Ty'r Orsaf , Station Road Port Talbot

 

This is Ty’r Orsaf. It’s a residential and retail development on the site of the old Port Talbot Police Station in station road, which I sketched in 2017 just before it was demolished. It’s not the sort of building I’d normally choose to draw for pleasure, and I’ll come back to that a little later, if I may.

 I will try to be objective about the building. It’s brick clad, which is better than bare concrete. At least the roofline has a little bit of interest because of the combination of different levels. There are no huge unrelieved expanses of brick, as there’s plenty of windows. On the front of the building, the asymmetric arrangement of the windows is more appealing to me than the symmetrical arrangement of the windows on the side of the building.

So, I like the building then? No, sorry, I don’t. Let me stress that I don’t actively dislike it, no. Although there’s about 30 years between the Civic Centre and this one, this building presents a very similar attitude to the passer-by – “All I ask,” it seems to say to me, “is that you don’t dislike me.” And I think it’s fair to say that it does enough to achieve this. But why don’t I actually like it? Well, let’s start with that flat roof. The building has only existed for a couple of years, and you can already clearly see patches of damp below a couple of the balconies on the side of the building. If there were some simple pitched roofs on the different roof levels, then not only would they make the drainage a lot easier, the building would look better as well.

If you look at the sketch, you can see there are areas of panelling on both the side and the front of the building. I really am not a fan of this. If you have to do it, then be bold! Go for scarlet. Go for deep purple. Go for viridian green. These, though, are copper coloured. There’s no sign of weathering, which is good, but hey, the building is only a couple of years old. What these will look like in a decade is anyone’s guess.

The building, to my mind, suffers from grudging ornamentation. Yeah, okay, said the architects, we’ll liven the building up with some balconies then, but all we’re prepared to give you are minimalist buggers, and don’t even think of getting some curves.  The result is that we’ve got a building that is arguably better than the police station that was there before it, but not much.

We could do so much better.  There’s an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about only a brisk walk away. I’m talking about Jubilee House on Victoria Road, which is also a retail and residential development. This was erected about 10 years ago. Just try to imagine what it would look like with flat roofs, then try to imagine it with blocky square balconies, rather than the curved and gleaming chrome that it sports. I like Jubilee House, and I don’t mind saying it. The ironic thing is that unlike Ty’r Orsaf, there was actually a more interesting building on the site before, the Vivian Park Hotel. Well, that’s gone, sadly, and I’m not holding it against Jubilee House.

 

I did say earlier that I’ll explain what it is that made me want to draw this unoriginal, unexciting building. In December 2018, one night a Banksy painting appeared on a garage a few streets away from where I live. Very quickly it made national, and soon after, international news. To give you an idea how much of a story it was, it can’t have been more than three days later I went early to work so that I could look at it on the way. There were crowds from all over Britain and some from places as far afield as the USA, and this was 6 o’clock in the morning! 

An art dealer bought the painting – well, the whole wall of the garage actually for a reported 6 figure sum. A deal was made with Port Talbot council so that the work would stay in the town for 3 years. Originally it was planned for a gallery to be built, but I don’t know that this was ever more than a plan. So where did it end up for its 3 year stay? Why, one of the empty retail units in Ty’r Orsaf! You have to look at it through the window, mind you, you can’t go in. I wouldn’t want to. Those retail units look dark and uninviting. 

I have mixed feelings about the Banksy though. You see, there was such a fuss about it when it was first found, and the almost universal reaction was – isn’t it wonderful that our town has been gifted this amazing thing? To which I can’t help thinking – gift? Really? Have you really looked at it, then? Because what it shows is a child, with a bobble hat and an anorak, close to a sledge, opening its mouth to taste the snowflakes falling all around it. Only they’re not snowflakes, for when you look around the corner of the wall you see that it’s the ash from a fire in a burning metal bin. Let’s think about that for a minute, fellow citizens of Port Talbot. Banksy was supposedly inspired to visit Port Talbot and leave this mural after reading that Port Talbot was measured with the worst air quality in the UK earlier in 2018. Yes, that mural is telling the world that not only do we in Port Talbot have the worst air quality in the UK, but we are so accepting of it, we care so little about it, that our children even mistake ash for snow. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a brilliant piece of work. But I just think that the huge outbreak of pride in Port Talbot that it created at the time really wasn’t what Banksy intended.