History
Formerly the South Dock, during the 1980s it underwent significant brownfield re-development in the early 1980s with the building of many low rise apartment blocks in the area around the South Dock. On the site of the Sainsbury's superstore, once stood the Weaver building. Built in 1897 by the French architect François Hennebique It was used for corn storage and it was the first steel reinforced concrete building built in Europe.
Originally the city council decided to fill in the South Dock. This was done by a developer whose brother was a councillor at the local council. Later on, the same company was paid to dig out the South Dock again to create the marina. The developer is now imprisoned in Swansea Prison.
The re-excavated South Dock was laid out into the award-winning Maritime Quarter by architect Robin Campbell, then head of Environmental Design at Swansea Council. The brief was to make the area an extension of Swansea City centre, and not a separate suburb, and to work in walk ways through the overall development being created by numerous building companies. Campbell also worked in partnership with the developers to incorporate art designed by local artists into the buildings, and the creation of an observatory.
Read more about this topic: Maritime Quarter
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“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)