Is high quality, locally distinctive paving finally making a come back? Robert Holden looks at the good, the bad and the ugly of recent underfoot schemes in Britain and continental Europe.
Paving has always helped to create a sense of place. Go to Paris and you will find a consistent approach to paving: the same small granite blocks and granite kerbs in footpaths and roads have been used for centuries. In Copenhagen, granite is used, locally sourced from Bornholm. Most towns and cities use a traditional range of paving materials. In the United Kingdom, York stone and granite kerbs from the Channel Isles are used in London; Caithness stone is used in Belfast; millstone grit in many northern towns; and red engineering bricks in Tunbridge Wells. Pebble pitching and thin slate kerbs are used in mid-Welsh towns like Llanidloes and Machynlleth, offset by diamond patterned Staffordshire blue bricks (otherwise used in cowsheds) for chapel entrances. English parks in the 18th century were known for their ‘sandwalks’, just as today the Paris park is known for its use of bound gravel.
In Paris and other European cities traditional paving materials have continued to be used, often reinterpreted in modern designs. In Britain, however, this idea of the particular place, the genius loci, reflected in paving materials has been buried since the 1 950s. The granite setts of the pre-war street have been buried or swept aside by hot-rolled asphalt, alongside pre-cast, standard sized concrete paving stones (rather than the random lengths of stone paving) and more recently by concrete blocks. Only Edinburgh remains a city of setts. Most pedestrianised areas are a rising tide of greying concrete or monochrome clay paviors, from Preston to Kings Lynn. The scale and pattern of the traditional street has been subsumed under a wall-to-wall carpeting of blocks straight from the catalogue. The result is that you have to search for scraps of 19th century paving in side streets or surviving in front of shops to have an idea of the richness of the traditional paving whether in stone, or brick.
Under the influence of road engineers much pedestrian paving is now laid on a mortar bed on a concrete base which is inflexible, has a tendency to crack, and generally costs more than similar flexible paving. Uniquely in Europe the British are afraid of building flexible paving structures, which allow for movement and for ease of relaying. As a result, English paving is marked by both cracks and patching.
There have been some promising developments in Britain. For instance, the availability and range of both brick paviors and stone slabs and kerbs has improved over the last 20 years. In consequence some local authorities are beginning to see the environmental and economic advantages of high quality long life paving. Norwich and Durham are cities notable for their street paving over the past two decades. Two interesting London schemes of the 1 990s are Regent Street and The Strand. The Regent Street scheme was designed by McCall for the Crown Estate. McCall used granite kerbs and York stone footpaths (though the integral neo-19th century Street furniture is neither 19th century, nor new, nor particularly elegant). W. S. Atkins designed The Strand in a more contemporary and simple style for the City of Westminster, and also used the traditional materials of York stone and granite kerb.
Elsewhere in London there has been an extreme patchiness of approach ranging from the
architecture practice Muf’s over publicised and banal in situ concrete in Southwark Street, to the badly laid blue brick in Borough High Street by East, both for the London Borough of Southwark. Walk along just one kilometre to the South Bank and you will find yet another totally different theme, this time more elegant and professionally laid: Lifschutz Davidson’s Clearmac’ footpaths, flush granite channel edge retention and small black granite block rumble strips (though these had to be relaid).
Go back to Machynlleth nowadays and you will find very little stone pitching or slate kerbs. Instead the High Street, Heol Maengwyn, has been relaid with stony grey pre-cast concrete imitation slate which is sad in an area so rich in natural stone slate. To be fair the imitation slate looks quite good, but why imitate — why not use real slate? Why not revive the art of pitching? Money is one problem; lack of imagination and the tendency to specify from the catalogue is another.
There are three answers to the problem of the British street, What all British towns and cities need is a consistent design approach to street paving and furniture — in short an urban Street and paving strategy plan, similar to the approach in Paris or Copenhagen where the materials are set, but the individual Street designer is allowed to work within that range of materials. The other need in Britain is for a more fundamental understanding by designers of flexible and inflexible paving and how to use both appropriately. Finally the public appearance of our streets and the public realm generally needs to be given a higher priority In Holland, in cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam, all streets are relaid every ten years (because of the differential movement of cities on peat or reclaimed land), and it is taken for granted that streets are repaired. Too often in Britain the street is an excuse for a bit of patching up at the end of each financial year to whatever style takes the specifier’s fancy, whether they be road engineer, architect or landscape architect.
All this calls for a far-seeing approach, and a consistent financial and political commitment. I live in Southwark, London, where I don’t dare jog any more for fear of breaking my legs due to uneven paving. However I don’t have to go far to find a consistent strategy carried out over the years: the City of London3 has consistenly used traditional York stone.
1 The most accessible guide to Parisian street design policy is the permanent exhibition of urbanism, parks, architecture and city planning at the Arsenale, near Bastille.
2 The best guide to Copenhagen city space design is Jan Gehl, Public spaces —public life, Copenhagen, Danish Architectural Press, 1 996.
3 The City of London has maintained a policy of York Stone footpaths offset by mastic asphalt. Until the late 1 8th century Purbeck stone was the main pavinq stone in London.
