Process: Selfridges Department Store in Birmingham
With the Selfridges department store, the city of Birmingham has acquired a new emblem and the West Midlands a valuable piece of urban renewal. Outwardly, there is no indication of the use of the building. Without the media campaign and all the PR that accompanied its opening, this fascinating built sculpture would remain a huge mystery. Functionally, however, the “blob” makes sense and attracts swarms of customers. The designer skin, created to a bargain price, is drawn over the ample curves of the building, which fill the site to the brim and in fact allowed a greater volume to be realized than was foreseen in the master plan. The sprayed concrete outer skin is painted bright blue and attired in a layer of polished aluminium discs – like floating sequins that catch the light, reflecting the surroundings and even the weather conditions. They lend the great mass of the building a quality of lightness and a fine-grained structure that helps to establish a sense of scale. The store harmonizes astonishingly well with the nearby neo-Gothic church. Like two objects from a different world, they stand amid the uninspiring urban fabric.
