The sad fate of the CASPAR appartments here in Leeds was revealed today via a somewhat over-hyped Yorkshire Evening Post headline. The flats are to be pulled down after structural problems first uncovered back in 2006 have proved unfixable.
I had a good friend who lived here for a couple of years so I've spent some time there. The flats were designed to provide affordable living to city center workers and were built using an innovative pre-fab construction that enabled them to be put up quickly. They offered a nice space in which to live and features such as heavy insulation also ensured they were cheap to run and relatively environmentaly friendly. The buildings shape took advatage of an unusual circular site created inside a slip road. Unfortunately as I understand it the buildings problems were down more to mistakes in the construction that the design. I can only hope the new building destined for this site shares some of the spirit of innovation with the doomed CASPAR.
For me, I'll miss this building because of the good times I spent there. Farewell to the CASPAR.
Further reading:
That's really interesting. Where exactly are these? They sound really quite an intriguing experiment and there is SO much new building going on. Sad that what sounds as if it was well-intentioned has come unstuck.
Posted by: Lloyd Spencer | Friday, 09 February 2007 at 09:28