Civic Centres in The UK
In most cases civic centres in the UK are a focus for local government offices and public service buildings. The Cardiff Civic Centre is probably the oldest and best preserved civic centre in the UK. With reforms of local government in London in 1965 and across England in anticipation of the implementation of the Redcliffe-Maud Report in 1974, a number of local authorities commissioned new civic centres sometimes funded by disposing of their 19th Century Town Hall buildings. Sir Basil Spence was responsible for designing three of these civic centres:
- Hampstead Civic Centre, which was only partially completed; and of which only the Swiss Cottage Library (1964) still exists.
- Sunderland Civic Centre (1970).
- Kensington and Chelsea Civic Centre (1977).
Other noteworthy civic centres include:
- Barking and Dagenham Civic Centre at Becontree Heath (1937).
- Southampton Civic Centre (1932).
- Newport Civic Centre (main building 1940, clock tower completed 1964).
- Civic Centre, Plymouth (1950-1962), Devon, Architect Hector J W Stirling.
- Newcastle Civic Centre (1967).
- Civic Centre, Swansea (opened in 1982 as the County Hall)
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Famous quotes containing the words civic and/or centres:
“But look what we have built ... low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.... Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums.... Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“We all have—to put it as nicely as I can—our lower centres and our higher centres. Our lower centres act: they act with terrible power that sometimes destroys us; but they don’t talk.... Since the war the lower centres have become vocal. And the effect is that of an earthquake. For they speak truths that have never been spoken before—truths that the makers of our domestic institutions have tried to ignore.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)