Birmingham shows its metal

As you slowly pull into Birmingham's New Street station you suddenly see it: a huge undulating mass of silver discs. This is Selfridges's new department store - its third outside London - a building that is likely to attract people to Birmingham in the same way Frank Gehry's Guggenheim brought people to Bilbao.

The store, which opens on 4 September, is the work of one of the UK's most adventurous architectural firms: Future Systems. Before Selfridges, its best-known work, for which it won the Stirling Prize, was the media centre at Lord's Cricket Ground: a shimmering white pebble on stilts that sits above the field.

Amanda Levete and Jan Kaplicky, the team behind Future Systems, have something of a Sixties sensibility. Kaplicky says the space shuttle and Paco Rabanne's famous sequinned chain-mail dress inspired the design, which includes 15,000 aluminium discs.

Creating a landmark building for Birmingham was one of Selfridges's aims when it hired the firm. It wanted to be part of the drive to transform the city from a Sixties concrete-and-tower-block basket case to a sleek metropolis.

The store forms part of the new Bull Ring shopping centre: a £500 million redevelopment, that included the demolition of the city's much-hated elevated roundabouts. A new shopping centre, which Birmingham Alliance - the consortium behind the scheme - prefers to call a shopping destination, will open alongside Selfridges.

The project has returned to the old street pattern and opened up views to St Martin's Church, around which there will be a public square with cafés and public art. A Debenhams will be built at the opposite end of the scheme, while, between the two stores, there will be more than 150 outlets, including Nike, Zara and Topshop.

At the heart of things

For Londoners making the pilgrimage, the new Bull Ring is a twominute walk from New Street station. Virgin operates a fast intercity service which takes an hour and three quarters from Euston where you can also catch the cheaper, but slower, Silverlink service.

A more scenic route is via Chiltern Railways from Marylebone to Birmingham Moor Street, which is also a two-minute walk from the Bull Ring.

The Bull Ring is the latest in a long line of regeneration projects in Birmingham. A perfect weekend in the city would include a visit to the Mailbox, a dashing-looking building on the site of a sorting office. It is reputed to be the largest mixed-use scheme in one building in the country. While you are there you can stay at the Malmaison Hotel, shop in Harvey Nichols and stop off for a meal overlooking the Birmingham canal. The Mailbox also houses Emporio Armani, DKNY, Ronit Zilkha and Ralph Lauren.

Venice of the Midlands

The city's canals provide an enjoyable network of car-free walks. From the Mailbox, the Birmingham canal takes you to Brindleyplace, one of the city's earliest regeneration projects. It is a mixed office-residential scheme with cafés and restaurants, and has the feel of a Venetian piazza.

Visit Birmingham's modern art gallery, the Ikon Gallery, housed in a converted gothic-style school, and follow that with a meal at Le Petit Blanc, one of Raymond Blanc's chain of four brasseries. Finish up with a concert by the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at nearby Symphony Hall.

Best to invest

A weekend in Birmingham could be combined with hunting for an investment property. According to David Fenton of Knight Frank, Birmingham has become a favourite with London buy-to-let investors as the rental returns are higher than in the capital. "There were fears of oversupply, but the developers seem to have reined back their activity lately," he says.