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Architecture: Tomorrow has been cancelled

The Millennium Commission has 185 projects on the go, but the really ambitious ones may never make it.

Nonie Niesewand
Thursday 25 June 1998 23:02 BST
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A new ailment is threatening to cut down millennium celebrations across the country in the year 2000. It's called donor fatigue. Donors, whether they be the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Arts Council, the Millenium Commission or private companies asked to match lottery hand-outs, are finding it is infectious. Symptoms include great difficulty reaching deep into pockets...

Many took a turn for the worse when they saw the Prime Minister in a hard hat inside the dome listen to Jenny Page, chief executive of the New Millennium Experience, announce a pounds 50 million shortfall in sponsorship for the great white flagship project itself. If even the dome can't attract sponsors, pity all the hundreds of other plans around the country that may never get off the drawing board.

"Clearly they are going to have a problem. That's the premier league appealing to prestigious firms in the top site," says Peter Valentine. And he should know. Finance director of the planned National Space Science Centre in Leicester, Valentine has spent a year with professional fundraisers BDS trying to get this pounds 46.5 million millenium project off the ground.

He's not the only one. The Millenium Commission has 185 projects on its books, that "represent a physical change to the landscape" such as buildings, bridges, woods and canals. It has set aside pounds 2.9 billion of lottery money to fund them. But the catch is that the projects chosen must match their grant by the same amount from other sponsors to get the go-ahead. The commission says that 97 per cent of the 185 projects have been promised the additional sponsorship they need. But promises are not always kept and several of the proposed jewels in the millenium crown have not yet attracted the funding that they hope for

Peter Valentine has first-hand experience of donor fatigue and knows it's getting worse. With a first-rate project for Britain's first space science centre, linked to the University of Leicester, Valentine has had difficulty finding companies willing to pay a fortune to match lottery funding of pounds 23.5m.

"Even when the Prime Miinister intervenes to drum up support for the dome there are shortfalls," Valentine says wistfully. They've got 60 per cent in the bag but the centre, designed by Nicholas Grimshaw, at present going through planning, has been downsized from 12,000 square meters to 7,000. The National Space Science Centre is not due to open until February 2001, but the university is committed to opening the Space Challenger cockpit and mission control centre, on loan from the USA, before 2000. It might end up being housed in Portakabin, if they can't find somewhere to park it.

Even with EU grants guaranteed and private sponsorship on the table, things can go wrong. Further up the road, Trafford council so love the fragmented shards of the new Imperial War Museum designed by Daniel Libeskind, that they raised nearly pounds 8m from the EU only to find their request for lottery money turned down by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Just 20 minutes drive away, the extension to the Manchester Art Gallery by Michael Hopkins was granted lottery funding of pounds 20 million two years ago but still no donors or sponsors have been found, so work hasn't begun.

The Millennium Commission only releases their share of the money in phases - once they know that the project is going along nicely. Sometimes they pull the project althogether. The Weather Station at Bracknell sounded like a good idea when the council presented it as an interactive discovery centre, but their grant was withdrawn when they decided to turn it into a visitor centre.

The famous Giant's Causeway electric tram that ran along the coastline in Northern Ireland also had its funding pulled when the applicant couldn't get occupation of a house and garage critical to one terminus. A one-way railway brings on advanced stages of donor fatigue.

Not that you get a glimmer of this in a new exhibition called "12 for 2000", only on for one night in London, alas, before showing the world, through the British Council, 12 millennium projects. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister Derek Fatchett calls them "examples of the excellence of British architecture and design". It's no secret that curator Hugh Pearman had to endlessly revise his list of buildings to make sure that they were all going ahead.

Mindful that a dozen buildings okayed for lottery money by the Millennium Commission hardly represents the 185 on the books, its chairman, Chris Smith, described it as a "snapshot of what we are providing for the millennium". There were some good tourist attractions: the castellated Lowry centre by Michael Wilford at Salford on the bleak quays of the Manchester canal; revitalised village greens across Britain and village halls granted new green china and urns in hamlets twinned with obscure EU place names.

The enviably green Earth Centre in a disused colliery near Doncaster (see below) was included in the exhibition, but without its major attraction, the butterfly building by Future Systems.

A New Millennium Experience market researcher asked me a year ago: "What does the Millennium mean to you?" He seemed taken aback when I replied: "A deadline". Deadlines take on a whole new meaning for the Millennium Commission funded projects afflicted with donor fatigue. The bigger the designer label behind the building, and the more fun it promises, the tougher it is.

Bird sanctuaries, bellringers' towers, canalside gardens, visitor centres, and village halls may be great places to celebrate the millennium, but the really inventive projects with a longer shelf life are going to need resuscitation.

NATIONAL SPACE

SCIENCE CENTRE

LEICESTER

Britain's first space science centre will definitely go ahead, to open in February 2001 but downsized from 12,000 square meters to 7,000.

The architect: Nicholas Grimshaw - he of the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo and the new stadium at Lords. Originally, he flooded a flat roof so that from space the centre look looked like a lake. Now he's used foil and insulation cladding to design a building that constantly changes colour, more like a mirage.

The building: Has a tower tall enough for rockets, clad in plastic foil fritted to change from transparent to opaque depending on your perspective. A mosaic of insulation panels on the walls changes colour with temperature (like rave T-shirt) and the flat roof is planted in wave form with alpine shrubs that turn from green in summer to autumnal red and orange in winter. Inside there is the most advanced planetarium in Europe.

The site: Storm water tanks emptied 20 years ago, donated by Leicester Sewage and Pumping Company, on the Abbey Mills pumping station.

Cost: pounds 46.5m.

Funding: pounds 23.25m from the Millennium Commission with pounds 13.8m raised by professional fundraisers, BDS. Richard Busby of BDS says: "Our job is to make design companies commercially viable. We work with the curators, not against them. If there's not enough distinction it's not easy to get a sponsor."

For: NASA and the client, the University of Leicester.

Against: The conquest of outer space proved easier than filling the inner space.

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM NORTH

TRAFFORD, MANCHESTER

Intended to house surplus material from the Imperial War Museum in London and provide educational access for children north of Watford

The architect: Daniel Libeskind, superstar of the profoundly unsettling Jewish Museum in Berlin and planned Victoria and Albert Musuem spiral extension in London. His deconstructivist style, everything skewed and on the diagonal, is a metaphor for a century of international conflict.

The building: Three shards represent "the globe broken into fragments", showing land, sea and air warfare.

The site: Five acres of wasteland on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal.

Cost: Originally pounds 40m, now pounds 23m.

Funding: Refused - except for pounds 8.3m EU grant which expires if nothing is added to it within six months.

For: Trafford Council, which means planning approval won't be a problem. Manchester's Jewish community are strong supporters.

Against: Heritage Lottery Fund who twice rejected an application for pounds 20m.

THE ARK AT THE EARTH CENTRE

NR DONCASTER

Part of an educational environment complex.

The architects: Future Systems, whose eco-chic buildings, flapped and hinged to exploit light and air, wowed the EU.

The building: The Ark is seriously green with its butterfly-shaped roof dropping to the ground as a wrap-around shelter that creates its own energy. Exhibitions on three levels inside. Visit Antarctica or the rainforest.

The site: 400 acres of a disused colliery outside Doncaster.

Cost: pounds 23m, as part of the pounds 100m Earth Centre project, the first phase of which, with buildings by Feilden & Clegg, Alsop & Stormer and Letts Wheeler, has begun.

Funding: Needs pounds 23m, of which pounds 16m has come from the Millennium Commission and private sponsors. Still seeking pounds 7m.

For: Sir Crispin Tickell of WorldWide Fund for Nature and Jonathan Smales of Greenpeace.

Against: Nobody in their right mind could be against it. So why has the Ark been left high and dry?

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