Coffee in the Square

How snow changes everything

This was Petersfield Market Square at dawn today. It always looks pretty, but in the middle of winter the extra light reflected off the snow is welcome.
Scandinavians know how important light surfaces are in gloomy climates. Think of the white and gold of Russian churches, the Winter Palace or the pale blue or yellow of so many 19th Century Swedish villas.

But in Britain we are so wedded to brickwork that we often forget other building materials. And architects are keen to draw the artists impression for a summers day but they forget to check how it will look in the gloom.

On the far left of this image you can see Petersfield's funky 70's Barclay's Bank with it's white rendered and concrete surfaces. It would probably never get planning these days. But I must say I think it's a fine bit of urban intervention. And it's wearing remarkably well.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Equality for Bicycles!

I visited Freiburg over the New Year and the information I picked up was very rich.  You will see quite a few blogs on the new developments there over the next few weeks I guess.  Something one of our traffic engineers said before I went away made me think quite a bit about street widths.  Here is a tram in a really narrow street in Antwerp.  So don't tell me that you need a really wide street for a tram! (You know who you are.)

We measured this street out as 6m wide - and you can see that a good metre and a half each side is the footpath.  So a tram takes up about 3m.  (If you look very closely you will see my dog Astrid waiting at the side!)  Yes and cars are allowed down here as well - but woe betide them if they try and park.

However a thorough-fare for all types of traffic needs to be designed differently.  Vaubanalle in Frieburg, is the main road that runs through the Eco suburb of Vauban.

This street is 35m wide. Download the info sheet for a detailed section and more images.  What's really interesting is the fact that the roadway section - two way traffic and a line of parking - is only 6m wide while the pedestrian/cycle track is also 6m wide.  Designing cities for cycles does not seem to mean less tarmac unfortunately.  But it does mean a different balance between car uses and other uses.

Southsea Afternoon

The English South coast is slowly starting to wake up from about 50 years snooze in a deckchair.

Mike and I went to Southsea yesterday and strolled in the un-seasonal August Bank Holiday sun.  Its about ten minutes walk from Portsmouth

and Southsea rail station.

The highlight is the East Beach which local people seem to decry as decrepit, but  we found it delightful.. They have left the beach un-weeded, so plants like sea cabbage and thrift are flourishing.  Half way along – just opposite the military museum there is a lovely take away café – they have a real coffee machine in the back of a trailer and do home made bread and butter pudding as well as delicious looking filled rolls.  To complete your seaside meal a local ice cream company park nearby.

The really cool thing is the beach deckchairs that you can sit on to drink your coffee.  Each one has a container in the arm to support the coffee cup!  Those fold out chairs are really comfortable – the high back can also be used as a wind break if it gets a bit nippy.

If you pop into the tourist office you can pick up a map which shows the whole seaside from Portsmouth Harbour right to the ferry to Hayling Island (which runs from the very far end of Southsea front.)  (It’s a cycle route – but in fact its quite difficult to hire a bike around here!)

There is a very good leaflet to be had on the works of Thomas Ellis Owen, 1805-1862 who did a series of Nash type terraces and cottages just near to the Southsea town centre.  It’s a short walk – all concentrated into a few streets and obviously the posh part of town to live.  Kent Road used to overlook the common and the sea – but sadly its all been built-up now.  Before you get to the bombed out part of Portsmouth – which have now been built up with tower blocks and council flats – you walk through a delightful cottagey Victorian area.  The pubs all look amazing – festooned with tiles and decoration and all amazingly still open and active.  Some have turned themselves into brassieres and look quite smart.

 

But don’t get too excited – Southsea is an expensive place to live – we saw no bargains in the estate agents’ windows!  And these agents are obviously good at marketing.  The architectural leaflet is sponsored by estate agents DM Nesbit and Co!

 

www.portsmouth.gov.uk/living/714.html

Orchestra Seats

Danièle Thompson's new film, which opened in London this week is a charming evocation of life in a civilised city like Paris.  Though at one point one of the protagonists says that this central quarter is not typical.  A young girls from the provinces comes to work in a street cafe which is next door to a gallery, a concert hall and a theatre.  The actors, the pianist and the galleriestas all meet in the cafe and get to know the girl.  The cafe as a focus for the social life of the city is an excellent example.  The head waiter in the cafe says, "Everyone comes in here - the rich and the poor - they can all afford a cup of coffee."

Working in a town or a theme park - comparing Chiswick Park with Chiswick Mall

A chance visit to Chiswick gave me the opportunity to visit Chiswick Park (constructed 2002) and compare it with Voysey's Sanderson factory, now a workspace and built exactly 100 years earlier in 1902. Chiswick Park is a slick modern development built on brown land in a corner between three railway lines.  Thus it is excellently connected to transportation routes.  However the design, clever though it is, is predicated on the idea that everyone will come to work by car. The scheme is surrounded by parking and the basements are all garages, which have the effect of cutting off the buildings from their hinterland. There is always the annoying chicken and egg situation that developers won't build without parking, employers are scared to buy offices without parking and so employees never get to be encouraged to come to work by public transport here.  The pseudo green iconography of brise soleil and a pond, doesn't convince me.  It's the daily travel to work that really eats up carbon in these offices.  Also because the "estate" (for that's what it is ) is unifunctional it becomes a wasteland at weekends and in the evening.
The architecture and the landscaping are of a high enough quality but I can't help feeling that its cosmetic.  The only lip service that the design pays to its inner London location is to squash up the landscape so that it becomes a mere corridor between the blocks.  It takes a hoard of security guards and CCTV to keep this all going.  The website offers all sorts of fun.  There is a health club and a coffee bar as well as fireworks and goose herding.  What employer can't see that all this is  just a Disney-land version of real life which is available in its real incarnation ten minutes WALK up the road in Chiswick Mall!
Its the isolationary premise that I particularly object to.  I was stopped as I entered the park and CCTV's followed me everywhere. 

By comparison the Voysey building designed for the Sanderson factory and adjacent to the Barley Mow workspaces in Chiswick Mall is a real urban office space.  As far as I can see there is no car parking here at all - and even deliveries have to run the gauntlet of a tiny service road. There is no expensive manicured lawn - but this is right next door to Chiswick Park, no pond and I expect that the insulation is lower.  But people seem to manage to walk to work here and the communal activities like access to health clubs, cafe's ( no no goose herding here!) are public so anyone can join in and the profits from these activities are shared more widely with the community.

Ironically the architecture is rather similar. Both buildings are about the same scale of floor heights with a distinctive lower level and a distinctive roof-line.  Both were designed to provide open floor-plates and both have a very well defined service core.  Both also took advantage of modern scientific advances.  Architects have always loved the technology!
I can't help feeling that the Voysey building has already demonstrated its greater sustainability.  But how do we persuade the hard nosed developer that this is the better option?

Left:
Plan of Chiswick Park - note enhanced colouring of the pond!

Below:
Voyseys original drawing.  The building remains very similar today. 
 

Riding the Green Wave

A couple of experiences last week, one exhilarating and one demoralising has got me thinking about queuing theory in urban design.  Today is the start of the road pricing extension, which I hope works, though I am not too pleased about the prospect of seeing a lot more Chelsea Tractors in my part of Westminster.  When the experiment started a few years ago congestion in my part of town - I live within the old C zone - went down by 30% and for a brief an enjoyable moment I considered starting to cycle around town again!  The streets around here (Fitzrovia) became quite quiet and we even sent a petition to Westminster Council asking them to consider making a home-zone around here.  But of course they refused to countenance such a lefty idea. 
However a little known aspect of the congestion charging has been the fact that Transport for London has changed all the traffic lights around the edge - so that traffic flows more easily round the perimeter routes.  Euston Road, which bounds the congestion zone to the North has (I'm sure of it) been converted to a green wave.  On Friday I had the pleasure of riding that wave all the way along to the A40.  I don't know how they do it, but if you go at about 30 miles an hour along the road you are likely to receive green lights all the way along.  Now children, this does not work during times of congestion and even though some people say that it also works at 60 miles an hour I would not risk the ticket or the injury!  But at 30 miles an hour on a relatively clear day it is one of the small pleasures of London life!
The unpleasant experience of queuing theory was waiting in the freezing cold for my 10.00am appointment until 12.30pm outside the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square.  I got so angry at one point my mind went back to the anti-Vietnam riots in the square in the sixties.  I was sorely tempted to start one - but I was wearing my high heels so thought better of it and just  made polite conversation with my fellow queue members.  How is it that one of the so-called most civilized nations of the world have such trouble administering a queue that happens the same way every day?  If the 10.00am appointments don't really need to get there until 12.30 why not call it a 12.30 appointment? 
So for anyone who has the misfortune to need an American visa here are my top tips.
1. Book an appointment a few days ahead because the prelims take time.  e.g. you will need a 50mm square picture and to receive fill out , print out and return by email a form from the embassy.
2. Take the 8.00am appointment if at all possible and arrive at 7.30 - thus eliminating all queuing (I suppose)
3. Failing that arrive at the appointed time - make sure the man in the yellow jacket has ticked you off his list - and then toodle off to Oxford Street for a bit of shopping, meet your friends for coffee or have your hair done.
4. However resist all temptations to purchase anything as they don't let in mobile phones, liquids and all your metalwork (including belt buckles) has to be visible in a plastic bag.  There were a lot of embarrassed men in the queue with decidedly drooping drawers!
5. Check and double check that you have everything with you, including passport, photo, copy of form, copy of appointment letter, receipt for visa fee, letter from employer saying they want you to come back and any other salient proofs required.  However I didn't have a letter from my employer (me!) but they let me in anyway.
In true British fashion my queue was good humoured and I'm sure that people make friends for life sometimes.  But it sure is a bad reflection on the lack of organisation or the lack of care on the part of such a powerful nation.  if you really don't want to queue take a stick and gray your hair ......... or better still borrow a wheelchair from somewhere! 
However while we are talking about queuing there are times when bunching people up is just the right approach from an urban design point of view! Take for example the shopping street.  In most cases people tend to design these streets too wide but there is nothing more off-putting than a windy street scene.  In my view it is often the narrower the better.  For example St Christopher's Place located just off London's Oxford Street has an opening that must be less than a meter wide, but it is extremely popular and its little square at the back is always packed at all times of the year with people enjoying the quite and sheltered street life that it offers.  Dublin (above) is also a case in point, its narrow side streets, about 2.5m wide at most are far more attractive than its main shopping streets, and the better shops have tended to congregate in these lanes.

Westminster's Folly

Parking in central London can be expensive and a drag.  But I have nothing against small green cars and even these need somewhere to park.  So underground car parks like the one in Cavendish Square just behind John Lewis and Oxford Street should provide a model for other developments.  This was rather miraculously built after the war, managing to maintain the fine Plain trees which now sit on top of the spiral car park.  (There is a similar car park in Russel Square which is one of the oldest squares in London - but that is a double spiral!).  Even on a gloomy day like today Cavendish Square provided a green respite from central London's hustle and bustle.

However the car park itself is gloomy and needs sprucing.  And the square, which is potentially beautiful, is cut off for pedestrians by roads on all sides.  I think that Westminster councillors must hate pedestrians.  They certainly have a fear of pedestrianisation and here the roads and footways have been configured so that there is NO WAY to access the gardens except by taking your life in your hands across traffic lanes.  There are no pedestrian crossing or lights. 
Yet the roads around here are only local distributor roads.  There is no need for traffic around here to go fast!
The New West End Company have obviously recognised the problem and in 2005 they conjured up a scheme with adjoining landowners Marchday Group PLC who are the freeholders of the square.  But since what is reported to have been a positive consultation nothing more has been heard.
It is simple schemes and partnerships like this could progressively improve central London, but Westminster, one of the richest of London Boroughs drags its feet.
What New West End Company realises, and what Westminster Councillors should understand is that Oxford Street is losing out to the dead - but admittedly convenient - hand  of places like Bluewater.  Central London has no God-given right to remain central.  The website gives no credits to the designers of the proposals.  (They probably were not paid anything!)

I'm sending this article to New West End Company and to my councillor - I am a Westminster ratepayer.  So we'll see what response we get.  (If any)