Remember This? Trinity Square Car Park
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Perhaps there is no other building in the world that epitomised Bob Marley’s proclaimed concrete jungle better than Gateshead’s Trinity Square Car Park.
The brutalist 1960s structure commandeered Gateshead’s uninspiring skyline for nearly half a century, until its eventual demolition in 2010. The brutalist architecture movement emerged in the mid 20th century and quickly came to dominate many of our towns and cities, Gateshead included. The concept of using raw, exposed concrete to create a fierce, merciless countenance was considered state-of-the-art and futuristic at the time. And rather than being seen as the iconic and innovative statement that it was supposed to be, the car park rapidly became sympathetic with the sombre realities of life in a dying industrial town, defined by a lack of investment and ravaged by poverty. And perhaps this was the car park’s biggest flaw – it didn’t belong in Gateshead. As fondly as some of us look back on the swinging 1960s, for architecture at least, the era was a bleak and dispassionate time – much like the starkly characterless buildings it produced.
However, despite the structure’s reputation as a complete eyesore, the car park still holds a place in the heart of North East film fans thanks to its role in the 1971 film ‘Get Carter’, in which Jack Carter, a London-based Geordie gangster played by Michael Caine, pushed another of the characters clean off the top of the building.
Yet despite its fame – and several preservation attempts – the controversial car park met its end in 2010, with Gateshead council selling off what they called “commemorative pieces of concrete in specially decorated tins” for a fiver each.
In its place came a monstrous Tesco and a wealth of student housing, which ironically was nominated as the ugliest building of 2014.
Now, we all know that when Santa visits misbehaving children he leaves behind a charred lump of coal in place of the presents, but perhaps they’d prefer the “commemorative pieces of concrete” instead…