Yesterday; wandering back from a visit to Holy Trinity in Berwick with my friend David we came across an interesting new office development. A photographic exhibition was being shown inside so this gave us the chance to make a visit. It turned out that the building was more interesting than the photographs and we were glad to look around. This building-which has quality written all over it, is the work of the Malcolm Fraser practice which has produced some fine work in Edinburgh; the Scottish Poetry Centre being perhaps the best known. So there are now two worthwhile recent buildings in Northumberland: this office development and the new observatory at Kielder. Both feature wood in their construction or cladding. Newcastle has nothing recent to offer of similar quality. The new City Library appears to be a monument to banality and have even less going for it than the dreadful housing on the Quayside. I do not think Newcastle has had a building of real quality since MEA House by Ryder and Yates.
Unfortunately the Berwick building, which has offices to rent by the month, was almost totally unoccupied: another sign of the times. You can access the Berwick Workspace from the alley beside the Berwick Advertiser building and also from Walkergate.
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