The urban environment has seen an escalating exodus from commercial buildings. Window space is populated by for lease signs, tills no longer chime and foot-traffic is losing its density. Friedlander’s Ironbank, built during the start of the Global Financial Crisis, has faced an economic climate that has not been sympathetic to its occupancy and consequently its engagement with K-Road as a whole. Its public/private courtyard is hardly occupied and thoroughfare underutilized.
You must spend money to make money *
Through the song If I were a Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof we propose an intervention in this dead space by channelling the life of K-Road through, up, down and around a reworked public arena, a promenade of flamboyant spiraling parade to reinvigorate and revitalise.
*Titus Maccius Plautus 254-184BC
If I were a rich man
I’d create a partition in the road and throw a parade
All day long we’d biddy biddy bum
If I were a wealthy man
You would only have but fun
I’d open my bubba bubba deedle deedle dum doors
And together we’d spend more and more.
I’d fill corporate boxes, square footage by the dozen
Looking over the middle of town
A fine tin roof with real wooden floors below
There would be one long staircase just going up,
And one even longer coming down,
And one more leading nowhere, just for show.
I’d fill my court with ducks and peacocks and queens and bears
A celebration the town will see and hear
And each loud ‘cheep’ and ‘squawk’ and “holler” and rustle of back combed hair
Would cascade down like glitter
As if to say “Here lives a wealthy man”
I see my wife, my Margret, looking like a rich man’s wife
Gleaming, head to toe, bedazzled
Supervising deals to her heart’s delight
I see her putting on airs and strutting like a peacock
Oi, what a happy mood she’s in
Announcing the performers, sashaying day and night
If I were a rich man
I’d create a partition in the road and throw a parade
All day long we’d biddy biddy bum
If I were a wealthy man
You would only have but fun
I’d open my bubba bubba deedle deedle dum doors
And together we’d spend more and more.
