URBAN DESIGN AND TOWNSCAPE Gordon Cullen Tribute Practice Profiles of Colin Buchanan, ECD, PRP and WML International Plus Design in the Countryside UDQ Issue 52 OCTOBER 1994 ISBN 0266-6480 UDG News

Silvertown in London's Docklands. The experts representing the seven schemes AUTUMN PROGRAMME 1994 included Lucien Kroll, masterplanner for the Wed 16 November Prof Doreen Massey Ecolonia project in Holland and Barbara "Lefebvre & the History of Space" Able from the practice Joachim Eble, who are involved in permaculture in Germany. The UDG events are held on Wednesdays Other leading roles were played by Margrit at the London Exchange, 77 Cowcross and Declan Kennedy from Germany, Street, London EC1 at 6.00 pm for 6.30 Marilyn Mehlmann from Sweden and pm. Tickets are available at the door - £2 Robert Fowles from Cardiff School of members, £3 non-members and £1 for Architecture. students/concessions. The two days of presentations, working groups and late night discussions led to Other Events positive conclusions for "Building for Thur 17 November Tomorrow". Joint RTPI/RIBA Conference supported The Workshop's final conclusion stemmed by UDG from an accord struck between "Spirit of Abercrombie" opening address will be delivered by the Rt. representatives of the 'people and process' To be held at the RIBA. Details Hon. John Gummer MP, Secretary of State movement and representatives of the more described separately on this page. for the Environment. Professor Sir Peter technical, product related approach: - where Fri 18 November Shepheard, CBE, FRTPI, PPILA, PPRIBA, participatory and ecological processes are Joint RTPI/UDG Conference HonFAIA - Dean Emeritus, Graduate School initiated from the outset, with respect for "Design, Crime and Vandalism" of Fine Arts University of Pennsylvania, will contributions from all participants, Details from Linda Cox 071 636 9107. present the keynote address. Sir Peter was frameworks for physical, social and one of the original members of the economic and ecological change can be There is a 'Landscape Matters' exhibition Abercrombie design team. He will give agreed and initiated by consensus. Lucien at the Building Centre which continues valuable insight into the influences that led to Kroll, architect and urban designer, until 11 November. Associated with the the design and production of the plan, as well Belgium, expressed this in the following exhibition arranged by the London as his vision with hindsight for the next fifty way: "The people possess the knowledge Chapter of the Landscape Institute are the years. Other speakers include Professor how to live, to dwell, to organise cities. I following lectures: Peter Hall of the Bartlett (formerly Professor always try to understand it, to translate it of Planning at the University of California) and to build it poetically and go deeper, 31 October and Architect Cedric Price of the more completely into that civilised Kansai Airport Architectural Association. Paul Finch, AJ landscape. Architecture can help." Alistair Guthrie Ove Arup Partnership editor and Planning in London co-editor is John Thompson summarised the findings 7 November the conference chairman. The cost of this full of the Workshop to the Eco-Cuitat (Eco- Hampton Court Garden Restoration day conference including lunch is £35 per City) Conference in Barcelona: - "If the Jan Woudstra and Marylla Hunt delegate. A date not to be missed. Further technical and human sides of ecology remain 9 November information from RIBA London Regional separate they can easily be side-lined - but Thames Landscape Initiative Director: Meta van der Steege on 071 580 fused together, they can and will become the Dr J Gardiner of the NRA 5533. most powerful movement for beneficial All lectures are at the Building Centre change". beginning at 7pm. BUILDING FOR TOMORROW Copies of the Report of the Barcelona An international Workshop held in Workshop, Building For Tomorrow, are THE SPIRIT OF ABERCROMBIE' - Barcelona in April brought together obtainable from Sue Hargreaves at Hunt PLANNING & DESIGN CONFERENCE participants from thirteen different European Thompson Associates, price: £9.50. The RIBA - London Region and the RTPI - countries to see how the lessons from seven London Branch are organizing the fourth experimental settlements involving ecology SOURCE BOOK annual planning and design conference at the and community planning could be brought Members should have received their copy RIBA on Thursday 17th November 1994 and from the fringe into the mainstream. of the 1994 Source Book. Additional copies have invited the Urban Design Group to be The organisers of the event, the European are available at £5 for members and £8 for associated with the event. The conference Academy of the Urban Environment in Berlin non-members. entitled 'The Spirit of Abercrombie' will invited Hunt Thompson Associates to commemorate fifty years of the ' 1944 London facilitate and report on the process, having QUARTERLY PRODUCTION Plan' produced by architect/planner Sir previously worked together on a study of the Any people interested in helping to Patrick Abercrombie, and with a view to October district in Moscow and at the produce the Quarterly, i.e. editing and doing projecting the wisdom forward to 2044. The Community Planning Weekend at West layouts, are asked to contact the editor. • UDQ Issue 52 October 1994

URBAN DESIGN GROUP CONTENTS CHAIRMAN Jon Rowland Tel: 071 6370181 COVER Porto Santo International Competition Entry 1975 ENQUIRIES and CHANGE OF ADDRESS: Gordon Cullen, David Gosling 140A The Broadway, Didcot, Oxon 0X11 8RJ. Tel: 0235 815907 Fax: 0235 819606. NEWS 2 Forthcoming Programme RIBA RTPI UDG Conference PATRONS Alan Baxter EVENTS 4 Zaha Hadid Annual Urban Design Group Lecture given in June Honor Chapman Sir Philip Dowson and Urban Design Tomorrow Panel Discussion held in October Terry Farrell VIEWPOINT 5 RURAL DESIGN AND URBAN DESIGN: THE MISSING LINK Peter Hall Simon Jenkins Jeff Bishop of BDOR argues the need to move beyond the term urban to consider Jane Priestman application of design principles in the rural situation. John Worthington REGIONAL 8 GLASGOW AND ITS TOWNS UDG REGIONAL ACTIVITIES Hildebrand Frey describes a series of seminars in Glasgow concerning the role of REGIONAL CONVENORS urban design in the regeneration of the city. Scotland Mike Galloway 041-429-8956 INTERNATIONAL 10 NIMES- DESIGN LED PLANNING North Alan Simpson 091-281-6981 Yorks/Humber Tony Dennis 0904-613161 Chris Couch analyses what has happened in Nimes as part of the French North West Stephen Gleave 061-491-0972 approach to their development plan system. East Midlands Merideth Evans 0533 549922 West Midlands John Peverley 021-235-4188 BOOK REVIEWS 12 Reviews by Neil Parkyn, Philip Cave, Francesca Morrison, Tim Catchpole, Peter South Wales Gordon Lewis 0222-231401 Howard and Helena Webster. South West Andy Gibbins 0272-222964 East Anglia Alan Stones 0245-437642 ISSUE TOPIC 15 INTRODUCTION South East Roger Evans 0869-350096 GORDON CULLEN The topic was originally intended to celebrate Gordon Cullen's 80th birthday which occurred in August. Sadly he died during that month and so the issue becomes URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY one of a tribute. David Rock with whom Cullen worked on the Ware study, Vivat EDITORIAL BOARD Derek Abbott Ware, remembers his unique contributions. John Billingham TOWNSCAPE AS A PHILOSOPHY OF URBAN DESIGN Kelvin Campbell Roger Evans William M Whistler and David Reed produced this text as an Exchange Tony Lloyd-Jones Bibliography for the Council of Planning Libraries in the 1970s on Townscape. Bob Jarvis TOWNSCAPE REVISITED Tim Catchpole Marion Roberts Bob Jarvis, topic editor for the Cullen articles, rereads 'Townscape', compares it JudithRyser with other literature and concludes that it emerges enhanced. Alan Simpson EDITOR 23 WORKING WITH CULLEN John Billingham David Gosling describes his association with Cullen on Maryculter, on competitions TOPIC EDITOR Bob Jarvis and lastly on proposals for the Isle of Dogs. BOOK REVIEWS 28 PROJECTS 1981-1991 Tim Catchpole, 56 Gilpin Ave, London SW14 8QY David Price worked with Cullen since 1981 and formed the Price and Cullen LAYOUT John Billingham Partnership in 1985. He refers to work in Scotland and in London. DTP KEVIN LYNCH LECTURE 31 ENGLISH POST WAR PLANNING: A GOLDEN AGE? Kingston Type, Oxford PRINTING Sir Peter Shepheard gave this years lecture in July, reported by Tony Lloyd-Jones Constable Printing PRACTICE PROFILES 32 COLIN BUCHANAN & PARTNERS COPYRIGHT Urban Design Group 34 ECD ARCHITECTS AND PLANNERS ISBN 0266 6480 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 36 PRP ARCHITECTS The topic for this issue was originally suggested by 38 WML INTERNATIONAL John Scott Davies MATERIAL FOR PUBLICATION PRACTICE AND This should be addressed to: The Editor, 26 Park EDUCATION INDEX 40 Road, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 1DS. Tel: 0235 526094. ENDPIECE 43 STUDY VISIT 1994 SUBSCRIPTIONS Alan Stones reports on the tour to the Harz Region of Germany. The Quarterly is free to Urban Design Group Members (Subscription £25.00 with students £14). The Urban Design Group is not responsible for views expressed or statements made by individuals FORTHCOMING ISSUES 53 URBAN COMPONENTS Topic Editors Jon Rowland and Kelvin Campbell writing in this journal. 54 SMALL TOWNS Topic Editor Alan Simpson

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Events

another innovative landscape around the proposals in a London Borough which did magnificent Fire Station at Vitra. Again a not happen because the two committees structured, geometric and artificial scheme, involved failed to agree; he instanced this as Zaha Hadid well suited to its purpose, the almost a lack of vision and compared it to Europe, Remember those sweltering evenings in choreographed rituals of fire drill. The more specifically France, where the strong June? It was on such an evening on June scheme also sets the pattern for future mayor system showed direct results; in the 29th that Zaha Hadid spoke to an buildings which "will grow like furniture in a USA, apart from the mayors the Chambers undeservedly small audience about her large room". of Commerce got directly involved to make approach to urban design on the occasion of The slides were excellent. How sad that, things happen. the second Annual Urban Design Group as yet, there is no example of her work to The cultural aspect was also raised and Lecture. visit in Great Britain. Since she spoke, her Andrew Warner described the sitution in Describing her early experiences of success in the Cardiff Bay Competition has Leicester Square where Haagen Daas London, as an architecture student, she gave been announced so that omission will soon be wanted outdoor seating and it took about a a personal and perceptive account of the rectified. • year to get approval to eight seats; there physical changes caused by its growth from a were servicing factors to consider but it was series of villages to a great metropolis. This Elizabeth Young the attitude that was negative. By led her to a question "How do you create a comparison Barcelona approached the civic and public zone to meet today's needs?" company to persuade them to put seats Not, she suggested by leaving an important outside their site. Nevertheless it can space such as Trafalgar Square "like a Urban Design Tomorrow happen here as shown by the Edinburgh pretend Italian piazza, imprisoned by traffic The third discussion evening in the series Festival licence extensions and and surrounded by pigeons". Her project for 'What is a City' was held in September, the Manchester's encouragement of outdoor Grand Buildings illustrated her preoccupation first being concerned with the concept of the drinking. with "layering and programming" public city, the second how it might evolve and this space. Rather than accepting a single street evening devoted to ways in which urban STRATEGIC ISSUES level she created a number of interlocking design is relevant to the future of the city. Is urban design pursuing superficial issues levels to encourage a richness and diversity Chris Glaister continued in his role as whilst strategic issues are not being faced? of public activities. Where traditionally there Chairman and the panel included Andrew The view was put forward that urban design would have been solids defining the spaces Warner, a chartered surveyor dealing with should permeate the whole structure of she created voids, new spaces, and links to planning issues, John Montgomery, a planner environmental decisions - we should not surrounding areas. Her live projects at this and an economist, and Robert Holden, a push ourselves into a narrow area but ensure time, both in Tokyo and Germany were on landscape architect involved in practice and that an urban design approach was involved "weird" extremely narrow sites where all her teaching. at all scales. There were examples where ingenuity in programming and layering were that had happened such as New York under needed to achieve amazingly vital results. RELEVANCE Mayor Lindsay where the Urban Design These were followed by two harbour The first question put to the panel was section sought to maximise public policy studies in Hamburg and Cologne which led to 'how relevant is urban design, as at presently benefits from development - some decisions her most recent project, the harbourside practised, to planning issues?' were proved wrong but it was a positive Media Complex in Dusseldorf. Here she has Andrew Warner felt that developers were approach to the urban design process; San created a "new urbanity, not an edge or less rapacious today and more were prepared Francisco and Portland were also examples marginal scheme". On the street facade the to put money into design issues. Robert of this and so was Birmingham. buildings continue the rhythm and scale of a Holden's view was that unless we get global traditional narrow warehouse alley. On the economics and the transport situation right MECHANISMS harbour side the scheme explodes and we are merely tinkering with the system with Could the mechanisms of the present fragments into four dramatic glazed fingers, urban design. John Montgomery was worried system be improved? We needed to create a four office blocks clutching a "black box", a about many approaches to urban design, feeling of ownership of the city by the public broadcasting room, between them. The which appeared to be tidying up and seeking which meant improving the dialogue layering of the building is continued in the to create order whereas surely the object between the public and the planners. In surrounding landscape. But for Zaha Hadid should be to encourage people and their Spain, for example, planning proposals are landscape is not something which "gentrifies activities - creating places where things can exhibited in three dimensional form. The the space through shrubbery". She creates a happen; he referred to the area outside the French education system seemed to new geology, breaking the earth's crust and Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith where introduce a better appreciation of culture. leading pedestrians through the fissures into agreement had been reached with Training of Planning Committee members her own geometrically structured rocky surrounding owners to recreate a proper would help and we needed to get local water's edge. public realm but this had been stymied by authorities to work in an integrated way, not The same concern about the treatment of local authority bureaucrats. as separate compartments of highway spaces around her buildings has produced Robert Holden described improvement engineers and separated disciplines. •

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Rural Design and Urban Design The Missing Link? VIEW POINT

In this paper, Jeff Bishop of BDOR in Bristol argues the need to move beyond a narrow construct of 'urban' to consider the applicability of the principles and methods of urban design to the shaping and management of rural areas. He suggests that there are lessons to be learned in both directions, and that making such a move will help to bring urban design closer into line with developing thinking on further themes - notably sustainable development.

'Imagine an urban countryside, a highly traditional urban visions. In fact, the results varied but humanised landscape. It is neither showed more consistency with developing urban nor rural in the old sense, since houses, notions of perceptions of rural landscapes workplaces and places of assembly are set than with those from the then well- among trees, farms and streams.' established urban tradition. This description was chosen - quite This is nowhere clearer than in Walter deliberately - by Kevin Lynch to underpin his Bor's comment on changes in Milton Keynes slightly tongue-in-cheek 'Place Utopia' which planning that had made it into (in his term) formed the worked example chapter of Good "an enormous patchwork". He, of course, City Form} The choice of a wider landscape followed the old urban (and intensely male) for this Utopia was one result of his unease at tradition by assuming that a "patchwork" is the way in which many of his ideas, from intrinsically bad. It certainly was a those in The Image of the City2 onwards, had "patchwork", but the results showed that it been colonialised by urban enthusiasts to give could be highly valued, and extremely them increasing justification for arguing the effective. There were anomalies; in particular distinctiveness and superiority of urban form. from the apparent lack of 'congruence' Lynch was concerned that the broader between form and patterns of use and perspective on people and places, on movement that Lynch's work argued to be so meaning, legibility, identity and order, that he important. The Milton Keynes results and others - notably McHarg3 and Appleyard4 showed highly urban patterns of movement - had begun to develop was being weakened. co-existing quite happily with images of a He saw assumptions being developed that mainly rural pattern of settlements. only clearly urban form can given meaning Residents conceived the whole place as and order, and hence that urban designers are villages set in a landscape, each with its own the only true guardians and shapers of the by-pass and all just down the road from one broad-scale physical fabric. He wished to of Europe's largest covered shopping centres reassert the relevance of his approach to any (known as 'the city'!). landscape or territory, even to 'Managing the Sense of a Region'.5 OLD IDEAS RESURFACING? In this, there are parallels with my own With Kevin Lynch's sad death during an work on Milton Keynes in the late 1970s,6 exchange of ideas about all this, and shifts in where the results of the study of resident my work pattern, these ideas lay deep down perceptions of the new "city" challenged in my mind for some years. They came professional constructs. This work showed flooding back around three years ago when clearly that it is possible to structure a large- we were approached by staff at the scale place to give order and coherence, to Countryside Commission to discuss emerging balance local with overall identity, and all in issues around the theme of the "Design of a manner which does not demand recourse to Buildings and Settlements in the

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 LOCAL DIVERSITY Landscape Assessment Settlement Pattern Building Design MATRIX

Physical Influences Geology, overall form, hydrology, slope, climate, Settlement location, re: landform, water table and Materials, micro-climatic response, ground natural and semi-natural vegetation, ecology supply, shelter/exposure, aspect, habitats conditions, habitats

Spaces and Enclosure Openness, distance or enclosure, vistas and Scale, topography, enclosure, openness, Public and private spaces, division, enclosure, views, horizons, skylines, sub-divisions, change boundaries, sequences, consistency, connections, constriction over seasons public and private space

Forms and Patterns Managed vegetation, effects of tress, hedges, Pattern of field and farm development, legibility, Volumes and massing, consistency and variety, boundaries, agriculture, buildings, distinctive tree and boundary patterns orientation, number of storeys, height, areas, legibility, impact on the landform, boundaries proportion of cover features

Characteristics Tone, colour, light and shade, variation over Tone, colour, light and shade, variation over Tone, colour, light and shade, shelter, security, time, seasonal change, texture, contrast, variety, time, seasonal change, texture, contrast, variety, boundaiy details, roofs, walls, openings, eaves, consistency, management, strategic landmarks consistency, management, local landmarks verges, ridges, planting, condition, distinctive features

Circulation Orientation, general pattern of roads, rail, paths Pattern of roads and paths through and across Circulation in and around buildings, through, and watercourses visual effects of moving settlement, signage, lighting, verges, condition, between and across spaces, access to buildings, through, views opened, and closed, density of surveillance, safety, density of traffic condition, surveillance, safety, public and private traffic, permeability access

Change Deforestation, plantation, intensified agriculture, New villages, agglomeration, abandonment, Redundancy and reuse, design guidance, minerals extraction, trunk roads, reservoirs, infilling, suburbanisation, by-passes, * extensions', coach lamps and gnomes, signage, landfill, strategic planning infrastructure, public utilities, local plans standardisation, development control

Values Meanings, attitudes perceptions and symbols at national, regional, local and personal levels in terms of: environmental, historic, social and cultural factors

Countryside"8 (as the eventual work came to design - to celebrate and enhance local especially in a way which could assist be titled). The issues emerged following distinctiveness. designers and planners. general reaction to a Commission policy Though we still hesitate about its use in As a matter of principle, we were keen to paper on "Planning for a Greener practice, we developed a "Local Diversity avoid what we have always considered to be Countryside".9 Matrix" - shown above - which enabled us to the trap of design guides. From experience This latter paper attracted almost as many give coherent attention to the many aspects of working with development control comments on the design of buildings and which shape local diversity and planners, with designers and with developers, settlements as on all other issues put distinctiveness. In this matrix, we linked we have become convinced that any design together. This was encouraging (and had to together the different physical scales of guide is only as good as the weakest link in be acted upon), yet the topic of design, landscape, settlements and buildings to a the chain - and this is just as likely to be an architecture, even aesthetics caused worrying range of factors covering the original, architect as a plansmith or a developer's ripples in an organisation with no background underlying shaping forces of geology and technician. Moving forward from narrow in this area and a fear of the secret garden climate, through the resulting patterns of prescription - especially in the context of which we professionals have constructed for 'figure' and 'ground' in how we read places, celebrating diversity - demanded an approach our territory. So far has this construct of a to local idiosyncratic features, and on to the which would place the onus firmly on secret garden imbued even other influence of movement and change over time. designers to put in the work to demonstrate in professionals that the best the Commission Finally we added one further, indispensable their designs a full understanding and hoped for, at that stage, was some sort of factor - values. This covers the established, appreciation of the nature of specific sites and their context. generic design guide. They had no idea that (and changing), meanings and values given to engaging with design would overlap the area and its settlements and buildings by This general approach places our work remarkably with almost all their other policy local communities. firmly in the territory explored by John areas; in particular with developing research, However, our work with the Countryside Punter in his study for the Department of the policy and practice on landscape appraisal Commission was not intended to be Environment on design policies in local 10 and assessment. We took it further with theoretical. The aim was to provide the plans. The (hopefully) forthcoming guide to them; into aspects of links between design Commission with modes of intervention in good practice will argue the centrality of and access, recreation, countryside planning, development and design processes appraisal-based policies, setting a descriptive management and community participation. which would help to deliver a higher quality and analytical framework against which They became especially excited by two of building design in rural areas, and hence future design proposals can be tested. Our emerging themes, both of which are also reinforce their remit for a beautiful and own developing methods introduce appraisal central (if in varying form) to urban design. accessible countryside. Having developed, at two levels, and also introduce some The first theme was the need to look beyond through the matrix, what we considered to be innovative and already fairly controversial ways of generating and using that appraisal. individual buildings and design detail to the a good working basis whereby one could nature and form of settlements and their assess the contribution that any new building relationship with their landscape. The might make to reinforcing local EMERGING METHODS second theme was the need to hunt out, distinctiveness, it was then essential to We have recently tested the two main critically describe and then - through new describe how this could be achieved - and methods for the Countryside Commission,

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 VIEW POINT

working with another consultancy (SGS Interestingly, much of the field work testing urban neighbourhoods. It would be great pity Environment, their landscape group in the matrix and the overall approaches in real- for the overall advancement of urban design particular) and Cotswold District Council. life situations led us to tackle issues which, in as a key, but currently undervalued, process The results have recently been presented to another setting, would be regarded as classic were we to gain some interest from the dyed- the Commissioners, where they were urban design. In one village, the issues of in-the-wool-urbanists only after the methods received extremely positively - as they were permeability and the privatisation of public found their way into urban practice. in a series of regional seminars for the space were central. In another, the district- Our recent work suggests that UK urban majority of local planning authorities across wide appraisal paid particular attention to design urgently needs to consider its England. (They are not yet, however, public, legibility. In one of the Cotswold studies, the relevance to all parts of the country; we so all comments which follow are mine local authority found itself getting close to believe the principle for doing so is clearly alone.) The methods are: "understanding and manipulating the established. Our 'nose' tells us that urban developer's goals through the planning design practice - in general - would be COUNTRYSIDE DESIGN SUMMARIES machinery to achieve quality in the public enhanced by this move, and that rural areas Produced mainly at district level and by realm" (a minimally adapted UDG Agenda would benefit from it. We feel that there is planning authorities, these are area-wide principle). also much to learn about the balance between appraisals of landscape, settlements and There can be no doubt that we were (UDG the general advancement or urban design buildings in different zones of the district, Agenda again) addressing questions of practice (part of that being empowerment and offering broad guidance not on how to helping users to achieve their aspirations, and capacity-building) and the actual doing of respond (as per a design guide) but on what a operating as promoters and enablers. In fact, urban design projects. Finally, we have a design should respond to. the latter techniques were probably more fear that urban design will become beached if critical, and raise questions about the balance it fails to look more broadly, in particular VILLAGE DESIGN STATEMENTS between drawing-based work in urban design when facing the growing momentum of Produced mainly by village communities, and that of process management, facilitation, sustainable developments arguments. in association with planning authorities, as a and consensus-building. The work drew us Hopefully, the pages of the next UDQ or two more specific appraisal in terms of the into appraisals of relationships, balance and could contain some responses to, perhaps generic framework, these offer very explicit structure at a level well beyond that of even elaboration of, these arguments. • guidance about the setting to which any individual buildings, while also alerting us to design must respond - but still stay clear of aspects of landscape structure and character. REFERENCES prescribing what the response might be. If anything, the latter has implications beyond 1. Lynch, K (1981), Good City Form We can now be much clearer about the urban design and into landscape assessment, (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press). eventual status of these outputs. The suggesting that this rapidly growing area of 2. Lynch, K (1960), The Image of the City Countryside Design Summaries will be professional expertise urgently needs some (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press). incorporated into district-wide local plans in input from more instrumental, designerly 3. McHarg, I (1969), Design with Nature all three of the areas used for testing. The thinking. (New York, Doubleday). four Village Design Statements will all be When looking back, we find parallels 4. Appleyard, D (1976), Planning a securing status as Supplementary Planning between our approaches and those outlined in Pluralist City (Cambridge, MA, MIT Guidance. In fact, the VDS for Cottenham UDQ by John Punter in his paper on research Press). (in South Cambridgeshire) has already been in the USA." In that paper he suggested that 5. Lynch, K (1976), Managing the Sense of approved - the first time ever that an entirely "very few cities consider the ecological, a Region (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press). community-written document has been natural resource and conservation aspects of 6. Bishop, J (1986), Milton Keynes: Best of incorporated fully into the planning system. landscape and build it in as a crucial Both Worlds? (SAUS, University of In all four villages, the community groups are contextual factor in design", and also Bristol). continuing their work and are now moving on highlighted the lack of attention in UK 7. Bor, W (1981), Reported in Architects to consider appropriate development briefs. practice to sustainable development and Journal, 15 April. In one of the four, this has led to an increased social equity. Our work reinforces this. 8. Countryside Commission (1993), Design housing allocation, increased land values and in the Countryside (Cheltenham, Coun- potentially better layout and design. WHERE NOW? tryside Commission). All this leads us, inevitably, to the 9. Countryside Commission (1989), IMPLICATIONS conclusion that the time is long overdue Planning for a Greener Countryside Each method is rooted in a desire to bring (even if the substitute words fail us) to put (Cheltenham Countryside Commission). often conflicting parties together to link aside redundant distinctions between urban 10. Punter, J, (forthcoming), Guide to Good general policy to detailed local practice, to design and rural design - at least in the way Practice for Design Policies in Local provide a 'common language' for all, to the latter has been construed in our own work Plans (London, HMSO, Department of create a shared awareness of value, and to for the Countryside Commission. We are the Environment). widen the decision-making base. In general, now actively exploring (with clear support 11. Punter, J, (1992), Design Control in the the matrix described above provides the from 'high places') the applications of the United States (Urban Design Quarterly, 'common language'. approaches both to Conservation Areas and to Issue 44, pp. 5-10).

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Glasgow and its Towns

The seminars - supported by Glasgow their own sake but in reaction to a very wide District Council, Glasgow Development set of social, economic, environmental and Hildebrand Frey, Director of the Urban Agency, Strathclyde Regional Council, functional issues and criteria. Studies Unit at the University of Scottish Homes, The Glasgow Institute of Thirdly, many here in Glasgow disapprove Strathclyde, summarises the major issues Architects, and the Department of of urban design because it has frequently and conclusions reached at a series of Architecture and Building Science - came been in the past, and is still perceived today, seminars held in Glasgow this year. about as the result of the perceived lack of to be rigid and all-prescribing Between the end of February and mid development strategies and specifically urban masterplanning, hindering if not strangling March 1994 the Urban Design Studies Unit design in Glasgow's regeneration process. rather than enhancing urban development; the at the University of Strathclyde organised Support was considerable, perhaps depressing results of comprehensive four seminars about the role of urban indicative of the importance attributed to the development in the 50s and 60s are an design in the regeneration of Glasgow. discussions. Next to local speakers - Frank eloquent reminder. The seminars argued and The seminars did not, and were not Walker, Thomas Markus, John Punter and demonstrated that good urban design intended to, break new ground; but there myself from the University of Strathclyde and frameworks are primarily concerned with the was discussion with a little difference. Mark Baines from the Mackintosh School of 'hard' areas of the city, the long-lasting and First, the seminars were not events at Art - interesting speakers could thus be image-giving public spaces, buildings and which the 'converted' talk to each other invited: David Mackay (MBM, Barcelona); monuments. Grey or 'soft' areas of the but meetings at which sceptical but open- Giinter Schlusche (Berlin/IBA); Ulrich private realm have to be flexible, adaptable minded professionals of all the city's Loening (University of Edinburgh, Centre for to changing socio-economic conditions and agencies, departments, associations and Human Ecology); Richard MacCormac needs, and should remain largely unregulated groups actively involved in the (MacCormac Jamieson & Prichard, London); except for the overall massing and height of regeneration of the city came together to Anthony Costello (Ball State University development in order to prevent any listen to arguments and comparisons and Muncie, USA); Paul Stouten (RIW-Housing interference with the public realm's structure, discuss issues and problems of their Research Institute at the Delft University of form and image. concern. Technology); Lucien Kroll (Atelier A fourth important objective of the What is also remarkable is that the series d'Urbanisme, d'Architecture et seminars was to show how urban design 'fits was initiated not by the University but the d'lnformatique, Brussels). But major in' and why the spatial structure and physical City of Glasgow's Town Clerks Office in contributions were also made by many form of the city is so important. Examples collaboration with planners and architects delegates in form of questions, comments or demonstrated that an improved image of a involved in the regeneration of the even short papers. city or urban area generates not only directly Gorbals. a social, spatial and formal gain but also MAJOR ISSUES indirectly an economic benefit, though the But what was it all about? First, there are latter cannot be predicted with any accuracy. many here in Glasgow who believe that they It was furthermore shown how social, actually do design the city and have economic, environmental and functional strategies. In response to their claim it was needs, demands and problems perceived by relatively easy to demonstrate that in the citizens lead, ideally and necessarily in a Glasgow we design individual parts of the participatory process, to the generation of city but, with a few notable exceptions, action programmes. They in turn result in the ignore the need to generate a design physical changes of the city. The impact of framework for the integration of all these these changes must be realistically predicted parts into good towns and a good city. before they are carried out and requires to be Secondly, many still believe that urban monitored after changes have taken places. design is primarily and solely concerned with Examples of urban regeneration projects in formal and aesthetic issues, the cosmetic Glasgow clearly illustrated the lack of impact treatment of preconceived projects in the city, analysis which causes many if not all of their and therefore largely irrelevant in the process benefits to be lost again in a very short time. of tackling the city's 'real' social, economic and structural problems. The seminars THE LESSONS FOR GLASGOW demonstrated with the help of examples At the end of the seminars some very clear particularly from Barcelona and Berlin that recommendations emerged with direct Above: City Structure. Hatched section good urban design, rather than following relevance for urban regeneration in Glasgow. shows central and southern areas with development projects as an after-thought, sets As the discussion embraced the city at large coherent urban structure. Dotted section the rules for the physical as well as rather than specific parts, details or issues, shows areas of comprehensive programmatic integration of development these recommendations are fairly general and redevelopment during 1950s and 1960s. projects, influences the city's 'performance' need to be worked out in detail at seminars and shapes its very form and structure not for and workshops to follow, but a first small

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Glasgow's fragmented structure today compared with ideas for a city of linked towns, plans for a more sustainable city. REGIONAL

step towards a regeneration strategy was made. It was agreed that Glasgow's regeneration had to achieve all of the following goals: a sustainable city and city region; an economically thriving and a socially balanced city; and a structurally, spatially and formally legible and imageable city. To achieve these goals demands the co-ordination of all action and the prediction and assessment of the environmental, economical, social, spatial and formal impact, of all regeneration projects in the city. To achieve a sustainable city, Glasgow has to consolidate its development clusters to become real towns with mixed use and all major facilities and amenities of a town. If not all clusters can become effective towns, a clear and rather painful decision is required which clusters should be reinforced and which others may have to return to a more rural role. The large areas of open land between the towns should be used for industries and food production; large-scale research and commercial units; recreation and sports; recycling of waste; public and private transport. To achieve an economically viable city, inward investment should be attracted not least through the enhancement of the city image as consequence of high quality design of the public realm. To achieve a socially balanced city requires, next to educational, job creation and social programmes, the consolidation and repair of the spatial structure and form of deprived areas, high quality design of the public realm of these districts, a much larger variety of different house types and forms of river Clyde area; the reinforcement of the general and all-embracing. Many are now tenure attracting a population of mixed social major spatial links between towns; the concerned that the momentum gained is not and income levels; and high quality generation of an integrated transport strategy lost. An essential next step is the landscaping of open spaces. in which the pedestrian, cyclist and public organisation of further seminars and To achieve a legible and imageable city the transport have priority. workshops, each with a very clear focus. Of public sector must take responsibility for the The design of the towns' major public particular importance is the generation of development of the public realm and must act places should involve: the conservation of the operational plans to implement step by step upon it. This requires urban design to historical substance including its image- the regeneration objectives and programmes become an integrated part of the planning giving skyline; the design of the towns' gates of Glasgow and its towns. system and public funds to be made available and arrival points; the high quality design of One immediate practical outcome of the for the improvement of the public realm. the major squares and streets; a plan for the discussions is the inclusion of Professor The role of urban design is to develop a pattern of uses in these major public spaces; Punter and myself from the University of three dimensional framework for the city's design rules for surfaces enclosing major Strathclyde in the working group responsible form and structure, based on the historical public spaces; and a comprehensive for the development of a comprehensive growth pattern of Glasgow, consolidating the landscaping strategy for the public spaces. regeneration strategy for the Gorbals. This city as agglomeration of linked towns. The seems to me a significant first stage of a new framework should include: the introduction of POSTSCRIPT approach to the management of urban a comprehensive plan for the nature and use No doubt, the seminars were only a starting regeneration in Glasgow. • of open spaces between towns, especially the point and discussions were perhaps too

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Nimes Design Led Planning

level but vitally important to the more controlled; and to provide a link implementation of physical planning ideas is between a series of new urban projects. Chris Couch, Professor of Urban Planning the preparation of the Plan d'Occupation des Urbanising the first stretch of the road is at Liverpool John Moores University, Sols (POS): the legally binding land use and currently at the design stage but three describes measures being taken in Nimes development plan. Preparation has been projects have been built. In the west lies the to exploit its artistic and cultural heritage. divided into three phases. Phase One, 'ville active' project: a retail and business completed in July 1991, dealt with La Plaine zone that tries to cater for the spatial According to Jean Bousquet, Mayor of Sud de Nimes to try to bring some order and requirements of edge-of-town commerce Nimes, architecture and urban design are protection to the rural area of development while providing a strong design framework important to him because they provide the pressure between the motorway and the and integration with housing and social physical framework for living: "we are airport. The second phase covered the city facilities. Nearby is the Stade des Costieres: surrounded by architecture, it's like a second centre and the Garrigues (the area of low, dry a new indoor sports hall and 20,000 seat set of clothes for everyone... the quality of hills and small-holdings to the north) and was outdoor stadium for football, rugby, etc. our architecture is indicative of the strength the subject of a public inquiry in April 1993. of our culture". Within the context of this plan virtually all THE AXE NIMES-CAMPAGNE NORD-SUD Of Roman origin with a well preserved the medieval core has become a pedestrian This was the concept of the Norman Foster medieval centre, Nimes is a city of around zone and a secteur sauvegarde (conservation team. To the west of the medieval city centre 150,000 people in western Provence. While area). The final phase will deal with the the 19th century inhabitants had built a great known for its strong artistic heritage the city suburban area south of the city centre and formal boulevard running south from the had, until recently, a slightly depressed air, north of the motorway: the development zone. Jardin de la Fontaine for over two kilometres overshadowed economically and culturally by The process of preparation and the content through the city. Foster's idea was to provide its neighbours, Montpellier to the west and of the POS are only remarkable because they a symbolic link between the gardens (the Avignon to the east. are informed by the second, higher level of heart of the city) and the southern horizon. Such is the power of French local planning. This plan, known as the Plan Thus he proposed extending the axis through authorities and the office of the mayor in d'Ordonnancement (literally, a plan for the 8 kilometres gradually transforming its particular, that Nimes has become in the general arrangement of buildings) has no function and character from urban street to early 1990s, one of the main focusses of legal status but for the planners of Nimes it suburban avenue and finally to country road. attention in French urban design and provides the strategic framework for physical planning. Driven by the enthusiasm of Jean planning. What the plan does is to establish DIAGONALE VERTE Bousquet and his belief in cultural and the key physical characteristics, constraints Perhaps the most immediately appreciated design led regeneration, the town has become and opportunities within the agglomeration by the people of Nimes will be the Diagonale very 'a la mode'. It has been transformed, at and to set out a small number of critical Verte. This series of public open spaces, both least temporarily, into a mecca for visiting urban design proposals for specific parts of hard paved areas and soft green areas, is to planners and architects and is enjoying the city. This is not a set of criteria but a run north-west to south-east through the city something of an economic renaissance. This series of proposals. It is not comprehensive. linking the Garrigues in the north with the has been achieved, or at least strongly If fully implemented, the proposals represent agricultural plain to the south. Beginning at influenced, by a combination of coordinated major changes to the physical environment of the Jardin de la Fontaine it too has been the environmental planning policies and the the city with improvements to both visual location for a series of urban projects. development of a series of high quality appearance and legibility. 'flagship' building projects. The Plan d'Ordonnancement has three Local government in France is very main proposals. They relate to: fragmented, with many urban areas divided - the boulevard peripherique sud; between a number of communes, each with - the axe Nimes-Campagne nord-sud; its own planning powers. Thus, historically, - the Diagonale Verte the planning of Nimes had fallen between the Departement de Gard, the Ville de Nimes THE BOULEVARD PERIPHERIQUE SUD and a number of surrounding communes. Built as a ring road in the post-war period One of the first steps towards good planning the peripherique sud cuts an ugly swathe was to bring the whole urban area within the through the southern suburbs of the city. The jurisdiction of one planning authority and in concept is to 'urbanise' this whole suburban The Canal de la Fontaine (shown above) 1988 the local authorities agreed to set up the zone through increasing densities and links the gardens with the city centre. In a Agence d'Urbanisme et de Developpement 'civilizing' environmental works. The most recent project the city have cleaned up the de la Region Nimoise with the task of important proposal is to change the character canal, rebuilt and widened the pedestrian preparing and implementing a coordinated of the ring road to create an urban boulevard promenade alongside, planted semi-mature plan for the whole agglomeration. where buildings are to be brought closer to trees and replaced the old street furniture. The 'new' planning of Nimes has the road to enclose the environment; where Traffic movement has been restricted and proceeded on two levels. The more prosaic traffic speeds are to be reduced and its flow adjoining buildings, which were run down,

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 INTER- NATIONAL

are beginning to be renovated. Just to the Measures introduced include: quality, as evidenced by the poverty of south lies the Place d'Assas. Dug up to retaining a building mass and density in thinking behind the British Enterprise Zones construct an underground car park in the late keeping with the rest of the city centre; for example, in Nimes well considered 1980s, it was rebuilt in 1993 to provide a retaining the domestic urban scale and physical improvements are leading to home for a number of large outdoor character of the streets and facades; economic benefits. The Carre d'Art and the sculptures. Unusually and successfully, the refurbishing those buildings of architec- refurbishment of its surroundings have artists were involved in the design of the tural merit or which form key elements in brought more tourists and more spending to square from the beginning allowing the the townscape, while permitting the the area; pedestrianisation and environmental artifacts to be shown to best advantage while demolition and replacement of others; improvements in the medieval city have being integrated into the fabric of the city. removing the 'parasitic' constructions encouraged a return of people and economic Around the corner from the Place d'Assas (e.g. workshops) that have appeared in activities; the whole exercise of the Plan is Foster's new Carre d'Art. Opened in 1993 the inner courtyards of blocks and d'Ordonnancement and the architectural it is the most important centre for refurbishing as semi-private spaces, projects has had a powerfully beneficial but contemporary art in France after the repaving and refurnishing the streets. unquantifiable effect on the image of Nimes Pompidou Centre in Paris. Not only is it a and its ability to 'sell itself in the superb example of modern architecture investment markets of the world. successfully inserted into the fabric of an old To be useful, strategies to enhance the city but its construction has provided an townscape of a city need not be opportunity to rebuild the adjoining Place de comprehensive criteria-type policies, along la Comedie so as to calm traffic and improve the lines of the fatuous 'good design will be the pedestrian environment around the art encouraged' so often found in British Local gallery and the adjacent Roman Maison Plans but can take the form of specific Carre, where the number of visitors has more proposals for sections of the city in order to than quadrupled since completion of the provide a clear physical framework and works. It is a classic example of how structure, i.e. to improve the legibility of the investment in one building can provide a The 'diagonal' runs through the Esplanade city; and to offer examples of good urban catalyst for the regeneration of a whole area Charles de Gaulle: again combining the need design that others may follow. (shown above). to provide underground car parking with the In Nimes not only are good modern To the south the 'diagonal' route continues opportunity to refurbish the surface area. buildings inserted into historic areas without along the tree-lined Boulevard Victor Hugo to The policy of the city is not simply to limit visual detriment, but they enhance the the Arenes where the city have roofed over the use of the car in the city centre but to townscape and economy. Indeed, one of the the roman arena to provide a summer and encourage the use of bus services with more general points about French urban design is winter venue for concerts and cultural events frequent services on realigned routes. the willingness of architects to propose and of all kinds. This is a bold example of Passing along the Avenue Feucheres and planners and local authorities to accept bold, conservation combined with economic use under the main railway station the final innovative and visually exciting solutions to and provision of a new facility. There is stretch of the diagonal verte follows the line design problems in historic areas. There nothing precious about building preservation of a small stream, le Petit Vistre, out into the seems to be a confidence about urban design here. The attitude appears to be: it is part of countryside. in France, both on the side of designers and our heritage, we respect it but we will use it, on the side of the commissioners and not just look at it. CONCLUSIONS controllers of development that is generally To the east of the Carre d'Art lies the In Nimes it is possible to observe a number lacking in this country. medieval core of the city centre. Formerly of features of interest to British planners and The final point is that few British local run down with many vacant buildings, the urban designers. It demonstrates the ability authorities have attempted to produce city has taken a powerful stand, effectively of the French local authority, with its anything like the Plan d'Ordonnancement. banning cars from the centre for most of the decentralised planning powers, local identity Few British Development Plans can offer any day, repaving the entire area to indicate the and civic pride, to develop its own solutions strategic urban design concepts to guide and pedestrian's dominance, replacing street to planning problems. In the case of Nimes, lead the future development of their towns furniture and signage. Combined with steady the city has chosen a strategy for economic and cities, let alone using design strategies to investment in building refurbishment and development based around exploitation of its being economic and social benefits. Urban conversion the effect has been to upgrade the artistic and cultural heritage and design in Britain has become too detached urban fabric and bring inhabitants and environmental improvement. At the same from the planning process for this to happen. economic life back to the inner city (as shown time, high standards of architecture and Yet in Nimes, as in many other continental in the next column). The objectives have urban design are being pursued for their own cities, plans have been prepared that indicate been to retain or recapture the best parts of sake: because the physical fabric of the city is what the city will look like in the future, why its historic identity while making the area the people's second set of clothes. it will look like that and what the benefits functionally more useful in the context of the Far from there being a choice between will be: a rationally argued urban design late 20th century city. economic development and environmental strategy leading the planning process. •

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Reviews of books on Los Angeles, Japan, Skyscrapers and Urban Change

substitute for analytical thought and there is a a foretaste of paradise, city of hope or despair. pinched and preachy feel to the running text. Whatever the popular wisdom, it is certainly a UNDERSTANDING URBAN DESIGN How has this come about, since the city which inspires writers, academics and An Introduction to the Processes of Urban publication is clearly well intentioned by its serious commentators to take a holistic view. Change, David W Chapman and Peter J authors? It has nothing to do with the poor From Reyner Banham's 1971 "Los Angeles - Larkham, Faculty of the Built illustrations, since the redoubtable Kevin The Architecture of Four Ecologies" to Mike Environment, University of Central Lynch himself certainly could not draw in any Davis' 1992 "City of Quartz" and Stephen England, Birmingham, 1994. £10.00 conventional graphic sense. However, Brook's 1992 "LA Lore", writers have taken One of the very real problems in being both Lynch's back-of-the-envelope sketches were on the whole spectrum of the development of talented and tenacious is that you leave in always brimming with intent and purpose; it Los Angeles from its history and geography, your wake a legacy of lesser talents who was possible to see a concept, or a record of to its demography and sociology, plus all its seem forever destined to pick up the themes the qualities of a place he visited, shine quirks and idiosyncrasies to build up their and techniques which you laid down for the through the child-like graphics. picture of the city and their scenario for its first time. In theory, there should be no Certainly the text contains some useful future. problem here, since most of us have followed vignettes which could be culled by urban Now Charles Jencks has come under the in the hallowed footsteps of one urban design students as a shortcut to taking the spell of Los Angeles and has written a book designer or another, reading their books, source books down from the library shelf. about an architecture which he sees as visiting their built projects and meeting Perhaps Urban Design has now become such embodying both the spirit of the city and the together over an evening to share what one an orthodoxy that it can support a whole tier hope for its future. Jencks is definitely of the hopes are insights into their life's work. of lesser rate commentaries aimed at school of boosters (see Mike Davis, pp 24- Things begin to go badly wrong, however, informing a secondary market of Town 30). He enthusiastically draws from a wide when the disciples begin to lose the message Councillors, specialists from other collection of data - population studies (over in their enthusiasm to be labelled with the professions and interested members of the 100 different ethnic groups, 40 different master. public at large. lifestyle clusters, 86 languages spoken in Since the untimely death of Francis If so, it does Francis Tibbalds a grave schools), politics, philosophy, economics. He Tibbalds, there have been numerous well disservice. His own book, Making People- analyses the causes of the 1992 Justice Riots, intentioned attempts to honour his memory by Friendly Towns, was published shortly after explores eco-systems, enclaves and means of prizes, project awards and his death. Francis is understandably very eclecticism, and surveys the abundant local dedicated meetings. It is testimony to his hard to beat in terms of his passion and flora and fauna in his study of the fine- very great influence on us all that such perception, and the book is shot through with grained heterogeneity of Los Angeles. It is enterprises should be placed on the same very high calibre examples from his own this heterogeneity which is seen in LA's new level as those associated with, say, Lewis practice. Kevin Lynch and Lewis Mumford, architecture, an architecture, Jencks says, Mumford or one of Francis's greatest heroes, although no rivals to Francis in terms of which represents the plurality and multi- Kevin Lynch. Further, Francis Tibbalds' own graphic ability, could spice an argument with ethnicity of the city, the subcultures rather practice continues very much in the spirit of vivid language and a poetry which extended than an overriding mono-culture. its founder to this day. even into highly technical matters. If the At first glance "Heteropolis" is an What are we to make of this book-cum- work of these three great men is reheated or architecture book of the glossy variety - lots brochure emerging from the University of turned into scrapbook items by others who do of lovely coloured photographs of buildings. Central England Faculty of the Built not appear to understand the material before Demographic charts and socio-political Environment? The publication sets itself, by them, then is it any surprise that the analysis seem rather out of place in this its dedication 'to the memory of the life and 'product' loses so much in translation? setting. But, says Jencks, this is work of Francis Tibbalds', a very high Surely Urban Design is far too important to heterogeneity itself and, as he explains in the standard indeed. Here is a very curious be treated like this. introduction, he "will switch voices suddenly document of about 75 pages, neither a depending on which tone is more suitable for layman's guide nor a student's primer, and Neil Parkyn a particular context". certainly not a manual for professionals. Heteropolis is the city of difference but the A bewildering variety of poorly reproduced problem that Jencks sees in modern day LA photographs, amateur looking drawings and HETEROPOLIS is that it is the place where the politics of quasi-scientific diagrams and symbols of the Los Angeles: The Riots and the Strange universalism (the abstract idealism of US usual urban 'suspects' fills its margins, Beauty of Hetero-Architecture modern liberalism) clash with the politics of comprising a tawdry scrap-book of urban Charles Jencks, Academy Editions 1993, difference. His solution to this problem is design marginalia, from an illegible plan of hardback £24.95, paperback £17.95 the introduction of "double-coding", the UK Green Belts through to a Corbusian notion of weaving together the two vision of the future by way of comparative Los Angeles is a city which always seems conflicting philosophies into an intelligent shopfront proposals. The text, likewise, to polarise opinion - people either love it or strategy of hybridisation to create the reads as a typical student dissertation in loathe it, it's either "sunshine or noir" as "politics of recognition", a policy of "radical which academic references are supplied as a Mike Davis puts it, the apocalypse arrived or inclusiveness that overcomes the prevalent

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 BOOK REVIEWS

inspires Jencks to further abandonment of his 2010) we find that the avant-garde rich inhabit usual divisive "isms" approach. I certainly exaggerated and distorted houses made of hope so. This is a good book for anyone who brightly coloured plywood and chainlink has ever held a view about Los Angeles. fencing, eat out in sophisticated themed restaurants, go shopping in scaled down Francesca Morrison fantasy malls, and work either in anonymous multinational downtown skyscrapers or in deconstructed designer studio offices. Outside the compact downtown area - chosen LOS ANGELES: WORLD CITIES inexplicably for the dust jacket (it could be Series Editor Maggie Toy almost any major city in the State) - there is Academy Editions £69.95 an inventive and witty group of young architects, or school as Charles Jencks has A sybaritic sun-drenched city sitting, elsewhere referred to them, with a lightness of Pompeii-like, astride a potential natural touch and formal dexterity, and enough clients disaster, a place where fantasy and reality to indulge their design skills. embrace, where - if the luscious photographs A quick glance at the location map in this book are to be believed - the sky is helpfully provided at the end of the book always deep blue, except for when it is tinged shows that the projects are almost exclusively with a scenographic purple hue as the street located in a narrow band stretching from lights twinkle against the setting sun- downtown to Santa Monica and Venice Los Angeles is the second of the projected Beach, some fifteen miles away, the area of series on world cities. Like London, its greatest personal wealth in the county. Given predecessor (reviewed in the April 94 issue the emphasis in the text on social and ethnic of Urban Design Quarterly), it is - as one issues it's disappointing that there are no would expect with a price tag of nearly £70 - projects from the districts whose populations a heavy and lavishly produced volume. In are predominantly Hispanic, black or Asian, two parts, it kicks off with a series of essays or those areas of greatest poverty where we under the general heading Social and read of "the recent discovery of thousands of homeless living under a freeway that had tendency to see things in either/or terms." Planning History. Apart from rehearsing a been enclosed by side walls". Perhaps there According to Jencks it is the architects' lot of well established LA folklore of the "no is no public housing worthy of illustration? role to create the framework for this synthesis there there" variety - freeways, earthquakes, by representing all the various cultural bush fires, mud slides, riots, smog, ethnic Despite the rather facile graphic discourses without judgement. He believes diversity and so on - the five essays end with presentation many of the projects show a architecture can cast a new light on the multi- the transcript of a forum "Learning from Los preoccupation with the art of place making, a cultural debate and in several chapters Angeles" held at the Royal Academy in 1993 recurring theme through the work of Charles devoted to describing this architecture of "en- whose participants, including Ed Soja, Eric Moore and Frank Gehry, the elder statesmen formality", he presents convincing arguments Owen Moss, Conrad Jameson, Charles of the period, as well as in the projects of to prove his hypothesis. Jencks and Ralph Erskine, aired many of the younger practices like Morphosis, Eric Owen The LA architecture of en-formality social and planning issues currently facing Moss and Frank Israel. While Gehry's redefines public space in a way that allows the conurbation. Loyola Law School is a dignified new different groups of people to enter into a fluid The second part of the book is a tripartite pedestrian plaza not far from downtown, the social situation. It suggests new ways of overview of recent architectural projects, Jerde Partnership's shopping malls have all making creative responses to situations which undated, though starting probably with the the razzmatazz of Disneyland. The private residences illustrated - large enough are at an impasse. Los Angeles, Jencks says, locus classicus of the current phase of LA sometimes to be like small villages - must be may not survive if it does not deepen design, the controversial house extension that among the most inventive spatially anywhere. commitment to the two contradictory Frank Gehry built for himself in Santa philosophies - it is a city "on the verge of Monica in 1977-8. This section is presented This book brings together a number of either splitting up or making something under three headings, Los Angeles as it might serious essays covering a wide range of strange and exciting that no-one has seen have been,... as it is, and... as it will be, each contemporary urban issues facing the city before". introduced by a short perceptive essay by with a selection of thrilling new-wave This is Charles Jencks at his most spirited Maggie Toy, the series editor. architectural projects, both of which show and evangelical. He comes as a prophet, So what impression does this catalogue of that the legendary diversity and exuberance warning of doom, but at the same time projects give of life in Los Angeles today? In of LA is flourishing; enjoy! revealing LA's great gifts and unfolding the a city - or rather, county, since that is what potential it has to become a model world city. LA is - with a population of 13.4 million Peter Howard and Helena Webster It will be interesting to see if any other polis (expected to grow to 18.1 million by the year

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Book Reviews

notion of empties or void and Nitschke cites its origin goes back to the dawn of man. the Ryoanji rock garden with its fifteen rocks However, the skyscraper is a 20th century FROM SHINTO TO ANDO in a sea of gravel as being a fine expression of invention and the application to it of Studies in Architectural Anthropology in this. 'Beyond Fence and Focus, Beyond bioclimatic principles seems to have been Japan. Gunter Nitschke. Academy Sacred and Profane' is the next essay that noticeably lacking. Editions 1993, £27.50 begins with the Ise Shrine, passes through the Ken Yeang was a student at the AA in the This is a collection of essays about Fushin-on tea house and ends with the Lotus 1960s when skyscrapers in his part of the Nitschke's interest in the 'Anthology of Pond Hall of Honpukuji Temple by Ando. world (South East Asia) were in their infancy. Architectural and Urban Form in East Asia', The participant actually enters the pond by He did a PhD at Cambridge on eco- which concentrates on the symbolic. Contrast descending the staircase in the centre in order architecture and today runs a successful and this with the socio-economic on which he to gain access to the sanctuary - pure poetry. influential practice in Kuala Lumpur. says traditional architectural history and The reader is left with a colourful picture According to Ken Yeang high-rise theory is based, revolving around the of ritual fans used in a fire festival, but buildings are sustainable in as much as their disciplines of archaeology and artistry. He probably the best epilogue is to start at the concentration of activities enables a reduction emphasises throughout the importance of the beginning again and grapple with those of energy in transportation; but in design unconscious mind towards common and concepts that passed over your head on the terms they have generally been wasteful of unchanging threads that explain and direct first reading. A longer and more detailed energy. The incorporation of climatically our built forms. introduction would have helped in responsive design features would add to the The essays vary in their intensity and understanding, or perhaps some sort of construction costs but would create profundity, but all are for the serious scholar summing up at the end. Overall it is an significant savings in operational costs. to ponder over and definitely not for the exploration without any definitive Such design features include recesses and casual reader. There are informative plans conclusions which is perhaps why Nitschke balconies on solar-facing facades in order to and diagrams, many small black and white avoids any drawing together of the ideas at introduce shade, ventilation and space for photos and larger expansive full colour plates the end. planting (curtain-walling being sustainable that we have come to expect in books on the only for non-solar facing facades); wind Japanese arts. Philip Cave scoops on facades to allow natural instead of In the first essay, the renewal of time, artificial cross-ventilation within the space and man is explored by reference to buildings; and planting boxes and trellises to both the Ise Shrine, the most sacred of BIOCLIMATIC SKYSCRAPERS allow vegetation to reduce heat and improve shrines in Japan that is rebuilt every twenty Ken Yeang. Artemis £24.95 the climatic, as well as ecological and years, and the celebration of Daijosai, the aesthetic, environment. first fruit tasting rite. The continuing theme The product of these design principles is a of time and space is explained in the second sort of 35-storey Hanging Gardens of essay using Ando's Christian Wedding Babylon. Examples of Ken Yeang's work are Chapel at Mount Rokko, Kobe, and the old illustrated in his book and can be seen in hermitage of Shisendo near Kyoto. The Malaysia and elsewhere in South East Asia. designer of Shisendo, the mystic Ishikawa If C*»tT*«1 H»U There are, I suppose, three generations of Jozan, apparently knew that 'what is to be high-rise: the pre-war buildings of New York, empty must first be filled' - the principle on Chicago and Moscow which are stately and in which all meditation techniques are based. some cases ornate; the post-war curtain- Ando is compared with Sen Rikkyo, the great walled boxes; and now the bioclimatic. 16th century tea master, in the design of the fWXTtrttt, VHG Because Malaysia has skipped the first two 7" 9r Fi uet> »P Chapel. The entrance path leads up to the Fn Rme* generations, the buildings of the third have Fxa-TK/wJ Church, but before entry, Ando created a given the country a distinctive cultural ninety degree turn to the right with a vertical identity. slit in the wall that allows a view of the sea - This is an interesting book but the reader or infinite space. You then enter a dark gets the impression that all bioclimatic passage before seeing a view of the well lit skyscrapers are (a) Malaysian and (b) interior of the church - the destination. All designed by Ken Yeang. Maybe this is true. this is a preparation for that final goal in a The last issue of the UDQ featured an The reader is also tempted to ask whether a similar way to the tea master preparing his article on Singapore which included vignettes bioclimatic Malaysian skyscraper would look guests before arriving at the tea house. of bioclimatic skyscrapers drawn by Ken visually acceptable in London where most There follows a treatise on the Japanese Yeang. In the wake of this article comes a high-rise buildings belong to the curtain-wall and Chinese Character 'Ma', translated by review of Ken Yeang's book. generation. The answer must be a qualified Nitschke as 'place', where he presents a The concept of the 'bioclimatic' building, yes. • number of uses of the character. Ma was ie one that responds to climatic conditions adopted by Japanese Buddhists to express the and is energy efficient, is nothing new; indeed Tim Catchpole

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Introduction to Cullen Tribute

David Rock, whose work with Gordon include. Cullen included the study of Ware All these theories were applied and developed introduces the special topic for this issue. over the next 25 years in many consultancies including his work with me on the Ware report Although Gordon was 80 when he died in (1973-74). It was not generally known over those August, he still would have had much to offer consultancy years that he worked under the because the themes he expounded have a tremendous restriction of poor eyesight. He once universal relevance. To many, especially the described to me that with one eye, anything he younger ones amongst us, he will be Mr. looked at had a white blinding light at its middle so Townscape, but his skills and experience ranged that he had to keep moving his head to be able to wider than that. We can now begin to put his get a full view of anything; while the other eye was contribution to urban design and planning into so short-sighted that he needed to be very close to context, although inevitably this will change with the paper to see anything. time, as legends do. Gordon's life has been well listed elsewhere in THE ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW national obituaries and will be covered in detail in In eulogizing Gordon we must not AR's October issue. Suffice it to note that he underestimate the milieu and times in which he joined Regent Street Poly School of Architecture in worked. Just as Gaudi seems less unique when 1933, but never finished the course - what a loss it you see his contemporaries' work in Barcelona, so would have been to urban design had he qualified! Cullen must be seen as a product and unusually- Work with Raymond McGrath, Godfrey Samuel gifted chronicler of his working environment and of and Tecton 1934-36 and wartime planning in the the group he joined at the AR who were plugged organised tables of principles and sub-lists and West Indies followed, before he joined the AR in into a rich mix of people aware of the sea-changes articles into a series of pictures and captions. He 1949 as art editor, leaving in 1956 to be a in society and its approach to the environment and also took on the campaigning zeal of the AR, consultant. planning. He was one of four assistant editors to although his anger was suppressed as Nairn's was His brilliant draughtsmanship for a long time five editors: J. M. Richards, Nikolaus Pevsner, Ian not. overshadowed the importance of his other creative McCallum, Osbert Lancaster and the owner, H. de work, especially his writing. He hated being asked C. Hastings. The latter, as Ivor de Wolfe, wrote THE SEEING EYE to do only perspectives on a scheme, and did so 'Townscape, a Plea for an English Philosophy He was brilliant at quick decision-making, only when he had to. He was involved in many Founded on the Fine Rock of Sir Uvedale Price' in putting down what then seemed the obvious. My important awakenings of thought, beginnings of 1949, having used townscape in The Art of work with him at Ware (1973-74) was typical. A movements and the opening-up of attitudes: Making Urban Landscape' five years before Cullen day's walking around that small Hertfordshire town Casebook (1949); The Functional Tradition (Lyme joined the AR. produced strong, diagrammatic analyses and Regis 1950); The Nautical Style; South Bank The eclectic mix of AR's contributors included design sketches which formed the basis for the Translated (1951); Floorscape (Woodstock Vanessa Bell, Raymond Mortimer, Evelyn Waugh, team's work over the next six months in producing Unwinding 1952); The Exploring Eye (1958); and Cyril Connolly, John Piper, Osbert Sitwell, Clive that seminal report 'Vivat Ware'. He isolated whole philosophies of planting (1952), outdoor Bell, Wyndham Lewis and Eric de Mare, all tied himself from the rough and tumble of organisation lettering, street furniture, and everything visual. All into the boundary-breaking issues of their day. and that real-politik that takes ideas into reality, that seems passe now, but "environment" in the AR's issues, including townscape, have to be and the financial reality of his proposals - he left fullest sense was then not part of the formal seen in their planning context, alongside the that to others. Typically he was not interested in architectural and planning vocabulary. He massive formalisation of town-planning between the following twelve years of my grinding work in supported Ian Nairn and AR's Outrage (1955) and 1943 and 1951 - the setting up of the Ministry of "caring" for Ware, in applying 'Vivat Ware' - and Counter Attack (1956). He proposed many urban Town and Country Planning; the Barlow, Uthwatt correctly so, because his great strengths could be design schemes, eg Barbican 1957, forever and Scott reports; the Acts of 1944 and 1947; the better applied elsewhere. arguing to get the visual approach back into New Towns and National Parks; the three London He had one disciplinary rule which I admired. planning - this at a time when comprehensive Plans. Urban design (not then a term) owed much However late it was at night, or however drunk, he redevelopment was the buzz phrase. He took the to the Beaux Arts tradition of planning - the axial would always pin out a drawing sheet in his studio visual approach into traffic engineering (Switch on avenue, the cross avenue, the rond-point, the (a hut at the bottom of his garden) and make - Road Policy 1957). His book Townscape was vista. To apply the Picturesque theories of enough marks on it to attract him back to the published in 1961. landscaping - irregular, as rich in surprises, as board next morning. In the 'Sixties, Alcan sponsored the seminal skilful in the use of the happy accident, as nature Gordon's work continually formed a link series - A Town Called Alcan - with four circuit herself - to the urban scene, as Wolfe did in 1944 between the past and the present in "seeing" the linear regional plans (1964); The Scanner (1966) and 1949, was new. Even by 1953 the Ministry of environment for what it could be, and giving where human and physical factors were set out Housing and Local Government's authoritative proper value to that vital interplay between people and interrelated and the Optic Chain introduced; 'Design in Town and Village' was still largely and traffic, whatever the pressures. He kept his then Notation (1968), 'the observant layman's rooted in comprehensive redevelopment. eye on the golden horizon as a lesson to us all. • code for his environment". In 1970-72 a group of So Gordon's skill was in chronicling the group's us worked with him to extend the "map" of human ideas which he did brilliantly in a variety of easily- and physical factors to include the negative, understood, attractive sketches, diagrams and something, typically, Gordon had not wanted to words. He loved to transform theories into

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Townscape as a Philosophy of Urban Design

The Oxford English Dictionary cites 1880 Review which, by 1960, were formalised for the first use of the word 'townscape', and into a regular monthly townscape feature. William M Whistler and David Reed wrote 1889 for its specific use in the current sense. Typical design issues dealt with in this the text of this paper in the 1970s for the '... Some of the quaint townscapes (to invent series were the effects of a motorway Council of Planning Libraries Exchange another word) of our romantic, unspoilt plan on the physical fabric of a town, the Bibliography no. 1342. It was felt this English towns...'.1 Clues to the present visual effect of modern large scale gave a useful background to the ways in meanings of townscape can be found in the development, and the general tidying-up which Cullen's views contributed to using use of the word by Thomas Sharp in 1948 of pre-industrial towns whose character townscape as an approach to an urban where he attempts to give a name to the act was deteriorating.4 design philosophy. of improving cities: '... by an analogy with an The high point of the Architectural equivalent art practised by the eighteenth- Review's series was the application of the The word townscape has become century improver of land, it might be visual art of townscape to a theoretical associated with a variety of concerns in christened Townscape...'.2 new town, called Civilia.5 This proposal, environmental design ranging from the This civic design orientation was given a planned on townscape principles of conservation of pre-industrial towns to the further refinement by Ivor De Wolfe who inducing drama into the environment and development of design guides for labels townscape as a visual art of town of providing significant differentiation, residential areas. The idea of townscape planning that is a contemporary extension of was illustrated through a series of has been praised as the saviour for our the English picturesque school of landscape photographic collages of modern architec- urban environment and has been attacked design.3 De Wolfe sees the emergence of ture. Its popular rejection began to show as being only concerned with the townscape as a new radical tradition in that the appeal of townscape was more superficial visual aspects. The purpose of architecture in that it breaks with the modern than the visual art of the ensemble. this short paper is to present an outline of movement by emphasizing "character" and • Concurrent with The Architectural what townscape is, how it has developed significant differentiation. Also important to Review's emphasis on genius loci came and what its contribution is as a early development of townscape is Gordon the development of a negative reaction to philosophy of environmental and urban Cullen's Townscape Casebook which suburban sprawl, which was concisely design. accompanies De Wolfe's article. Through a articulated by Ian Nairn in an article series of descriptive headings including "The entitled Outrage.6 In this searing attack Eye as Fan dancer" and "The Eye as on those who record suburbia as Utopia, Articulator", Cullen illustrates how the eye Nairn shows how mindless repetition of might be used by this new visual planner in speculative housing standards is re- seeing the physical environment as an "art of making Britain into an un-differentiated the Ensemble". Thus, by the early 1950s visual blur. Outrage became a classic in townscape has come to mean a theme of this field although its basic message has urban design which emphasizes the visual remained unheeded as Nairn shows in his perception of the environment. The Outrage 20 Years After.1 assumption that is made at this time (similar • A third theme that became associated with to the contemporary assumptions about townscape in the early 1960s was the planning) is that this visual perception and gradual enlargement of the meaning of consequent "improving" can be accomplished conservation from the preservation of in an objective manner through an buildings of architectural merit to include understanding of the emotional effects the preservation of certain building created by the juxtaposition of physical groups or spaces as important elements in elements of the environment. the physical setting of the town. A good early example of this theme is found in 8 THEMES Tenterden Explored. The present Within this general theoretical framework acceptance of the validity of the of assessing the physical environment in townscape conservation argument visual terms, several loosely defined but however is due primarily to the publica- 9 generally complementary themes in urban tion of The Character of Towns which design became associated with townscape: illustrates concisely what the principles • One major development was an emphasis of townscape conservation are and how on designing to reinforce the uniqueness they might be achieved. of place, being sensitive to the genius loci • One popular but mistaken idea that has or the significant differences between one developed as a theme is that good area and another. This became the cause townscape is only the result of higgledy- of a series of design studies, usually at piggledy individual additions to the the village scale, in The Architectural physical environment. This illusion is

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 due primarily to the use of historical examples which presumably owe their appeal to their individual charm rather than being a part of a larger pre-con- ceived design theme. Recent information about the extent of design and aesthetic controls operating in baroque, renaissance and even medieval times has shown that classics of townscape such as the English Cotswold village and the Piazza del Campo were the result of the right degree of design intervention. Both Gordon Cullen and the editors of The Architec- tural Review have maintained that townscape is not purely the result of accident but depends on a degree of pre- planning to turn chaos into variety within order. This theme has been the basis of design guides such as The Essex Guide for Residential Areas,10 design briefs such as Vivat Ware" which develops a physical development framework for an existing town, and Maryculter: Final Report12 which contains a townscape plan for a proposed new town. The fundamental theme of townscape as a means of providing excitement, drama and emotional response to the physical environment is most closely associated to the work of Gordon Cullen who has remained the leading figure in its development. His seminal work, The Concise Townscape,13 (originally pub- lished in a longer form as Townscape) consistently emphasizes that the starting Top: Tenterden Study 1967 point for design is the individual's Above: Townscape Casebook 1949 experience of the environment. This Right: Outrage 1955 theme is developed through several Below: Vlvat Ware 1974 loosely organised concepts. Firstly, there RE LI Bp is the concept of creating a place. Cullen points out the physical and visual elements which allow us to canonise public space. Secondly, he introduces the concept of serial vision which illustrates that the individual's reception of spatial information is the constant play off between the existing view and the emerging view as the observer moves through urban space. Thirdly,he formu- lates a casebook of these design devices such as 'juxtaposition' or 'immediacy' which cause us to interact either emotion- ally or actively with the environment. As well as having developed a significant . * proportion of the visual analysis methods used in The Architectural Review's >y townscape articles, Cullen produced The

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Townscape as a Philosophy of Urban Design

14 Scanner, a check list of human and building forms and elements such as arches, SCANNER AND NOTATION physical criteria necessary for creating an cobbles and local vernacular which carry with In the 1960s Alcan sponsored a series: urban environment capable of satisfying them the message of stability and acquired A Town called Alcan with four circuit the range of human needs from physi- strength through aging and familiarity. San linear towns (1964): ological safety to individual self- Grimaud is the height of townscape as a stage The Scanner (1966), where human and 15 fulfilment, and Notation, a shorthand set. The image is of a quiet provencal village physical factors were set out and system for evaluating the physical but the reality is a very expensive holiday interrelated: environment. Cullen's works can be seen resort. Civilia on the other hand is planned Notation (1968) 'the observant layman's as a formative basis for townscape as a on similar concepts but is built of concrete code for the environment'. philosophy of urban design. and glass, and the effect of the cultural Right: 'Physical Factors' from The message is made clear. Scanner TOWNSCAPE AS A PHILOSOPHY As mentioned, the misunderstanding that Below: 'Indicators' from Notation Because townscape is lacking a the effect of visual perception is the only methodology and relies on journalistic theme in townscape, and the belief that CONHCCIOOS SEItuU. VISION SCOUCNCZ . »•<•«• im.M ^ flowery language it is sometimes dismissed townscape is actually an intuitive designer's * ! «n*7r CO as not a serious contribution. However, contribution to providing a more satisfying «A™ leksb townscape is a philosophy of urban design in environment is borne out by recent works of mnffwaaa ^K much the same way as le Corbusier's Ville environmental psychologists and writers on CWOUP3 ^ Radieuse is a philosophy of urban design - it visual perception. Several of these writers wiMmkn* ^ A is basically an intuitive application by a refer to townscape, or more specifically •• I• • • designer of a belief in how people operate in Cullen's The Concise Townscape, as being SKOWTH ^^^ MMosnet 'Cp- a city. Corbusier talked about the need for the physical and visual edification of their -1 1 MaWMI ^ WWCWTPW . ~J » 1 sunlight, fresh air, flowing open space and theories. ——- P/UJ p \ ways to facilitate car travel between points. Rapoport and Kantor put forward the Cullen talks about the possession of space hypothesis that there is a human need for vistas >*• © «o —p © JV accommodating the range of human needs complexity in the visual environment and that »-»•«*. ISO and emotions, and also about traffic and one of the most satisfactory ways to provide rACM MCCTON — movement serving to vitalise areas of the city. this complexity is through ambiguity or the These are abstract ideas by themselves and it creation of '... visual nuance, however slight, is the resultant physical form and the visual which gives alternative reactions to the same sense of well being and control of the perception of the form which can given these building or urban group.'15 After environment. In transferring this symbolic terms meaning. substantiating this belief with a sampling of code to analysis of architecture and urban The significant contribution of townscape empirical research findings, the paper goes design he refers to Cullen's description of is that it is a design philosophy based upon on to refer to five of Cullen's descriptive enclaves. "... The enclave or the interior satisfying a fuller range of human needs headings (Combination, Multiple Use, Here open to the exterior and having direct access including those which are at least partially & There, Projection and Recession) as to both... has the advantage of commanding met by the visual environment. intuitive interpretations of their more the scene from a position of safety and The emphasis on visual perception, thoroughly researched hypothesis of strength...".18 however, has allowed the idea of townscape, complexity. More recently, Eduardo Lozano This, contends Appleton, is the essence of as advocated by The Architectural Review, to cites Cullen's call for visual variety within a the prospect refuge complement. make the mistaken presumption that apparent pattern as "... substantially the essence of his Certainly Jane Jacobs' call for diversity in form can be divorced from content. Two hypothesis that there is a need for a cities is similar to Cullen's ideas about multi- implications of this incorrect idea are that the combination of plurality of visual inputs..." to use and precincts in the city, while Cullen's visual message can be abstracted from the provide orientation and variety in the ideas about possession of public space and 17 cultural message and that the creation of a environment. occupied territory are really the same thing strong image can be a substitute for content. Research only partially related to that Oscar Newman is describing as creating Both of these fallacies are summed up in the environment psychology has also mentioned zones of influence and defining public from visual message of Port Grimaud, the modern the significance of Cullen. The main tenet of private space as the principal argument of his resort village designed according to Jay Appleton's Prospect Refuge theory is that defensible space ideas. townscape principles in 1965 and built in a our physiological need for safety in its most counterfeit pre-industrial vernacular style. basic sense can be expressed as the ability to CONCLUSIONS The illusion of Grimaud is in believing that see without being seen, and this primordial Thus, summarising townscape as a philosophy the quaint effect of the various juxtaposed instinct has been sublimated to an aesthetic of urban design, the following points can be buildings and spaces can be created in a response. Appleton develops from this a made: totally modern form and imagining that symbolic language in which the presence of • Townscape in terms of its visual image owes townscape appeal has nothing in particular to distant prospects and hiding places in a much of its success and/or failure to the do with the implications of using certain I landscape scene or painting signals in us a cultural baggage of older environments.

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 19941 7 COMMUNITY 8IZE COMPOSITION Chofc* of cflmoctorlc »i*M bM«d c B*i«nc« of tmbotenco of: Tho art of thin® Aogtenol cfcOftcttrhtlca Projoctod growth Tlmt eye* Cttchmont KM Boaaonol fluctuations Changa of compoaitlon (•.0. wookly sufflciofKyl S«W limiting community Orowth of Icooofnte viobMHy

capacity

PATTERN DENSITY TRANSPORT GIVEN PATTERNS LOW MIOIUM HIOH TRAFFIC TO PEOPLE PEOPLE TO TRAFFIC BY-LAWS TRENDS INDUSTRIALIZED Dvm 01 privacy M IMC* Dayflghtlnf BUILDING health, low lend-uee, random rwArm M m, ppeelbMtty apaea. optimum land uee. deorsvey. amomty of traffic Paaca of mind and eotowrs ptlwn, poor puMc treneport, of corporate vteuat groups, greater poeeJbWty of vfauaf Crana awing ditdeviti lot loduitrioiiitd viable lor puMc Iteneport, Pt^lem of preslmlty: nebt. InvHonmenl Pop-art budding. cash sale of houoee. viable lor Induetrtellted optimum Induetriellted 1 " - "" points, Commuting layouts and Pactocy afting limited (raffle segregation buMIng, mortgage, horliontel building, council rani, vertical FVi accaaa eegregatlon IRadbum ate.) traffic aagragatlon Ena of contact or Production flow segregation

LANDSCAPE CATEGORIES CLIMATE AGRICULTURE tr INDUSTRY WHO natura Arabia land Rough Graan Bait Now Panama of farming National pant Industrial land TnHHght land Factory farming Upland! Parkland Suburb Artfldel cfcnete Ctapn Industry Coastline. estuary Oreen (an City Population drift Automation InAjetrlel mala Fpwet/servlce grids

LIGHT PERSPECTIVE SERIAL VISION OPTICS SPACE CHAIN CuMem Iflecti of foreshortening MAZi INTERNAL EXTERNAL (BUILT) - EXTERNAL (NATURAL) DfvWon and orgenitation of FACTOR Mhouetle Courtyard Avonue Texture Snoot Perk end lake Intrualon and eidolon by Growth of epperent alio Flow of apacaa Square Artificial kght Connection: atalra Formal garden liptoretory The visual globe rampa

IDENTITY OF SITE SYMPATHY COMBINATION AMBIENCE OBJECTS PLACE HOMOGENEITY City Character of bunding Conformity Market town Hlotorkol appraisal Suburb Vitality Water Style Ouertler Trees and plants Surprlee VMego Cnctoeure Genius tod

Reproducing the image is a hollow success REFERENCES 9. Worskett, Roy, The Character of Towns, when it is not an accurate reflection of the 1. Hissey, J J, A Tour in a Phaeton through London: Architectural Press, 1969. social and economic conditions which create the Eastern Counties, London: R Bentley 10. Essex County Council, Design Guide for it. & Son, 1889, p. 263. Residential Areas, Chelmsford: Essex • Townscape as a method of creating a 2. Sharp, Thomas, Oxford Replanned, County Council, 1973. stimulating physical environment is significant London: Architectural Press, 1948. 11. Rock Townsend, Gordon Cullen, Arthur when it is seen as one aspect, perhaps through 3. De Wolfe, Ivor, 'Townscape', Architec- Henderson, consultants, Vivat Ware, East the production of a townscape plan, of tural Review, Vol. 106, December 1949, Hertfordshire District Council, 1974. providing a more accommodating pp. 355-362. 12. Gosling, David, Gordon Cullen and environment. 4. Browne, Kenneth, 'High London', The Kenneth Browne, Maryculter: Final • The real value to be gained from reading The Architectural Review, Vol. 127, J-J 1960, Report, Kincardine C.C., 1974. Concise Townscape or The Scanner is in being pp. 175-179. 13. Cullen, Gordon, The Concise Townscape, presented with good physical design Nairn, Ian, Derby Market Place. London: Architectural Press, 1971. applications of some aspects of human needs Architectural Review, Vol. 130, J-D 1961, Townscape Architectural Press, 1961. in the visual environment which are being pp. 429-431. 14. Cullen, Gordon, The Scanner, London: identified by more scientific research in 'Manchester Re-United', Architectural Alcan Industries Ltd, 1966. environmental psychology. Review, Vol. 132, J-D 1962, pp. 116-120. 15. Cullen, Gordon, Notation: The Observant • Townscape as a philosophy of urban design 5. De Wolfe, Ivor, Civilia, London: Archi- Layman's Guide to His Environment, takes its examples of physical design from an tectural Press, 1971. London: Alcan Industries Ltd, 1968. era when time and motion scale was 6. Nairn, Ian, 'Outrage', Architectural 16. Rapoport, Amos and Robert Kantor, pedestrian and the majority of human contacts Review, Vol. 117, J-J 1955, pp. 364-460. 'Complexity and Ambiguity in Environ- were face to face. It can be used an important Re-printed by Architectural Press, 1955. mental Design', American Institute of counter-argument to advocates of an aesthetic 7. Nairn, Ian, 'Outrage 20 Years After', The Planners Journal, July 1965. based on a higher-speed, less-direct contact Architectural Review, Vol. 158, J-D 1975, 17. Lozano, Eduardo, F, 'Visual Needs in the society. • pp. 328-337. Urban Environment', Town Planning 8. MacManus, Fred and Partners, and Review, Vol. 45, No. 4, 1974. Gordon Cullen, Tentenden Explored, Kent 18. Appleton, Jay, The Experience of County Council, 1967. Landscape, London: John Wiley, 1975.

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 19941 7 Townscape Revisited

There are only three urban design tests still The Major difference between Townscape in print after thirty three years. Jane Jacobs' and everything that came before it is the Bob Jarvis re-reads 'Townscape' as a Death and Life of Great American Cities1 and authorial tone. Townscape is written from the 10 book and explores the devices of word Kevin Lynch's Image of the City2 are two; the heart, not the lectern. Though Sitte and 11 and image and its language and third, and the one I want to "re-read" here is (Jnwin had allowed glimpses of their construction. Townscape begins with a Gordon Cullen's Townscape3 now truncated personality and instinct - Sitte perhaps in his casebook in which 'serial vision', shown and published on plan paper in soft wrappers opening chapter, Unwin where in'Of the City below, are the rewards of the moving eye, as The Concise Townscape4. Survey' he writes of the designer walking the 12 13 but an eye which is open and not lazy'. The other contributors to this tribute have ground to be planned, Giedion no sooner written about Gordon Cullen's professional, offers glimpses of an irrational creative spirit practical and theoretical importance to urban than it is absorbed into a broader cultural design. My task is rather different. I want to Zietgiest that sweeps along everyone from examine why a book I bought as a first year Michelangelo to Jorn Utzon. The rest - even student (admittedly - although perhaps Thomas Sharp - are sets of lectures, significantly) alongside Tom Wolfe's Kandy- instructions on what parts aspiring planners Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby5 and designers should shape and place to and a primer on optical illusions in the create desired effects in villages, residential 14 visual6 is still in demand when the others on areas, towns and city centres. Only Thomas those yellowed reading lists have either Sharp's The Anatomy of the Village, popularly disappeared (Chapin, Keeble, Abercrombie) rather than professionally published, written or are now collectors items (Thomas Sharp's as a part of the Penguin populist wave of The English Village, Design in Town and rebuilding Britain after the war 15 Village). communicates a sense of love of place. I want to examine Townscape above all as By contrast, all three of those books from a book, as a piece of literature, and briefly that annus mirabilis, 1961, are centred in the explore the devices of word and image, the individual, personal response, Kevin Lynch language and construction of the work itself. turns it into an area of scientific inquiry, Jane This approach is quite different from the Jacobs stands as the street corner social way Cullen's work is usually placed in the observer. In Townscape we see the world context of urban design. Two substantial though Cullen's eyes (mainly, it underplays reviews of the subject emphasise Cullen's the other senses). Only after those exercises other work - either his practice and the for the senses, after those critical reflections reports associated with it7 or the ephemera and sketches are there any proposals. (un-catalogued, unpriced and unobtainable) Maybe it wasn't entirely chance that I published by Alcan in the mid 1960s.8 This bought it alongside Kandy-Kolored... like is understandable: David Gosling is a long Wolfe, Cullen's work had matured out of time collaborator with Cullen as his piece journalism, albeit the Architectural Review here and his forthcoming edition of Cullen's rather than the New York Herald Tribune. work records; Broadbent's wider concern is Townscape in this analysis, stands like to establish a theoretical perspective that is Wolfe's New Journalism16 against the essentially picturesque and pluralist: so it's diversion of 'objective' modernism and hardly surprising Broadbent concludes "that reasserts the reporting of experience. in comparison the Rationalists look more rigorous" rather than to point to the METHOD AND APPROACH 9 profundity of Cullen's Message. Townscape is an important book not because of its content, still less because of its LITERATURE REFERENCES influence (which Cullen himself dismissed in But whatever the theoretical strengths of the Introduction to the 1971 Edition) but The Scanner et al and the practical precisely because of its method and its demonstrations of A Town Called Alcan and approach. Broadbent emphasises the overt Maryculter (The Concise) Townscape is all rational charting of The Scanner and that most readers will ever have seen. What Notation}1 did its 9 pages of introduction, 185 pages of The structure of Townscape is suppressed. glossy photographs case studies, and (deleted There are no obvious divisions: there are no from the Concise Townscape...) 117 pages of chapter numbers, the headings to the parts are Bob Jarvis is a Senior Lecturer in Town Studies and proposals, offer for the identified only by capital headings in slightly Planning at South Bank University 56s. (£2.16s.od) I paid? larger typeface within the flow of short

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 paragraphs well spaced alongside photographs and drawings. The articulation of the parts on the title page is hard to discern in the book itself. The reader's attention is caught now by a photograph, now by a comment, now by a cartoon. The text itself is fragmented. Outside the Introduction there is never more than a page without subdivision or heading. Most of it is alongside or sometimes written into illustrations. The content and language vary from theoretical and imperative categorization (at random 'The essential function of a town should be visible from a single glance at the plan' p. Ill) through sequential and analytical description to poetic reverie and reflection. Abstract nouns are given precise concrete expression in Proposals for Westminster, shown above, experience of space though time; analogy, and for Pimlico Gardens shown below. metaphor and neologism are all used in the Town Studies for Evesham, right, and heading captions. Shrewsbury, below. Through this the author is always with the reader ('... arouse one's curiosity as to what scene will meet our eyes upon reaching...' p. 49), but there are paradoxically few authoritative instructions or examples. Now that The Concise... has deleted Proposals as well as Town Studies this is even more the case: we are left walking down the Via dei Servi towards the Duomo early one morning with just three and a half pages of the Endpiece's polemic to go.18

POST MODERN It is precisely this transparency and yet withdrawal that makes Townscape not a reactionary book but a truly port-modern one; so called architectural part-moderns are still writing as author-dictacts, strutting and instructing, pointing to their projects, their rules, in just the same manner as Palladio or Pugin. Townscape has survived because it is an open work.19 The leader not only has to make the work with the author but there is no fixed order or combination of the parts and devices. Doubly so, as there is no single order in which the places created might themselves be experienced. The closest parallel to Townscape lies not in the literature of urban design (though de Wolfe's Italian Townscape reinstated it20) but in literacy theory. Not only does Roland Barthes The Pleasure of the Text use a similar fragmented sequence but Barthes, like Cullen before him, champions the senses. '(Pleasure)... does not depend on a logic of understanding... it is something both

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Townscape Revisited

7. Gosling D and Maitland B, Concepts of Urban Design, Academy Editions, London, 1984, pp. 48-51. 8. Broadbent, G, Emerging Concepts in Urban Space Design, Van Nostrand Reinhold (International), London and New York, 1990 pp. 217-225. 9. Broadbent, G op. cit. p. 219. 10. Sitte, C, City Planning According to Artistic Principles, in Collins, G R and Collins, C C, Camillo Sitte; The Birth of Modern City Planning Rizzoli, New York, 1986. 11. Unwin, R, Town Planning in Practice reprinted in facsimile, Benjamin Blom, New York, 1971. 12. Unwin, R, op. cit. p. 149-50. 13. Giedion, S, Space Time and Architecture Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass/OUP, London, 1967. 14. See for instance: Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Design in Town and Village, HMSO, London, 1953 and Gilberd, F, Town Design, Architectural Press, 1953. 15. Sharp, T, The Anatomy of the Village, revolutionary and asocial, and it cannot be diminished. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1946. taken over by any collectivity, any mentality, The essential reason for this is that 16. Wolfe, T, The New Journalism, Picador/ any intellect.21 Enjoyment is too readily by Townscape, unlike so many urban design Pan, London, 1975. 'the political policeman and the psycho- texts is not written with the arrogance of 17. Cullen, G, Notation and The Scanner analytical policeman'.22 Barthes' texts, like the author/architect, it is written from the Alcan Industries, Banbury, 1966, 1968. Cullen's towns and spaces are to be savoured, heart of experience, to engage not subdue 18. Cullen, G, op. cit., 1971, pp. 193-196. as sequences, rhythms, fluctuations of the reader who like Barthes, cruises its 19. Eco, U, 'The Poetics of the Open Work' attention. There is no single prescription. pages/spaces. The Italian edition is titled I in The Role of the Reader Hutchinson, Maybe we have been wrong, deceived by passaggietti urbani. m London, 1981, pp. 47-67. the publisher's imprint and the author's 20. de Wolfe, I, The Italian Townscape, professional practice to read Townscape as a Architectural Press, London, 1963. handbook for designers. Perhaps it too is a REFERENCES 21. Barthes, R, The Pleasure of the Text, Hill blueprint for topographical bliss, an English 1. Jacobs, J, The Death and Life of Great and Wang, New York, 1975, p. 22. picturesque variant of the line than runs from American Cities, first published Random 22. Ibid, p. 57. Baudelaire through Andre Breton and Louis House, New York, 1961. 23. See Berman, M, All that is solid melts Aragon's surrealist promenades to the 2. Lynch, K, The Image of the City, first into air, Verso, London, 1983, (Part III), psychogeography of the Situationiste derive.23 published MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., Benjamin, W, Charles Baudelaire: A 1961. Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, CONCLUSIONS 3. Cullen, G, Townscape, first published, New Left Books, London, 1973; Irwin, A, "Classics" easily become tokens, books Architectural Press, London, 1961. 'Surrealist Paris', in Places Vol 6:2, to be cited but not quoted, let alone read 4. Cullen, G, The Concise Townscape, Situationism pp. 56-57, 1990; Thomas, M or even used. Townscape repays re- originally Architectural Press, London J, Urban Situationism in Planning reading, closer and more careful attention. 1971. Outlook, Autumn, 1975, pp. 27-39, to It has survived over thirty years in print 5. Wolfe, T, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine- trace this most radical re-reading. perhaps as much for its authorial tone and Flake Streamline Baby, Jonathan Cape, its use of language and illustration as for London 1966. its message - which has been 6. Carraher, R G and Thurston, J B, Optical summarised, disputed and re-written often Illusions and The Visual Arts, Reinhold/ enough. Re-reading it after the critical and Studio Vista New York/London; 1966. Proposals to relieve Oxford by building a theoretical revolutions of recent years, it Townscape is an art of three dimensional new road across the Cherwell and south emerges enhanced rather than optical illusions. of Broad Walk.

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Working with Cullen

David Gosling collaborator with Gordon Cullen on a number of projects describes his experiences of working with Cullen. Though a great admirer of Gordon Cullen since his student days at Manchester University, the dream of working with him did not actually occur until the mid-1970s. It was during his halcyon days as art editor of the Architectural Review from 1946-56 that David found such enchantment in his drawings, as well as the lyricism of his words in his "Townscape" articles, commencing with the January 1950 special edition of the "Functional Tradition", which he wrote with Eric de Mare, the photographer. It was especially his concept of "serial vision" which was to have the greatest influence on him and was, in a sense, a prophesy of present-day computer animation systems in urban design.

After my return from the United States in magical combination and everybody truly 1959, I joined the Manchester City Architects believed at the time that the outcome would Department and in 1962 was given the task be the first major built work in Cullen's of preparing the urban design plan for part of career. Geoffrey Broadbent, writing in his the City Centre (the so-called Processional "Emerging Concepts in Urban Space Design" Way). The scheme was sent to Kenneth (Van Nostrand Reinhold 1990, pp. 223-225), Browne, who had succeeded Cullen as said that "... Cullen is perfectly clear that any Townscape Editor at the Architectural design study should start with a proper Review, and he decided to publish it in scientific survey and the Maryculter study August 1962. This led to my was a model of its kind, taking into account acquaintanceship with Ian Nairn, who as it did, location, land ownership, together with Cullen had produced the topography, landscape, existing development, seminal "Outrage" issue in June 1955. services, geology and subsoil. David It was perhaps ironical that I should finally Gosling's team then worked out on that basis meet Gordon Cullen when times had become their proposals for the village's overall form, very bad for him, both in medical and circulation, population, employment, employment terms, and at the time when I density... (and so forth). It was within this Illustration shows overall layout proposed was leaving my professional career as chief framework that Cullen then presented his for Maryculter. architect of Irvine New Town to start an concept. He saw this in terms of a Habitat "A sense of Identity can also be generated academic career at Sheffield University. for Houses, a Townscape plan followed by by the use of landmarks or recognition the detailed treatment of four neighborhoods: points: a church steeple, a single tree at MARYCULTER East Park, Kaleyards, the Wynds and the end of a street, a flagpole or a red In 1973, Christian Salvesen Ltd., the house Burnside... more than any other scheme building in a white street. If these are builders, through its managing director Tom (Broadbent continued) Maryculter shows that linked together in a network then people Baron, commissioned a masterplan for a far from being a product only of time, quietly understand where they are in the privately financed new town outside picturesque effect can be generated from general context. Ambiguity concedes to Aberdeen, and Salvesen agreed to the response to a particular situation; a certain clarity." appointment of Gordon Cullen and Kenneth site with its contours, its climate and other Browne as consultants. Ian Nairn acted as local conditions; views out, views in and David Gosling is Professor of Urban self-appointed critic and Guinness drinker. other visual clues; above all, a desire on the Design and Director of the Urban design The team, which included Salvesen's young part of the designers to respond to a place Centre at the University of Cincinnati chief architect, the late Dan Donohue, was a rather than imposing sterile geometry."

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Working with Cullen

In his notes, Cullen introduced his own urban design concepts as a Habitat for Houses and said "People live in houses, but where do the houses live? If they are homeless, then all we are left with is the i typical endless, featureless suburbia..." and he set out guiding principles for the urban design: fitting the development to the site J snugly; creating a central nucleus and having ' the necessary authority, scale and incident; breaking down the housing programme into distinctive sections, each of which has its idiosyncrasy and individuality; articulating the various parts of the development, the one from the other by means of recognisable edges; providing a network of landmarks each of which acts as a rallying point for a particular zone. In this way recognition and navigation is considerably simplified; exploiting topography and planting to produce a memorable situation; using enclosure to provide a sense of locality and place (I am here); leading people from one experience to another so that unfolding drama or climax is achieved which sticks in the memory. If, as a result of these works, a sense of belonging and identity can be induced, then this is only to provide what is a birthright. No one should be asked to live in anonymity and ambiguity unless they so choose." The centre of Maryculter is a carefully considered sequence of elements along a "causeway" link across a central bowl of green space and lakes defined by the terrain. The settlement is situated in a natural amphitheatre of land with the houses grouped around the enclosure and facing inwards to a central parkland. Urbanity builds up from the wild country outside the central street which links the north side of the amphitheatre to the south. Each village or housing cluster has its own corner shop usually located as part of the old farm steadings and associated with the local community centre. The centre itself, as Cullen said "although a single continuous street is made of a series of linked spaces and events... there is then the short release of compression and the substitution of water for brick and stone. Then the sudden release of the loch as it passes under the causeway - the real centre is presented over the water as a citadel."

DESIGN APPROACH Perhaps Cullen's greatest contribution to

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 the urban design of Maryculter was his deep as the RIBA urban design prize-winning understanding of the ecology and topography. thesis by Macdonald & Lees which he Each of the three villages had its own tutored. particular character in response to these two factors, but the southern village, Kaleyards, COMPETITIONS on a north facing moorland slope was the During that time, Gordon and I worked on most lyrical. Cullen says, "In the Shetland a number of schemes, including competitions, Islands the weather is severe, and in order to one of which was the 1975 international secure a space where plants, including Kale, urban design competition for the Island of can grow, the crofters have built walled Porto Santo close to Madeira. Though it was enclosures. Inside these the wind is unplaced, it was an attempt to relate the tempered and what sun there is benefits the theories of serial vision to ecological and plants and flowers. Weather conditions here topographical issues. Though essentially suggest a similar protection for houses. The barren because of lack of a water supply, the provision of courtyards and enclosed gardens island provided an abundant supply of 'People live in houses but where do the will encourage the growth of plants and do building limestone. The island had constant houses live?' This sketch defines the much to break down the barrier between wind velocity and fierce tidal currents and, as overall landscape and strategy for interior and exterior that a severe climate the Portuguese government wanted to Maryculter into which the houses move. dictates." develop tourism, water and power supplies were essential. The plan suggested the Maryculter was never built: it was defeated creation of a tidal barrage between the main at public meetings by an unholy alliance of island and the smaller western isle to provide the landed aristocracy and Marxist action hydro-electric power, which in turn would groups from Aberdeen University, many of support a narrow gauge electric railway along whose members squatted in derelict farm the southern coast, where solar stills would buildings in the area. The landowners, distil sea water for the water supply and having sold their land at a profit to Salvesen, windmills would pump water to the new had no wish to see their grouse moors vineyards as well as the linear villages for invaded by development. Salvesen decided tourists. The narrow rail track provided a not to go to a public enquiry and abandoned sequence of spatial events linking nuclei of the scheme. The final ironical outcome for development, illustrated left. both groups was that the entire site was turned into a gigantic stone quarry. There In a 1978 project for the Central Bank of were funny moments of course, such as the Barbados and the Commonwealth Fund for Board presentation at the Christian Salvesen Technical Cooperation we produced an urban headquarters in Edinburgh, which resembled design plan for Church Village, Bridgetown an embassy complete with the national in partnership with a former Sheffield consular flags of Scandinavia. At lunch, student, John Ferguson. The government of Cullen, who by that time had grown an Barbados required a new bank headquarters enormous beard, said he had "had quite and as "planning gain" construct an open air 1 Overall layout of Maryculter enough of the right-wing conversation" and performing arts centre and plaza to encourage 2 Kaleyards village disappeared downstairs and was discovered the growth of dance which was a flourishing 3 Kaleyards - on either side of the spine by the elegant receptionist fast asleep on the performing art on the island. The key road are small enclosures containing sofa. She reported to her bosses that "a elements of the plan were: the cathedral and about six dwellings and enclosed by vagrant had somehow wandered in". Gordon cemetery which were retained as a green hedging or grassed banks. took similar action on numerous other oasis in the southwest corner of the site; and Left: part of Porto Santo Competition entry occasions including a meeting at the a small plaza between the cathedral and the 1975 Architectural Press offices in Queen Anne's Central Bank as a busy, small-scale entrance Gate for a television programme to be plaza linking the Church Village produced by a Sheffield colleague, Peter development with Trafalgar Square and Smith. Cullen got bored with the Broad Street. These pedestrian ways in conversation and fell asleep on the floor. themselves formed a sequence of spaces and Cullen suggested that a hotel should be built Gordon Cullen went through incredibly on the west side of the square to form an difficult times during the 70s, with little work entrance gateway. The form of the bank itself and the likelihood of losing his sight. He was to have been a series of stepped terraces joined Sheffield University at my invitation to allow the building form to be utilised as a to become a visiting critic had an immensely series of solar collectors for cooling. The positive effect on urban design projects, such

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Working with Cullen

scheme was completed by the mid-70s and it provided an important key to the possible though the celebrated Brazilian landscape visual structure and could act as an urban designer, Roberto Burle Marx, produced a generator. The Greenwich axis almost takes successful landscape scheme, the brutal on the mystical form of a ley-line with a design of the bank building itself by the local significance beyond the linking of two major architect Mervyn Awon attracted much public monuments but provides a series of reference criticism and bore little resemblance to the points which enhance the visual structure. sensitive images of Cullen, but rather a At first Gordon Cullen embraced the idea regurgitation of the excesses of the Japanese with enthusiasm. He wrote, "In this way we Metabolists of the early 60s. Gordon construct the internal water world of fantasy, oode Jftferqall fi«V Cullen's drawings were displayed at the scale, and amazement. It is the greatest soul Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1979. - axis in London." But later in 1982, he The Community Circuit reversed his position and produced his own LONDON DOCKLANDS visual appraisal and networks. It related In 1981, a study was commissioned by the studies of key areas of existing development London Docklands Development Corporation around the perimeter of the peninsula to and I was invited as consultant to form a suggestions for environmental improvements Cofnfrtttiar) small in-house design team to work with the and a study of the inner core for new development. Beautifully drawn, it Ftdkr- chief planner, Edward Hollamby, in the preparation of a comprehensive urban design nevertheless failed to provide a strong enough firiyafvt linV framework for developers. Now that the Fllfct (CMtvph Br) study for the Isle of Dogs, which included the Atmospheric reltoa* Enterprise Zone. The team was established team had split into two factions, the in mid-1981 and towards the end of the year I corporation permanent team headed by persuaded the corporation to also appoint Hollamby rejected both sets of proposals and Cullen as consultant. The final report was produced its own pragmatic plan largely published in 1982. The execution of the based on current ideas of all the developers involved as an amalgam of ideas. Basically, Water. The Central Identity study created unforeseen difficulties. Working with John Ferguson from the corporation rejected the Cullen proposals Sheffield, we produced alternative planning and the Gosling alternatives as being too options to indicate a variety of design prescriptive and certainly did not follow the JsockSate. enfny opportunities. The proposals were seen as an political ideology of the day. The irony was amalgam of the public and private realms. that when Olympia and York finally decided The public realm concerned the public spaces to develop Canary Wharf, they demanded an formed by new and existing buildings, public urban design framework to protect their own movement systems, including pedestrian financial interests. -V" Bengali Bridge routes and rapid transit systems and the The outcome of the fragmentation of the squares, streets, arcades, parks, and open team is interesting. Most of the original team spaces which form the urban morphology or were Sheffield graduates and one of them, physical shape of the plan. The argument David Price, joined Gordon Cullen as his was that if the skeletal structure of the city - partner in a new practice. It was perhaps the Pier the public realm - is sufficiently strong in very best thing that happened to Cullen Main Discovery Lines terms of visual identity and navigation - then because it seemed that it gave him a new greater freedom of architectural expression lease on life at the end of his career and for can be afforded in the private realm. Of the the next seven or eight years he produced Isle of Dogs three options produced, option three some of his most beautiful work. Though I Above: Cullen's principles for structuring (illustrated to the right) came closest to an did not work with Price and Cullen apart development. authentic urban design plan. form the Water Square Proposal for Canary Right: David Gosling Associates proposed In the whole of the peninsula, Island Wharf in 1988 with Skidmore Owings & Urban Design Plan (Option Three) and Gardens at the southern tip is the only major Merrill as master planners, I did work on above this Cullen's aerial view of his own public area giving a dramatic view out subsequent projects in Docklands and proposals. towards Greenwich. The vista is followed their work with great interest. breathtaking. The significance of this view is Brian Edwards in his seminal study that there is a direct axis towards St. Anne's ("London Docklands: urban design in an age Church, Limehouse, designed by Nicholas of deregulation", Oxford, Butterworth Hawksmoor in 1714 on the northwest Architecture, 1992, p. 42, p. 48) of boundary of the Isle of Dogs. Because this Docklands said, "The framework for the Isle axis crosses key points within the peninsula, of Dogs conceived in the first instance by

26 URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 David Gosling and Gordon Cullen, proved too prescriptive and far-reaching for the LDDC in 1982. It sought to bring a measure of order to bear where political will and commercial pressure had tended rather to pull in the opposite direction... Gosling and Cullen's urban design study for the Isle of Dogs sought to establish a range of development options within a strong spatial and physical development... Gosling has subsequently stated that urban design frameworks are the best way to weld together existing communities instead of allowing their destruction and believes this to be the primary goal in the reconstruction of declining inner cities in the post-industrial age." In an acerbic article of the 1984 LDDC Exhibition, Louis Hellman in the Architects Journal (AJ, 19 Sept. 1984, pp. 48-49) also noted "On my way home I read with pleasure Gordon Cullen and David Gosling's sensitive and intelligent analysis of the character of place, history and visual uniqueness of the Isle of Dogs and studied Cullen's perceptive drawings showing how this character could be echoed and enhanced by careful design and development. But of course we all know it never will be. It smacks too much of planning and that went out with flared trousers didn't it?"

CONCLUSIONS If all this sounds a little cynical, then perhaps it is intended to be. Gordon Cullen was perhaps one of the greatest and most misunderstood urban designers of this century. He never really got to build anything. He has been a charming and humorous friend, with a wonderful family, an irascible and stubborn old man and a man who shared with me a passion for pubs in Wraysbury and northwards. It is for these reasons that David Price and I want to prepare a sixty year anthology of his work from the 1930s onwards. •

REFERENCES Gosling D, Cullen, G and Donohue D, Development Plan for Maryculter New Town Aberdeen, 1974, Christian Salvesen. Hollamby E, Gosling D and Cullen G, Isle of Dogs: A Guide to Design and Development Opportunities, 1982, LDDC.

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Urban Design Projects in Practicev 1981-1991

Gordon Cullen enjoyed a tremendous renaissance in activity for the ten years before illness forced his unwelcome retirement from practice. With his death on 11 August this year it is timely to remember his contribution to the real business of urban design and particularly introduce some of his last works to his world-wide audience. Little of this work has been published and it would be impossible in the limited space available to describe the projects in detail. However, as David Gosling has already mentioned, it his hoped that an anthology which does justice to him and his work will be available in the not-too-distant future. ISLE OF DOGS undertook north of the border. As real-life Readers will probably be familiar with the projects they added significant new study of the Isle of Dogs commissioned in dimensions to "Townscape" theory applied to 1981 by the London Docklands Development cities with both obvious and invisible Corporation and led by David Gosling. I problems. Gordon used to call the process have a little further commentary to add to "Urban Psychiatry" which is a very adequate David's recollections of this project. description of the method used to reaching, Although many observers have criticised and drawing, the conclusions of the studies. the product of the LDDC's regime and the The Glasgow project was originally lack of adherence to a strong urban design conceived as a method of attracting framework it should be remembered that the investment into the city by demonstrating original aspirations of the Corporation were how its allure and reputation could be relatively modest. Gordon's solution to this increased faced with the competition of dilemma was to produce a "precedent Edinburgh, only forty miles away. The network" which identified the critical places construction of the M8 motorway had which should, once developed according to divorced the western and northern districts his visual prescriptions, make three- from the centre and there was a fear that the dimensional sense with the sections between city centre would be sacrificed to a sprawl of the nodes naturally respecting them as they brown-field development. Gordon's solution became built up. Unfortunately such a was to devise a programme of "implosion" sophisticated planning tool was beyond the initiated by raising the visual and spatial comprehension of the "market" and the magnetism of the centre to a point where it concept was never adopted. Large scale would become the only logical place to projects, such as Canary Wharf as we see it relocate and redevelop. Buchanan Street and today, were inadmissible at the time and it the Clyde were singled out for special would be interesting to observe how the attention and a series of special projects, visual structure Gordon invented might have when linked together, formed two major changed with prior knowledge of such an urban systems which intersected at St Above: Precedent Network for Isle of Dogs intention in the study. He accepted it Enoch's. This was later identified as the site identifying places critical to Cullen's intellectually as development progressed but for the "Glasgow Tower" competition proposed strategy. remained frustrated by the lack of urban although we ignored our own advice in our Top: Glasgow Study cohesion in the Isle of Dogs context. submission and placed it in the river instead! Right hand page: Top: View from Stirling Study GLASGOW ABERDEEN Middle: From Waverley Station The Study of Glasgow City Centre (1983- The study of Aberdeen (1986) was Competition, Edinburgh 4), commissioned by the Scottish prompted by an elderly road proposal which Bottom: From Aberdeen Study showing Development Agency, was the first of four it was felt would ruin Union Terrace overall structure major and several minor exercises we Gardens, the city centre's principle open

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 space. Gordon pointed out that this was not the only problem facing the city centre and so the brief was immediately expanded into an examination of the whole of the central area. Our two most radical suggestions were the extension of the railway station to provide a concourse directly on Union Street and the extension of the inner harbour to provide a site for the proposed Petrochemicals Museum. As with Glasgow, our ambition was to locate as many dispersed activities appropriate to the city centre within it rather than on "soft" sites on its periphery. Only in this way would the critical mass required for true regeneration be achieved.

STIRLING AND EDINBURGH The studies of Stirling and Edinburgh Old Town (1987-9) were both commissioned as part of larger projects examining the tourism potential of these historic locations. At Stirling we were principally concerned with creating a powerful route from the castle to the Forth, which is presently completely cut off from the town centre but has remarkable development potential. Traffic and transport were vital issues which had to be addressed in both circumstances and in Edinburgh the major subject of enquiry was the "Royal Mile", the spine of the Old Town. Although the street does lead from the castle to the palace it is really rather shabby and is choked with vehicles. Our task was to suggest improvements which would transform it into one of the great linear urban experiences of Europe. With the benefit of the groundwork done for this study, we decided to develop the concepts further in order to enter the ideas competition for Waverley Station as a "long shot". Gordon's masterly argument caused him to win first prize and a degree of recognition in Scotland which had hardly been made public beforehand. During the course of the major Scottish projects we also worked in Greenock, Aviemore, Gretna Green and Clydebank. Gordon's enthusiasm for working in Scotland was immense. Born of parents from the Shetlands, his Celtic origins were unleashed in the course of the consultancies we undertook for the SDA with a passion and concern for the major cities of his native country. However, Gordon never ignored England or Wales, even though he was their adopted son.

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 29 Urban Design Projects in Practice - 1981-1991

LONDON, CARDIFF AND THE BLACK COUNTRY London Docklands, Cardiff Bay and the Black Country continued to be examined by his critical eye and his persuasive commentary and immaculate drawings. Furthermore our major built projects in London allowed him to transform theory into practice. The two he felt most deeply about are Swedish Quays and Helsinki Square, both on the water's edge at Greenland Dock. The interaction of private and public space, the aspect and prospect of the dwellings and their wonderful location distilled these schemes into the essence of "Townscape" in new buildings. Having caught the attention of private clients with these projects in particular, Gordon and I were then asked to submit designs for many other urban design and Above: part of a architectural essays, including the site of St series of ideas for Mary Abbot's Hospital in Kensington and Cardiff the masterplan for the Greenwich Right: Cuba Street, Peninsula. Gordon's talent for perception London Docklands simply got better with every project we were Bottom: Helsinki asked to undertake. Square housing, London Docklands CONCLUSIONS Gordon adored the company of people who could educate and amuse him. They were often much younger than himself which says a great deal about his opinion of the profession in urban design - he was, and is, the pinnacle of the "peer group" and every one of those who had the fortune to cross his path personally will remember his ability to give kind and forceful encouragement simultaneously. Many people think of Gordon only as a superlative draughtsman and forget that he represents the most influential source of urban design that the twentieth century has produced in the United Kingdom. Having had the unique privilege of ten years of his education, I would remind readers that Gordon's influence is much greater than is confined to the pages of "Townscape". It is up to us to develop and refine his theories as he wished. •

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 English Post-War KEVIN Planning: A Golden LYNCH Age? LECTURE

1947 LEGISLATION By the 1947 Town Planning Act, the major Sir Peter Shepheard, partner of Shepheard features of the new system - the provisions Epstein Hunter architects and erstwhile for Green Belts, New Towns and the Dean of the Graduate School of Fine Arts nationalisation of development rights - were at the University of Pennsylvania, in place. presented an anecdotal and entertaining Of these, the advent of comprehensive review of British post-war urban planning development control was perhaps the most in his 1994 Kevin Lynch Memorial Lecture important measure. Prior to 1947, the given in July. It is perhaps true to say that preservation of green space relied on the few if any "golden ages" withstand close limited potential of public purchase and low scrutiny, even in the nostalgic hindsight of density zoning was the mechanism for one so closely involved. But, at a time attempting to control development. when physical planning at the According to Shepheard, even private metropolitan scale is showing signs of developers found that the new system worked returning to the urban design and to their advantage, giving great definition to with low rise offices offering greater potential planning agenda, it is timely to share in opportunities and ensuring that development for social contact in administrative functions. the memories of the last real attempt to areas were properly serviced by The "world's most comprehensive planning determine the overall form of our cities. infrastructure. The Golden Age, such as it legislation" produced disappointing results that were a "tragedy". On the one hand the At the age of thirty, Shepheard had joined was, however, was short-lived. The system was less effective in practice than in the team of his godfather, Patrick subsequent failures appear to Shepheard to theory. There was, for example the failure to Abercrombie, working on his plan for have involved a combination of causes stem the intrusion of high rise buildings on London. A good part of the talk focused on including the undermining of some of its London's skyline, due in part to the this pivotal figure in the post-war town main provisions by politicians and mistakes interference of the Government of the day, as planning movement. According to in vision by the planners themselves. One of in the approval of the Hyde Park Hilton. Shepheard, Abercrombie had a real genius the keystones of the 1947 Act, the for simplifying complex problems so that Compensation and Betterment provision On the other hand, as argued by Walter Bor they could be easily explained and addressed. offering the possibility of taxing and others in the discussion that followed, In this he was able to draw on the development, was rapidly knocked out by the the British planning system has been perhaps considerable talents of the architects and Churchill government and the development of far too comprehensive, aiming at planners in his team, developing various new towns and communities was slowed "scrutinising everything". The British system inventive techniques of "presentation for down by the new government. was contrasted with that in the USA and persuasion". Arthus Ling's depiction of there was some difference of view as to London's living communities as organic PLANNING VISION whether a system that relies almost totally on the effectiveness of public demand and "blobs" was a good example. In terms of vision, many of the ideas of the participation and, by implication, the In the use of simple, but comprehensive architect-planners of the time, as exemplified effectiveness of lawyers, is any better. analytical methods, the influence of Geddes in Abercrombie's Plan for London, were For Shepheard, "seat of the pants" was to the fore. Simple practical survey never embodied in legislation but, in some planning could only be effective with methods were used, including pacing out the respects, as Peter Shepheard admitted, planners of stature, as seat of the pants flying physical edge of Greater London in a three nevertheless had major negative in the Second World War was the preserve of week slog that left its imprint in the inner consequences for the urban environment. ace pilots. This raised the question: where boundary of the subsequent Green Belt. Proposals for the transport system, for are the modern equivalents of Abercrombie The post-war planning movement was example, relied too heavily on ring roads, and Williams-Ellis? By implication, the portrayed in the historical context of a presaging the M25, but failing to address the answer seems to be that there is no place for philosophical lineage from Geddes, through importance of the larger network and of this type of integrated approach to planning Unwin and Parker to Clough Williams-Ellis public transport provision. The plan was in the emaciated "must-do" local government and Abercrombie, and in contrast to the low based on forecasts that failed to predict both of today. As Jon Rowland pointed out, by density zoning and relative "laissez faire" of the post-war population boom and the vast comparison to the depth and scope of the inter-war period. The resulting urban increase in road traffic. Abercrombie's plan for London, today's local sprawl was the enemy of the new generation For Shepheard, the major new public authority UDPs are sad, two dimensional of planners, and the shift of perception that housing schemes brought good space and shadows. The Golden Age of British Town came with the Second World War, ensured open space standards but the use of high rise Planning may be largely a myth but in Sir that their time had come. The war shook up for family accommodation was a "grotesque Peter's words, "local government decline in British social life, and profoundly changed mistake" (for which architects like Gropius planning is sinful". • attitudes towards social issues and towards and Maxwell Fry bore a large share of the the land, including inducing a strong responsibility). High rise, in Shepheard's awareness of the importance of agriculture. view, is good for neither families or offices Tony Lloyd-Jones

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Colin Buchanan and Partners

THE PRACTICE Colin Buchanan and Partners is a leading multi-disciplinary planning and transport consultancy with more than twenty five years' experience in the UK and overseas. The practice was founded in 1964 by the team that produced the 'Traffic in Towns' study - still regarded as the fundamental work on the effects of the private car on our urban fabric and the need for improved public transport. Today the consultancy employs some seventy professional staff including town planners, urban designers, architects, market researchers and economists, as well as traffic and transport specialists. Operating from UK offices in London, Stratford above and below Edinburgh, Bristol and Manchester as well as overseas, the consultancy offers comprehensive analysis and specialist services on all aspects of master planning from initial assessments to policy implementation. Our wide range of in-house skills ensures an innovative approach to all aspects of the development process.

STRATFORD This commission by the London Borough of Newham explored regeneration options for the Town Centre and adjacent railway lands associated with the potential siting of the Second Channel Tunnel Terminal at Stratford. Alternative scenarios were prepared to demonstrate the development potential of the Terminal hinterland with the aim of stimulating increased economic activity and associated social benefits.

OXFORD As part of a comprehensive Transport Feasibility Study for the City of Oxford, the urban design team worked closely with in- house traffic engineers to develop a series of proposals for permanent improvements in the pedestrian environment in the City Centre.

MIDDLESBOROUGH A detailed regeneration strategy for East Middlesborough was prepared following the Borough Council's successful bid for City Challenge funds. Based on local public consultation undertaken by the consultants, a series of physical upgrading packages was prepared and costed, leading to an implementation strategy which is now underway on site.

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Practice Profile

Dense tree and shrub planting to break up long vistas

Smaller grass New parking bays areas for at 90° to road casual recreation

Pedestrian

entry points Wddlesborough above and left SAUDI ARABIA The twin 'Industrial Cities' of Jubail and Yanbu at each end of the trans-Saudi oil and gas pipelines were both the subject of major proposals, beginning with an initial site search (Jubail) thorugh to a radical revision of the draft Master Plan (Yanbu). There have been few comparable opportunities since the British New Towns for fundamental master planning exercises on this scale that are then realised on site. The achievements at Jubail were recognised by a RS Reynolds Award for Architectural Excellence.

DUBAI In association with consulting engineers Maunsell, a Master Plan was prepared for 700 hectares of undeveloped land on the eastern boundary of Dubai Emirate around Yanbar below Al Mamzar above the newly-dredged A1 Mamzar Lagoon. The project began with a series of broad development options testing different densities and land uses and led to detailed urban design guidelines, landscape proposals for the regional-scale Lagoon Park and financial feasibility assessments. •

Colin Buchanan & Partners 59 Queens Gardens, London W2 3AF Telephone 071 258 3799 Fax 071 258 0299 Contact: Neil Parkyn RIBA MRTPI FRSA

Offices also at: 49 Castle St,Edinburgh 9 Elmdale Road, Bristol BS8 1SL 4 Jordan St, Manchester M15 4PY

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 19941 7 ECD Architects and Energy Consultants

ECD was established in 1980 with the specific aim of combining energy research and consultancy with mainstream architectural practice. After completing a series of pioneering low energy housing schemes in the 1980s, our work is now concentrated in the fields of urban regeneration and environmental assessment. Currently the practice is forty strong with offices in London and Brussels. Over the past five years ECD has built up a strong reputation in estate refurbishment, much of it involving resident participation in design and construction with residents in occupation. These projects have often involved us in the preparation and submission of bids for Estate Action or City Challenge funding.

BARKANTINE ESTATE, ISLE OF DOGS - TOWER HAMLETS One example is the Barkantine Estate on the Isle of Dogs in East London, an estate the size of a small town with over 1,000 dwellings in low, medium and high rise construction together with a school, shops, pub and community centre. Much of the estate was re-developed in the 1960s but Above: Barkantine Estate showing new there are in addition buildings dating from architectural language applied to the 1930s, 40s and 50s and the result is a buildings. visual hotch-potch. Below and to right: Wornington Green The physical problems however were fairly Estate showing new entrance structures. consistent; leaking roofs, rotten windows, inadequate heating and condensation. The solution has been to give the buildings a new suit of clothes to enter the 21st Century; new roofs and windows, insulated overcladding and affordable heating. This new architectural language is designed to reinforce the 'urban village' feel of the estate and to create a more unified and coherent visual environment. The first phase of work is now complete and illustrates the dramatic transformation from a grim '60s maisonette block into a clean crisp piece of modern architecture.

Propoxd New WORNINGTON GREEN ESTATE, NORTH Police Baae KENSINGTON Another recent example of ECD's work in the fields of urban regeneration is the

Wornington Green Estate within the North New Nuricry Kensington City Challenge area. Wornington Udt Green is a 1970s medium rise deck access »°l«Cr„Vf estate with serious crime and drug related

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Practice Profile

problems typical of this inner city location. ECD's brief was to consult with the residents and the Metropolitan Police and develop proposals to improve access and security. The solution has been to create seven new entrance halls together with new lifts, entry phone installations and restricted access to individual walkways. The entrances are located alongside existing staircase towers. Their curved forms are intended to create some drama and excitement in the streetscape. The entrance halls are built in a pattern of obscure and translucent glass blocks within a steel grid framework and are designed to be illuminated at night.

BALDERTON VILLAGE, NEWARK For the past three years ECD has been working on the masterplan for a new community to be built on the site of a former mental hospital in Balderton, near Newark in Nottinghamshire, shown to the left.

BREEAM In collaboration with the building Research Establishment ECD have developed BREEAM, the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method. The original version, designed for new office developments has been immensely successful with over 200 assessments now completed. Subsequent versions now cover existing occupied offices, retail superstores, industrial buildings and new housing. The BALDERTON VILLAGE, NEWARK BREEAM system assesses the environmental The 230 acre site, shown above, consists impact of a building at three levels - Global, of predominantly mature parkland into Local and Internal. Credits are awarded for which the new development has been measures which are better than normal sensitively inserted. In addition to the practice and an overall rating is then given; proposed 1150 new homes, some existing Fair, Good, Very Good or Excellent. buildings are retained and re-used to The BREEAM method provides a valuable provide business and retail space in the yardstick against which developers and high density 'urban core'. A new primary occupiers can measure that performance in school is also planned together with this area, as well as giving design community and leisure facilities. The professionals a specific environmental agenda development preserves the natural to work with. amenity value of the site and provides a ECD actively promotes the concept of system of pedestrian and cycle routes sustainable development and advises a large connecting all residential areas with the number of clients on the energy and centre. High standards of energy environmental aspects of their work. • efficiency are anticipated in all new buildings together with an environmental ECD Architects and Energy Consultants code to ensure a model 'green' 11-15 Emerald St, London WC1N 3QL community. Tel: 071 405 3121 Fax: 071 405 1670 Contact: David Turrent BArch RIBA

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 PRP Architects

PRP Architects (formerly Phippen Randall and Parkes) see architecture and urban design as complementary. The design of successful urban places is as dependent on the way buildings are grouped together and the design of the spaces between them as it is on the design of individual buildings, a fact as true for towns and cities as for housing develop- ments. What we recognise as urban space is generally characterised by (largely) continuous building forms which separate the public from the private realm. Two recent projects demonstrate these views.

WEST SILVERTOWN URBAN VILLAGE The project for West Silvertown Urban Village was prepared for a consortium of three developers in response to a competition brief from the LDDC for a development of 1,000 houses forming the first, largely residential, phase of a new Urban Village in the Royal Victoria Docks. The potential diversity of architectural design brought about by three developers each using their own architects to satisfy their perceived need to differentiate their products and satisfy a number of different market areas required both a comprehensive Master Plan and a foolproof Design Code if the overall coherence necessary to justify the use of the description 'Urban Village' was to be achieved. PRP were clear that if this was to be achieved a Master Plan which firmly established a 3D urban design was essential. The Master Plan so produced would need to establish the position and height of all buildings thereby ensuring the size and scale of the spaces between them. This would ensure the creation of the particular urban WEST SILVERTOWN character which would be synonymous with The pattern of development to the south of commencing in the south with two storey West Silvertown. the spine road comprises terraces of houses adjoining the North Woolwich The proposed Design Code could thus have mainly two storey houses arranged in Road and increasing up to six storeys been limited to the detailed design of loosely rectangular forms around private alongside the Dock. horizontal and vertical surfaces, namely to gardens in the centre. The corners are To the social facilities required in the the design of hard and soft landscape and turned with small flat blocks two or three brief, which included local shops, a elevational treatments. storeys high over group garages at village hall and a Medical Centre, were The Master Plan concept was constrained ground level. The flats are set forward of added a Nursery School and a Primary by an existing spine road. This was utilised the houses and provide a strong corner School. These facilities are located to separate the higher density development, which can be used to control space, partly around a public square near the centre of appropriate to the Dockside, to the north screen parked cars and define discrete the first phase would be mutually adjoining the Dock from the preponderance areas of the Village. supportive in acting as a catalyst for of lower density family houses to the south This approach produced a comparatively social contact and assist in the early and so enable the maximum number of smooth profile in section across the site creation of a 'Village' spirit. Village residents to have views over water.

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Practice Profile

CHALKHILL ESTATE, BRENT Chalkhill in Brent is an extreme example of a high density system-built 1960s local authority housing estate of some 1,200 six to eight storey flats where traditional urban characteristics, from access and parking arrangements, road layout, architectural scale and detail through to spatial organisation and social values were ignored in the celebration of the economies of scale and the apparent logic of the industrialised production of structural building components. The London Borough of Brent invited teams comprising housing association, contractor and professionals to put forward development and financial proposals. The extent of the technical social and management problems were such that large scale demolition was the only answer. The Centre Residential Road strategy was to work with tenants to create a new community based on a new supportive built form of traditional streets and houses. The existing single access to the estate would be replaced by a road network ensuring maximum permeability of vehicles and pedestrians, avoiding 'dead ends' and thereby providing strong and permanent links with the wider community and doing away with the isolation of residents. There would be a gradation of scale from the western end of the site, where there is an existing estate of traditional houses and flats, to the eastern end where a new access would be created together with a new urban park opposite Brent Town Hall. The variation in scale and detailed design of the proposed new buildings, their use to create a sequence of coherent spaces of crescents, circus's, squares and courts combined with a designed road hierarchy of avenues, streets, roads and mews would lead to the creation of a legible environment. It created the opportunity to form a series of CHALKHILL ESTATE, BRENT would create a sequence of distinctive housing areas each with a strong character The new urban park would act as a hub urban forms. At junctions between major with which people would be able to identify from which new major routes would and minor roads flat blocks three and four and make their own. • radiate. Chalkhill Road the existing storeys high would define and celebrate access road would become a tree lined the corners. Dwellings around the urban Boulevard providing the main artery and park would be on a large scale with a four PRP Architects linking the urban park in the west to the storey crescent on the principal axis of 82 Bridge Road, Hampton Court new and existing residential areas. the Town Hall. Five storey towers formed East Molesey, Surrey Wherever practicable open space would gateways into the Park. In the area of KT89HF be incorporated in private gardens at the existing traditional housing to the east Tel: 081 941 0606 front and rear of buildings in order to existing public open space would be Fax: 081 783 1671 transfer maintenance responsibility from rationalised by the creation of private the Housing Association to the individual gardens for a high proportion of the Contact: Peter Phippen OBE Dip Arch tenants and owners. existing dwellings and by further (RWA) RIBA The houses fronting onto Chalkhill Road development where appropriate.

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 WML International

WML International was formed in 1990 as part of the Whinney Mackay-Lewis PLC Group of companies with offices in Cardiff and London. Architectural commissions are undertaken by the sister companies of Whinney Mackay-Lewis Partnership in London and Hoggett Lock-Necrews PLC in Cardiff with WML International providing an urban design, planning and development service to group clients. Gordon Lewis has been the Managing Director of the company since its formation in 1990 and prior to that was the Managing Director of an American firm of landscape architects working in the UK. The directors of WML first "cut their teeth" on major planning and regeneration projects when they were selected by Cardiff Bay Development Corporation as one of the four consultancy groups to prepare a pre-development feasibility study for Cardiff Bay. Since then there has been a dramatic change in the way clients plan major developments and urban design has now become a foundation of good development practice. Like many consultancy companies, WML International carries out a wide variety of commissions ranging from specialist planning studies to regeneration strategies and urban design proposals for individual sites. The last ten years have seen a dramatic change in the way that society relates to the built environment. Urban regeneration has become part of our everyday vocabulary as a vital task in solving the problems of inner cities. Successful regeneration however, cannot be achieved overnight; it is a long term process that requires clear vision and committed action. WML International is a multi-disciplinary company with architects, urban designers and planners working together to solve clients' problems. On many projects they work with a wider team of transport engineers, highway designers, chartered surveyors and economists. This holistic approach, with a NEWPORT enable the town to compete with other wide variety of professional skills that creates This urban design strategy was part of an regional centres. a marketable and viable, three-dimensional, overall development strategy for the town, The study area extended to the River Usk design solution. The planning profession has prepared jointly with Drivers Jonas who where a dual carriageway separates the grasped the importance of urban design carried out the market analysis and W S town centre from the riverbank. Major initiatives with many planning departments Atkins the traffic studies. environmental enhancements are now preparing three-dimensional plans in The strategy identifies retail and proposed and a new landmark pedestrian addition to land use zoning policies. commercial growth centres within the bridge, linking a new retail development Much of WML International's work has central area and enhancement initiatives across the dual carriageway to new public been undertaken in Wales working with local for the public realm and highways to buildings on the waterfront.

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 Practice Profile

authorities and the Urban Development Department of the Welsh Development Agency. The first commissions involved the preparation of development strategies and then progressed onto detailed regeneration strategies and urban design studies. A recent example of that work is the urban design strategy for Newport.

AMMANFORD In West Wales WML International worked with Coopers & Lybrand to prepare a regeneration strategy for Ammanford. This was followed by a commission to prepare action plans setting out the priorities for development in the first five years. In addition, studies were carried out on the central area identifying how the new pedestrianised High Street could be linked to the Market and Car Park via a new Public Square with a reorganized road system. A New Market Hall building was created as a focal point at the end of the High Street next to the main retail stores. The Square is defined along two sides by the existing buildings and on the third and fourth edges by an archway and planted screen on the edge of the car park. The screen is planned to be replaced by new retail development forming a public square around the market hall, creating a meeting place for the town and a major entrance into the area from adjacent riverside land. SWANSEA VALE Over the years WML International has The objectives are to create a new urban developed a strong corporate philosophy that district comprising a mixed commercial, is conveyed through a distinctive visual residential and recreational development presentation conveyed through colourful on 470 acres adjacent to the M4. It is concept sketches. intended to regenerate East Swansea, Gordon Lewis commented that, "the urban provide high grade employment land, design profession has become established reduce housing pressure on West during the last decade. Where it goes now, Swansea and provide a 'flagship' for will depend upon the integrity of its members regional growth. and quality of the service it gives to clients. Planners, architects and engineers must The proposals include: 110 acres of recognize the value of urban design policies industrial and commercial development and promote their integration into generating 4,700 jobs; 132 acres of development schemes to create well balanced environments". • residential development creating 1,800 new homes; golf course development including driving range, golf school and WML International golf course; office and hotel sites next to Westgate House M4 intersections; improved road network Womanby Street for the north eastern section of the city. Cardiff CF1 2UA Tel: 0222 231401 AMMANFORD Fax: 0222 374690 Proposed new public square with new Market Hall shown on left. Contact: Gordon Lewis BSc BArch RIBA

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 PRACTICE INDEX

DIRECTORY OF PRACTICES OFFERING URBAN DESIGN SERVICES AND SUBSCRIBING TO THIS INDEX

The ASH Partnership Building Design Partnership Edward Cullinan Architects Ltd Roger Evans Associates 140A The Broadway PO Box 4WD The Wharf, Baldwin Terrace School Studios Didcot ,Oxon 0X11 8RJ 16 Gresse Street London N1 7RU Weston on the Green (also in Glasgow, Edinburgh, London W1A4WD Tel: 071 704 1975 Oxford 0X6 8RG Liverpool, Manchester) Tel: 071 631 4733 Fax: 071 354 2739 Tel: 0869 350096 Tel: 0235 511481 Fax: 071 631 0393 Contact: John Romer Fax: 0869 350152 Fax: 0235 819606 Contact: Richard Saxon BArch Contact: Roger Evans MA DipArch DipUD Contact: Simon Rendel MA (Oxon) MICE (Hons)(L'pool) MCD MBIM RIBA Designing buildings and groups of RIBA MRTPI ALI buildings within urban or rural contexts. Transport design. Landscape design. The relationship to existing buildings and A specialist urban design practice Design of urban spaces and Commercial development planning. the making of spaces between buildings is providing services throughout the UK. streets,feasibility studies for upgrading Sports and Leisure planning. Industrial of particular importance to us, in the Expertise in urban regeneration, housing and industrial land and transport site planning. Educational campus struggle to re-establish the civic place. development frameworks, master corridors. Tourism studies. planning. planning, town centre improvement schemes and visual impact assessment.

W S Atkins Planning Consultants Burrell Foley Fischer DEGW London Ltd Terry Farrell and Company Woodcote Grove, Ashley Road 15 Monmouth Street, Covent Garden Porters North 8 Crinan Street 17 Hatton Street Epsom, Surrey KT18 5BW London WC2H 9DA London N1 9SQ London NW8 8PL Tel: 0372 726140 Tel: 071 836 5097 Tel: 071 239 7777 Tel: 071 258 3433 Fax: 0372 743006 Fax: 071 379 6619 Fax: 071 278 3613 Fax: 071 723 7059 Contact: Joanna Chambers BA BTP MRTPI Contact: John Burrell MA AADip RIBA (also at Glasgow, Manchester, Berlin, Contact: Susan Dawson DipArch RIBA FRSA Brussels and other European cities) Multi-disciplinary practice of urban Specialisms: Urban regeneration and Arts Contact: Ken Baker DipArch RIBA Architectural, urban design and planning planners, landscape designers, transport and Cultural buildings - Museums, services. New buildings, refurbishment, planners, urban designers, architects and Galleries, Theatres, Cinemas. Planning and Urban Design across Europe. restoration and interiors,masterplanning environmental planners, specialising in Redevelopment of Redundant Estate Urban regeneration strategies. Civic and town planning schemes. Retail, Con- Master Plans, Development Frameworks Land, Urban housing. New settlements. Design. New communities and green field ference Centres, Exhibition Halls, Offices, and Concepts, Development Briefs, New design in Historic Contexts. development. Research and briefing for Railway infrastructure and Railway Devel- Environmental Assessment, Waterfront buildings and strategies. complex projects. opment, Art Galleries, Museums. Cultural Environmental Improvements, Town Innovative Urban Design and Planning and Tourist buildings, Television Studios, Centre renewal, Traffic Management and approaches. Theatres, Housing, Industrial Buildings. Contaminated land.

Bell Fischer CAMP 5 ECD Architects and Energy FaulknerBrowns Landscape Architects 35 Alfred Place Consultants Dobson House 160 Chiltern Drive London WC1E7DP 11-15 Emerald Street Northumbrian Way Surbiton Tel:071 323 3717 London WC1N 3QL Newcastle upon Tyne NE12 0QW Surrey KT5 8LS Fax: 071 580 6080 Tel: 071 405 3121 Tel: 091 268 3007 Tel: 081 390 6477 Contact: David Rock BArch Fax: 071 405 1670 Fax: 091 268 5227 Fax: 081 399 7903 CertTP (Dunelm) RIBA FCSD FRSA Contact: David Turrent BArch RIBA Contact: Neil F Taylor BA (Hons) DipArch Contact: Gordon Bell DipLA ALI (Dist) RIBA MBIM Master planning and analysis, small town ECD Architects specialise in the design of Landscape architecture, urban design, and village regeneration, physical energy efficient buildings and advise on Urban Design, Environmental and landscape planning. Environmental and planning, building and area enhancement, the environmental aspects of new Economic Regeneration, Masterplanning, visual impact assessment. Concept expert witness,architecture consultancy, developments using the Breeam Development and Implementation design, detail design and project policy formulation, marketing and 'making assessment method. Strategies. management. UK and overseas. it happen'.

Colin Buchanan & Partners Philip Cave Associates EDAW CR Planning Gillespies 59 Queens Gardens 5 Dryden Street 80-82 Grays Inn Road Environment by Design London W2 3AF Covent Garden Holborn, London WC1X8NH GLASGOW Tel: 071 258 3799 London WC2E 9NW (also at Glasgow and Colmar, France) Tel: 041 332 6742 Fax: 071 258 0299 Tel: 071 829 8340 Tel: 071 404 6350 Fax: 041 332 3538 Contact: Neil Parkyn MA DipArch DipTP Fax: 071 240 5800 Fax: 071 404 6337 MANCHESTER (Dist) RIBA MRTPI Contact: Philip Cave BSc Hons MA (LD) Contact: David Keene BA Dip TP MRTPI Tel: 061 928 7715 ALI Jason Prior BA Dip LA ALI Fax: 061 927 7680 Town planning, urban design, transport OXFORD and traffic management and market Design led practice seeking innovative yet EDAW CR Planning are part of the Tel: 0865 326789 research from offices in London, practical solutions. Large scale site international EDAW Group providing Fax: 0865 327070 Edinburgh, Bristol and Manchester. planning through to small scale detailed urban design, land use planning, The Practice philosophy provides clients Specialism in Town Centre projects, design - from studies to constructed environmental planning and landscape with creative and sustainable solutions including public realm design. projects. Specialist experience in architecture services throughout the UK and a commitment to excellence from landscape architecture. and Europe. We offer particular expertise inception to completion in Planning, Urban in market driven development Design, Landscape Architecture, frameworks, urban regeneration, Architecture, Graphic Design and masterplanning and implementation. Ecology.

40 URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 PRACTICE INDEX

Greater London Consultants LEITHGOE Landscape Architects and David Lock Associates Ltd Peter McGowan Associates 127 Beuiah Road Environmental Planners 50 North Thirteenth Street The Schoolhouse Thornton Heath 6 Southernhay West Central Milton Keynes 4 Lochend Road Surrey CR7 8JJ Exeter EX11JG Milton Keynes MK9 3BP EdinburghEH6 8BR Tel: 081 7681417 Tel: 0392 210428 Tel: 0908 666276 Tel: 031 555 4949 Fax: 081 771 9384 Fax: 0392 413290 Fax: 0908 605747 Fax: 031 555 4999 Contact: Dr John Parker DipArch ARIBA (also London tel: 071 229 6469) Contact: Will Cousins DipArch DipUD Contact: Peter McGowan DipLA MA (UD) DipTP FRTPI FRSA Contact: Andrew Leithgoe DipLA FLI RIBA ALI

Services focus on architectural and urban Landscape Assessment, Planning, Strategic planning studies, public Landscape architecture and urban design: design aspects of planning and environ- Design and Maintenance. Hard and soft inquiries, urban regeneration projects, planning and design. Highways, ment including: photo-montage studies Landscape solutions. Experienced in master plans, area development pedestrianisation and traffic calming. especially high building proposals, site working with Architects and Engineers. framework plans, environment New town development. Urban parks and investigation, traffic, applications, appeals, Clients include PSA/DoE, Local statements. spaces. Sea fronts. Urban Renewal. marinas, ElA's, feasibility, development Authorities, Property Institutions, Landscapes for housing and industry. schemes, conservation and security Universities, Private clients. schemes.

Halcrow Fox and Associates Nathaniel Lichfield & Partners Ltd MacCormac Jamieson Prichard Anthony Meats Urban Design 44 Brook Green Star House 9 Heneage Street 3 High Street Hammersmith 104- 108 Grafton Road Spitalfields Taplow London W6 London NW5 4BD London E1 5LJ Bucks SL6 0EX Tel: 071 6031618 Tel: 071 485 8795 Tel: 071 377 9262 Tel: 0628 666334 Fax: 071 603 5783 Fax: 071 482 4039 Fax: 071 247 7854 Fax: 0628 602676 Contact: Asad A Shaheed BA Arch MArch (also in Newcastle upon Tyne) Contact: David Prichard BSc DipArch Contact: Anthony Meats AA DipL RIBA Contact: Nicholas Thompson BA BPI MA (Lond) RIBA FRSA Area and site planning, town centre (UrbDes) MRTPI and lain Rhind BA MPhil renewal, waterfront regeneration, traffic DipUD (Dist) MRTPI Master-planning, development briefs, Urban design, tourism and development calming studies, conceptual design, visual urban regeneraion studies, land use planning, conservation and townscape impact assessment. Independent planning, urban design and studies, rural settlements. Planning in studies, conceptual design. economics consultancy,combining analysis historic and sensitive sites. with creativity. Masterplans: all sites, all uses. Residential schemes. Town centres. Visual appraisal. Conservation.

Hunt Thompson Associates Livingston Eyre Associates Andrew Martin Associates MPT Associates Urbanologists 79 Parkway 7-13 Cottons Gardens Croxton's Mill, Little Waltham Penthouse Studio, Haresfield House London NW1 7PP London E2 8DN Chelmsford, Essex CM3 3PJ Brookfield, Wingfield Road Tel: 071 485 8555 Tel: 071 739 1445 Tel: 0245 361611 Trowbridge Wilts BA14 9EN Fax: 071 4851232 Fax: 071 729 2986 Fax: 0245 362423 Tel: 0225 751166 Contact: John Thompson MA DipArch Contact: Katherine Melville RIBA ALI Contact: Andrew Martin MAUD DipTP Fax: 0225 751166 RIBA (Distinction) FRICS FRTPI Contact: Michael Tollit PG Dip UD The design of the space between Dip Arch (Leic) BA(Hons) ARIBA Architects and urban designers buildings in urban or rural contexts; Strategic, local and master planning, Minst Env Sc specialising in the problems of physical, master planning and feasibility studies; project co-ordination and facilitation, social and economic regeneration with an rehabilitation and regeneration of the development briefs and detailed studies, Site development research, innovatory approach to participatory urban landscape; building the places we historic buildings and conservation. EA Analysis, transport, community involvement. design. Comprehensive and integrated planning of landscape, master planning, new and expanded communities, urban design, architectural, including housing, employment, shopping, historical, geographical recreation and leisure, transport and interpretation, tourism environmental considerations. market research surveys.

Derek Latham & Co Llewelyn-Davies Robert MacDonald Associates NFA St Michaels Brook House 76 Haverstock Hill Falcon House, 202 Old Brompton Road Derby DE1 3SU 2 Torrington Place London NW3 2BE London SW5 0BU Tel: 0332 365777 London WC1E7HN Tel: 071 2841414 Tel: 071 259 2223 Fax: 071 259 2242 Fax: 0332 290314 Tel: 071 637 0181 Fax: 071 267 9976 (also at Bangkok, Beijing, Hong Kong, Contact: Mark Strawbridge Fax: 071 637 8740 Contact: Robert MacDonald BA(Hons) Kuala Lumpur, Los Angeles, Contact: Jon Rowland AADipl MA RIBA DipArch (Dist) RIBA Melbourne, Paris, Singapore, Vietnam) Innovative Conservation, Urban Design, and David Walton BA MRTPI FIHT Contact: Peter Verity MArch MCP (Penn) Architecture, Planning, Landscapes and Robert MacDonald Associates combine RIBA Interiors. Problem solving by design. Architecture, planning, urban design and the skills of urban design masterplanning, regeneration, site appraisal and context housing and new communities, beneficial Architectural, Urban Design, Planning, studies, strategic landscaping. re-use studies for land disposal, planning Landscaping services internationally. negotiations and architecture. Development Planning, Urban Regeneration, New Communities, Waterfront Regeneration, Tourism Planning and Design.

41 URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 PRACTICE INDEX

Terence O'Rourke pic Taylor Young Urban Design Shepheard Epstein and Hunter Tibbalds Monro Ltd Everdene House The Studio Architecture Planning and Landscape 31 Earl Street Wessex Fields, Deansleigh Road 51 Brookfield 14-22 Ganton Street London EC2A 2HR Bournemouth BH7 7DU Cheadie London W1V1LB Tel: 071 377 6688 Tel: 0202 421142 Cheshire SK8 1ES Tel: 071 734 0111 Fax: 071 247 9377 Fax: 0202 430055 Tel: 061 491 4530 Fax: 071 434 2690 (also at Glasgow) Contact: Terence O'Rourke DipArch Fax: 061 491 0972 Contact: Steven Pidwill Dip Arch RIBA Contact: Andrew Karski BA (Hons) MSc (Oxford) DipTP RIBA MRTPI Contact: Stephen Gleave MA DipTP (Dist) Eugene Dreyer MA (City and Regional (Econ) FRTPI DipUD MRTPI Planning) Planning and Design Consultancy Multi-disciplinary practice of architects, specialising in land use planning, Urban Design, Planning and Architecture, master-planning, landscape, planners, urban designers, landscape landscape architecture, ecology, Development. Public and Private Sectors. urban design, computer modelling, designers, tourism specialists and interior environmental assessment and urban Town studies, housing, commercial, environmental statements, planning-for- architects. The firm provides consultancy design. Development Briefs, Master distribution, health and transportation real, public consultation, development services to institutional, public sector and Plans, Urban Regeneration, Town represent current live' projects. Specialist consultancy. corporate clients. Studies, Conservation and Public Realm in Urban Design Training. Strategies.

PRP Architects Rothermel Thomas Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Inc. Travers Morgan Environment 82 Bridge Road 14-16 Cowcross Street 46 Berkeley Street, London W1X 5FP 2 Killick Street Hampton Court London EC1M 6DR Tel: 071 930 9711 London N1 9JJ East Molesey Tel: 071 490 4255 Fax: 071 930 9108 Tel: 071 278 7373 Surrey KT8 9HF Fax: 071 490 1251 (also Chicago, New York, Washington, Fax: 071 278 3476 Tel: 081 941 0606 Contact: James Thomas BA (Arch) DipTP San Francisco, Los Angeles, Hong Contact: Marie Burns BA (hons) MAUD Fax: 081 783 1671 FRIBA FRTPI FRSA FIMgt Kong) Dipl. LA ALI Contact: Peter Phippen Contact: Roger Kallman OBE DipArch (RWA) RIBA Urban design, conservation, historic International multi-disciplinary practice. Multidisciplinary Practice of urban buildings, planning, architecture. Expert Master Planning, Landscape Architecture, designers, landscape architects, planners, Social and private housing development, witness at planning inquiries. Civil Engineering and Urban Design. ecologists, noise and air pollution special needs housing, including housing Project types: urban regeneration expertise - undertaking environmental and for elderly people, mentally handicapped schemes, business park master plans, visual impact assessments, traffic calming and single people, healthcare, urban university campus design, transportation studies; town centre and waterfront redevelopment. planning. Associated services: regeneration schemes, contamination environmental impact assessments, remediation, new build housing and estate design guidelines, infrastructure refurbishment. strategies.

EDUCATION INDEX

DIRECTORY OF COURSES PROVIDING URBAN DESIGN EDUCATION AND SUBSCRIBING TO THIS INDEX

University of the West of England, University of Greenwich School of the Built Environment University of Newcastle upon Tyne Bristol School of Architecture and Landscape Liverpool John Moores University Department of Town and Country Faculty of the Built Environment Oakfield Lane 98 Mount Pleasant Planning, Claremont Tower Frenchay Campus Dartford DA1 2SZ Liverpool L3 5UZ University of Newcastle Coldharbour Lane Tel: 081 316 9100 Tel: 051 231 3209 Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU Bristol BS161QY Fax: 081 316 9105 Fax: 051 709 4957 Tel: 091 222 7802 Fax: 091 222 8811 Tel: 0272 656261 Contact: Philip Stringer Contact: Professor Chris Couch Contact: Dr Ali Madani-Pour (Town & Fax: 0272 763895 MA in Urban Design for postgraduate MSc/Diploma in Urban Renewal (Urban Country Planning) or Bill Tavernor Contact: Richard Guise architecture and landscape students, full Regeneration & Urban Design) 1 year full- (Architecture) MA/Postgraduate Diploma course in time and part time with credit time or 2 years part-time. MA/Diploma in Urban Design. Joint Urban Design. Part time 2 days per accumulation transfer system. programme by Dept of Town and Country fortnight for 2 years, or individual Planning and Dept. of Architecture, on full programme of study. Project based time, part time, or certificate accumulation course addressing urban design issues, bases. Integrating knowledge and skills abilities and environments. from town planning, architecture, and landscape design.

Edinburgh College of Art/Heriot Watt University of Liverpool University of Westminster Oxford Brookes University (formerly University Dept of Civic Design School of Urban Development and Oxford Polytechnic) School of Architecture Abercromby Square Planning Joint Centre for Urban Design Lauriston Place PO Box 147 35 Marylebone Road Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP Edinburgh EH3 9DF Liverpool L69 3BX London NW1 5LS Tel: 0865 819403 Tel: 031 221 6071/6072 Tel: 051 794 3119 Tel: 071 911 5000 Fax: 0865 483298 Fax: 031 221 6606/6157 Fax: 051 794 3125 Fax: 071 911 5171 Contact: Dr Georgia Butina or Ian Bentley Contact: Robert Smart Contact: Michael Biddulph Contact: David Seex Diploma in Urban Design 6 months full Diploma in Urban Design: 1 year full time Diploma in Civic Design.: 21 months full MA or Diploma Course in Urban Design time or 18 months part time. MA in Urban or 3 years part time. MSc in Urban time or 33 months part time. Master in for postgraduate architects, town Design 1 year full time or 3 years part Design: 1 year full time or 3 years part Civic Design: 2 years full-time / 3 years planners, landscape architects and related time. MPhil/PhD by research (full time and time plus 1 year part time. Recognised by part time. disciplines. One year full time or two part time). the RIBA for the RIBA Urban Design years part time attendance of two Diploma. evenings a week plus an additional five to eight days each year.

42 URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 ENDPIECE

medieval planned town on a one of the tourist showpieces of Urban Initiatives 1994 Study Tour remarkable site at the confluence the old German Democratic 35 Heddon Street of the Fulda and the Werra. it Republic, it was evident that London W1R 7LL Alan Stones describes the was strange to find these houses many buildings were in need of Tel: 071 287 3644 UDG Study Tour which visited laid out on a regular grid street repair, or vacant awaiting the Fax: 071 287 9489 the Harz area of Germany in plan. Here, and in Paderborn, return of owners or the arrival of Contact: Kelvin Campbell BArch RIBA new purchasers. Streets were MRTPI MCIT FRSA May 1994. we encountered the elaborate The Harz is the northernmost Weser Renaissance style used for being extensively re-surfaced, Urban design, transport planning, range of high, wooded mountains town halls in the region west of but fortunately the town had not infrastructure and development planning in Germany, whose scenery the Harz. suffered the effects of insensitive to include master planning, town centre attracted and inspired nineteenth modern development. studies, conservation, environmental century romantic poets and The same cannot be said of improvements, traffic calming and design writers. During the Middle Ages those former East German towns guidelines. it was Europe's most important which had the misfortune to centre of mining and coin suffer Allied bombing during the minting, which brought the area Second World War. In a city like great prosperity, resulting in the Halberstadt, the cathedral close WML International Ltd building of many fine towns, the and main Romanesque churches Westgate House object of our visit. remain, but expediency and lack Womanby Street Our outward journey took us of the commercial impetus Cardiff South Glam CF1 2UA along the old Hellweg, an ancient Without doubt, the finest present in the West resulted in Tel: 0222 231401 east-west trading route. What towns we visited were Goslar the rest of the devastated city Fax: 0222 374690 we had not appreciated and Quedlinburg (shown above), centre being rebuilt in the form (also at 55-65 Whitfield Street beforehand was that, even before one in the former West, the other of soul-less parallel blocks of London W1P5RJ) leaving the Westphalian plain, in the former East. In the flats which pay no heed to the Contact: Gordon Lewis BSc BArch RIBA we were to encounter at Soest the eleventh century Goslar was the historic street pattern. A priority first examples of the Saxon seat of the Holy Roman for the assimilation of such Land planning, urban design, architecture, timber-framed building style that urban regeneration, masterplanning and Emperors, but it was only later towns into the new Germany is development strategies. was to accompany us throughout that the town started to prosper going to have to be the knitting the rest of the tour. Unlike the as a result of the mining of back together of the original simple braced frame metals. The Emperors' Hall and urban spaces in order to create a characteristic of so many other the Cathedral became dilapidated community focus. Otherwise the regions of Germany, the typical and vanished at the beginning of inhabitants will vote with their Saxon house is jettied and highly the nineteenth century, but many feet. decorative, with rolls and swags substantial town houses testify to One of the benefits of the old under the jetty, and splayed feet the former wealth of the mine- East Germany was the low level to the upper storey posts University of Strathclyde owners. We were able to visit of car ownership, which enabled incorporating sunburst motifs. Dept of Architecture and Building that of the Siemens family, an extensive rural railway Science ancestors of the founder of the network to survive. The element Urban Design Studies Unit electrical engineering firm. The of this network which has the 131 Rottenrow Glasgow G4 0NG typical medieval Goslar house is most assured future is the Tel: 041 552 4400 ext 3011 arranged around a courtyard, to narrow-gauge Harz railway Fax: 041 552 3997 system, which reaches all parts Contact: Dr Hildebrand W Frey, Director, one side of which is a timber- Urban Design Studies Unit framed hall, whilst on the street of the area, including the UDSU offers its Postgraduate Course in frontage is a stone-built element, Brocken, the highest mountain, Urban Design in CPD, Diploma and MSc called a 'kemenate', containing and has steam traction every day modes. Topics range from the influence sleeping quarters and storage for of the year. This major 'plus' for of the city's form and structure on valuables in case of fire. tourism makes it possible to see balanced development to the design of This makes for a distinctive Quedlinburg lies at the foot of all the sights of the Harz region public spaces. townscape,particularly in a town a castle hill. Within the castle, without the use of a car. such as Einbeck (shown above), seat during the eleventh century To complete our overview of on the edge of the Harz, where of the Kings of Saxony, lies the the historic towns of a region, we This directory provides a service to the inhabitants strive to outdo pre-Romanesque Cathedral of St. visited an early-twentieth- potential clients when they are looking one another in the gaudiness with Servatius. We were already century attempt at recreating the for specialist professional advice on which they paint their houses. familiar with buildings of ethos of the German small projects involving urban design and Most of these houses seem to Carolingian date from seeing the historic town, the related matters and to students and professionals considering taking an date from the sixteenth century, Abbey of Corvey on the Weser a Margarethenhohe development urban design course. as many towns had disastrous few days previously. The scale for housing Krupp workers at Those wishing to be included in future fires which destroyed the and elaboration of these churches Essen. It adds up to a civilised issues should contact John Billingham medieval building stock. The contrasts with the humble and attractive living 26 Park Road, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 same kind of house can be found English Saxon buildings of the environment, but, we felt, did 1DS. Tel 0235 526094. in the former East Germany, same period. Various stages of not contain sufficient continuous generally looking more drab and growth of the town of enclosed space to constitute a in need of maintenance. At Quedlinburg during the Middle town as such. • Hannoversch Miinden, a Ages were detectable. Though

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7 URBAN DESIGN GROUP forum for architects, town planners, engineers & landscape architects

The Urban Design Group, founded sixteen years ago, has to raise the profile of urban design. It has reciprocal been established to provide high standards of performance membership with a number of complementary and inter-professional cooperation in planning, organisations including Vision for London, and the British architecture, urban design, and other related disciplines; Urban Regeneration Association (B.U.R.A.). The U.D.G. and to educate the relevant professions and the public in has set out an agenda aimed at explaining urban design matters relating to urban design. Membership is made up and how, using urban design principles, the quality of the of architects, planners, landscape architects, engineers, environment can be raised. These principles are surveyors, historians, lawyers, photographers, in fact encapsulated in the U.D.G.s "The Good City". The Urban anyone interested in the quality of our built environment. Design Group continues to grow. Membership is national, Local authorities, practices, and universities are also and each region has its own convenor, who organises local members. The U.D.G. runs a series of public lectures, events. The subscription is £25 per year with a workshops and other events which are valid for C.P.D. concessionary rate for students of £14. If you would like The Kevin Lynch Memorial Lecture has attracted such more information on the U.D.G. please contact: speakers as Leon Krier, Peter Hall, Sir Roy Strong, and Sir Philip Dowson. Annual study tours are also organised. The U.D.G. publishes a quarterly magazine dealing with Susie Turnbull, Administrator: tel. 0235 815907 urban design issues and an Urban Design Source Book fax. 0235 819606 which identifies urban design practices, courses and Roger Evans, Regional coordinator: tel. 0869 350096 members. The U.D.G. is working closely with the R.T.P.I. Jon Rowland, Chairman: tel. 071 637 0181

SPIRIT OF ABERCROMBIE London in the 1990s & Beyond - Planning and Design

A one day conference will be held on Thursday 17 November from 9.30 a.m at the RIBA 66 Portland Place, London W1N 4AD. This year's joint RTPI/RIBA conference, supported by the UDG, will focus on critical planning and design issues in the capital, carrying forward Professor Abercrombie's vision as the inspiration for London in the next fifty years.

The first session will introduce the 1944 Greater London Plan and identify its most significant elements. Subsequent speakers will follow the early chapter headings of the plan on subjects such as population, new towns, industry, communications and the Green Belt. Each will summarise briefly the Plan's context, outline its impact, and speculate on how Abercrombie would recast his vision now.

Speakers will include Sir Peter Shepheard, Tony May, Frank Duffy, Ellis Hillman, Mervyn Miller, Cedric Price, Janice Morphet, Tom Turner, Richard Cole, Charles Knevitt and Paul Finch.

The Conference will be concluded by a personal view from Peter Hall who will aim to suggest an agenda for the next visionary plan.

Further details: contact Meta van der Steege on 071 580 5533.

URBAN DESIGN QUARTERLY OCTOBER 1994 1 7