2 Somerset Place

Number 2 Somerset place, in its new bright blue coat, is a stunning building, to my mind one of the most attractive in the city. Despite the heavily overcast weather when I saw it today, the place really stood out and cried for me to take a photograph of it. And in one those 'decisive moments' Henri Cartier-Bresson wrote of, just when I began sizing up my iphone 4S to take a shot of it, around the corner came a guy wearing red on a bike. Luckily, the camera app was already running and ready to go and I managed to capture the cyclist in his perfect spot for the pic before he wheeled on by.

The place has recently been bought and its its previous incarnations used to house Charlie's Cafe Bar. The building dates back to at least 1843 and is Grade II listed building,

The "Creative Cluster" Building, High Street

I have watched this building being constructed over the past year with growing delight. It was not until today, however, that I got the chance of taking a closer look it. Titled the "Creative Cluster", the building, which is located on High Street, possesses five floors and 30,000 square feet of space. Its owner hopes to attract small creative startup companies as well as larger art/design businesses to take up residence in what has been designed to be the first building in Wales dedicated solely to creative industries. It is already one of the city's most distinctive pieces of architecture.

Multi-storey car-park walkway to Wellington Street

This walkway illustrates nicely one of Swansea Council's better policies of decorating some of the dingier areas of the City Centre with public works of art. These particular paintings, depicting scenes of the city from yesterday, turn what could otherwise be quite a daunting route connecting the Quadrant Shopping Centre, the multistory car park and Tesco Marina into something a little more amenable.

Kingsway

Another spectacular scene greeted me as I stepped off my work's bus and onto the Kingsway tonight. Swansea City Council have some fairly major plans in store for this street over the forthcoming months. I am hoping the golden veneer loaned to this street by this evening's sunset is an omen for some great things to come for the Kingsway.

Oxford Street

Winter, at long last, seems to be withdrawing its gloom from Swansea's streets. For the first time in 2016, after a full day at work, I caught the sun setting over the city instead of the usual gloom of dusk. And how it transformed the place! I half expected to see Dick Whittington and his cat to walk out of the glare at the end of this street paved with gold.

Dylan Thomas Leaf Sculpture, Castle Square

Sitting atop a cascading stepped waterfall and overlooking both Castle Square and the fountain which forms its centerpiece, Amber Hiscott and David Pearl’s half leaf / half boat sculpture is one of Swansea City’s most attractive public works of art. The piece takes as its inspiration the line ‘We Sail a boat upon the path, paddle with leaves down an ecstatic line of light’ from Dylan Thomas’ poem ‘Rain Cuts the Place we Tread’. The glass sculpture, unveiled on 27 November 1996, stands glistening and proud even after nearly 20 years of display - a remarkable feat considering its location at the entrance to the city's infamous Wind Street (a controversial area that is often castigated and which has been described by one of the city's own MP's as 'an area of drunkeness and debauchery').

Amidst a long, gloomy and very wet winter, the Leaf Boat, with its gold-tinted glass panels aglow from the rays of long-missed sunshine, was a real tonic to my eyes today. Swansea is often much maligned for its love of concrete, its poverty and disrepair. But this jewel of a scene reminded me there and then that Dylan Thomas' description of Swansea, as being both ugly and at the same time lovely, stands as true today as it did in his day.

Townhill in the Rain