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Brindleyplace inspires China's 'English' city
Jun 3 2004
Birmingham's canalside pubs are the unlikely inspiration for new watering holes in a giant English-style city in China.
In Songjiang, close to the Yangtze River delta, skyscrapers and eight-lane highways are giving way to village greens, shady Georgian squares and winding cobbled lanes.
After extensive tours of England, Chinese planners put together a shopping basket of picturesque features they wanted to recreate.
And the pubs and cafes of Brindleyplace were selected as the ideal spots to relax in and replicate.
The idea was to create a satellite city to attract home-buyers from China's newly affluent middle classes.
Thames Town, a five-year project incorporating 500 years of English architecture.
While its Catholic church is modelled on one in Clifton, Bristol, a covered market reminiscent of Covent Garden, its inhabitants will be able to enjoy a gin and tonic at bars inspired by Birmingham's re-invented Brindleyplace.
WS Atkins construction and engineering consultants won a design competition to create the city two years ago, headed by its Shanghai office.
Nick Rowson, principal landscape architect for Atkins, said: "One of the parts that impressed the Chinese was the canal area at the back of Brindleyplace.
"They liked the cafe-style pubs with the fronts looking out onto the water. The new town sits on the Yangtze delta, so it is a very flat, water-based landscape. Although on a smaller scale, Birmingham was a similar landscape. At Brindleyplace there is good quality, new design, based on a canal heritage."
