Category Archives: Landscape Architecture

Thames Estuary Airport proposed by Boris Johnson

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A pilot's landing view of the Thames Estuary Airport. The sun is coming out and he can see the lido where he will relax before his next flight.

A pilot's landing view of the Thames Estuary Airport. The sun is coming out and he can see the lido where he will relax before his next flight.


Boris Johnson has proposed a new Airport in the Thames Estuary. It is a great idea but it needs to be much more than an airport plonked  in the Thames estuary if it is to get built. It should be a sublime feature in the landscape which also forms a new Thames crossing, a downstream flood barrier to protect Europe’s largest and richest city in the coming era of rising sea levels, a great lido facility and a wildlife habitat creation project. This is the proposal from Eleanor Atkinson, a MA Landscape Architecture graduate from the University of Greenwich – see her Thames Estuary Airport website for further details.

A friend’s father criticised the first proposal for an airport Maplin in the Thames Estuary: BROMHEAD, PETER The Great White Elephant of Maplin Sands – -the neglect of comprehensive transport planning in government decision-making Paul Elek, London, 1973. His case was well argued but, I believe, Eleanor’s proposal would overcome his objections. She has designed a Great White Swan instead of a tawdry white elephant. Her airport plan is comprehensive  and fits very well with the Channel Tunnel Railway and the Thames Gateway Development, both launched since Bromhead’s 1973 book.  Above all, her ‘ Swan Plan’ for an Estuary Airport is landscape architecture led. This gives it the best possible chance of overcoming the muddy waves of objections which greet any large development proposal in England.

The lower Thames Estuary can have a glittering splendour when the sun shines but it is NOT the most beautiful part of Britain. And when the new airport is built it will cure West London of the terrible curse of airport noise – and release a fabulously valuable development site. An intelligent approach to context-sensitive landscape design is the royal road to voter-support in England. I am pleased to report that the design has been sent to the Mayor of London’s office and they have passed the design concept to their consultants. A decision is expected.

NOTE: if you would like to see more of this proposal, and other excellent landscape architecture projects for London, they will be on Exhibition at the Menier Street Gallery near London Bridge 53 Southwark Street London SE1 1RU 10am-5pm from 22-26 June 2009.


Plan of the Thames Estuary 'Boris Johnson' Airport, showing the river crossing, flood barrier and habitat creation areas

Plan of the Thames Estuary 'Boris Johnson' Airport, showing the river crossing, flood barrier and habitat creation areas


Burial Mounds

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Winterbourne Stoke Barrows

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Martina’s comments on ways of commemorating the dead bring us full circle to the Stonehenge site which has amazing burial mounds all around the surrounding countryside. Many have been ruined by the plough but as the English Heritage site above shows there are still some beautiful landforms. http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/stonehengeinteractivemap/sites/barrows/start.html

 

 

An architectural approach to landscape

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The architecture of landscape, in Deptford Creek

The architecture of landscape, in Deptford Creek

It is a pleasure to find a really successful instance of an architectural approach to landscape design. The Laban Centre in Deptford, London, was designed by the Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and won the Stirling Prize for Architecture in 2003. The sculptured landforms create a sense of place and work well with the mirror glass. Children love running amok on the grass.

The pity of the scheme is that it is not integrated with the intriguing landscape of Deptford Creek.  It lurks behind steel fencing, like a business park. So, reluctantly, I classify it as context-insensitive design – but the blame probably rests with the health and safety and security brigade.

Home Office landscape architecture

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TV crews waiting for Jacqui Smith to resign on 2 June 2009. Note the coloured light on the paving, from a rooftop brise soleil

TV crews waiting for Jacqui Smith to resign on 2 June 2009. Note the coloured light on the trees and the paving, from a rooftop brise soleil

Last time I stopped to take a photo outside the Home Office two security men rushed out to say ‘You can’t – it’s a government building’.  ‘Why not?’ I asked ‘Has Jacqui Smith brought in the porno videos her husband bought on expenses?’ They laughed and let me take my photos. Today there were half a dozen TV crews outside the office.’ Huh’, I thought, she must be resigning at last. No one stopped me taking the photo and I got home to find she had half-done the decent thing: she is resigning as Home Secretary but hopes to cling on as an MP. Let’s hope her constituency does do the decent thing. Home Secretaries should inform their underlings that members of the public are 1000% within the law when taking photographs from a public place.

Note: I believe DLP, formerly known as Lovejoys, were the landscape architects but could not find the project on their website. Geoffrey Jellicoe was asked to do a design for the site before the offices were re-built and said it could not be done, because the buildings were so ghastly.

Deptford Creek London Landscape Archaeology

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I wish I could tell you whether this rotting barge is a ‘wreck awaiting removal’ or a ‘scheduled monument awaiting a viewing fee’. I fear the former. Deptford Creek is a very interesting place. Henry VIII established England’s first Royal Dockyard here. Peter Romanov, son of Alexis I, was born in the Kremlin and came to Deptford in 1698 to learn shipbuilding. This was 4 years before he became the Czar who became Peter the Great. An exceedingly strong man, he worked, drank and womanized with the shipwrights. From 1871 until 1914 Deptford was the City Corporation’s Foreign Cattle Market. But almost all the evidence of this fascinating history has gone. The Docklands Light Railway was as heartlessly perched over the river as if it  been in Tokyo.  Then, with the 1990s YBA’s and Britart, Deptford became an artist’s enclave.  Most certainly, the old ships should not be removed. But nor should they be restored. They should be allowed to sink, ever so gradually, into the mud.

Eyesorit: I love lawns

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My definition of an eyesorit is  ‘an urban design which makes the eyes sore but tinged with mirth’, rather as Private Eye Magazine does with its brilliant covers. Normally, they are photographs with bubble captions.Print

The architect, the town planner, the highway engineer and the landscape architect responsible for this codge-up, photographed in London’s Isle of Dogs on 19.4.2009 should only venture out wearing shame-guards. It is a stupid waste of some of the world’s prime urban land. The road and the paths are ugly and too wide. The gardens and the balconies are too small. The lawn is but an exercise ground for lawn mowers. The greenspace  has no use and no beauty. Its maintenance wastes fossil fuels. And yet this example is much better than many of the residential blocks the city has shoved up in the past decade, making London what Rasmussen might have called a ‘less-unique city’. It makes one wonder if professional bodies are worth having – and reminds one of Adam Smith’s remark that: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”