Trinity Centre Multi-Storey Car Park
Encyclopedia
Multi-storey car park
A multi-storey car-park is a building designed specifically to be for car parking and where there are a number of floors or levels on which parking takes place...
situated in Gateshead
Gateshead
Gateshead is a town in Tyne and Wear, England and is the main settlement in the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead. Historically a part of County Durham, it lies on the southern bank of the River Tyne opposite Newcastle upon Tyne and together they form the urban core of Tyneside...
, North East England
North East England
North East England is one of the nine official regions of England. It covers Northumberland, County Durham, Tyne and Wear, and Teesside . The only cities in the region are Durham, Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland...
, demolished in 2010. It was particularly noted for the Brutalist
Brutalist architecture
Brutalist architecture is a style of architecture which flourished from the 1950s to the mid 1970s, spawned from the modernist architectural movement.-The term "brutalism":...
design of its car park, designed by the Owen Luder
Owen Luder
Owen Luder, CBE is a British architect who designed a number of notable and sometimes controversial buildings in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s...
Partnership. The concrete
Concrete
Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...
structure, which dominated the skyline of the town, was opened in 1967. The car park had a prominent role in the 1971
1971 in film
The year 1971 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*February 8 - Bob Dylan's hour long documentary film, Eat the Document, premieres at New York's Academy of Music...
film Get Carter
Get Carter
Get Carter is a 1971 British crime film directed by Mike Hodges and starring Michael Caine as Jack Carter, a gangster who sets out to avenge the death of his brother in a series of unrelenting and brutal killings played out against the grim background of derelict urban housing in the city of...
, so is commonly referred to informally as the Get Carter Car Park. The car park and the rest of the Trinity Square complex has now been demolished, to make way for the redevelopment of the site by Spenhill Developments, a division of Tesco PLC
Tesco
Tesco plc is a global grocery and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Cheshunt, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest retailer in the world measured by revenues and the second-largest measured by profits...
. Demolition of the car park structure itself started on 26 July 2010 and was complete by early October.
Construction
The car park was designed in 1962, when Brutalism was regarded as the cutting edge of architecture, but by the time that it opened in 1967, interest in the movement had begun to decline. The building's raw concrete weathered poorly, and by the time Get Carter was filmed the following year the car park had already become patchy.The Multi-storey car park
Multi-storey car park
A multi-storey car-park is a building designed specifically to be for car parking and where there are a number of floors or levels on which parking takes place...
had seven tiers of parking decks. These were raised above the adjoining shopping centre by a "forest" of piloti
Piloti
Pilotis, or piers, are supports such as columns, pillars, or stilts that lift a building above ground or water. They are traditionally found in stilt and pole dwellings such as fishermen's huts in Asia and Scandinavia using wood and in elevated houses such as Old Queenslanders in Australia's...
columns. The decks on the north face had a slight curve creating a wave effect. There were two supporting towers containing stair and lift access. Each level of car park was therefore uninterrupted, so that when viewed from a distance the sky was visible through the structure. A cafe unit in a contrasting box structure sat above the top tier of the car park connected to the access towers by an expressed glazed 'bridge' and an open walkway. The cafe had large windows providing views across the Tyne Valley
Tyne Valley
Tyne Valley may refer to:*Tyne Valley, Prince Edward Island, Canada*River Tyne in Northern England...
.
The developer was E Alec Colman Investments Ltd, who had also used Luder for their Tricorn Centre
Tricorn Centre
The Tricorn Centre was a Brutalist shopping, apartment, nightclub and car park complex in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. It was designed by Owen Luder and Rodney Gordon and took its name from the site's shape which from the air resembled a Tricorne hat. Constructed in the mid-1960s, it was...
in Portsmouth
Portsmouth
Portsmouth is the second largest city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire on the south coast of England. Portsmouth is notable for being the United Kingdom's only island city; it is located mainly on Portsea Island...
, and construction was undertaken by Robert McAlpine
Robert McAlpine
Robert McAlpine may refer to:*Sir Robert McAlpine, 1st Baronet , Scottish businessman, founder of the construction company Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd....
. The Consulting Structural Engineer was Gordon Rose of Rose Associates. The car park was commissioned as part of the redevelopment of the established market square in Gateshead town centre, and hence was sometimes referred to as the Inner Market Car Park. However the landscaping ultimately created an exposed and unattractive shopping precinct on two levels with poor access. While construction of the car park was in progress subsidence
Subsidence
Subsidence is the motion of a surface as it shifts downward relative to a datum such as sea-level. The opposite of subsidence is uplift, which results in an increase in elevation...
was noticed due to mine
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
workings, but this was overcome. At the same time nearby Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...
had begun the covered Eldon Square Shopping Centre and this further undermined the long-term success of the development. The rooftop cafe failed to find a tenant and was never opened.
Depiction in Get Carter
Get Carter
Get Carter is a 1971 British crime film directed by Mike Hodges and starring Michael Caine as Jack Carter, a gangster who sets out to avenge the death of his brother in a series of unrelenting and brutal killings played out against the grim background of derelict urban housing in the city of...
and is often seen in the distance. Corrupt local businessman Cliff Brumby (Bryan Mosley
Bryan Mosley
Bryan Mosley OBE was a British actor, known best as grocer Alf Roberts in the long-running ITV soap opera Coronation Street.- Early life :...
) gives Jack Carter (Michael Caine
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....
) a tour of the incomplete roof top cafe, stating that he is in the process of developing it into a restaurant. Carter later confronts Brumby at the same location.
Other depictions
In 2005, BBC Radio 3 broadcast 'Gateshead Multi-Storey Car Park' in its experimental Between The Ears slot. A radiophonic tribute to Trinity Square, produced by Langham Research CentreLangham Research Centre
Langham Research Centre is a group devoted to authentic performances of classic electronic music, and the creation of new music from their instrumentarium of vintage analogue devices. Founded in August 2003, they comprise the radio producers Felix Carey, Iain Chambers and Philip Tagney, abetted by...
, the programme was made entirely from the sounds of the carpark, processed and treated on quarter-inch tape, featuring interviews with its architect Owen Luder, and representatives from The Twentieth Century Society
The Twentieth Century Society
The Twentieth Century Society is a British charity which campaigns for the preservation of architectural heritage from 1914 onwards. The society's interests extend to buildings or artefacts, whether important or humble, rare or commonplace, that characterise Twentieth Century Britain.The Sociey was...
and Gateshead
Gateshead
Gateshead is a town in Tyne and Wear, England and is the main settlement in the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead. Historically a part of County Durham, it lies on the southern bank of the River Tyne opposite Newcastle upon Tyne and together they form the urban core of Tyneside...
Council.
The car park was the subject of scale (1/16 inch=1 foot), a dual channel super 16mm film transferred to video, 16 minutes long and made in 2003. The work is by Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
-nominated artist Runa Islam
Runa Islam
Runa Islam is a Bangladesh born artist based in London, and was a nominee for the 2008 Turner Prize. Islam is principally known for her film works.-Background:...
. In the piece the building is compared to its architectural model.
In 1984, Newcastle band Hurrah!
Hurrah!
Hurrah! were a British jangle pop band formed in the early 1980s and active until 1991. Two band members traded off lead vocals on track-by-track basis, giving the band two distinctly different sounds.-Lineup:...
shot a video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
showing the group performing their third single ‘Who’d Have Thought’, which reached number 7 in the UK Indie chart in 1984, at the very top of the 15 storey car park.
Decline
With the development of the MetroCentre and competition from nearby Newcastle upon TyneNewcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...
city centre, commercial interests in Gateshead town centre have declined. The 1985 opening of the Gateshead Interchange Centre, a bus and metro transport hub, combined with changes to town centre access for private motorists, made the car park largely redundant. Its deteriorating condition also led to the 1995 decision to close the upper parking levels. In the late 1990s Tesco
Tesco
Tesco plc is a global grocery and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Cheshunt, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest retailer in the world measured by revenues and the second-largest measured by profits...
acquired an interest in the site and in 2008 work began to redevelop the entire Trinity Square site and the existing Tesco supermarket into a new town centre shopping complex.
Preservation attempts
During the 1980s and 1990s, there were various proposals to redevelop the car park as a contemporary art galleryArt gallery
An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art.Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection...
or events venue (and in 1983 Charlie Hooker and the Newcastle-based Basement Group organised Mainbeam - a ballet for vehicles there), but as the structure was regarded as a civic white elephant
White elephant
A white elephant is an idiom for a valuable but burdensome possession of which its owner cannot dispose and whose cost is out of proportion to its usefulness or worth...
, these all met with local resistance.
The building remained unlisted. The building was featured in the Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
series Demolition in 2005
2005 in television
The year 2005 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 2005.For the American TV schedule, see: 2005–06 United States network television schedule.-Events:-Debuts:-Miniseries:...
. At the same time general interest in the car park has increased, partly as a reflection of the recognition of Get Carter as a classic of British cinema, with Sylvester Stallone
Sylvester Stallone
Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone , commonly known as Sylvester Stallone, and nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an American actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, film director and occasional painter. Stallone is known for his machismo and Hollywood action roles. Two of the notable characters he has portrayed...
lending his not inconsiderable weight
Get Carter (2000 film)
Get Carter is the 2000 remake of the 1971 crime film of the same name, starring Sylvester Stallone in the title role. The film also features Miranda Richardson, Rachel Leigh Cook, Alan Cumming, Mickey Rourke, and Rhona Mitra. Michael Caine, who starred in the original, plays a supporting role...
to the calls for it to be preserved as a cinematic landmark.
Demolition
"front teeth".
Gateshead Council are selling off the remains as "commemorative pieces of concrete in specially decorated tins" for £5 each.