Urban design in Britain must be about the worst in the civilised world. This masterplan shows why, with a variety of autumnal shades used to demonstrate how little clue we have about making real streets, real neighbourhoods or real connections with the fabric of the city. Look at the perimeter, to start with. The site is almost entirely removed from any engagement with its context by lines of trees. Look at the shared surfaces at the road junctions - a shitty brown colour picks out the spaces that no kids will play on (still too dangerous) but that will cause maximum annoyance to motorists. Look at the sub-Brookside close in the bottom left. This is town planning done at the developer's behest, with no regard to what makes a town work. There's no real public space, just the semi-private kind masquerading. Look at the small blue spots - these denote what the architect refers to as 'garden squares'. They look more like car parks to me. Urban planning in this country has assimilated the propaganda about placemaking from bodies like CABE, and carried on doing the same old crap the housebuilders always wanted from its pathetically pliant consultants. Here are some of the houses:
Oceans of indeterminate watercoloured green space and some sketchy housing helpfully obscured by the trees. A party wall (to the left) left white because they don't know what to fucking do with it. That's a problem that English architecture has had for 300 years, and the designers of this scheme don't even try to dignify the problem.So, why are these houses so awful? Roger Lomas of Taylor Young can enlighten us: "The objective of the proposals was to create homes not houses, places not spaces and a community rather than an estate." I wonder how they're measuring such scientific metrics?
Urban designers in this country talk crap all the time, government-approved crap that reassures planners while pulling the wool over their eyes time and again.
The elevations? You'll be sorry you asked...
The elevations? You'll be sorry you asked...
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I noticed that the "courtyards" are actually car parks too, and the "shared streets" appear to be nothing more than an excuse to avoid putting in a proper sidewalk at the intersections (of all places). It's also pretty obvious that they avoided lining up any of the entrances to the development with any of the existing streets. They might as well put up a fence around the whole thing.
ReplyDeleteI presume the person that wrote this is an architect or urban designer, who only designs things which are absolutely perfect in every way!
ReplyDeleteand if you are going to point out everything thats wrong with the scheme, i assume you know how to do it better?
@ townplanner007
ReplyDeletehe could design a scheme with the pencil stuck up his arse and it'd be better than this
of course he knows how to do it better; just do the opposite of what he's criticising them for. connect the new roads to the existing ones, have proper pavements and circulation. not hard
Christ-on-a-bike! You are right I am sorry I asked about the elevations! My eyes! They burn!
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more with your assertions, I am training to be an Urban Designer in September and hope to do much better than this. I want to make art out of places so people 'really' enjoy them. This is vacuous developer rubbish and should rightly be criticised
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more with your assertions, I am training to be an Urban Designer in September and hope to do much better than this. I want to make art out of places so people 'really' enjoy them. This is vacuous developer rubbish and should rightly be criticised
ReplyDelete