Having decided to write about the new HSBC UK building at 1 Centenary Square, it proved to be very difficult.

I asked the bank to arrange a visit for me. I was told it was only possible if they had the right to approve what I wrote.

I refused and decided to write anyway.

Dealing with the building's architects, Make Architects, was no easier. Asking on the phone to speak to their press office, I was told it was only possible if I could name the person I wanted to speak to.

But I don't know people in Make's press office, I replied. Therefore we can't help you, goodbye.

A later email asking to speak by telephone to the architect remained unanswered. What makes organisations so obstructive and unhelpful?

Is it a paranoid belief that the world is against them? If so, behaving this way only makes it so.

Anyway, I went, at least to peer through the doors, under the eyes of a (quite friendly) security guard.

Just getting to the building is extraordinarily difficult, what with Centenary Square being rebuilt, Broad Street being torn up to lay the Metro tracks and other parts of the development around HSBC also being under construction.

1 Centenary Square, which opened late last year, is currently an isolated fortress.

There is still plenty of construction work impeding access to HSBC UK's new head office at the moment
There is still plenty of construction work impeding access to HSBC UK's new head office at the moment

The building is part of the masterplan for the Arena Central development and Make is also the overall masterplanners.

Their plan is similar in nature to that of Brindleyplace across the street, although smaller.

A number of closely spaced but freestanding buildings, enabling them to be designed and built (and ultimately demolished) independently, defining a network of pedestrian space.

Brindleyplace incorporated one previously existing listed building, Oozells Street School, into its masterplan.

Arena Central has two - the 1931 neoclassical Municipal Bank and the 1973 high-rise office building Alpha Tower, designed by the Birmingham-born George Marsh of Richard Seifert's practice.

1 Centenary Square is, with some difficulty, positioned between the two of them.

The difficulty does not arise from the Municipal Bank, which will soon be repurposed to give a city centre presence to the University of Birmingham.

There is a big difference in height between HSBC and the older bank but the latter has sufficient architectural gravitas to hold its own and not be overwhelmed.

HSBC comes close to, and conceals, the utilitarian side elevation of the Municipal Bank and respectfully continues its building line on Broad Street.

This is good urban behaviour. The difficulty is with Alpha Tower.

Rubble outside The Rep as the new-look Centenary Square takes shape
Rubble outside The Rep as the new-look Centenary Square takes shape

Alpha Tower is the most elegant modernist tower that we have in the city and accordingly it is listed at grade II.

But, viewed as a piece of urbanism, it is disastrous.

It was conceived as an elegant, freestanding, isolated object, its angular shape capable of being viewed from all sides. But a city cannot be made from freestanding objects.

A few, which possess a civic importance and symbolism, like the Town Hall or the cathedral, can be accommodated.

But ordinary buildings like offices and shops have an obligation to form close relationships with their neighbours and collectively make an urban fabric.

If not physically joined together, then at least being close enough together to enclose the public space of streets and squares.

Shaping coherent public space is the primary obligation of urban buildings.

HSBC, by standing squarely side by side with the Municipal Bank, will contribute a bit more enclosure to Centenary Square, once it is regained.

As a public space, it was always insufficiently enclosed, with its edges generating little activity.

On the other side of the HSBC building, Make have tried to establish a relationship with Alpha Tower. But it is impossible.

CGI of University of Birmingham's plans to renovate the former Municipal Bank building
CGI of University of Birmingham's plans to renovate the former Municipal Bank building

Alpha Tower has no interest in having a relationship with another building or with enclosing external space.

It is an object that stands in space, not a building that makes space. It is aloof, anti-street and anti-urban.

Those of you who knew Alpha Tower from before the Arena Central development will remember the hostile space in which it stood.

It had no purpose other than to stand in to look at Alpha Tower and it was one of the most windswept places in the city centre - on a stormy day one often had difficulty standing at all.

The residential building to the south of Alpha Tower currently being built by Dandara have the same problem as HSBC and possibly succeed even less in establishing a satisfactory relationship.

Alpha Tower gives its architect, Stephen Hodder, and Make Architects with 1 Centenary Square, an insoluble task.

What of the HSBC building itself?

Externally, it is a sober block framed in a grid of pre-cast smooth concrete panels whose colour relates quite well to the Portland stone of the Municipal Bank.

Facing Centenary Square, the grid is flat but on the long side elevation behind the Municipal Bank which will face a pedestrian square.

The verticals and horizontals of the concrete grid are bent into a basket-weaving pattern as if intersecting each other.

New flats by Dandara, Alpha Tower and HSBC dominate the view from Centenary Walk
New flats by Dandara, Alpha Tower and HSBC dominate the view from Centenary Walk

Why do they do this? It is unclear, unless it is to offer the square a slightly more animated surface.

It seems rather arbitrary.

But it is a lot less arbitrary than Make's other prominent building in Birmingham, The Cube.

There, the excessively busy façade reduces architecture to urban wallpaper, just two-dimensional pattern-making.

The three-dimensional form of 1 Centenary Square is complicated by layering three blocks of different heights - seven, ten and 12 storeys - on to each other.

The stepped composition is an enlarged version of what the neoclassical bank next door does.

This effectively reduces the dimensions of the building, in particular as seen from Centenary Square, where a three-storey glazed entrance porch is recessed into the seven-storey block.

Make has made a businesslike building for big business.

It's not exciting but it does quite a sound job on a difficult site.

When the chaos around it is eventually removed, it should assume a solid presence on Centenary Square.

Joe Holyoak is a Birmingham-based architect and urban designer