Anke: Royal Tunbridge Wells

Looking forward to visiting this at the weekend, we need some radical thinking to make our town centre, a town centre to be proud of.

Thanks for the comment, Lisa, I hope you will be submitting some of your ideas too.

What a great idea for the Library. I like that idea. Also I assume that the removal of the big bank further down the road would then give access in to the basement of the existing Town Hall?

The new frontage on to an existing building has got to be cheaper and more practical than pulling the whole building down.

Well done... let's hope you get to see some of the results in the next few years....

Steve

Thanks for the comment, Steve. I think this is a really cost effective way too. It has to be done.

Wonderful stuff James - I would welcome this tomorrow.

Now, sensible head on and knowing how from experience how the council works. Are there any financials for how much it would cost to build, what extra income it would bring in, when would it pay for itself if they tapped into council reserves. Yeah, yeah - all the sensible stuff... Or does that come later down the road, now that hopefully you will open their eyes to what could be.

Thanks very much for the feature and the great comments here.

The lowering of the daft garden levels outside the town hall would indeed make access to the lower level of the town hall building. My idea here was to create a town square that would support the farmers' market properly and also become a pop-up performance space, a gathering area, possibly with fountain jets etc, like a mini-centre pompidou terrace.

To answer Jez's question, the exercise thus far has been to idealise. Money is so tight at the moment that even commissioning the design of these spaces is beyond available budgets, so I expect, and welcome, criticism on how deliverable these ideas are. The key importance for the process we are trying to achieve is to excite people about their town, to detract from the emotional blight created by the decline of key sites, and hopefully to raise the public aspiration on what quality architecture their town can boast.

We have some fabulous historic architecture from previous periods, and each can be recognised as quality by everyone, irrespective of their knowledge of architecture and the arts. Which bit of the town will 1990-2020 be remembered for?

The architectural world is more exciting now than it has ever been, with modern material technology capable of delivering some stunning compositions. We need a few gems of the highest quality contemporary design in our town.

If we have these ideas now, and harness the passion of the community, converting that into graphical representations of what the town wants then we surely stand a better chance of guiding development when the money starts flowing again.

Greg Clark is the champion of localism. It's only right that as his home town we take up that mantle and show the country what our collective voices can deliver.

Really like the idea of developing the current library/town hall/war memorial site. Tourist interest currently focused around the Pantiles but I think the rest of the town could/should have more to offer. I also love the idea of Calverley Park having its bandstand back and there being musical events and a kind of amphitheater. The whole Mount Pleasant area it's at present a bit sad, not a great first impression...

Thank you for explaining Jim, thought that might be the case.

The the job of raising excitement is already working it's magic around TW I have noticed.

I thank you and your team for doing this, god knows we need some positivity about the town again.

Would love to see a large open space in the centre of town, like a piazza or French style town square where people meet, for coffee or lunch in the sunshine with space for children to run around, maybe fountains they can play in, better space for ceremonies like our Remembrance ceremony, street entertainment, farmers' market, exhibitions. Just raising the existing cinema site to the ground and paving it could be a start. Ask a younger person though and creativity will really flow ... it's their town now and for many more years to come. Zoo!!

Rather than spending vast sums of money on making The Civic Centre look indistinguishable from any other wealthy city, may I propose and at considerably less cost, that the reference library invest in a few books, and if they cannot run to that, to put back those books that they have removed. The refernce library now reminds me of the cheese shop in the old Monty Python sketch.

Is there anyway that those who couldn't make it, or have ideas, can see the designs and pass on suggestions?

Thanks for your interest, Carl, the designs can be seen, and your input inputted here on their Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/SoCreateADifferenceTW