The Friday Photo: Selfridges Building

This week we are paying homage to a much newer part of our Cities architectural heritage for the Friday photo and featuring the Selfridge building which opened in 2003 as part of a major development to the Bull Ring area of Birmingham. The Guardian described it at the time as  “not so much architecture-as-ocean-liner berthed alongside Moor Street station, but a vast cliff of a building, a computer-age geological outcrop, as distinctive and eye-catching as the white cliffs of Dover”.

The impressive building is spread over four floors and is covered with 15,000 aluminum discs that give it that distinctive look, setting it up to be one of those defining and iconic buildings of Birmingham.  Selridges & Co was founded by a Chicargo man called Henry Gordon Selfidge who arrived in England in 1906 where he then set out to established the Selfidge chain.  The flagship Oxford Rd store opened in 1909.