out areas of the city, not Dursley.

If you want to see how it doesn't work, then pay a visit to my fair city, Newport, about an hour's drive from Dursley, just over the border in South Wales.

Great swathes of beautiful Victorian buildings have been levelled to make way for modern buildings, and the result is something akin to what I would call "designer rubble".

Typical is a megabucks new arts centre on the River Usk in the centre of the city, a beautiful spot indeed. The building as been quite rightly likened to a chicken shed and one of those portable loos you see on a building site.

I have lost count of the letters in our local daily newspaper ridiculing this strange edifice that is taking shape on the river bank.

It is absolutely ugly and totally not in keeping with the surrounding area, along with a huge statue called The Wave, which resembles, somewhat, the front part of a giant bicycle.

The Wave has remained the butt of jokes and innuendo since it was erected over ten years ago, and the new arts centre will suffer the same fate for many years to come.

My view is, why not try meeting all sides halfway, and come up with something sympathetic to both old and new, just a doff of the hat to both camps.

I feel that going full tilt for something worthy of a science fiction set would be disastrous for your town.

Nigel Corten, Forest Close, Newport, Gwent