I recently held a lec­ture at the TU MUNICH, Depart­ment for Land­scape Archi­tec­ture and Public Space, on the topic of public space in London, pre­sent­ing some of the work at maxwan archi­tects in Rot­ter­dam. Here’s is an excerpt of it:

Cross River Park, UK

The Cross River Park is in the imme­di­ate neigh­bour­hood of the Bark­ing River­side devel­op­ment in East London. The approx­i­mate size of the park is 350 ha with a dis­tance of roughly 9km to the city centre. The brief for the fea­si­bil­ity study was to bring two com­mu­ni­ties (Newham and Dagen­ham) along with the two land­scapes on either side of the River in the London Thames Gate­way closer together. A new bridge, the Thames Gate­way Bridge, with a height of 50m and a length of 600m, will be the miss­ing link between the divided com­mu­ni­ties and there­fore an impor­tant ele­ment of the park.

The area pro­posed for CRP fea­tures unique oppor­tu­ni­ties: It is one of the few areas in East London where access to the Thames river­front is pos­si­ble. The CRP area is envi­ron­men­tally diverse; it fea­tures wet­lands and a vari­ety of flora and fauna along­side sites of heav­ily con­t­a­m­i­nated land and former indus­trial land uses. A look on the map of London shows how­ever, that the area is a typ­i­cal ‘dumping-place’ of all those func­tions and insti­tu­tions which are regarded as the most unat­trac­tive ones in a city, such as: waste-​deposits, Sewage-​works, Gas- Works, Logis­tics, a Jail and an Air­port. The site is both smelly and it’s noisy: it is the typ­i­cal part of a city you would nor­mally never go to with­out a spe­cific, prag­matic purpose.

The his­toric evo­lu­tion of heavy ser­vice indus­tries in the area, dating back to the exten­sions to the Wool­wich Arse­nal and the 150yr old Sewage and (later) gas works have been sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­ers to inte­grated plan­ning. Each func­tion is iso­lated, and the area is dif­fi­cult to cross; beside a few lines, points and pock­ets of veg­e­ta­tion, it has few eco­log­i­cal or recre­ational qual­i­ties. The area is the ‘belly’ of East London: It con­tains those ‘organs’ of the body/city which guar­an­tee its metab­o­lism. Con­cern­ing the present debate on ecol­ogy, this could be an inter­est­ing and stim­u­lat­ing aspect. Incor­po­rat­ing the sewage plant and the waste-​deposits as well as the gas-​works and the logis­tics into the park con­cept could set the park apart. The CRP area expe­ri­ences strong pres­sure from cur­rent regional devel­op­ments, includ­ing sig­nif­i­cant areas of hous­ing, sewage works expan­sion, or the dis­place­ment of ware­houses due to the Olympic Games.

CRP’s poten­tial to become a High Qual­ity Park for the 21st cen­tury will be reached by syn­chro­niz­ing the inter­ests of the dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers, being the logis­tic build­ings, the sewage plant and gas works, and the new or exist­ing pop­u­lated areas. There­fore, CRP needs strong lead­er­ship to gather every­body under the ‘umbrella’ of CRP’s vision and turn them into active part­ners rather than indif­fer­ent neigh­bours. The oppor­tu­ni­ties at CRP are there­fore both unique and com­plex, but offer fan­tas­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties to inter­act with the river and the new bridge, and unlock an intrigu­ing mosaic of hith­erto hidden sites and func­tions of the living city.

Moving for­ward, the cre­ation of Cross River Park will require polit­i­cal and eco­nomic courage. Its suc­cess depends an alter­na­tive way of acting and doing, rather than plan­ning exten­sively. The process could and should start imme­di­ately by open­ing the area to the public, and cre­at­ing small events and interventions.

Mas­ter­plan Bark­ing River­side, UK

This is a mas­ter­plan we have been busy with for the last couple of years in London. Bark­ing River­side is a hous­ing devel­op­ment with a site area of 180ha. Because of its size and the prox­im­ity to the city centre of London, the hous­ing devel­op­ment has been chosen by the Greater London Author­ity (GLA) as one of seven out­stand­ing hous­ing devel­op­ments in the Greater London area.

Besides our urban pro­posal there are sev­eral large-​scale devel­op­ments along the River Thames. Mostly these involve the regen­er­a­tion of the former dock­lands, indus­trial areas and open brown fields out of use for a long period. In a way, these are the last oppor­tu­ni­ties within London for such large scale devel­op­ments of new employ­ment and hous­ing areas for the growth of the London population.

The project con­sists of 11’000 dwellings (aver­age den­sity 120 dw/ha) with com­mer­cial, employ­ment, edu­ca­tion, health and sport facil­i­ties. The site is located approx­i­mately 10km east of London city centre and about 5km form the London City Air­port. The exten­sion of the Dock­lands Light Rail­way to this project site with 3 sta­tions makes this devel­op­ment pos­si­ble in the first place.

Our site was orig­i­nally the loca­tion of Coal-​Fired Power Plants, once the largest in all of Europe. After the clos­ing of this power plant, and because of its con­t­a­m­i­nated ground and its iso­lated loca­tion from the city centre of London, this site was neglected for many years. At one point the Bor­ough of “Bark­ing and Dagenham” was rated the tenth worst place in the UK for its con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of asbestos. But on the other hand, this site has been one of the rich­est nature reserve area for a wide range of species because of its size and iso­la­tion from the sur­round­ings, as well the beau­ti­ful scenery along the river.

In this project we had to deal with many dif­fer­ent par­ties. In the usual plan­ning process of a UK hous­ing devel­op­ment you only have to con­vince the bor­ough to get what they call a “Plan­ning application”. But in the case of this project, we had to con­vince all the par­ties in this chart more or less. Actu­ally, there were two pre­vi­ous mas­ter­plans for this devel­op­ment; but in both cases, the mas­ter­plan was rejected by the bor­ough. Maxwan finally made it to the “plan­ning application” phase in 2006.

The urban design frame­work (UDF) plan shows the pri­mary and sec­ondary road struc­ture, devel­opable hous­ing areas, tra­jec­to­ries of the 2 major public trans­port lines, includ­ing the posi­tion of the sta­tions and stops, major public space, Parks and the con­ser­va­tion area for the nature. And this plan was made with the syn­the­sis of all the con­straints of this site such as the exit­ing over­head elec­tri­cal lines, nature reserve, topog­ra­phy of the site with flood­ing issues, and the con­nec­tions to the sur­round­ing neighbourhood.

After sub­mit­ting this urban design frame­work with all the descrip­tions and guide­lines for major public space and main roads, we received the fur­ther request from the Greater London Author­ity for devel­op­ing the qual­ity and design guide­lines of the hous­ing area, in order to show the atmos­phere of each neigh­bour­hood in greater detail. The con­cept of “Design Guidelines” for such a large devel­op­ment was an exper­i­men­tal thing for the city of London at that time. Since their ambi­tion for this project is so high, they have tried very hard to pre­vent the anar­chic devel­op­ment of each plot by the local developers.

The Urban Design Guide­lines (UDG) are split-​up into two cat­e­gories: the rules and the guides. The Rules were oblig­a­tory in the sense that the archi­tects must stick to them; whereas the guides give an indi­ca­tion of how cer­tain aspects should be dealt with. The realm of work in this phase con­tains the cre­ation of varied streetscapes, diverse block typolo­gies and spe­cific build­ings as well as guide­lines for play, sport and recre­ation areas. The Land­scape and eco­log­i­cal guide­lines aim to increase exist­ing habi­tats for ani­mals, as well as cre­at­ing people zones in the heart of the urban devel­op­ment. Our role as a mas­ter­plan­ner has come to an end, yet maxwan is now involved in select­ing the archi­tects for the development.