Design for London was a unique experiment in urban planning, design and strategic thinking. Set up in 2006 by Mayor Ken Livingstone and his Architectural Advisor, Richard Rogers, the brief for the team was ‘to think about London, what made London design unique and how it could be made better’. Sitting within London government but outside its formal statutory responsibilities, it was given freedom to question and challenge. The team had no power or money, but it did have the licence to operate without the usual constraints of government. for london With introductions from Ken Livingstone and Richard Rogers, Design for London covers Experiments in urban thinking the tumultuous and heady period of the first decade of this century when London was a test bed for new ideas. It outlines how key projects such as the London Olympics, public space programmes, high street regeneration and greening programmes were managed, critically examines the lessons that might be learnt in strategic urban design and considers how a design agenda for London could be developed in the future. By providing an engaging account of the strategic approaches and work of Design for London, and documenting the particular methodology and approach to urban theory it developed, Design for London will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students of planning, urban design and architecture, and to current practitioners from the public, private and community sectors who are struggling to achieve regeneration through poorly understood ‘placemaking’ concepts. Peter Bishop is Professor of Urban Design at The Bartlett School of Architecture, London and the founding partner of Bishop & Williams Ltd. Lesley Williams Lesley Peter Bishop Edited by Lesley Williams is a Partner at Bishop & Williams Ltd. Edited by Peter Bishop and Lesley Williams Cover image: © Lesley Williams Free open access version available from Cover design: www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press www.ironicitalics.com Design for London Design for London Experiments in urban thinking Edited by Peter Bishop and Lesley Williams First published in 2020 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: www.uclpress.co.uk Collection © Editors, 2020 Text © Contributors, 2020 Images © Contributors and copyright holders named in captions, 2020 The authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Non-derivative 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This licence allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for personal and non-commercial use providing author and publisher attribution is clearly stated. Attribution should include the following information: Bishop, P and Williams, L. Design for London: Experiments in urban thinking. 2020. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111. 9781787358942 Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at http://creative commons.org/licenses/ Any third-party material in this book is published under the book’s Creative Commons licence unless indicated otherwise in the credit line to the material. If you would like to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. ISBN: 978-1-78735-896-6 (Hbk) ISBN: 978-1-78735-895-9 (Pbk) ISBN: 978-1-78735-894-2 (PDF) ISBN: 978-1-78735-897-3 (epub) ISBN: 978-1-78735-898-0 (mobi) DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787358942 There is still a chance against all the odds, if we fight, that some of it will turn out well. – Mark Brearley, Introduction to the Thames Gateway Strategy, 2004 Contents List of figures ix Notes on contributors xv Foreword: strategies for a global city xvii Ken Livingstone Foreword: London, a city of beauty, a city for its citizens xxiii Richard Rogers Acknowledgements xxvii Introduction: urban interventions in a time of rapid global change 1 Peter Bishop 1 London, the unique city: the establishment of the Architecture and Urbanism Unit 13 Peter Bishop, Lara Kinneir and Mark Brearley 2 Design for London: an interesting but short life 43 Peter Bishop, Lara Kinneir and Mark Brearley 3 High street places: doing a lot with a little 73 Tobias Goevert and Adam Towle 4 Better housing for London: how on earth did we pull that off? 112 Richa Mukhia 5 Peopled landscapes 142 Peter Bishop 6 Opportunism on a grand scale: using the Olympics as a catalyst for change 170 Peter Bishop, Esther Everett and Eleanor Fawcett 7 Selling the story: promotion, publicity and procurement 215 Isabel Allen, Peter Bishop and Eva Herr CONTENTS vii 8 Conclusions 243 Peter Bishop Index 253 viii DESIGN FOR LONDON List of figures 0.1 Who Designs London? 1 1.1 London, a city of neighbourhoods 14 1.2 Big ideas – small actions: analysis of opportunities for intervention on high streets and road corridors in London 25 1.3 Mapping and masterplanning: A+UU studies of London 27 1.4 Woolwich town centre masterplan 28 1.5 City East: the centre for London’s growth 31 1.6 City East: analysis of the morphology of the London Thames Gateway 32 1.7 Barking town centre: analysis of form and connections 33 1.8 The Mayor’s 100 Public Spaces programme 33 1.9 London Green Grid 34 1.10 Images from the London Streetscape Design Manual showing principles and examples of detailing 37 2.1 Open city: London, a cosmopolitan city of many nationalities 52 2.2 Proposals for Gillett Square in Hackney as part of the 100 Public Spaces programme 53 2.3 Richard Rogers (centre, in a characteristic coloured shirt) at the Design for London Advisory Panel 54 2.4 Influencing through policy documents 54 2.5 The Green Enterprise Zone: a conceptual plan for the regeneration of east London 62 3.1 Incremental urbanism as a collection of interlinked small-scale interventions: Bankside Urban Forest 75 3.2 Map of London (1832) showing Roman roads (in red) 76 3.3 London’s 600 high streets (outside the Central Activities Zone) 77 3.4 Whitechapel Road and Market 78 LIST OF FIGURES ix 3.5 Barking town centre folly. The folly wall was designed as a ruin to recapture Barking’s sense of its past. The wall references Barking Abbey and nearby Eastbury Manor House 85 3.6 Barking town centre arcade beneath affordable housing by AHMM 85 3.7 Barking town centre arboretum 86 3.8 Value, nurture, define, deliver: a methodology for incremental urbanism 87 3.9 Mapping community assets in Dalston 88 3.10 ‘Lots of projects everywhere’: incremental urbanism in Dalston 89–90 3.11 The Eastern Curve Community Garden summer project as wheatfield and flour mill 91 3.12 High Street 2012: conceptual design strategy 92 3.13 High Street 2012: projects and interventions 93 3.14 High Street 2012: refurbished terrace on Whitechapel Road, illustrating heritage as a key design anchor 94 3.15 High Street 2012: Aldgate to Whitechapel Road 94 3.16 High Street 2012: Altab Ali Park provides room to breathe just off Whitechapel Road 95 3.17 High Street 2012: Altab Ali Park community programme, using traditional Bangladeshi chalk paints 96 3.18 High Street 2012: proposals for Ocean Green and Mile End Waste 97 3.19 London, a city of high streets 98 3.20 Uxbridge to Romford: non-residential land uses 99 3.21 Diverse economic and cultural activity on Tooting High Street 100 3.22 Good to grow 104 3.23 Schematic representation of a Berlin radial road that runs from the city centre to the outer city through various types of neighbourhoods (2011) 105 4.1 The Parker Morris report: (a) Cover; (b) Livable housing 114 4.2 Housing for a Compact City: (a) Cover; (b) Three alternative approaches to designing at the same density 117 4.3 Cover, London Housing Design Guide, consultation draft, 2008 127 4.4 Cover, London Housing Design Guide, interim edition, 2010: clear, austere and easy to navigate 130 5.1 The Mayor’s 100 Public Spaces programme 149 x DESIGN FOR LONDON 5.2 New public space in Brixton 150 5.3 New public space in Woolwich 150 5.4 Dagenham Heathway to the Thames 151 5.5 Union Street, Southwark 151 5.6 The Mayor’s Great Spaces programme 154 5.7 London as a garden city 156 5.8 Connecting landscapes in east London 159 5.9 The East London Green Grid: a lattice of connected landscapes 160 5.10 The East London Green Grid: open space deficiency 161 5.11 The East London Green Grid: a series of small projects 162 5.12 The East London Green Grid: small projects in south-east London 163 5.13 East London, showing the correlation of flood risk, major development projects and the East London Green Grid 164 5.14 East London Green Grid partnership bodies 164 5.15 Thames Gateway Parklands: a regional green grid 166 6.1 The London Olympics as a catalyst to move the city eastwards into the Thames Gateway 172 6.2 Aerial view (looking north) of the future Olympic site in the Lower Lea Valley in 2005 172 6.3 London’s road network, showing the Lower Lea Valley as a ‘tear’ in London’s fabric 173 6.4 The five key spatial strategies for the Lower Lea Valley: (a) Neighbourhoods and communities; (b) The connected valley; (c) The working valley; (d) Thriving centres; (e) Water city 176–7 6.5 Mapping the connectivity of the Lower Lea Valley 178 6.6 Integration of the Olympic legacy vision with the existing and proposed town centres 179 6.7 Preparing the Olympic site, March 2008 180 6.8 The multitude of overlapping boundaries and organisations operating across the