Civilising London Spaces

Tackling oligarchy: wider pavements

London is the richest city in the country and its wealth is conspicuously, often obscenely, displayed. At the same time public spending per capita is higher in London than anywhere else in the country as a patronising Paxo was forced to concede in his bruising encounter with Plaid Cymru. Public investment in public transport and the public realm is massive and that is a good thing – would be nice if the rest of the country got a look in too but London is a world city and a different world from the provinces. There is a big question however about how wisely this public largesse is being spent. London is also the most unequal city in Europe and that too is horrifyingly obvious, yet so much public investment is directed to vanity projects, mostly Boris inspired. However there are also some good examples of relatively low cost enhancements of public spaces which really improve the quality of city life.


Pedestrian friendly crossing to the new King's Cross

It is a commonplace to say that London is a city of contrasts but nowhere is this more so than Euston Road where the great stations disgorge provincial hopefuls into the maelstrom. Euston of course, now a byword for philistinism and public squalor, is to be redeveloped as the mother of all Grimshaw stations due to the tenacity of the HS2 train spotter tendency. The implications of this for the rest of the rail system and indeed for the onward journey of HS2 passengers have not been thought through, following in a great British tradition of non-joined up planning. Expect chaos.


How the elite arrive in London

St Pancras, now basking in the sunshine of its magnificent re-invention, must be about the most exhilarating station to arrive at in the world. And I say that despite the fact that my Midland trains have been pushed out into a utilitarian annexe. However, I do baulk at the privatisation of what was the station’s magnificent booking hall much as I applaud the painstaking restoration of the hotel. What seems a particular wasted opportunity is the elevated forecourt above the clamour of Euston Road which has been beautifully paved but is mostly used as a car park for the 5* hotel. Although not exactly private, the signals of uniformed flunkeys and privileged access for cars certainly doesn’t encourage public use.


How everyone else arrives

Across the way McAslan’s new concourse to King’s Cross is just opening and looks sufficiently exciting and robust against the magnificent power of Cubitt’s station. As with St Pancras the cleaning and reglazing of the train sheds is creating an extraordinary transformation. But the biggest benefit should be the clearance of the tat in front of the station’s monumental façade and the creation of a new public square – except this won’t be the entrance to the station and the square will give onto the snarling bedlam of Euston Road. The new square has been designed by Stanton Williams who got it spectacularly right with their minimalist conversion and extensions of the King’s Cross goods sheds for Central St Martins. However I fear their stark approach to the new square is wrong headed. The station façade is certainly very dominating and the design of the square must not compete with this. But its other perimeter is Euston Road. How or why a civilised city would tolerate this idiotic and selfish traffic is beyond me, and it is worst at the King’s Cross gyratory. There is only one solution – to massively reduce the number of private vehicles and put pedestrians, cyclists and buses first. But the Mayor has bottled this. King’s Cross Square surely needs some enclosure, some attempt at tranquillity and to be somewhere that people can meet and enjoy, not just an external concourse.


FFS - Tavistock Place

Along Euston Road the British Library has very successfully created just such a place. The spacious courtyard with subtle enclosure and changes of level is screened from the road and provides a very tranquil and reflective environment which is a prelude to the library itself. This is one of the most important public buildings of the late C20th - thoughtful, practical and beautifully detailed and executed. The tremendous interior spaces flow from the courtyard and have great quality of materials and design so that the building reveals its pleasures slowly. St John Wilson managed to achieve this despite the parsimony of government, delays and controversy which HRH famously fanned - testament to the values and public service ethos of his generation of architects.


Byng Place is shared space

Opposite the library is Camden Town Hall – not a particularly remarkable building in itself but home to some excellent thinking about streets and urban design, the pole opposite of Boris bling. Camden includes Bloomsbury, perhaps the most simpatico part of central London although 50 years ago Nairn pronounced it was dead. Cycling on the Euston Road is terrifying and foolhardy but there are relatively quiet alternative routes through Bloomsbury. These include an extremely popular segregated two way track along Tavistock Place. However this is very narrow and at times really congested - the balance between traffic, cycles and pedestrians is just not right. However the continuation of the cycle route westward at Byng Place has recently been redesigned as part of a shared space repaving scheme which I think is extraordinarily successful. It is all very simple and designed as an entity with uniform setts. There is a kerb between the carriageway and the paved area where cyclists mingle happily with pedestrians. What was pretty much a non place with endless taxis rattling through has now become a very pleasant new square. The traffic is still there but is slower, less dominating and the feeling is relaxed, tranquil, civilised. The adjacent farmers’ market makes it a lively people-place and an excellent spot for lunch even in March.


Widening pavements and reducing signage 

Malet Street which leads south towards Covent Garden has also been utterly transformed from what was a somewhat dour street of university institutions and parking to a text book model of sensible use of space. The street is now one way for cars and there is even some parking, principally for electric cars and car clubs. The pavements have been widened to allow for pleasant passegiata but, perhaps most importantly, the carriageway can now provide a very comfortable two way cycle route on the street with no need for fussy layout and signing. It is simple, very elegant and very functional. The same principles are applied to Montague Place outside the north entrance to the British Museum, although I’m not sure about Delia’s Kitchen Afrika van which seems to have taken up squatters’ rights here – perhaps I am being too anal.


Squaring the corners and defeating the racetrack - Russell Square

The massive improvements to this main bike route would not have been possible without the recent remodelling of Russell Square. London did not invent squares but London squares are one of its most distinctive features and biggest assets. In the 1960s many fell victim to the traffic engineers and one way systems of roaring traffic which so damaged street life, pedestrian convenience and cyclists’ safety. These traffic schemes were a stealthy sequestration of the wide roads which had not been designed primarily for traffic and parking but for proportion, outlook, light and public health. The street space had been multi functional – now pedestrians were penned into narrow pavements with awkward multi stage crossings and the geometry of the squares encouraged high traffic speeds. Russell Square, laid out in 1800, is one of the largest London squares but its fine public park was the centre of a race track. The new road layout has utterly transformed its setting. The streets are now two way and the junctions are a simple T, allowing straight desire line pedestrian crossings. Pavements are widened and some parking bays provided but visually these are part of the repaving. It all works brilliantly and is now a really comfortable place for pedestrians and cyclists. Although traffic is still heavy on the main Southampton Row to Woburn Place route at least you can now cross the street easily. The one thing in short supply is bike stands although Barclay bike stations are everywhere in evidence. Russell Square shows what can be achieved with political will, simple good design…and reasonable public funding.


The revolution will be repaved - Bedford Square

At the other end of Montague Place is Bedford Square, completed in 1786, and as Pevsner says ‘the most handsome of London squares, preserved completely on all sides’. The gardens in a central oval remain private but there is extensive ‘public highway’ outside the railings. This has now largely been reclaimed from taxis and parking in a very simple and effective solution and the new public space ‘borrows’ the private gardens in a very democratic way. It is somewhat galling that this new public space is being abused by American style anti-abortion campaigners seeking to intimidate women attending a clinic here.


Turning a traffic jam into a public space - Great Queen St

Bloomsbury’s public realm improvements are often very simple, like just widening pavements, improving crossings and civilising anarchic parking but they are characterised by good uncluttered design and quality paving. Other areas have similarly been improved, like Lincoln’s Inn and Covent Garden. There is a problem however in linking these up because of the horrendous traffic around Holborn which makes it a no go area for all but the most testosterone fuelled cyclists. Like Euston Road a far more radical approach to this conflict is required.


We don't need your private gardens - Fitzroy Square

Across the chasm of Tottenham Court Road, Camden and Westminster are currently consulting on an Action Plan for the fascinating Fitzrovia area based on a study by Urban Initiatives. This shows how public space and green space can be reclaimed even within a very tight and busy mixed use environment. It is bizarre that the restaurants of Charlotte Street do not spill out into the street which is dominated by parking. However Fitzroy Square provides an object lesson in sensible urban improvement. Two sides of the square are by Robert Adam but like Bedford Square the circular gardens remain private. What was the highway outside the railings is now pedestrian space with plenty of seating and views into and across the gardens - all delightful except for the litter which is everywhere.


Look, no guard rails and foot friendly kerbs !

Kensington High Street is one of the best known examples of rethinking highway design, although this was as much to do with libertarianism as aesthetics with politics overruling professionalism. And it works. The street is pretty much dominated by traffic but pedestrians have much more freedom and it looks crisp and uncluttered. Idiot rails have been removed, except I notice outside the Underground station. Pavement thresholds continue across side streets and there is a central reservation you can walk along – brilliant idea – as are the bike stands here, some of which are improvised. This really is a very practical model for high streets.


Exhibition Rd - making a bad exhibition of shared space.


The speedy car is still priority - Inequality Space

You could not say the same about the recently completed showpiece shared space on Exhibition Road. The concept is good – to make a grand visual and pedestrian axis between South Kensington, the V&A, Natural History and Science Museums and Kensington Gardens, the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall. Despite its grand buildings and the crowds of museum visitors Exhibition Road lacked interest and was certainly not geared for the pedestrian. The new scheme designed by Dixon Jones is definitely better – but with a price tag of £29m is just not value for money. This is not the fault of the architects but rather of the brief.


The London elite don't really get sharing.

The shared space concept is controversial and will be more so after Exhibition Road. It is based on the Dutch inspired principles that all road users need to take responsibility to ‘negotiate’ rights of way and this is safer than segregated and directed flows. This certainly seems sensible. My wife once had a research job investigating accidents, the conclusion of which was, broadly, that when roads look safe they are dangerous and vice-versa. (It also made her the worst car passenger in the world.) However to make shared space work it is not enough to remove physical barriers, signs and other paraphernalia – you also need to change the psychology of ‘ownership’ of the space. The problem with Exhibition Road is that this has only partially been achieved


Behind the parking, pedestrians stick to the old pavement lines - big wow.

The political deal is that the road space has basically been divided into three. The westernmost section alongside the Natural History Museum is meant to be a broad sidewalk. The eastern section adjacent to the V&A is a two way street. Amazingly and absurdly the central section is reserved for residents’ parking bays. The Dixon Jones design attempts to provide a false unity to this division in an overall wall-to-wall diamond pattern of white on black Chinese granite setts. This is elegant and not as assertive as I was expecting - although the central light columns on kerbed islands are – big time. Otherwise the detailing is all very nice but actually tends to reinforce the timidity of the central concept. For example the elegant cast iron drainage channels provide a visual kerb which eats into the pedestrian space, as do the residents’ parking spaces with their discreet studs. So the pedestrians don’t gain a lot in space. They would certainly be foolhardy to try and share the road space because the traffic comes in fast moving pulses whenever the lights change (the pace set by taxis of course). This is still effectively a segregated street and the reason for this is the visual and physical division caused by the very expensively paved residents’ car parking bays. This is a telling expression of Kensington priorities but really speaks of political timidity.


£29,000,000 spent on residents' parking for the super rich

Further evidence of political timidity is the failure to tackle the dominance of Cromwell Road, which slashes across the granite with tarmac and roaring traffic (although to be fair the pedestrian crossings are much improved). Then there is an abject failure to make meaningful visual or pedestrian connection across Kensington Gore to the park or the Royal Albert Hall. Indeed the upper section of Exhibition Road reverts to a traditional street layout complete with a very gross roundabout at the Prince Consort Road junction to speed traffic. All this is rather strange as Exhibition Road is the baby of Daniel Moylan, responsible for the groundbreaking Kensington High Street and now Boris’s deputy chairman of TfL. Exhibition Road is not a bad scheme but a compromised one which comes with a big price tag. Lots of lessons should be learnt for the future but it is telling that there has been little interest in the planning press or in the transport press, except for the excellent John Dales. That the architectural press take this important scheme seriously tells us a lot about relative professional values.


Flat Iron Square - Southwark

As well as big ticket items like Exhibition Road there are lots of interesting small scale, low cost improvements to be found in London, often the result of the enterprise and dedication of Council planners. A nice one spotted on our recent sortie to Southwark is at the junction of Southwark Bridge Road and Union Street. What was little more than a traffic island but with a characterful island café, some plane trees and the drama of the railway viaduct on its north side has been reimagined as a pleasant and interesting paved space including cycle priorities. As much aimed at regeneration of a run down quarter as at urban design, it deserves to be successful.


Playing frogger with your life - Bow Interchange

Way out east within sight of the absurd Anish Kapoor Olympic Tower, which will surely be Boris’s epitaph, we found a pedestrian and cycle scheme which really restores your faith in the value of good design. If Euston Road is unpleasant Bow Interchange is insane with a neo motorway in underpasses and a flyover speeding traffic between Bow Road (which is actually quite civilised) and Stratford High Street which needs to be civilised if Stratford is to achieve any of its potential as a recognisable part of central London post the Olympics. The roundabout between is notorious and two cyclists have been killed recently, movingly remembered by ghost bikes.


...and take a right turn, into the church

A masterplan for the area has already resulted in the renovation of the quirky Bow Church in the middle of Bow Road but the traffic is hugely dominant and dangerous. Plans for a cycle and pedestrian route across the flyover don’t seem like the answer to me. Leicester is getting rid of its Belgrave flyover. Surely TfL could do the same, but don’t hold your breath.


Sod the Olympics, lets have more of this 

The Bow Riverside project is beneath the notorious Interchange and links what were discontinuous footpaths/cycleways on either side of the River Lea Navigation leading northwards to the Olympic Park and southwards to Limehouse. Previously you had to traverse the deadly roundabout. The new link is basically a long Z walkway and bridge supported by robust stanchions set in the waterway. These are protected by fenders and create a habitat-rich water environment off the working navigation. Fencing in vertical hardwood timber batons ties the project together and creates a wonderfully satisfying and tranquil rhythm echoing the reed beds developing in the water below. What is great about this project is that it is so subtle and understated. It is not imposing itself on the riparian character, just complementing it. The cleverest thing is the way the cantilevered section of walkway beneath the roundabout is handled. This has very low headroom and is quite lengthy. Often such pedestrian/cycle routes can be really intimidating and unpleasant but here it is handled so well with low level lighting on the railings twinkling in the water below. Designed by Adams and Sutherland it is a real winner. It should be the start of a broader greening of Bow Interchange. There are lots of fairly marginal activities on land adjacent to the roundabout which could be made a much greener environment. Bow Interchange may never be a London square but it could and should be a hell of a lot better than it is now.


Guard rails - go faster stripes and pedestrian imprisonment

As London continues to boom, perversely benefitting from the financial instability in the rest of the world which it kind of had quite a lot to do with, it is going to have to make some difficult choices. The DfT forecast traffic growth of 43% by 2035 which is of course bollocks but is a useful fallacy as it can help London to confront reality. There is no way that the capital can accommodate such traffic growth and remain a liveable and competitive city. Bur Boris is eating his fine libertarian words of a few years ago about pedestrians in cattle pens etc. and is now promising more investment in roads, more guard rails and pedestrian bridges. Boris, you are pathetic  - stop appeasing the car minority and support the good work being done in the Boroughs to civilise London spaces.


Behind enemy lines - Kensington

Bankside, Borough & Bermondsey

Vulliamy's sturgeon - the origin of municipal design in London

The annoying thing about exploring London these days is that in virtually all long views the Shard will pop up. It is like an irritating splinter in your finger that you are always aware of and can’t get rid of - it really pisses you off. But at least you now know where Southwark is – that seems to be the idea. Well actually I knew where Southwark was before and wonder why the Borough has lumbered itself with this boorish icon which would be far more at home in Docklands or Brum.

One day there will be a Blue Plaque for Lang Rabbie  - Southwark Bridge Rd

Southwark is more subtle than that - an extraordinarily complex urban landscape shaped by the river, marshy ground, bridges, viaducts and multifarious activities deemed unsuitable for the City. Its rich mix of buildings and townscape is highly eclectic, often eccentric, usually humane and if sometimes monumental  rarely pompous. Beyond the South Bank crocodile walk it is the smaller scale lively street scenes that dominate your memory of the place. The reinvention of Bankside over the last few decades has been an extraordinary success story but then if you could not make urban regeneration work here you could not make it work anywhere. The catastrophic decline of local industries induced by right wing dogma opened up mouth watering development opportunities just as Mrs Thatcher also pulled the pin out of the hand grenade of deregulation in the adjacent City. But it is not quite as straightforward as that. For a start, glitzy regeneration does not extend far inland and few of the jobs in the new regenerated Bankside seem to go to Southwark residents. It remains one of the most deprived places in the country.


That Halifax advert has much to answer for -  Shad Thames

It would be churlish not to celebrate Bankside which has added a new dimension to London as a global city. Much of this riverside went largely unnoticed until relatively recently and it was Lord Foster’s beautiful if initially wobbly bridge that really changed perceptions and accessibility. Most of London’s bridges are quite difficult and hostile for pedestrians, unlike Paris, but the Millennium Bridge is intimate and very convenient. Not only that but it creates a clear axis between two of the great emblematic temples of London – St Paul's and Tate Modern. The perverse but brilliant decision to establish Tate Modern in the former Giles Gilbert Scott power station built only 40 years before was a real game changer. This grim structure with its fabulous brickwork was converted by Hertzog and de Meuron and opened in 2000. Its success was immediate and overwhelming but I have always felt it is somewhat disappointing. The huge turbine hall is, yes, huge but nothing much happens there. The actual galleries are cramped and the circulation spaces confused and crowded. I’m not sure the extraordinary new extension - big enough dwarf the original power station - will change this.


Elevating pedestrians 

The entrance plaza from the Millennium Bridge is poor and scrappy but this does not actually matter, partly because the building  itself is so overwhelming but also because the success of Bankside does not rely on self conscious ‘public space’ – quite the reverse. The riverside walk is so successful because the public space is actually limited and very subsidiary. The experience is all about people in motion – not just tourists but joggers, cyclists, people going to work. It is not a place you want to or need to linger. The river views are also exciting and, compared to Westminster for example, the Thames has a harder estuarial character with dangerous tides and currents very evident. The buildings flanking the riverside walk are mostly interesting with lots of conversions and remnants of old London to leaven the boring and bland. The Globe is bizarre but actually rather likable and there are real archaeological finds, like Winchester Palace. The walk is anything but boring – the street is the point not the paving, although I notice major new paving is currently underway.


Borough High Street hiding from the Shard

After diving under bridges and behind buildings you end up at Southwark Cathedral and Borough Market and their thrilling juxtaposition with the railway viaducts. Nairn said that the unsentimental throwing together of the cathedral, railway and warehouses is the essence of place which should never be sacrificed and it hasn’t been. If anything the new Thameslink viaduct has heightened the drama, flying over old buildings in a cavalier but very exciting way. Borough Market remains a fabulous place but in danger of losing its soul to too much gentrification.


Neo balls up

The other way to Borough from Blackfriars is along Southwark Street, a wide Hausmann-like improvement which always somewhat lacked empathy. It is now overwhelmed by the looming Shard and dominated by massive and rather faceless new buildings, the latest being Rogers Stirk Harbour’s Neo-Bankside. This has an extraordinary juxtaposition of cold glass and steel against the C18th Hopton almshouses, very reminiscent of the relationships you find between the medieval remnants of Coventry and the post blitz city. Like the adjacent Allies and Morrison’s Blue Fin building, Neo-Bankside is not without elegance, subtlety and precision but ultimately inhuman. We must be grateful for the wit and interest of Piers Gough’s nearby Bankside Lofts. Also Allies and Morrison show how it should be done with their own offices on Southwark Street.


Introducing the council style - off Long Lane

It does not help that Neo-Bankside is offering bargain apartments (inevitably with stunning views) at £1.5 million to £5 million in a borough where most residents are poor and there is a desperate need for social housing. Away from the hum of tourism and creative media much of Borough and Bermondsey is social housing as can be seen on the first part of the train journey from London Bridge to Brighton . This is an enthralling ride not because of the Shard but for the impressive mass of varied and well built council housing. Some general changes in the aesthetics of local authority housing can be discerned: Jacobean-arts and crafts, neo-Georgian blending into a Viennese brave new world, Scando-modernist, a full blooded GLC brutalism and finally a low rise quasi vernacular reaction. The mistakes at Aylesbury and Heygate have been a gift for reactionary polemicists yet for the vast majority of cases in north Southwark council housing clearly worked. 'erbert Morrison and Co. really did create a better future.


Peabody flats - when bankers were at least civil

Any tour of Southwark’s social housing is inevitably partial and arbitrary. The earliest example is probably the 1864 model industrial dwellings with cast iron balconies on Redcross Way which are fairly grim. However Octavia Hill’s 1887 Redcross Cottages and gardens nearby are delightful. Our perambulation starts on Blackfriars Road near the Palestra Building. Designed by Will Alsop, the Ken Russell of the architectural world, this is a really successful building - large but subtle, fun without being frivolous (unlike so much else of his work).It is a true local landmark and puts us in a good mood for a tour on a bright but freezing day, starting off walking southwards on Blackfriars Road. Palestra rises above but does not dominate Nelson Square. A fragment of the late Georgian original survives but the rest is post war redevelopment with 8-9 storey council flats. Pevsner says they are dull, but actually they seem quite desirable to me with their effective rhythm of balconies overlooking the retained square, its public greenery and play space. Many of the housing schemes we are to see evoke the traditional London square, often quite successfully. On Surrey Row archetypal LCC 30s deck access flats are unsurely poised between neo Georgian and streamlined moderne.


London municipality - 1899 housing off Lancaster St

Peabody Square of 1870 looks almost Parisian. It is quite grand; less crowded and institutional than most Peabody estates with well proportioned blocks around pleasant courts which look well cared for. Peabody, as a plaque explains, was a London banker. Don’t hold your breath for such philanthropy from the present sharks. Behind on Webber Row 1970s Peabody houses and flats have a robust design and clever plan. Tall turn of the (20th) century LCC blocks are nicely detailed and the composition of bicycles chained to balconies adds a further level of visual interest. Facing Waterloo Road the flats sensibly incorporate shops. This is the era which signifies London's comparatively late rise to municipality, when progressives the like of Sidney Webb oversaw the planning of County Hall, tramway electrification, school meals, housing estates and slum clearance. The earliest housing is on Lancaster Street (1889) and compared to Webber Row illustrates the change from Jacobean to Arts and Crafts.


GLC brutalism hoves into view - Jurston St

Towards Westminster Bridge Road the scale gets bigger with uncompromising 1970s hard red brick blocks, surprisingly sporting tall chimneys and small gardens, and impressive 8 storey pre-war angled deck access apartments. The confident house building stride of the LCC was disrupted by the introduction of the GLC and the financial effects of the oil crisis. Nevertheless the flats off Jurston Street (and the nearby Kipling Estate) show that the GLC had a bold stab at bricky brutalism. Now with the demolition of the Heygate Estate Southwark are building a number of small scale new housing schemes for its residents, like the interesting and precise housing and open space at Library Street off Borough Road. These are designed by Metaphorm Architects and Sarah Wigglesworth.


Density, intimacy & noddy - the Scovell Estate

The earlier reaction to often badly executed mega deck access developments has frequently resulted in disappointing and inappropriate sub-suburban housing schemes in inner cities (like Surrey Quays). But there were also examples like the Scovell Estate, designed by Southwark architects department in the 1970s, which aims at a low rise villagey effect. The houses are grouped off vehicle free lanes and yards – the cars in an undercroft and the level change created is used to good effect. The atmosphere is remarkably quiet and intimate with nice juxtapositions but there are a lot of blank gables with little of the informal surveillance you would find in a real village and rather too much hard paving.


Social ceramics - Lawson Estate


A jolly rhythm - Lawson Estate, by Burnet, Tait & Partners


Scando town - Lawson Estate

Down Trinity Street and past the early Victorian Trinity Church Square, which Nairn pronounced one of the best squares in London, is the Lawson Estate of 1953. The great man also singled this out for praise, comparing it to housing in Copenhagen: ‘the similarity is unnerving: the same angular polygonal blocks, the same beautifully cut bricks and the same feeling of people first and architectural expression second.’ He was less enamoured of the tall standard LCC concrete slabs added later. Across Great Dover Street is an estate designed by Lubetkin in 1965, not particularly remarkable and somewhat run down but quite a pleasing ensemble of medium and low rise flats around gardens.


The template worked - Tabard Gardens

Far more characteristic of the area is the neo Georgian of the blocks behind Tabard Gardens (there is a lot of Chaucer around here). The Tories ruled the LCC from 1907 to 1934 and there is a shift toward paternalist aesthetics: an imperial neo-Georgian with barrack like symmetry. Yet the architects actually subvert this with quite functionalist interpretation. The blocks employ a standard template but are set amongst generous greenery in a tranquil environment. The standard template clearly worked, and still works today.


Materials and typography from LCC's neo-Georgian years

North of here on Weston Street is an archetypal 60s redevelopment of tower blocks with lower scale courtyard flats; altogether a harder and more challenging proposition but elegant in its composition. It is opposite the fine Leather Market of 1878 now well converted into offices. Most ex-industrial buildings nearby are converted to trendy apartments as we are on the edge of the ‘creative industries’ bit of Bermondsey.


'Good old 'erb' - Meakin Estate

The huge 1902 Hartley Jam Factory complex off Tower Bridge Road has been converted to flats, studios, offices and with its live-work ethos is an exemplar for ‘new’ Bermondsey regeneration chic. Opposite is the 30s Meakin Estate with its wonderfully dramatic mirrored horse shoe arched entrances. This represents an earlier and more substantial vision for Bermondsey. The design owes something to the Fuchsenfeldhof in Vienna or possibly Copenhagen and is very convincing and moving. There are many other blocks of flats nearby with similar inspiration and motifs. They speak volumes of the pride and aspiration of an earlier London and its political leaders such as 'erbert 'Labour gets things done' Morrison. He set out to create 'the most powerful local political organization ever to exist in this country' and he did. By the end of the 1930s the LCC was building around 4,000 flats every year - four times as many as the previous administration. Morrison stood up to Imperial Whitehall and his social policies had powerful implications for the post war era.


Post-war social confidence - off Grange Walk

On Grange Walk blocks of 6 storey maisonettes with expressive open stairwells are set in expansive greenery and have been provided with local amenities like shops. The estate underscores the confidence in society, planning and the future which was such a characteristic of post war Britain. In the post-war era LCC architects like Robert Matthew and Leslie Martin gradually cast aside the old templates as they developed a Scando-Modernist aesthetic of their own. The twenty years leading up to 1981 saw the percentage of local authority housing in inner London increased from a fifth to nearly half – no wonder Mrs Thatcher abolished the GLC. The resurgence of the right re-imposed old orthodoxies which justify and sustain the sort of inequalities that are particularly evident in Southwark, as is so eloquently explored in Owen Jones’s brilliant ‘Chavs’.


Cardiff Bay-on-Thames - Empire Square

In the era of neo-con ascendancy Southwark has made some brave attempts to emulate the housing achievements of its illustrious predecessors but has been obliged to use Thatcherite methods which massively limit its ability to deliver. Bermondsey Spa is a good example. Here a new community of 2,000 homes with schools, health facilities etc is emerging based on a Llewellyn Davis masterplan and employing architectural competition as a tool. The estate agents with typical hyperbole advertise it as ‘London’s best new place to live’. Certainly there is a feel of urbanity in places but the actual buildings are fairly standard with oh so much of that jolly spectrum of cladding. This is nothing however to Empire Square off Long Lane, which is rightly castigated by the excellent local blog as the worst new development in north Southwark by a long shot. What is so crass about this scheme is the whole nonsense about creating a new public square. Yeah right, but a square surrounded by overbearing and faceless crap is of no public value.


The future of social housing? Bermondsey Island

Bermondsey Square is not crap but it is disappointing. It has lots of advantages - terminating wonderful Bermondsey Street, archaeological heritage and the weekly antiques market - but it does not really come alive as a space. You might have expected lots of interesting uses capturing the vitality of the streets around with their mixture of chic and eel and pie shops. (Apparently eels are currently in short supply.) What you actually get is fairly ordinary café-bars, an overpriced deli, a Sainsbury Local and a cinema (although this is not very obvious). The buildings defining the space are a bit like Muji storage – minimal, functional and ubiquitous. Being boxes they have difficulty in effectively defining the awkward geometry of the surrounding streets and creating an inviting inner space. The final phase, Bermondsey Island is much more engaging – a carefully sculpted and articulated janus of a building by Urban Salon which provides good social housing on a difficult site.


The charming village idiot

Bermondsey Street is the sort of place which makes London irresistible with its wonderful jumble of buildings, fashionable uses and interesting punters. It is a conservation exemplar: former leather factories and their hoists jostle for space – at times you could be in Antwerp. The ancient rhythm of the street is punctured by the brilliantly eccentric dumpy Strawberry Hill Gothick of St Mary Magdalene. Bermondsey Street is one of those 'London villages' of the middle class return-to-town movement, which has actually been ongoing since at least the 1960s – remember Mick Jagger’s Notting Hill pad in Performance? These began with left of centre media and arts types and the estate agents followed later. Also known as gentrification, the village ideal has helped to preserve an historic fabric and successfully lobby against excessive road building schemes, yet the other side of the coin is that it can be socially divisive. While skilled workers left the estates as work moved westward the poorest remained, which created two Londons - 'inner city' and 'village'. The myth that council estate equals sink estate stems from a misinterpretation of recent history.


Another bourgeois barrow boy's curio stall - The White Cube

But although inner city and village are different worlds, they arguably co-exist more easily in north Southwark than in much of London. This is partly because of the smaller scale and diversity of much of the social housing which has been developed very largely within the old street network. Also new developments were, until recently, of more modest scale and with a stronger emphasis on quality and good design. Despite the tensions you do not sense a void between separate planets as in Docklands where social housing is overpowered by yuppie bling in its face. But it is fairly absurdist to find the latest White Cube gallery half way down Bermondsey Street. Described as ‘uber-frigid’ by the very amusing Tom Dyckhoff in his recent ‘Let’s move to Bermondsey’ it is certainly very white. The attendants wear black and stop you taking photographs. Currently there is an interesting exhibition of work by Anselm Kiefer with massive works on what I took to be industrial decline and dereliction (hugely relevant). Chris was resolutely unimpressed by the experience.


Dubai-on-Thames

Around every corner looms the Shard. Its presence becomes overwhelming when you reach St Thomas Street but here it has to compete with the 30 storey tower of Guy’s Hospital. This has been reviled as a concrete eyesore for decades and is shortly and sadly to suffer the indignity of cladding. This is a pity because it has clarity, integrity and purpose. It makes a very effective ensemble with the tranquil entrance courtyard to Guy’s but now the Shard is muscling in. You can escape it by ducking into the C18th Guy’s Hospital Chapel, singled out for praise by Nairn most especially for John Bacon’s monument to the compassion of Thomas Guy. But there is no escape for St Thomas Street, with its former church of 1702 (where the attic became an early operating theatre and is now a museum). Keats used to live opposite. Now the severely elegant late Georgian terraces are totally overwhelmed by bad neighbour development. Whilst we will inevitably get used to the Shard in the long views, the impact on St Thomas Street is criminal.


Please, no More London

There is only one vantage point I found from which the Shard looks good and that is More London. Lord Foster’s huge development is ‘sleek, efficient, scrupulously detailed and built to a well tried formula’ as Ken Powell says in his analysis of architecture and regeneration in Southwark 'City Reborn'. More London captures the ambition of Southwark to be central London, not an inner London borough. It is now the home of the Mayor himself in the slightly disturbing asymmetrical City Hall. Within this context the courting of the Shard by mayors and other politicos looks more understandable. No doubt the contribution the developer is making to the revamped London Bridge Station helped too. This is badly needed but the external images of Grimshaw's scheme look pretty disappointing. The Tooley Street elevation has been compared to a Waitrose and the wavy canopies too look apologetic - hardly his Waterloo International or the peer of say Calatrava's thrilling Oriente station in Lisbon. The station is subservient to the bombast of the Shard. But whatever the architectural virtues of the Shard, and I am far from convinced it will live up to the expectations of its supporters, the political statement that it makes couldn't be more relevant to the current political debate on inequality and the overwheening power of finance. It is 'sod you'.


Public vs Private - Guy's Tower & the Shard

Southwark has got a lot to be proud of in its regeneration, as examined in ‘City Reborn’. More so than most authorities it has taken advantage of its opportunities and has promoted good architecture (if we forget Strata). But the rationale for the massive scale of development has been to provide housing and jobs for local people and this is proving increasingly difficult to deliver. Despite the efforts of the planning authority, developers are not fulfilling their part of the bargain, especially affordable housing that is actually affordable or jobs for local people. Poorer residents risk being increasingly marginalised by the continuing colonisation of the 'City' and the 'village'. In theory Localism will empower them, but actually this is just a cruel charade to mask the increasing power of business.


The white cliffs - Great Dover St

The record of previous generations in delivering successful municipal housing has been largely obscured by Thatcherite rewriting of history. But it is the failures of her model of the housing market that are now all too apparent. London's municipal housing record looks increasingly impressive and needs to be much better understood and celebrated. Much excellent research and analysis has already been done by Elain Harwood, Matthew Whitfield and others. Hopefully this will be expanded into a comprehensive reinterpretation of its achievements of municipal housing which is badly needed. And what London badly needs is a new 'erbert Morrison, not another four years of Boris buffoonery.


SE1 is a museum of social housing - Redcross Cottages

--

References:

Pevsner
Nikolaus Pevsner & Bridget Cherry, London 2: South
Jerry White, London in the Twentieth Century 
Stephen Inwood, A History of London
Kenneth Powell, City Reborn
Elain Harwood & Alan Powers, Housing the Twentieth Century
Ian Nairn, Nairn's London
Owen Jones, Chavs  

Glasgow Revisited

You can stick your Englishman's castle - Camphill Avenue

With Scottish secession a distinct possibility we face the horrifying prospect of a permanent Tory Westminster. Even worse, the ex-industrial Midlands and North (and Cornwall) will be the only remnants of Empire left to the incompetence and condescension of the Establishment. Emigration to Scotland seems a very attractive option especially with the dividend of global warming (I may be wrong about that). Scotland with its wonderfully urban cities and towns, boundless countryside and wilderness, magical coast and islands – who would not want to live there? Well of course there are some deep seated social and economic problems too, and these are especially pronounced in Glasgow and Strathclyde. There is a real danger that the new Scotland will reflect the English north/south split in a Caledonian west/east divide with the capital city of Edinburgh, like most European capitals, dominating political, financial and creative life to the detriment of its larger neighbour.


A city where this is ordinary

I love Glasgow – I just get such a buzz from being there. The only place I know which can compete is Chicago, a city which shares many similarities although not the skyscrapers. Glasgow is so American in feel, but also so European, actually so British as opposed to Scottish or English. It is so much its own place. The sadness is that with most new development it is becoming less distinctive, more second rate. Glasgow must be sick of all this advice. Fifty years ago Gomme and Walker’s tome captured the city in all its splendour but just when it was losing so much of it. Ian Nairn pronounced ‘unless the city wakes up to a sense of its greatness Glasgow is heading for disaster’. Thirty years ago local historian Francis Worsdall published ‘The City that Disappeared’ (a bit of an exaggeration).Twenty years ago the Buildings of Scotland catalogued Glasgow’s outstanding architectural legacy. Gavin Stamp spent years raging against the iniquities of the City Council and its neglect of Greek Thompson and the rest of its extraordinary heritage and many, probably most, Glaswegians supported him. Most recently Owen Hatherley told the city it was looking for the future in all the wrong places – but I don’t think the Glasgow authorities are listening.


Pioneers of the Modern... well actually it's 1927 but still

Certainly the decline of manufacturing and especially of shipbuilding meant Glasgow was in a difficult position. The very fact that it had been such an enterprising and innovative city meant that the decline was steep when world conditions changed. Glasgow had to reinvent itself and this helps explain, even if it does not justify, its often philistine approach to new development. However, despite the needless self harm to its fabric, Glasgow remains largely a very coherent city – far more so than other big British cities and especially its nearest rival, Liverpool. It is far grander and culturally richer than Manchester, Birmingham or especially Leeds. And Glasgow is a proud place, proud of its achievements and its special identity, which makes it all the more puzzling that it is not as passionate about its architecture.


New tenements and per cent for art near Caledonia Road

Of course there have been big achievements. Perhaps the most important has been the reinvention of the tenement block after decades of clearance. Tenements, despite their often negative connotations, are the glory of Glasgow - the real WOW factor. Across great swathes of the city they create rich, diverse and intensely urban townscapes, reinforcing the street as a public, legible and social place. The West End provides one of the most attractive, congenial and consistently urbane urban environments in Europe. The extent and quality of tenements is quite staggering, in middle class suburbs like Hyndland and south of the river at Queen’s Park as examples, but also in working class districts like Govan as we shall see. Since the 1980s new tenement buildings are again achieving this quality of urban coherence, albeit with somewhat less quality of design and materials than the pre 1914 originals.


Welcome to Glasgow, twinned with Chicago 

The city centre is also successful - notably lively and the biggest shopping destination outside London. The decline of Sauchiehall Street is sad – once an upmarket destination, now the shabby former Willow Tea Rooms face a closed Pound-Mart. The Buchanan Galleries are boring but the splendour of Buchanan Street makes up for this and whilst the destruction of St Enoch’s station was unforgivable the St Enoch’s Centre, a huge 1980s steel and glass tent, is arresting although internally bland and confusing.


Boring Broomielaw

The striking thing about the city centre is not just how grand the buildings are but how so many of its buildings are so technically and stylistically adventurous. On Jamaica Street there were fine early iron framed buildings, some shamefully demolished quite recently. On Argyle Street you see this amazing Chicago like confidence with proto skyscrapers rising amid more modest scale, built with the expectation that everything was going to be like that, but WW1 intervened. On St Vincent’s St you find the fin de siècle inventiveness of buildings like the Hat Rack designed by James Salmon with Beardsleyesque and Gaudiesque features. Between the wars commercial confidence was asserted in the grandest neo-classicism. Post war commercial architecture was also confident if often insensitive, but so much recent development is just dim and dreary. The Clyde end of Jamaica Street is now a disgrace – Jury’s Inn one of the main culprits as usual. It actually manages to be worse than its Nottingham namesake. Fronting the river at Broomielaw, new offices could be anywhere. They are not absolutely awful, just so bloody boring and lacking in life. Interestingly plans to build new restaurants on the wide quayside opposite have sparked a big local protest, suggesting this space is valued although in December it is maybe not seen at its liveliest.


Jury's Inn: the canny ability to downgrade any townscape

Across the river from Broomielaw there is an immediate Chicago-like transition from the dynamic city centre grid to an urban wasteland with a few buildings rising out of the debris. The new M74 thunders through. On Eglinton Street a Greek Thompson terrace was needlessly demolished as late as the1980s. Carlton Place fronting the Clyde opposite the Suspension Bridge is a fine Georgian enclave providing an elegant screen, but there is urban chaos behind. This is of course the Gorbals, in the post war years a byword for appalling slum housing. The demolition of the fine tenement terraces of the Gorbals was meant to exorcise the injustices of the past and even the name of the area was temporarily expunged. Now most of this urban renewal scheme has itself been cleared, including the highly sculptural Basil Spence flats, although some monumental tower blocks remain. In places a third Gorbals has risen from the ashes seeking to learn from the past and at least in part succeeding.


Great stuff: the Gorbals facing the Clyde

Down Gorbals Street, past the massive Norfolk Street flats and the Citizens’ Theatre, on through a wasteland and beyond the railway bridges you will see the magnificent ruin of Greek Thompson’s Caledonia Road church. The neglect of this masterpiece, gutted by fire in 1965, epitomises the Glasgow problem of not realising its own greatness. But even as a ruin and in the middle of a traffic gyratory it is absolutely compelling and fundamental to creating a sense of place and identity in the adjacent third Gorbals development. This is broadly based on the tenement tradition with four or five story blocks flanking broad, legible streets and crescents. Car parking is largely in the streets, at times in right angle parking, so there is not the usual fussy and confusing domination of layout and design by cars. The tenements themselves, although of the right scale and massing, are a bit fussy, trying too hard at variety within order and not always succeeding. The artworks – I think flying angels – are certainly OTT. However there is certainly a sense of place and the numerous views of Greek Thompson’s church create very satisfying compositions. The biggest problem is the ridiculous barriers against Laurieston Road which make it virtually impossible to get to the bus stop. The concept of the multi functional street is obviously not fully re-embraced in Glasgie.


Black Hole Sun

Two miles downstream from the city centre, past Foster’s Armadillo and its hinterland of car parks, is Zaha Hadid’s new Riverside Museum, the focus of our Glasgow blog last summer. Great exhibits, shame about the location and the unsuitability of the building for them. However in its first six months the museum has attracted a million visitors which is one hell of an achievement – so well done. But visiting again in December my reservations were reinforced; indeed the greyness and bleakness of it was overpowering in a howling gale and driving rain. This is the problem with the global warming thing. Extreme weather seems to be here already, which is why an exposed riverside location is not such a good idea for regeneration, especially in Scotland.


This is Govan 

The best view of the zinc icon is actually across the Clyde from Govan, although few visitors will see this. Govan – that redoubt of anarchic working class resistance to global capitalism as embodied in Rab C. Nesbitt (although in the latest series he seems to have become a pillar of the community rather than the scourge of it). The place is not quite as I had imagined. It is almost a town in its own right - and was until 1912 - with its own monumental Beaux Arts town hall in red sandstone, built around 1900, the time of greatest prosperity based on the shipyards. There are other fine buildings of this period, like the Pearce Institute, a working people’s club disguised as a C17th Scottish town house whilst churches, schools, libraries and grand banks all attest to Govan’s heyday.


Govan - side streets and shipyards

Despite these dignified buildings however, on arrival by Subway (apparently not to be called the Clockwork Orange) Ian Pattison’s inspiration is immediately apparent. The irregular space of Govan Cross is the visual centre. The Govan Centre opposite sums up the poverty not just of its architecture but also of many of the shoppers. Appropriately it was built in the early years of Thatcher and illustrates her visionfor Scotland  – I don’t think Meryl Streep quite catches that. But turn west along Govan Road towards the Fairfield shipyard and you cannot fail to be impressed. This is a fine street lined with four storey tenements, interestingly showing the transition from the earlier light sandstone and square bay to the red sandstone and bow window model which is so quintessentially Glasgow at its zenith. Majestic side streets of similar red sandstone tenements lead down towards the river with the cranes of the old shipyards still in view – thrilling townscape.


No artifical colours?

The long monumental offices of the Fairfield Shipyard (later Glasgow Shipbuilders) built in 1890 of red sandstone in an Italian Renaissance style utterly dominate Govan Road. Although empty they are apparently being converted into offices and community space funded by Europe and the Scottish government. There are other heartening signs of renewal nearby with new flats nearly completed – not exactly new interpretations of the tenements but of the right scale and reinforcing the life and urbanity of this part of Govan. The block on Golspie Street feels the need for a Smartie assortment of coloured bays, which actually look ok. Back towards Govan Cross another nice touch is the palimpsest image of the original 1937 Lyceum Cinema on the curved façade of the husk of the old building which bingo could not save.


Intimacy - the back of Govan Road

Behind Govan Old Church is the ferry to the Riverside Museum, if you are lucky, but anyway you get the good view. There is a bleak Clydeside promenade, part of a featureless low rise 1970s redevelopment. The east side of Govan is really very depressing. The urban fabric has been blown apart by demolition without any apparent thought, leaving an utter wasteland. The saddest thing is the recent destruction of Napier House designed in 1899 by the little known W.J. Anderson. At once precocious in its steel frame and concrete floor construction and wilful in its eccentric version of art nouveau, it still exists on Google street view but all I found was a hole in the ground, which is what Govan needs like a hole in the head. The only encouraging development nearby is Collective Architecture’s scheme for the Govan Housing Association. The curved façade of the 6 storey block to Govan Road is unpromisingly defensive but has the good sense to embrace the fine sandstone bank building at the corner of Orkney Street. Here a crescent of linked 2 storey houses, brick with gold panels, creates an attractive, intimate environment. Opposite, small scale industrial buildings have been nicely converted into an Enterprise Centre.


New Govan Tenements

I had intended to walk back to the city centre through the Clydeside redevelopments but despair set in as I trudged through the ugliness, anomie and sheer misery of the alleged regeneration of the old Govan Docks. I got as far as the titanium clad spheres of the Glasgow Science Centre at Pacific Quay, designed by BDP and interesting in an ascetic way. Opposite is the RIBA award winning new BBC Scotland HQ by man of the moment David Chipperfield. Although a serious, carefully considered, scrupulous and elegant building, the bleakness of the site and the heavy security serve to alienate if you are in the cold outside its magnificent atrium. Why the BBC has chosen quite such hostile locations for its various new studios God only knows. I bottled out and took a cab from the luvvies’ taxi rank.


The city centre doesn't care what the weather man says...

The ride back to the city centre is through identikit acres of regeneration, no different, no better, no worse than much of London’s Docklands, Salford Quays – you name it. Maybe it is unfair to review the Clydeside version in the wind, rain and snow of December, but really that is the point. How does it work as a place? Well it just doesn’t. Despite the involvement of Foster, Chipperfield and Zaha Hadid there is no coherence, no hierarchy, no enclosure, no diversity, no street life, no shelter. These are all fundamental to successful place making. Glasgow city centre is thronged in the downpours. I walked round Hillhead and Langside in the snow and they are really civilised places with cafes, shops, libraries, parks. They are designed for the reality of the climate.


Woulda coulda shoulda been

I still love Glasgow, but maybe I’m in love with the image of Glasgow as it could have been – should have been; the finest, most adventurous, most ambitious, most exciting of British cities. I wish it were so today.