Architecture

British Landscapes – A change for the bet-ter?

For masterplanner Raymond Unwin, land-scape was not just a background to lives lived, it was a weapon of social change, says David Davidson, architectural adviser at Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust. Unwin’s vi-sion was the communal landscape, one that promoted social interaction at every turn. In creating the Hampstead Garden Suburb, he realised the democratic landscapes the Gar-den City movement espoused.

Davidson was the first speaker in the Land-scape Institute’s autumn lecture series Urban Landscapes in the Twentieth Century. He is also the first of our essayists in this special edition of Landscape, which takes as its start-ing point the ideals of the Garden City and pits them against the great 21st century chal-lenge: realising the green city.

Programmed by Susannah Charlton of the Twentieth Century Society, the lecture series accompanies the Garden Museum’s From Garden City to Green City exhibition. The five speakers agreed to pen a series of essays for us, so, following a foreword from Christopher Woodward, director of the Garden Museum, we dedicate 15 pages to what we can learn from more than a century of urban landscapes.

Projects adviser at the Prince’s Regeneration Trust Roland Jeffery tackles housing land-scapes, and the new towns in particular. Their landscapes, he says, have still to find a com-fortable role that is somewhere in between the private garden and the public highway.

Ken Worpole, writer and senior professor at the Cities Institute, suggests that the Brit-ish still have a problem in thinking about de-signed landscapes as places of pleasure. He asks whether now is the time for us to redis-cover the purpose of our leisure landscapes.

Ken Worpole, writer and senior professor at the Cities Institute, suggests that the British still have a problem in thinking about de-signed landscapes as places of pleasure. He asks whether now is the time for us to redis-cover the purpose of our leisure landscapes.

“If you leave people to live in a lousy, un-healthy, un-green and depressing environ-ment that indicates that society at large, their local authority and the government don’t care about them, then why should we be surprised when they act without care themselves?” This is Sarah Gaventa writing in the wake of Au-gust’s riots as she asks how communities can possibly be expected to interact when they have nowhere decent to commune.

And finally, Landscape’s honorary editor Tim Waterman explores our relationship with food and the urban landscape. Are taste and appetite our biggest barriers to realising sus-tainable design?

But just how relevant are the ideas of the Gar-den City to those nations currently in thrall to urban revolutions of their own? We asked Ruth Olden to get behind the images of ver-dant green cities and see what’s happening in India, China and Mexico.

With large-scale investment on the backburn-er for the foreseeable future, the Landscape Institute’s latest publication Local green in-frastructure: The production, reproduc-tion, and transformation of urban space via socially, economically, and environmentally just methods presents a complex challenge for architects, designers, engineers, planners and other professionals. There is an urgent need to use our professional capacities to reconsider and recalibrate our engagement with design to effectively respond to rapid urbanisation. The production, reproduction, and transformation of urban space via so-cially, economically, and environmentally just methods presents a complex challenge for ar-chitects, designers, engineers, planners and other professionals.

There is an urgent need to use our pro-fessional capacities to reconsider and recalibrate our engagement with design to effectively respond to rapid urbanisa-tion.

Since 2008, the majority of the world’s human population has lived in ur-ban areas. While such urbanisation is substantially transforming the planet, cities are fundamentally shaped by neoliberal policies and exogenous transformative marked-led forces that deepen the vulnerabilities of the urban poor and marginalised communities.

Additionally, the destructive effects of climate change and natural hazards tend to be concentrated disproportion-ally in poorer urban districts with the least adequate provision of protective infrastructure and services. The re-sult of these global, regional and local processes is that cities, the planning of cities, and the design of urban space has become increasingly fragmented, while inequality and vulnerabilities have risen.

The course presents a holistic process of design for development in cities within this context. It combines an ex-amination and analysis of economic, so-cial, cultural and spatial elements in the production of urban form and building with the principles of designing for de-velopment, which include affordability, acceptability, sustainability, participa-tion and responsiveness in design. In particular the course links together the methods and practice of 'design' with the complementary 'developmental' processes of development practitioners dealing with the spatial manifestation of injustices, complex urban challenges and spatial transformations at the scale of the building (architecture) and wider fabric (urban design) not as isolated disciplines or fields of practice but rather ones that are embedded and in-fused in the broader and more complex and contested urbanism.

Urban

plann

ing

Architecture is about evolution, not revolu-tion. It used to be thought that once the Ro-mans pulled out of Britain in the fifth cen-tury, their elegant villas, carefully-planned towns and engineering marvels like Hadri-an’s Wall simply fell into decay as British cul-ture was plunged into the Dark Ages. It took the Norman Conquest of 1066 to bring back the light, and the Gothic cathedral-builders of the Middle Ages played an important part in the revival of British culture. However, the truth is not as simple as that. Romano-British culture - and that included architecture along with language, religion, political organisation and the arts - survived long after the Roman withdrawal. And al-though the Anglo-Saxons had a sophisticat-ed building style of their own, little survives to bear witness to their achievements as the vast majority of Anglo-Saxon buildings were made of wood.

Architecture

Even so, the period between the Norman landing at Pevensey in 1066 and the day in 1485 when Richard III lost his horse and his head at Bosworth, ushering in the Tudors and the Early Modern period, marks a rare flowering of British building. And it is all the more remarkable because the underlying ethos of medieval architecture was 'fitness for purpose'. The great cathedrals and parish churches that lifted up their towers to heav-en were not only acts of devotion in stone; they were also fiercely functional buildings. Castles served their particular purpose and their battlements and turrets were for use rather than ornament. The rambling manor houses of the later Middle Ages, however, were primarily homes, their owners achiev-ing respect and maintaining status by their hospitality and good lordship rather than the grandeur of their buildings.

Fitness for purpose also characterised the homes of the poorer classes. Such people didn’t matter very much to the ruling elite and so neither did their houses. These were dark, primitive structures of one or two rooms, usually with crude timber frames, low walls and thatched roofs. They weren’t built to last. And they didn’t.

Architecture

However, the truth is not as simple as that. Romano-British culture - and that included architecture along with language, religion, political organisation and the arts - survived long after the Roman withdrawal. And al-though the Anglo-Saxons had a sophisticat-ed building style of their own, little survives to bear witness to their achievements as the vast majority of Anglo-Saxon buildings were made of wood.

Even so, the period between the Norman landing at Pevensey in 1066 and the day in 1485 when Richard III lost his horse and his head at Bosworth, ushering in the Tudors and the Early Modern period, marks a rare flowering of British building. And it is all the more remarkable because the underlying ethos of medieval architecture was 'fitness for purpose'. The great cathedrals and parish churches that lifted up their towers to heav-en were not only acts of devotion in stone; they were also fiercely functional buildings. Castles served their particular purpose and their battlements and turrets were for use rather than ornament. The rambling manor houses of the later Middle Ages, however, were primarily homes, their owners achiev-ing respect and maintaining status by their hospitality and good lordship rather than the grandeur of their buildings.

Fitness for purpose also characterised the homes of the poorer classes. Such people didn't matter very much to the ruling elite and so neither did their houses.

Architecture

British Landscapes – A change for the better?

For masterplanner Raymond Unwin, landscape was not just a background to lives lived, it was a weapon of social change, says David Davidson, archi-tectural adviser at Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust. Unwin’s vision was the communal land-scape, one that promoted so-cial interaction at every turn. In creating the Hampstead Garden Suburb, he realised the demo-cratic landscapes the Garden City movement espoused.

Davidson was the first speaker in the Landscape Institute’s autumn lecture series Urban Landscapes in the Twentieth Century. He is also the first of our essayists in this special edi-tion of Landscape, which takes as its starting point the ideals of the Garden City and pits them against the great 21st century challenge: realising the green city.

Programmed by Susannah Charlton of the Twentieth Cen-tury Society, the lecture series accompanies the Garden Mu-seum’s From Garden City to Green City exhibition. The five speakers agreed to pen a series of essays for us, so, following a foreword from Christopher Woodward, director of the Garden Museum, we dedicate 15 pages to what we can learn from more than a century of urban landscapes.

Projects adviser at the Prince’s Regeneration Trust Roland Jeffery tackles housing land-scapes, and the new towns in particular.

British Landscapes – A change for the better?

For masterplanner Raymond Unwin, landscape was not just a back-ground to lives lived, it was a weapon of social change, says David Da-vidson, architectural adviser at Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust. Un-win’s vision was the communal landscape, one that promoted social interaction at every turn. In creating the Hampstead Garden Suburb, he realised the democratic landscapes the Garden City movement es-poused.

Davidson was the first speaker in the Landscape Institute’s autumn lecture series Urban Landscapes in the Twentieth Century. He is also the first of our essayists in this special edition of Landscape, which takes as its starting point the ideals of the Garden City and pits them against the great 21st century challenge: realising the green city.

British Landscapes – A change for the better?

For masterplanner Raymond Unwin, landscape was not just a back-ground to lives lived, it was a weapon of social change, says David Da-vidson, architectural adviser at Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust. Un-win’s vision was the communal landscape, one that promoted social interaction at every turn. In creating the Hampstead Garden Suburb, he realised the democratic landscapes the Garden City movement es-poused.

Davidson was the first speaker in the Landscape Institute’s autumn lecture series Urban Landscapes in the Twentieth Century. He is also the first of our essayists in this special edition of Landscape, which takes as its starting point the ideals of the Garden City and pits them against the great 21st century challenge: realising the green city.