Birmingham’s architecture is eclectic and most Brummies accept the randomness of the buildings around them as the norm. Selfridges, bulging out of the city’s Bullring shopping centre, appears a bit like a fly’s compound eye thanks to the thousands of aluminium discs on its facade. Selfridges looks like nothing else and celebrates the constant ambition of Brummies to reinvent their city; an optmistic symbol of Birmingham’s recent regeneration.

The department store replaced a multistorey car park of an uninspiring quality. I remember how, below the car park, there was a decaying warren of pedestrian subways and shop units, which briefly in the 1980s formed a proto-Chinatown made up of several Chinese businesses: one was a resturant run by my grandparents. In its place, I’m happy to see that Future Systems have created a memorable building that looks certain to outlast the timid and mundane shopping centre around it.

by Wilson Yau

Wikipedia: Selfridges Building