The architect who is reaching for the city skies

Oct 11 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

One of Britain’s leading architects returns to his Liverpool home to hear if he’s won Britain’s top new building prize tonight. Peter Elson reports

AS A youngster, Paul Monaghan was intrigued by Liverpool’s Atlantic Tower Hotel, with its distinctive boat-shaped profile.

He never imagined that more than three decades later he would create a twin-tower mini-skycraper that not only overshadows the hotel but visually duels with the mighty Royal Liver Building.

Neither could he have contemplated back then visiting his home city to hear if he had won the annual prize for Britain’s most significant new single building.

But the former West Derby boy and pupil of St Edward’s College has indeed reached these dizzy heights as he waits to learn if his firm’s Westminster Academy has won the RIBA Stirling Prize at Liverpool’s BT Convention Centre tonight.

Paul, 46, co-founded the London-based architectural practice Allford Hall Monaghan Morris in 1989, with friends from Sheffield University and University College London’s Bartlett School of Architecture.

Anyone who has visited Liverpool can’t miss Paul’s hometown piece de resistance, the Unity Building, at 20 Chapel Street. Wherever you stand in Liverpool, it pierces the horizon.

As if the chequer-board black and white cladding is not striking enough, it boasts two aluminium-clad penthouses cantilevered out from the taller tower, echoing a ship’s bridge.

Visible, yet almost totally hidden to most people, are the small river-facing windows which spell out the name of Paul’s mother, Jeanne, in morse code.

“My mum, who still lives in our Alder Road house didn’t know about this – neither did the client or contractor. We like putting coded messages into design and decided to have some fun with the Unity.”

Bridge building aside, the Unity’s quirky exterior pattern reflects another maritime theme, albeit a highly unusual one: dazzle camouflage.

This was a First World War pattern devised by marine artist Norman Wilkinson, consisting of intersecting geometric shapes in contrasting colours.

The building was largely inspired by Edward Wadsworth's vast 1919 monochrome painting called Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool.

The only colour in Unity is hidden inside the balconies.

Costing £60m, the Unity, which contains 150,000sq ft of office space and 212 flats, was very nearly short-listed for last year’s Stirling Prize.

“We wanted to do a Liverpool landmark building and set a high standard for tall buildings here, so we gave it this distinctive look with two penthouses gleaming out,

“People really really love it or hate it, but at least they have opinons about it. This is our big break in the city and I can’t believe I’ve done a done a mini-skyscraper in my home city next to the Liver Building.”

“We were recommended to the developer Richard Miller of Rumford Investments by a previous client and fellow Liverpudlian Tim Pyne,” Paul continues.

“Liverpool City Council helped enormously with the Unity project and encouraged us to be quite brave. I like to think of it as a symbol of Liverpool’s renaissance.

“I left in Liverpool in 1980, then there were the riots and over the next 20 years I could never get any work here. I hope Unity represents Liverpool again in the way that the Royal Liver Building shows the wealth of 100 years ago.

“We had created one tall thin tower and a squat fat one. It’s more like Star Wars’ robots R2D2 and CP3O than, say, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but there is balance.

“I wanted a nautical theme, but felt putting on fake funnels and portholes was too cheesey, so I tried to be more subtle.

“From the Atlantic Tower I realised that buildings could be sculptural. But it was a boat with no bridge, that’s why our top box on the Unity is a bridge.

“I put a lot of effort into those penthouses. I know every bit of wood. There’s not much wind noise, except on thundery days. For the price of a penthouse there you could buy an estate, so anybody who buys one must really like it.

“We like the idea of stepping up the building so you get amazing terraces. That’s where it becomes sculptural and not just cut off. I like the idea of mini-manhattan and would love to do something else in Liverpool, such as a public building on a key site.

peter.elson