Postcard of some views of Birmingham this morning: the rebuilt city centre around Victoria Square contrasts neoclassical architecture with a mixture of modern styles.
Birmingham city centre is built on a number of hills: the layout of the streets is far from a regular pattern, following the contours and weaving around its canals, its earliest form of industrial transport. The railway cuts directly underneath the city centre, through tunnels and with New Street railway station under layers of concrete.
Yet Birmingham's architecture is relentlessly rectilinear in contrast, even the sixties cylinder of the Bull Ring tower has a rectangular grid of office windows mapped on its outer surface. Dhruva Mistry's scuptures of monumental sphinxes therefore stand out in contrast.