CONTENTS DIARY OF EVENTS - The Urban Design Group

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TOPIC REVEALING STREETSCAPES David McLaughlin explores how historic records put today’s designs in context ‘A design does not come from nothing, but from a long history of shapes, functions and sensations.’ Renzo Piano 18 | Urban Design | Spring 2005 | Issue 94 Local government planners and urban designers need to understand the genesis of place - where it has come from, and why it is the way it is. If you can explain why things are the way they are, and demonstrate local knowledge, it strengthens the negotiating position for change. Each officer needs to have an understanding of local history, because without it one is applying a veneer of the present which does not connect back to the past. Two different Bath-based projects illustrate this well. REALLOCATING ROAD SPACE Bath & North East Somerset Council’s former City Initiative: Transport & Environment team commissioned a streetscape history before repaving Bath’s 1760s Milsom Street and redesigning its southern junction with New Bond Street. The history revealed that a group of mediaeval buildings (with leases dating back to the 1320s) were severed in 1810 to form a new street - New Bond Street. The island group of buildings - Old Bond Street - continued northwards leaving only a very constricted way between the two ranks of buildings. The narrow gap was gradually increased as the central island buildings were removed in ones and twos. An 1855 map tellingly has a heavy pencil line showing the desire for a new kerb line for a significantly widened street, which in turn would result in the demolition of yet more of the island buildings. The new kerb line was implemented and as Milsom Street was (and remains) the best street for fashionable shopping in Bath, it also had Bath’s very first traffic signal at the junction with Quiet Street and New Bond Street in the 1930s. At that time, two-way traffic and parking was the norm but by the end of the 20th century, one-way traffic prevailed. Vehicles completely dominated the vast expanse of tarmac, leaving pedestrians to brave their way across a heavily-trafficked but vacuous space. This history of change was amply demonstrated by maps, engravings, leases and photos, and proved influential. Coupled with the need for traffic calming, designs were developed for a much broader area of paving for pedestrians to use and enjoy. The letter cutter Alec Peever was commissioned to produce a piece of public art, cutting the words of a poem specially commissioned from Alyson Hallett into the natural stone paving during 2001. KEEPING RECORDS By contrast, the bombing of Bath in 1942 in the Second World War caused significant damage and loss of life. The nights of the 25-27th of April 1942 mark a harrowing chapter in the history of Bath - the Baedeker raids. Artists and photographers recorded the ravaged city in a series of profoundly moving paintings, drawings and photographs that are to form the major exhibition Paint bombs – recording Bath in wartime to be held at Bath’s Victoria Art Gallery from 30 April to 14 July 2005. The painter, John Piper wrote to his friend, the poet John Betjeman on 15 May 1942, “I went to Bath to paint bomb damage. I never was sent to do anything so sad before. I was miserable there indeed to see that haunt of ancient waterdrinkers besmirched with dust and blast. Three houses burnt out in Royal Crescent, bomb in middle of Circus, and two burnt out there; Lansdown Chapel direct hit, 10 bombs in front of Lansdown Crescent, Somerset Place, almost completely burnt out: a shell …326 killed, 1,800 houses uninhabitable …My God I did hate that week…” 1 Among the bomb-damaged buildings was Sir George Gilbert Scott’s Gothic Revival 1870s St Andrew’s Church, Julian Road. The 73 metre high spire was the tallest landmark in Bath and was considered to mar the view of the Royal
Crescent as it jutted above its Palladian sweep. This incongruity prompted the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner to write in 1958 of the ruins of St Andrew’s, “Big … tower with broach spire … the rest happily bombed. The tower is now also coming down – a blessing; for it was unacceptable even from the picturesque mixer’s point of view.” 2 The site of the church is now simply a grassed triangular island. English summers reveal the outline of the walls and piers of the bombed church as scorch marks in the grass. The ‘Time Team’ has dug amid the Victorian ruins, and Roman remains are found to be far more extensive than those found by the Victorian church builders. Roman Bath is now known to have been a denser and more urban development in this area than had previously been understood. A new history of shapes, functions and sensations has been revealed, and beckons a bold, imaginative response. David McLaughlin, Conservation Architect, Bath & North East Somerset Council The views expressed in this essay are his own and may not reflect those of his employer. REFERENCE 1. John Piper to John Betjeman, 15 May 1942, McPherson Library, University of British Columbia, Victoria 2. Pevsner, Nikolaus, North Somerset and Bristol: The Buildings of England, Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, 1958, p105 Opposite page top left 1810 map of the formation of New Bond Street, Bath Record Office Opposite page top right 1855 Cotterell & Spackman map, Bath Record Office Opposite page bottom 1930s New Bond Street and its traffic signal This page top left and right Alec Peever’s lettering of Alyson Hallett’s poem Above Milsom St traffic table Left R F Wills, St Andrew’s Church, Julian Road, 1942, National Monuments Record Below Leslie Atkinson, ARCA, St Andrew’s Church, Julian Road, 1942, private collection Urban Design | Spring 2005 | Issue 94 | 19 TOPIC
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Page 3 and 4: How Can Urban Designers Save the Pl
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Page 7 and 8: Do Codes = Quality + Delivery? PAUL
Page 9 and 10: Nelson - Enquiry by Design JAMES HU
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Page 13 and 14: Manchester when his work with Jonat
Page 15 and 16: Such a code could be used to underp
Page 17: A further difference relates to the
Page 21 and 22: • obtain an understanding of how
Page 23 and 24: QUALITY HOUSING: THE CRUCIAL ROLE O
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Page 27 and 28: its more recent renaissance enabled
Page 29 and 30: additional layer of quality control
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Page 33 and 34: a couple of trees’ to relieve the
Page 35 and 36: VISIONS... As the modernist dream o
Page 37 and 38: SHARING THE MAIN STREET Local and i
Page 39 and 40: FRONT TO BACK - A DESIGN AGENDA FOR
Page 41 and 42: MEASURING PLANNING QUALITY MATTHEW
Page 43 and 44: BROADWAY MALYAN ARCHITECTS 3 Weybri
Page 45 and 46: HALPERN PARTNERSHIP LTD The Royle S
Page 47 and 48: PRP ARCHITECTS 1 Lindsey Street, Sm
Page 49: EDUCATION INDEX EDINBURGH COLLEGE O

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