issues i - We Made That

Transcription

THE — UNLIMITED — EDITION
Published by
We Made That
www.wemadethat.co.uk
Designed by
Andrew Osman & Stephen Osman
www.andrewosman.co.uk
www.stephenosman.co.uk
This issue of The Unlimited Edition has
been printed locally by Aldgate
Press, with recycled paper by local
supplier Paperback
www.aldgatepress.co.uk
www.paperback.coop
ISSUES I — II — III — IV
Many thanks to all our contributors
for their hard work
ISSUE I — SURVEY — AUGUST 2011
2
Olympic Park
Holly Lewis, We Made That
Stratford
ΩΩ
Ω Stratford High Street
Victoria Park
STRATFORD
HIGH STREET
Pudding Mill Lane Ω
Welcome to Issue I of The Unlimited
Edition. Welcome to the A11, to Aldgate,
Whitechapel High Street, Whitechapel
Road, Mile End Road, Bow Road and to
Stratford High Street. Welcome to High
Street 2012.
This stretch of road is an arterial
route for many Londoners and visitors.
Millions travel along it, and for over 300
years it has been an important route to
and from the capital. The Unlimited Edition
is a super-local newspaper focused purely
on this strand of London. The intention
is to record and explore the familiar,
and to celebrate and speculate on the
possibilities that lie in its future.
In our first issue, ‘Survey’, we focus on
the existing nature of the High Street.
Our contributors have been invited from
a wide range of disciplines: they have
watched, read, analysed, photographed
and illustrated the High Street to bring to
you a collection of articles as varied,
detailed and enjoyable as the area itself.
Historian, Derek Morris, describes
for us the scene that would have awaited
an eighteenth century traveller arriving
to the area. Some aspects are still
familiar – The Grave Maurice pub having
kept its name for over 250 years. Others,
such as a local 40 acre fruit nursery that
was supplier to King Charles II, are more
surprising. Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad’s
fascinating part-documentary, part-fiction
image on page 8, updates depictions of
the transitory nature of the area for the
present day commuter.
Expanding outwards from this critical
highway, articles from Ruth Beale and
Clare Cumberlidge reveal the tight mesh
of social, cultural, ethnic and economic
fabric that surrounds the High Street in
Aldgate and Wentworth Street. Such
hidden links and ties are further elaborated
by Esme Fieldhouse and Stephen Mackie,
who weave a mysterious fiction involving
two characters both intertwined and
fundamentally separated by the fabric
of the High Street.
With this paper we hope to draw your
attention to aspects of the High Street
that you might otherwise have missed.
Artmusic have provided us with just such
a diversion, a survey of local bells, whose
pervasive nature might cause you to think
twice next time you pass the renowned
Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Ben Pearce,
3
High Street 2012 Historic Buildings Officer
for Tower Hamlets Council, also gives
us his personal perspective on some of
the restoration works that form part
of the wider heritage remit of the High
Street 2012 initiative. Whitechapel Market
may hold new delights for you once you
have imagined the stallholders as part of
a life-sized ‘Happy Families’ card game,
as Hattie Haseler has done, or considered
a locally guided bus tour.
As with any survey, something is
bound to be missed: the photo you just
didn’t take, a dimension you didn’t realise
you would need. We can not hope to
accurately map the High Street, but we
do hope that this issue of The Unlimited
Edition will represent a fragment of the
diversity of this vibrant route. We hope
you will agree that it is a worthy subject
for your attention, and deserves more
consideration than a just fleeting visit.
Three Mills
Green
Ω Bow Church
Ω
Bow Road
Bromley-by-Bow Ω
Ω Mile End
BOW ROAD
Stepney Green Ω
MILE END ROAD
Whitechapel Ω
Royal London
Hospital
Aldgate
East
Ω
Mile End
Park
Ben Pearce, Historic Buildings Officer,
Tower Hamlets Council
WHITECHAPEL ROAD
WHITECHAPEL
HIGH STREET
ALDGATE
© All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means without prior permission in writing
from the editors. Every possible effort has been
made to locate and credit copyright holders of
the material reproduced in this publication.
The editors apologise for any omissions or errors,
which can be corrected in future issues. The views
expressed in this paper are those of the individual
authors and do not represent opinions of the
editors or funders of this project.
This newspaper, The Unlimited Edition, is
part of the High Street 2012 Initiative. High
Street 2012 is an ambitious programme
to enhance and celebrate the ribbon of
London life that connects the City at
Aldgate to the Olympic Park at Stratford.
The project combines a series of areabased initiatives that respond to specific
places along the route with street
actions that cover the whole stretch to
create a coherent thread that unites the
intersecting high streets.
Over the summer months of 2011 we
are publishing three issues of this paper
specifically dedicated to High Street 2012.
Each issue is focused around one of
the themes ‘Survey’, ‘Speculation’ and
‘Proposition’ respectively. The papers
are intended to reveal surprising aspects
of the existing and explore enjoyable
opportunities for the high street. A
final issue in June 2012, ‘Collation’ will
combine the previous papers into a
set that together will form a unique
documentation of the local area.
We have invited a wide range of
guest writers, artists, urban designers
and community members to contribute
creative snapshots to these papers.
Through this open and collaborative
method of content collection, The
Unlimited Edition encourages you to look
again at the familiar, at a route that is so
often travelled and so rarely celebrated.
The Unlimited Edition is curated
by We Made That. All three initial issues
of the paper will be distributed for free
on High Street 2012 in late summer 2011.
Full sets of all four issues: ‘Survey’,
‘Speculation’, ‘Proposition’ and ‘Collation’
will also be available to order from
June 2012 at www.wemadethat.co.uk
Whitechapel High Street, © Tower Hamlets Local History & Archive Library
High streets are real places – resilient,
adaptable, and a living story of the different
communities that live there, trade there
and shop there. Buildings that were once
loved are now dilapidated and have lost
their sense of identity; but sometimes
buildings that spent years being bland
and unnoticed have been restored to their
former glory; as businesses have come
and gone.
I believe unravelling the history of
the high street is key to its future success.
Why do people go to the high street any
more? Is it still that convenient? Isn’t it
better to go a mall, get it all in one place,
convenient and sheltered? I don’t believe
it is – and I believe that the historical
nature of our high streets is the integral
reason people want to go there.
The A11 is a series of historic town
centre high streets that have gradually
become one – bringing together a wide
range of commerce on a key trading route
between the city and the east, the central
and the docks.
As industries have become obsolete,
demand has changed, old communities
moved on and new ones taken their place,
these high street hubs have been adapted
a huge number of times, sometimes well,
sometimes badly. With the emphasis on
successful trading original shop-fronts,
architectural features and nuances have
been lost over time. We now have a
unique chance to put some of these back.
Care and repair of buildings reveals
many hidden stories. The grocery store in
Mile End that used to be a manufacturer
of plastics; the pound-store in Whitechapel
that used to be a boys club and a lecture
hall; the corner building in Aldgate many
assumed was always white-rendered was
revealed to be bright red brick underneath;
the ‘historic edge of a common’ that
was actually an ornamental garden; the
department store that was once the
‘Selfridges of the East’…
Many small shops tell me they face a
fight for survival. It is quite understandable
sometimes that business owners say that
the historic nature of their building is a
burden that they can ill afford to keep up.
Their buildings and shops have been
purchased as places of commerce, and
though individuals might be interested in
local history from a personal perspective,
the fact that they are old buildings
remains a drawback.
“The history and
heritage of
our high street
should be its
biggest asset”
Even with the offer of building grants,
some people will not want to take part.
Indeed many owners see any works to
their buildings as a potential disruption to
their trade and therefore a potential
cost to themselves. The Historic Buildings
Conservation Scheme, as part of High
Street 2012, aims to change this view.
The benefit of looking after historic
high streets ‘I think’ needs to be seen in the
long term and not the short term – every
small contribution and bit of care to the
high street helps it stay robust in the face
of increased competition from out of town
malls and internet shopping. The history
and heritage of our high streets should be
its biggest asset not its biggest hindrance.
4
Helen Ottaway, Artmusic
The Ring Ring Bell project by Artmusic
forms part of of the High Street 2012
Heritage, Culture and Community Grants
programme. In this article lead artist,
Helen Ottaway, introduces the project
and tells us what to expect in the coming
months leading up to June 2012.
Church bells – bicycle bells – door
bells – bus bells – hand bells – shop bells –
telephone bells – finger bells – ankle bells
– boxing ring bells – school bells – the bell
is everywhere and has many functions and
meanings: it punctuates our daily life
announcing beginnings and ends; it is used
to attract attention or sound a warning;
we use it for prayer, for celebration, for
mourning – and bells make music.
Ring Ring Bell is an exploration of
bells along the High Street documenting
and recording their sounds and their uses,
their stories and histories. Bells of all sizes
and from different cultures will combine
together in a new audio work and a ring
tone to be created.
The project will start in earnest in
January 2012 but the company have already
5
been out on the High Street checking out
some of the bells that are visible from the
street. The Ring Ring Bell music and the
ring tone will be available in May 2012 and
the project will culminate in a procession
of bells in June 2012.
There will be many ways for people to
get involved in the project from sharing
a bell story or contributing a bell sound,
to taking part in the final performance or
simply by using the ring tone.
Thomas Rowlandson, ‘Entrance from Mile End or Whitechapel Turnpike’, 1798
trying to make their way into London, and
shop keepers whose yard entrances were
blocked up by intransigent waggoners.
A young labourer from Essex on his
first visit to London would have been
amazed at the variety of entertainment
and found himself subject to a variety
of pressures in Whitechapel. There were
theatres and bowling greens, brothels
Derek Morris, Historian
Bells from the High Street. Images: Frances Ottaway
A thirsty traveller from Stratford, Southend
or Harwich arriving at Mile End in 1800
entered a four-mile long area of retail
therapy that stretched along Whitechapel
High Street through Aldgate to Cheapside,
St Paul’s Cathedral and the Strand. On each
side of the High Street soared three and
four-storeyed houses, shops and taverns,
a mighty contrast to the low houses and
hovels in Essex and Suffolk. Also impressive
were the London Hospital, Davenant’s
School and the Whitechapel Bell Foundry.
As most travellers arrived by horse
the immediate need for stabling was met
in the fields near The Hayfield tavern and
the White Horse in Mile End. For a glass
of beer, a tot of gin or a glass of Spanish
wine there were over one hundred taverns
to choose from in Whitechapel and
amongst those whose names have survived
for over 250 years is The Grave Maurice
near the Royal London Hospital.
The shops catered for every need from
clothing to food and the supply of luxury
goods such as gold watches and silver
cups and candlesticks and catered for
the increasingly fashionable tea drinking
rituals of the middle class.
Dominating the High Street was
the largest hay market in England that
survived until the 1920s.
By the 1750s the Whitechapel hay
market had spread along the south side of
the High Street, from the northern end
of Leman Street, to the eastern boundary
of the City of London, a distance of
several hundred yards. The market was
open three days a week. In the spring and
summer the market was open from 7am
until 3pm, but closed an hour earlier in
the winter months.
Probably over 100 hay waggons would
have rumbled through the night from
Essex and Hertfordshire in order to claim
a prime position in the middle of the
High Street. Inevitably this led to parking
problems and conflicts with travellers
“For a glass of
beer, a tot of gin
or a glass of
Spanish wine there
were over one
hundred taverns
to choose from”
and the haunts of homosexuals. At night
there were many cases of men being
robbed whilst ‘cherry merry’ in Whitechapel
High Street. Typically young women
would invite young men ‘into a house,
offer them a drink and ask them to stay
the night.’ As the victims could seldom
remember in the morning what had
been stolen the courts were not very
sympathetic; and would tell the victims
‘If you have no other evidence you must
reap the Fruit of your own Folly for going
to such wicked Places.’
Modern tourist guides like to emphasise
the association of Whitechapel with the
famous highwayman Dick Turpin but
never mention the millionaire merchants,
knights of the realm and Fellows of the
Royal Society that lived in Whitechapel.
There were wealthy Scandinavian
merchants importing timber, tar and hemp
from the Baltic and brewers and sail cloth
merchants supplying the Royal Navy.
So Whitechapel High Street has three
hundred years of history to celebrate
starting with the royal gardener to
King Charles II. In his 40 acre nursery in
Whitechapel Nicholas Gurle supplied
the king, Samuel Pepys and other gentry
with twelve varieties of peach, two of
nectarine, eight of plum, eight of pear,
three of cherry, three of apple, two
of apricot and one quince. Not bad for a
supposedly smoky suburb downwind from
the City of London.
Derek Morris is a noted historian and speaker
of London’s eastern parishes in the eighteenth
century. His latest book ‘Whitechapel, 1600 – 1800;
A Social History’, will be published later this year
by the East London History Society. His earlier and
very popular books include ‘Wapping 1600 – 1800,
A Social History’, written with Ken Cozens, which
was published in 2009 and ‘Mile End Old Town,
1740 – 1780; A Social History’, which was published
in 2007. All his books have been published by The
East London History Society.
6
The area around Aldgate is characterised by employment use to the west and
residential uses to the east. This forms
the basis for marked contrast across the
area, although the reality of how people
live and work here is more nuanced. The
detail of these use patterns has been
carefully explored in the Aldgate Public
Realm Strategy, which reveals hidden
links between these apparently divided
areas of London. An excerpt of the study
has been included here.
.@="ALQ"G>"&GF<GF"AK"L@="OGJCHD9;="
for many thousands of skilled workers in
the financial services sector. They work
in high employment densities. Plot ratios
are high, but so is construction quality.
Streets are mostly narrow, but they are
well maintained and traffic volume is low.
Pedestrian movements are high at peak
hours and public spaces are popular for
individual and collective winding down
at lunchtime and early evening.
By contrast, Spitalfields and
Whitechapel are predominantly residential areas, with high levels of overcrowding. A number of the wards count
amongst the most deprived in the
Key
country. The demographic profile of the
area is young. There is a low provision of
open space per head of population, and
relatively little targeted for young people.
These contrasts amount in places to
stark separation with little sign of common ground. Differences between the
two areas have been exaggerated by the
disruption caused by the gyratory, to the
extent that they have come to be seen as
two totally disparate and distinct areas.
However, the reality of Aldgate’s
social dynamics is less clear-cut and more
interdependent than might be assumed.
A number of the workers and residents
cross this ‘border’ on a daily basis:
n"ALQ"OGJC=JK""J=KA<=FLK">JGE"L@="
Portsoken Ward using local Tower Hamlets’
retail, ameneties and the East London
Mosque and madrassas in the east.
n"9EADA=K">JGE".GO=J"!9ED=LK"MKAF?"
;GEEMFALQ"AF>J9KLJM;LMJ="AF"L@="ALQ"G>"
London, e.g. children attending Sir John
9KK"HJAE9JQ"K;@GGD
n",=KA<=FLK">JGE"L@="*GJLKGC=F"O9J<"
(previously within the borough of Tower
Hamlets until the boundary changes of
1994) using local Tower Hamlets’ retail
and amenities.
The distribution of retail, workspace,
and cultural and social infrastructure
further nuances the picture of the area.
The distribution of these uses is uneven,
and varies considerably over the day and
week. The following diagrams illustrate
these patterns.
Site Boundary
ALQ"19DD
GEE=J;A9D
Residential
Healthcare
Education
Markets
JLK""MDLMJ=
Retail
Wholesale
GEEMFALQ
Leisure
9AL@
Hotels / Bars / Restaurants
Transport Stations
MAPPING OF
WEEKDAY EVENING USES
Spitalfields
Market
Whitechapel
Liverpool Street
Station
Tower of
London
Liverpool Street
Station
Tower of
London
Spitalfields
Market
Whitechapel
)F"9"O==C<9Q
"L@="ALQ"JAF?=":=LO==F"
Bishopsgate and Whitechapel High Street
is both active and diverse. The major
institutions of London Metropolitan
University, the Whitechapel, and Toynbee
Hall / Studios are all open, the street market
at Petticoat Lane (Wentworth Street) is
active. The connections northwards
to Liverpool Street, Spitalfields Market
and Brick Lane are well-peopled and
appear safe.
There is a noticeable drop-off in
secondary diversity south of Aldgate /
1@AL=;@9H=D"!A?@"-LJ==L"9F<"GEE=J;A9D"
Road, with the Tower of London’s 1.9
million visitors per year having little visible
AEH9;L"GF"K=JNA;=K"AF"L@="9J=9"GF;=JF"
was expressed by residents in consultation
for the Aldgate Masterplan over the
lack of retail diversity; however the retail
provision along Whitechapel Road, to
the east of Osborn Street, appears to be
slowly becoming more diverse.
The evening / night-time economy is
represented largely by pubs, bars and
restaurants, within the City, and in
particular in Brick Lane. The Whitechapel
and Toynbee Studios are both active in
the evening (the former once a week, as a
part of the ‘First Thursdays’ late opening
programme), but with little else open in
the immediate vicinity to serve (or benefit
from) these institutions’ visitors.
The streets animated by the
Petticoat Lane street market in the day
are quiet, and do not support evening
uses at present (unlike e.g. Chapel Street
Market in Islington). The routes from the
north vary in the degree of activity they
support, and consequently in terms of
safety. While Brick Lane / Osborne Street
remains busy, Commercial Street is
animated by little more than passing
traffic, and Toynbee Street / Old Castle
Street is generally deserted.
The large plots either side of the
Aldgate / Whitechapel High Street from
Aldgate to Whitechurch Lane are generally
without ‘active frontages’. In particular
in the evening, separated by the subways,
this reinforces the separation between
activities to west and east. The relative
lack of services south of Aldgate /
Whitechapel High Street and Commercial
Road is also evident in the evening.
MAPPING OF
SUNDAY USES
'**#( ")"
WEEKDAY DAYTIME USES
Spitalfields
Market
7
Liverpool Street
Station
Tower of
London
Whitechapel
With the City quiet at weekends, street
markets animate the City Fringe on
Sundays, stretching from Petticoat Lane
to Broadway Market, via Brick Lane and
Columbia Road (although the street market
at Whitechapel is closed). Spitalfields
Market and the Truman Brewery have
successfully inserted themselves into this
Sunday network. Petticoat Lane takes
over much of Middlesex Street on Sundays,
but market activity stops short of the
Aldgate / Whitechapel High Street.
The market activity supports some
retail opening and cafes / restaurants.
Toynbee Studios and the Whitechapel are
open, and have a high footfall.
This study is taken from the Aldgate Public Realm
Stragegy, authored by General Public Agency
and Witherford Watson Mann and completed in
2009. It was funded by Exemplar Properties and
the lead public sector client was Design for London.
The larger client group comprised of London
Borough Tower Hamlets, Corporation of London,
London Metropolitan University, Transport for
London and Whitechapel Art Gallery. General Public
Agency was run by Clare Cumberlidge and Lucy
Musgrave, now of Clare Cumberlidge & Co and
Publica respectively. © General Public Agency and
Witherford Watson Mann
8
THE UNLIMITED EDITION
ISSUE I — SURVEY
Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad, ‘Orderly Conduct London: (Untitled)’, 2010
ISSUE I — SURVEY
9
10
Ruth Beale, Publica
”The main characteristic of the area is
its mixture … Its component parts are
scattered widely, yet the area is compact.
When looked at closely it is rather like a
newspaper photograph, all random dots
and seemingly without reason … Land
tenure is mixed with freehold, long and
short leasehold and tenancies all jumbled
together. There are no single areas of
consolidated land ownership. Much
investment has taken place in new building
in the past twenty years and this too has
been piecemeal, cheek-by-jowl with older
worn out property.” — Michael Theis
This is a quote is from a 1971 Redevelopment
Study of nearby South Shoreditch, which
concluded that the existing buildings should
not be pulled down (as planned) but that
it was sufficient, characterful and wholly
adaptable. Instead what was needed was
‘to improve the amenity, convenience and
efficiency of these areas of employment
and thus foster and enhance the prosperity
of the many businesses and their work
people’. A resurgence of spirit is reflected
Esme Fieldhouse &
Stephen Mackie
Tonight, there is an encounter between
two unlikely characters. Or rather, two
characters who do not like each other
much. There was a family feud some time
ago. Though it was not quite so dramatic,
more a slow gathering of absence that
quietly stacked up. So high, it formed
a barrier between Taka and Poisha. An
occasion missed here or there because
of a lack of anticipation and then at one
point, it just tipped. The history became
arbitrary. Enough distance for some
abstract resentment to be convincing.
Taka and Poisha are not geographically
distant. They live on the same street in
fact – at either end of Whitechapel Road.
The exact point where each lives defines
exactly who they are. Taka is right in
the thick of it. He cocoons himself within
the comfort of a tight knit community
so that he might be everyone’s friend.
The tip of Brick Lane, leading to a strip
of professional welcomes. Whereas
Poisha is out on a limb, consciously so,
for just enough space to be allowed the
opportunity to be introspective. Giving
little away with tunnel vision towards the
family. Whitechapel where it starts to
change its mind.
Taka and Poisha use the street as a
tool to remain a world apart. But a larger
force binds them together, tugging at the
invisible wires that pull the traffic through.
While Taka gazes upwards to minarets
among the silk weavers, Poisha curls up
beneath the cross. A call for Taka to join
like-minded others at the meeting place.
One curious offspring of Poisha occasionally
peers over to this exotic character,
immersed in the centre of activity.
The disparate pair is tied by more
than this road, for they are relatives. This
would be difficult to spot of course, their
personalities are laughably in opposition.
Years spent in pursuit of splaying paths,
burying the shared blood and naive
experiences beyond view. Lives were once
piled atop one and other, now they tilt
at either end of a see-saw.
Taka and Poisha happen to be money
exchange shops. Seemingly banal office
types - desks, chairs, filing cabinets,
wall calendars - yet filled with tales of
adventures, and part of a topography
that stretches to the other side of the
world. Trade is embedded in the tarmac
here, which unfolds and wraps itself
around the tea leaves of north-eastern
Bangladesh. The exchange of money runs
along a streak of blue paint between
“Part of a topography
that stretches to the
other side of the world.
Trade is embedded in
the tarmac here”
skyscrapers, which gushes blue-brown
through the streets of Dhaka. Travelling
on two wheels from the City of Mosques
to The City mosque, and back again.
A blur of moving blue lights interrupts
the quiet pause just after the small hours,
just before early workers. All awake at a
tower composed of blue rectangles in the
middle of the road, where either end is
brought together. Taka is ill, a devastating
tear in the routine of normality. The
reason is not a lifetime of self-indulgence
or reckless attitude to health. Instead,
it is something that was there all along,
squeezing ever-tightly.
Taka needs a piece of strength from
another body to survive. It must be
someone with an ingrained bond; Poisha
knows it must be him. He does not feel
the family connection anymore, he has
carved himself a sense of belonging
where he is happy; he still knows it must
be him. Through bleary eyes, he sees
with great clarity a character that lives
on the same street. And for this reason
alone, the interests of Taka are not foreign
to Poisha’s own concern.
in the regeneration propagated by High
Street 2012, and in the current moment
of thinking in urbanism which values
existing strengths, addresses need, and
celebrates character rather than trying to
replace it.
At Publica we run a Community
Interest Company and consultancy through
which we conduct detailed surveys to
attempt to understand the physical, social,
cultural and symbolic landscape of
places, often where change is anticipated
or planned. Our team of architects, urban
designers, planners, researchers and artists
gather and analyse extensive information
about a given area, from the physical
to the personal to the statistical. Our
combination of design advice, engagement,
research and strategising is an unusual
service, but we pride ourselves on retaining
the same integrity of approach for
each client, whether developers, local
authorities, third sector organisations or
community members.
Our survey methods range from
‘fine grain’ analysis of roads, paving,
architecture and character; informationgathering about how and how much a
place is used at different times of the day;
mapping of cultural, retail and community
provision; research into the history of
the area such as demographic fluctuations,
We are seeking articles for future issues
of The Unlimited Edition. The newspapers
will include speculation about the High
Street and proposals for its future.
political events, historic character and
recent cultural changes; identification
of landmarks, character and desire lines.
We also include creative approaches and
have engaged artists to organise walking
tours with local residents and recently
added a filmmaker to our team in order to
create video portraits of surveyed areas.
We conduct interviews and walks
with local people in order to understand
their ideas, aspirations and frustrations
with the area. We also look at nearby
streets and public spaces, and research
relevant case studies in order to highlight
appropriate and successful public spaces.
These approaches, whilst continually
evolving, initially grew out of the ‘Social
and Cultural Survey’ methodology developed by Lucy Musgrave (Publica Director)
and Clare Cumberlidge whilst co-directors
of General Public Agency (see work on
pages 6 and 14). A Social and Cultural
Survey of Aldgate was the basis for
General Public Agency’s Aldgate Public
Realm Strategy on page 6, which in turn
informed Design for London’s brief for
High Street 2012.
The surveys always throw up surprises.
In Aldgate, General Public Agency
discovered that despite a historic ‘cliffedge’ condition dividing the City and
Tower Hamlets, thousands of people travel
11
“The surveys
always throw
up surprises”
daily west-east to attend prayer at the
East London Mosque. For a wider-area
survey around a site on the border of
Spitalfields and Aldgate the Publica team
documented the extent of privately
controlled ‘public space’. During a survey
of Aldgate for London Metropolitan
University we identified a super-local
condition where some residents live, work
and shop in a very confined area – with
differing social, cultural economic and
health implications.
Change is inevitable in any city and
in the neighbourhoods along High Street
2012, but the challenge is for development
to be respectful and contribute positively.
It’s right that developers now have to
deliver regeneration as well as development, but with that comes a responsibility
to respect existing neighbourhoods. So
if a survey can be a starting point of a
conversation about a place before change
is even considered, then it can help the
neighbourhood to come first.
Proposals may be informative, revealing,
outlandish, or hopefully all of these.
Please send article proposals to:
[email protected]
12
heroin in the UK. There were massive
gangs on this estate, and people that
I knew that were squatting it found it
really difficult to do anything there
because there were security guards
going round with dogs everyday, and
there were gangs attacking the squats.
My friends had to argue with some of
the indigenous Sylheti population that
actually the early Sylheti settlers were
squatting those areas around Parfett
Street and Myrdle Street too. So there
was a kind of lineage and history of
radical direct action.
A lot of residents of the Ocean
Estate were, to use that horrible word,
‘decanted’ to areas like Barking and
Dagenham. There were compulsory
purchase orders as well, where people
were given very low value for the flats.
So essentially to get the same size
property they’d have to move up north,
to Manchester and Sheffield. So this
Hattie Haseler
Wickhams department store, Mile End Road
Douglas Murphy: Thank you very much.
As Andrew says I’m an architectural
writer so I’ll probably be attempting to
provide some kind of critical framework
for Laura’s subjective rants.
Laura Oldfield Ford
& Douglas Murphy
The following excerpt is transcribed
directly from an open-top bus tour of East
London that took place on Saturday 30 July.
The tour was organised by UCL Urban
Laboratory, and connected to the Creative
City Limits network. The portion selected
covers the route from Aldgate to Mile End.
Dr Andrew Harris: I’m very delighted to
have two esteemed tour guides for
this afternoon. We have the artist, Laura
Oldfield Ford, joining us all the way from
Dalston and the architect and writer,
Douglas Murphy, all the way from Barbican.
They’re going to lead us on the tour today –
the destination is Stratford at 5 o’clock,
so over to them.
Laura Oldfield Ford: Hello, thank you
for coming. The first thing I should say
is that I’m not really a tour guide as
such, I’m an artist, so what I’m going to
offer you on the course of this journey
through east London are my impressions
of the area, recollections, observations
that have been made through walking
around this area over the last 15 years
I suppose.
My work’s really been about
chronicling the changes in this area,
changes that I would say have not been
beneficial or positive to the area, and
also observations about the regeneration
schemes, property developing around
here, culminating in the 2012 Olympics.
So we’re just going to chat as we
go along about the areas around. I’m just
going to pass you over to Douglas
Murphy now.
LOF: Just going past the mosque now.
There were plans to have a massive megamosque in east London very near the
Olympic site. There was a very small
mosque just next to the Olympic site just
near the Greenway Northern Outfall which
was branded the ‘mega-mosque’ like the
mosque we’ve just passed here, which has
expanded massively in the last few years.
There’s an Islamic learning centre, Islamic
apartments where the old Atlantis building
was – a massive development there.
“The best visual joke
in London, the small
house that breaks
up the Wickhams
department store”
DM: On the left here is the best visual joke
in London, which is the small house that
breaks up the Wickhams department
store. Basically in the early 20th Century
developers wanted Mile End to be the
Oxford Street of east London and a
developer tried to build a massive department store there and one little shopkeeper
wouldn’t sell up! So they had to build this
massive Oxford Street style, 6-storey
department store with a tiny little 3 storey
house and shop in the middle, so broken in
two basically.
LOF: We’re just approaching the Ocean
estate just a bit further along here. I think
we’re probably going to stop and have a
walk around it.
The Ocean Estate is quite a notorious
estate. When we go there now you’ll see
it’s mostly a building site – mostly ruins.
But I used to be involved with quite a large
squatting scene on that estate about 4
or 5 years ago. The estate’s absolutely
massive, it was developed piecemeal after
the second world war so it’s in different
phases; 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s even up to
80s and 90s developments. But 10 years
ago it was the cheapest place to buy
The Whitechapel Happy Families card
game was created as a playful method for
uncovering and understanding relationships
between language use, trade, social
hierarchy and religion within Whitechapel
Market. A selection of workers from the
market are expressed as characters on 28
playing cards and divided into ‘families’
according to their trade. The allocation of
trades as ‘families’ likens the market
workers to local tradesmen seen in the
original version of the game, emphasising
the personable face of the market as a
whole. The shuffling of the cards during the
game encourages the random reordering
of the typical trade hierarchies and
reassembles the market with an alternative
social structure.
In creating the game, the research
incorporated a collection of simple
information sets for each of the characters
which were then combined with information
on stall location and occupation to create
social maps of the market. This mapping
process revealed language use as a highly
influential factor across market activities
in relation to the built environment,
social networks and economic situation.
The investigation provoked a community
based design response which integrated
social spaces into the urban environment
through everyday market routines.
The study was made as part of a series of games
played by Diploma Unit 12 at the School of
Architecture at London Metropolitan University,
devised to investigate and create briefs for projects
in and around the High Street 2012 route.
whole area has really been subjected to
the most ruthless regeneration schemes.
DM: I would just agree with what Laura
says. Stylistically the Ocean Estate is
quite remarkable for being possibly the
widest selection of architecture, housing
architecture, in 20th Century history,
as Laura says, from the 1930s through to
contemporary stuff. Not much stuff that
you’d be proud of as an architect to be
honest – but there you go.
DM: This was once the site of Walter
Besant’s ‘People’s Palace’, which was an
iron and glass building which was built by
Walter Besant for the people of Mile End.
He was a writer – a Victorian writer, who
drew attention to the plight of the urban
poor in the east end. A very classic 19th
century type character!
And then there’s also the Octagon
library, which I’ve recently been informed
that has a dedication to King Leopold II of
Belgium – which is not nice.
And there’s a number of late 20th
Century student halls of residence by
various workhorses of the British architecture scene. And a few spots of flamboyant 21st century digital architecture
as well, which are not particularly great
but show a wide variety.
DM: The People’s Palace used to be on
the left, but it was demolished in the mid
20th century. This yellow bridge we’re
approaching was designed by the architect
Piers Gough in the late 1990s, which is
part of a linear park that joins up Mile End
park with the Limehouse cut and other
such locations.
LOF: It’s meant to form the link in the
‘green chain’, but it’s never really been used.
This area is one the first areas to take up
art as urban regeneration. Matt’s Gallery
13
is just up there next to the canal, and
that was one of the first galleries to move
to the east end and really started up a
community of small run gallery spaces
including Interim, on Beck Road, who
started off on Martello Street in Hackney
but has now moved over here.
DM: Is the green bridge considered a good
thing? It’s frequently considered a ‘good
thing’, in inverted commas. The brief was
originally just for a bridge but the project
developed into a much more interesting
park with shops and so on. Overall there’s
very little you can fault with it – it’s not
really done anyone any harm.
However this neighbourhood, Mile End
in particular, has changed a lot. There’s
been an influx of various middle class
people who don’t want to live in Hackney
or Dalston. There’s a lot of students and
post-grads, and young white professionals
as well, that have moved in over the years.
14
Q
European
Production
F
15
Asian
Production
Indonesia
European
Production
O
THEN
D
B
Petticoat Lane Market, one of
Britain’s oldest surviving street markets
(since 1608) opens on Wentworth Street
every Monday – Friday, extending around
the corner into Middlesex Street on
Sundays. A famous East End tourist
attraction it performs a daily pageantry of
raw market dynamism at the edge of the
City of London – a leading centre of global
finance. While the market’s location
underwrites its iconic status, the goods
themselves are generic: cheap clothes,
rolling luggage and mass-manufactured
ephemera of mainly unmarked origin –
most likely made in China, Romania,
Eastern Europe, England or India, according
to the stallholders who sell their wares to
a non-specific customer base of locals,
Londoners and foreign tourists. The original
Petticoat Lane was renamed Middlesex
Street in 1846. Despite this, the London
A – Z lists Petticoat Lane in its index and
marks it in italicised letters on the map.
This exceptional treatment – “our current
depiction of Petticoat Lane is an anomaly
and the only one we are aware of in our
London publications” – is maintained by
the A – Z “in order to assist customers who
wish to locate the market”. In an unrelated
sign of institutional intervention, the
London Assembly in 2008 proposed to
the Mayor the redrawing of the boundary
of the London Congestion Zone, which
currently runs along Commercial Street to
exclude Wentworth Street and protect its
vendors from falling revenues attributed
to the London Congestion Charge.
C
There are 27 African textile shops on
the three blocks of Wentworth Street
between Commercial and Middlesex
Streets. Unlike the swiftly changing
fashions of the street market, the textile
shops adhere to a strict menu of
specialisation and tradition: Swiss Voiles,
Brocades, Laces, Georges, Jacquard,
Cupion, Guinea, Organza, Dutch Wax.
The fabrics were originally produced in
Western Europe for an African clientele.
Claims to provenance are prominently
displayed in gold-detail labels on the
packaging and printed direct into the
fabric margins: ‘Real Dutch Wax’, ‘Swiss
Original Premium Grand’, ‘Trust Fabrics
Holland’, ‘Genuine Hollandais’.
D
Vlisco is the most prestigious producer
of the Dutch Wax fabrics sold on
the street. The Dutch Wax manufacturing
process is highly intricate, with designs
engraved on two copper rollers which
print both sides of the cotton fabric with
melted wax, before the multi-coloured
dyes are applied. Vlisco’s production
G
H
Wentworth St
E
N
Wentworth St
C
M
K
Revenue formerly destined
for Manchester
B
P
L
African
Consumers
African
Consumers
J
I
London
Consumers
London
Consumers
KEY
Dutch wax factories
Brocade factories
Voile factories
Wentworth Street: Now
Wentworth Street: Then
NOW
facilities are located in the factory town
of Helmond, Holland. The design team
is almost all Dutch, with not one African
designer. Vlisco is regularly cited as a
manufacturing anomaly – the rare case
of European industry producing consumer
goods exclusively for an African market.
E
The logic of the African textile trade
precedes contemporary globalism,
reflecting instead a colonial world map.
Dutch Wax trade with West Africa
began in 1846, when an Indonesian batik
method was copied and industrialised by
a Dutch merchant family, the Fentener
Van Vlissingens, later Vlisco. The Dutch
freighters stopped in Africa enroute back
to Indonesia, establishing a market for
the wax prints there. When Indonesia
introduced tariff protection laws to protect
their markets from imports in 1900, African countries became the sole buyers.
influence is of paramount importance
but the design is created exclusively in
the UK.
Cottage, Kilburn and Peckham. The largest
wave of immigration of Nigerians to
London began in the late 1960s.
G
J
Lustenau, Austria is a small town on
the border of Switzerland and the
historic source of Swiss Voile textiles used
in Nigerian ceremonial dress. The quality of
fabric – not the brand – is key to its social
distinctiveness. The Polish Cottons sold
on Wentworth Street are also produced
in Austria.
H
St Gallen, Switzerland established
its reputation for embroidery in the
16th Century, the fine quality of its
needlework secured with 19th Century
Swiss expertise on the embroidery
machine. Filtex, supplier of Nigerian voile
laces, is one of the manufacturers
headquartered here.
I
F
ABC Wax, Manchester began producing
wax print textiles for the African
market in 1908. As with Vlisco, the African
The textiles are retailed to the West
African community in London, particularly Nigerians, who live predominantly
in and around Dalston, Hackney, Swiss
Export sales to Africa – in particular
the former British territories of Nigeria,
Kenya and Ghana as well as Tanzania –
accounts for the majority of business for
some of the Wentworth Street shops.
K
The textile manufacturers also export
their wares to Africa direct. “It’s only
in Africa, where Real Dutch Wax carries
the authority of a brand like Rolls-Royce
or Rolex, that consumers care about
the difference between Vlisco quality
and cheap Asian imitations”, Vlisco’s CEO
explained in December 2000. While
European fabrics cost substantially more
than Asian-made equivalents, a common
perception in Africa is that Europeanproduced goods last, while Chinese
products are defective and ephemeral –
similar ideas and fears to those that persist
in Europe and the US today.
L
While the trade of goods manufactured
in Europe and destined exclusively for
Africa is possibly unique, the relationship
might soon be obsolete.
of Asian goods, and are raising product
standards accordingly. Royal Crown brand
in Yunnan province for example, employs
senior technicians from Holland to
supervise its Dutch Wax print manufacture.
While Wentworth Street traders still
claim to source all their fabrics from
Europe, peripheral traces of Asian supply
seen in textile shops along the street
include: large zipped delivery bag on shop
floor labelled Yoon&Yoon with a Seoul
phone number; voile fabric packaging
marked Smith Dongyang Co Ltd in shop
window; and Dutch Wax fabrics branded
Phoenix-Hitarget. Hitarget Limited
(Qingdao) is a Chinese manufacturer with
over 1000 employees, whose main export
markets are North America, Western
Europe and Africa.
to Akosombo, Ghana – a multi-million
pound manoeuvre. Cha Group has 20,000
employees, mainly in Africa, and also owns
United Nigerian Textiles Plc. in Lagos,
producing Dutch Wax prints there. Vertical
integration of the supply chain, including
technical liaison with the many textile
mills in West Africa and access to an
extensive network of local distributors,
enables the Cha Group to secure both
material supplies and future orders, making
the long distance mediation of European
traders seem increasingly obscure / remote.
The impact of the London Congestion
Charge on Wentworth Street traders may
be relatively banal. Cha Group now holds
the major market share of the African wax
print market, formerly held by Unilever
(UAC), who sold their share of the market
to Vlisco in 1994.
P
Q
M
Ongoing economic crisis and
devaluation in Africa has reduced
the competitiveness of European textiles
on the local market. African traders
increasingly look to the Persian Gulf and
China for more profitable products.
Attractive visa regulations in these regions
have facilitated trade ventures with
African traders travelling to China to
commission reproduction of fabric samples
to sell at home, thereby opening the market
to increased competition by providing a
blueprint to Chinese producers.
N
Chinese manufacturers in Shandong,
Yunnan, Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu,
Shandong and Zhejiang provinces now
dominate the low-cost production of
Swiss Voile and are moving into Dutch
Wax prints. Chinese producers have
adapted to perception of the low quality
O
In 2005, ABC Wax was bought by
the Cha Group of companies (headquartered Zhejiang, China) which
exported the main production machinery
and copper print rollers from Manchester
(Manchester) Despite the migration
of most of its production facilities,
ABC Wax products continue to be designed
by its team in Manchester in order
to maintain the look and style of ABC.
This project was commissioned and produced in
2009 by General Public Agency, a creative
consultancy which operated 2003 – 2010 and
worked in urban and rural regeneration. It was run
by Clare Cumberlidge and Lucy Musgrave. Clare
Cumberlidge now runs Clare Cumberlidge & Co,
a curatorial and cultural agency producing
exhibitions, cultural strategies, programmes of
commissions and events in the UK and
internationally. Lucy Musgrave has launched
Publica, a Community Interest Company and
consultancy providing public realm surveys
and strategies and detailed design advice on
the integration of new development.
© General Public Agency
16
Philipp Ebeling
A selection of images from a photo essay
for the Aldgate Public Realm Strategy,
authored by General Public Agency and
Witherford Watson Mann and completed
in 2009.
The strategy was funded by Exemplar Properties
and the lead public sector client was Design for
London. The larger client group comprised of
London Borough Tower Hamlets, Corporation of
London, London Metropolitan University, Transport
for London and Whitechapel Art Gallery. General
Public Agency was run by Clare Cumberlidge and
Lucy Musgrave, now of Clare Cumberlidge & Co
and Publica respectively. Images © Philipp Ebeling
Many thanks to all our contributors for
their hard work:
Ruth Beale, Clare Cumberlidge, Philipp
Ebeling, Esme Fieldhouse, Bahbak
Hashemi-Nezhad, Hattie Haseler, Stephen
Mackie, Derek Morris, Douglas Murphy
Laura Oldfield Ford, Helen Ottaway and
Ben Pearce.
Edited by
Holly Lewis & Oliver Goodhall
We Made That
Designed by
The Unlimited Edition is typeset in Ursus
(Beta) by Andrew Osman. The design is
informed by vernacular London lettering,
including tiled signage from LCC housing,
an alphabet from Truman’s public houses
and ultimately Johnston, the London
Underground font that is synonymous
with the city. The two-line treatment
used to set the titles is an homage to the
old Royal Mail logo, the Eastern District
Post Office maintaining a large presence
on Whitechapel Road.
Wouter Vanstiphout
The whole idea of talking about urban
riots in relationship to architecture and
urban planning was actually not an idea
that came out of myself, but it was an
idea that was forced upon us.
What I want to show you this morning
is a distillation of a lecture series that
I’ve been giving over the last year. It’s an
attempt at distilling about eight hours of
lectures into 25 minutes. I’m trying to use
this background to get the conversation
started over the UK riots. The riots that
we have been studying specifically, the
case studies for the lecture series, were
all in the post-war period. The first were
the riots that destroyed Detroit in ’67,
then we looked at the Broadwater Farm
Riot – just to take one riot from this period
of rioting in the early ’80s in England.
We looked at the Los Angeles riots, the
Justice Riots, or the Rodney King Riots in
’92, and then of course we looked at the
Banlieue riots in the fall of 2005. These
last riots, they were the reason for even
starting this research. These were riots
which happened on the ‘horizon’ of Paris,
way away from the centre of Paris, where
everything exploded, in something that
also seemed like mindless violence.
Communities destroying their own –
not so much shops in Paris – but you could
say at least as sad – they started destroying
their own schools, their own daycare
ISSUE II — SPECULATION — SEPTEMBER 2011
Images courtesy of the The Gentle Author and Shaun Young
centres, their own primary schools. So it
was this same kind of auto mutilation of
communities that you could see [as in
London], but this time it was ‘safely’ away
in the Banlieues.
Every riot has this ‘trigger event’.
Strangely enough, they are tragic events
of course, but [in the case of Paris] it
was not the first or the last time that
something like this happened and somehow
‘this’ event was the trigger, not some
other event, but this event. So, there’s
something of the coincidental to the
trigger event. From a flash point in
Clichy-sous-Bois, you can see the riots
spreading in the first days very quickly to
these other Grand Ensembles that have
the same demographic make up, the
same isolated position towards the centre
of Paris, the same ethnic make up, the
same income… All the same kind of
statistical make ups, you can see very
similar images, and it spread very fast to
these areas.
But the most strange thing, is that
not only did these areas match in terms
of ethnicity, or in terms of income level
or deprivation and so on, they matched
in terms of architecture. And they did not
just match, there was a 100% correlation
Continued on page 4
2
Olympic Park
Stratford
ΩΩ
Shepherd’s Bush), their location on the
pedestrian flow of the wider regeneration
area, transport modelling that takes in
public transport at an international scale
and a finely tuned calculation of parking
spaces. The ambition and design precision
of a great avenue translated into the
perfect shopping experience.
As Sam Jacob points out in this issue
of The Unlimited Edition (page 10), what we
think of as the traditional high street is
merely the social and economic product
of an era: “It only operates in relation to
a particular moment in the development
of urban technology, infrastructure and
economy.” Such a high street has been
‘dying’ since the first supermarkets
and malls arrived, spatial products that
came about due to changes in the market,
changes in technology, and changes in
society that we were (are) all a part of. But
the streets are all still there – functioning
and busy. They have not been erased by
the spectacular arrival of Westfield, nor
by the rise of internet shopping. However,
no longer burdened by their former status
as the primary site of retail, they have the
freedom to become other things.
Many of the speculations in this issue
of The Unlimited Edition envisage futures
that do not depend on the high street
as a corporate retail artery. They offer
visions both optimistic and pessimistic
about this future, from a developer
free-for-all of “endless landmarks and
David Knight
Victoria Park
STRATFORD
HIGH STREET
Three Mills
Green
Ω Bow Church
Ω
Bow Road
Bromley-by-Bow Ω
Ω Mile End
BOW ROAD
Stepney Green Ω
MILE END ROAD
Whitechapel Ω
Royal London
Hospital
Aldgate
East
Ω
Mile End
Park
WHITECHAPEL ROAD
WHITECHAPEL
HIGH STREET
ALDGATE
June 2012 at: www.wemadethat.co.uk
There are basically two kinds of street.
Some, like the Avenue des Champs-Élysées
in Paris, are the result of ambitious and
all-consuming planning, a singular vision.
At their peak they are part of the imperial
language of a country. They have
ceremony, poise, rhythm and grandeur.
They drip with precise symbolism and
have an axis. Others, like Whitechapel
High Street, are different. They are not
the product of a single intention but of
various endeavours spread out over time.
They are irregular, they communicate
in mixed messages and are hard to
photograph. They are shaped not by a
single vision but by culture at large. They
behave like, and look like, a bar graph of a
society’s economy.
I write this on the second trading day
of Westfield Stratford City, one of Europe’s
largest urban shopping malls and a key
component of London’s 2012 Olympic
project. 70% of visitors to the Games will
pass through Westfield, a 1.9 million
square foot centre that has changed the
shape of Stratford with the cutting of
a red ribbon and promises to alter the
form of London over the coming years.
Even more than the Champs-Élysées,
Westfield has been planned to perfection.
Somewhere, there is a room full of
reports analysing the mix of retail units
(subtly different to those in its cousin in
signature buildings” (Oliver Wainwright,
page 7) to a place where social functions
have replaced, or at least augmented,
retail (Ben van Bruggen and Steve Smith,
page 14). But nobody offers a grand,
Champs-Élysées-style vision of what this
series of streets might become; there are
no one-liners or ‘big’ ideas. It is as if the
form of the high street, its messy vitality,
is resistant to that kind of thing.
‘High Street 2012’ is typical of London,
a city that never built grand boulevards
like Paris because of the sheer complexity
of its land ownership and the lack of an
absolute ruler. What we got instead
are streets like John Nash’s Regent
Street, which is nothing if not a brilliant
improvisation and which twists to avoid
the expensive land. And streets like
Whitechapel High Street, Cheapside, Mile
End Road and Kingsland Road, which have
grown out of ancient tracks and which
preserve their social complexity and their
intricacy of ownership. Last year, the
School of Architecture and Landscape
at Kingston University, where I teach,
took London’s high streets as a collective
project. One of the key things this work
yielded was that, whatever their current
prosperity, the high streets of London
have a definite spatial character, and one
that carries lessons for the way we plan
(or don’t plan) our cities. They are deep,
and sustain an extraordinary density of
industries, communities and social events.
Their patterns of ownership bring delight
and surprise, elements which, as Rem
Koolhaas notes, have been sucked out of
the contemporary shopping experience.
In Whitechapel, the anarchist Freedom
Press occupies a building on Angel Alley
that rubs up against the Whitechapel Art
Gallery’s ‘back of house’, access to which
involves walking through what seems to
be part of a KFC. The rear courtyards of a
‘Cash and Carry’ are host to prayer rooms
and gathering places. Mr Spiegelhalter’s
jewellery business famously interrupts the
3
grand ambitions of Wickham’s department
store in Mile End (The Unlimited Edition
Issue 1 , page 12). And right next to Stepney
Green station is Mile End Place, an
extraordinarily cute street of terraced
houses accessed via a grim passageway
off the high street. Such spatial joy is
not the result of a predetermined plan
but of a constant renegotiation between
people, a ‘give and take’ that limitlessly
bends property lines into new and exciting
shapes. Two graduating students at
Kingston, Hannah Tourell (page 6) and
Shaun Young (page 15), produced work
which explores this kind of complexity, and
have used it to suggest possible futures
for the high street. Such complexity is now
at odds with way global retail works, though
Sam Jacob identifies some tactics –
gentrification and cannibalisation – through
which it is overcoming that obstacle.
“Such spatial joy is
not the result of a
predetermined plan”
But for a few weeks in Summer 2012, the
east end’s high street may yet find itself
firmly out of the limelight and abandoned
by the processes of global commerce. This
process has been happening for a long time,
and intriguing models of development
have grown up in the spaces left behind.
The way we plan our environment,
considered a dull story for decades, is
currently front page news in the light of
current proposals to radically reform the
planning system. In this light, places like the
high street, which derive their character
from the ad-hoc and the unexpected, may
prove to be a vital testing ground.
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Continued from page 1
between the architectural typology and
the riots. 100% correlation meaning that
all the riots happened in post-war high
rise council estates designed and built in
the ‘modernist functionalist’ town planning
model. So ‘all‘ the riots in Paris happened in
these council estates. However, the other
way round? Of course not. It’s not that all
the high rise council estates rioted – there
were some that did not – but all the riots
were in these council estates.
“What may be more
relevant here is the way
that riots ‘reveal’. They
reveal things about our
cities: your city”
So there was a debate that started very
soon in architectural circles, not just in
architectural circles, but also in planning,
government circles, journalistic circles,
that immediately the arrogant functionalist
town planning hand of the twenties, the
‘god’ of functionalist town planning, that
this is his legacy – burnt cars in banal
and awful alienating high rise areas. And
so that the only solution for that legacy
is demolition.
There is this idea that not only is
there something about the high rise
council estates in terms of their form and
shape, and also their content, that leads
to urban alienation, crime. Also the other
way round. This of course gives planners,
architects, politicians a fantastic tool
because then they can imagine that they
just have to destroy these council estates –
problem solved. You could say there’s a
utopian thing behind the building of the
council estates, but my thesis here is that
the demolition of council estates is just
DK-CM
When Kate Middleton wore ‘high street
fashion’ to greet the Obamas on the
occasion of their recent UK visit, she was
widely praised by the press for choosing
something so accessible, literally and
socially, to the rest of the nation. Kate’s
as utopian. In the sense that it assumes
that by doing something physical, that
you can solve the problem.
I’m not a cultural theorist, so what
I find much more interesting, and what
may be more relevant here is the way
that riots ‘reveal’. They reveal things
about our cities: your city, could be my
city, they reveal things about the city
that previously we may have hesitated
to look at, or our gaze was not focused
enough to see them. For example, what
turned out during the riots [in Paris] is
that when Jacques Chirac said, ‘Well, now
everything is back to normal’, that just
meant that the burning of cars during
the night went down to a ‘normal’ level.
Which meant that there are areas in
which millions, or hundred of thousands
of people, families, small children live,
where the burning of cars every night is
a normal event, and that that is somehow
acceptable. And I think that this shock
should be the shock, not the shock of
the riots – of course they were shocking,
terrible – but the real shock should be
about what they reveal.
I am not a specialist in London, but
what maps like these deprivation maps
of London show is a completely different
image than you would have in Paris.
How wealth and poverty are connected
in London is completely different than in
Paris. In Paris you would have all the rich
areas in the middle and then you would
have lots of middle class areas, and then
within the middle class areas you would
have islands of high deprivation. This is
something that I am really interested in,
and I found kind of shocking when I saw
these London maps. Of course, there is
the well known story about the fractured
nature of London and how the rich live
right next to the poor, yet still have nothing
to do with each other. But what I find
especially interesting is the disappearing
of the middle ground. The middle class
is completely marginalised on the
geographical level. And what is also
interesting, what these deprivation maps
show is that in a lot of these areas, that
over the last four or five years, is that the
poor areas have gotten poorer. So what you
fashion decision tells us a lot about how
the ‘High Street’ currently works in the
popular (and journalistic) imagination: it is
less a real place than a social and economic
barometer that measures prosperity,
popularity, class and ubiquity. It exists –
big, generic and unreal – collectively.
Opinion gathered from the high street is
can guess at is that it’s moving, to put
it dramatically, this ripping apart of the
city is going further.
Another thing that I find very
interesting about riots, is that you can
say that it’s just ‘gangsta’ culture or rap
culture, there’s a culture of violence. But
if you look more carefully there’s much
more going on. And that there are actually
richer and more complex stories to be
taken from pop culture and pop music
about the condition of inner cities that
we sometimes give them credit for. The
prophetic aspect of pop culture is also
interesting. A year before the Broadwater
Farm riots broke out they were actually
predicted by Junior Delgado, a reggae
singer from London, who had a song called
‘Broadwater Farm’. He was singing about
the tensions there, the hatred towards
the police, about the fact that it will
blow up one day and that nobody is doing
anything about it. So it’s interesting
that you have this predictive nature of
it. Lethal Bizzle, the London grime artist,
with ‘Babylon’s Burning the Ghetto’. It’s
the same thing, you can see. That is why
it’s very interesting to take a look at the
cultural context of these riots, not just a
criminological look.
“There are actually
richer and more complex
stories to be taken”
One last thing, a funny, or kind of bitter
thing with riots in cities, is that they
often happen when the city officials are
absolutely convinced that everything is
going well. And that they are doing the
right things, that have all these fantastic
plans, and they’re moving along, they’re
investing and building and planning, and
everything is going well and they’re doing
everything for everyone, and everybody
has a place in the grand scheme and it’s
all going in the right direction.
treated as a measure of popular taste, High
Street Honeys (© 2002 FHM magazine)
are sexy but accessible, and the ‘death of
the high street’ has been threatened in
newspapers for decades. Significantly,
when Kate’s dress was identified as coming
from a high street retailer, it was not the
shops that were flooded with people but
the retailer’s website – it crashed minutes
after the pictures were released. So the
high street is more on the internet than it
is in our towns, at least until the servers
go down.
The location and meaning of the high
street changes depending on one’s point
of view. Local campaigners might consider
the ideological ‘high street’ to be a defined
centre of their community, whilst for
economic forecasters the prosperity of a
The funny thing is, that’s another
correlation I found: the correlation, not
just between the fact that they were
high rise council estates and they rioted,
but the fact that all of them, all the ones
that rioted were somehow the subject
of a huge regeneration scheme, that had
been either proposed or just started.
Because what is the language of a
regeneration scheme? It is a language
of making the community more diverse
etc, meaning that a large part of the
community says, ‘I see, that means that
we have to go’. This is why regeneration,
even if we mean it fantastically well
can be received in the opposite way and
can, in that sense, be one of the triggers
for even violent alienation.
I believe there is a link between
urbanism and the riots, not so much in
the concrete form of the things that
are being designed, but what I see behind
or underneath these riots in London. It
also exists in many, many cities and
communities: urbanism is suffering from
what you could call a democratic deficit.
I think that an enormous amount of
people do not feel represented by politics
anymore, and urbanism is one of the most
visible forms of urban politics, so people
do relate their environments to how they
think their city is being run, and by
whom. And that – the lack of trust that
communities have in the intentions of
people doing urban regeneration projects,
for example – that is a very underestimated issue. That we could be talking to
them all the time, “We are building these
libraries, and still they do not trust us”.
I think that urbanists and urban planners
themselves should also take a long hard
look and see, or try to see the difference
between their intentions, and the way the
intentions are being received, because
in the end, you know, urban planning is
a form of real life physical politics, and
that aspect is not talked about a lot by the
design community.
This article is an edited transcript from ‘Social
Media Riots and the City’, a lecture originally
given at NLA on 9th September 2011 by Wouter
Vanstiphout, Professor of Design and Politics at
the Technical University of Delft.
retailer on a peripheral trading estate is
exactly the same as one in the centre of
town. For the current government, the high
street is certainly a real place tied into
traditional forms of community structure,
which is why they launched a high-profile,
celebrity-led campaign to save it in May
2011, whilst ‘High Street 2012’ is a key
component of London’s Olympic project,
and is explicitly linked to a chain of ‘real’
high streets from Aldgate to Stratford.
The following interviews are a snapshot of how the high street is perceived
by its principal agent: the retailer. What is
the future of the ‘high street’ as a concept?
What is the future of this high street?
“What is the future
of the high
street? What is
the future of this
high street?”
YASSIM TAYYAB
Tayyabs Restaurant, Fieldgate Street
ASAB ALI
Idea Store Whitechapel
Whitechapel Road
The future of the ‘high street’ is looking
very good. The whole High Street is
having a makeover and looks much more
attractive and welcoming. This has created
opportunities for new and existing
businesses. This is also great for the local
community as this will create jobs and
offer a wider range of products and services
at a competitive price. Not only that,
there will be greater room for culture
within the localities of the high street.
Idea Stores provide Library, Learning
and Information Services under one roof.
All the Idea Stores are located within the
boundaries of a high street and are easily
accessible. The Council conducted an
extensive consultation with the residents
which suggested that people want to see
Libraries and Learning Services that are
integrated, next to the shopping centres,
markets and transportation, that are
visible and a safe place to visit. Therefore
we put all these preferences together and
located the Idea Stores on the high streets.
Our drive is to become the borough’s
primary information provider where
we should be the first point of call for
information. Google is good and has a
vast amount of information if you know
what you are looking for. However, if you
do not know how to use a computer or
distinguish between the information then
its hopeless. At Idea Stores we would help
you find the information you are looking for
and in the process we will engage with and
empower you. If your skills are limited or
in need of improvement, we have a wide
range of courses on offer to help you,
from IT, dance and language to cookery
and life skills, from basic to advanced
levels. You can’t get that on Google.
I can imagine further interest by the
retail sector in the High Street even after
the Olympics have finished. It will give
businesses something to look forward to
and will attract the wave of visitors we’re
expecting to go in and use them.
The future of the ‘high street’ will be a
decline in shops, definitely. The high street
is dying because it is not as convenient as
the big shopping centres, and the internet
is also playing a big role. It’s a case of
supply and demand.
The future of this High Street will
be good for small businesses. I’d say the
market and Whitechapel High Street will
be OK, because it’s not occupied by big
shops and major brands. Instead there
are small, convenient local businesses
catering for the Bangladeshi community
and other local communities.
CHRISTOPHER OKWORU
Chrischem Pharmacy, Mile End Road
MOHAMMED ALI
Bombay Jewellers, Whitechapel Road
The future of the ‘high street’ is difficult
for people in my trade because of the price
of gold. We trade in gold jewellery, and
people are not buying gold in the way
they used to before. That’s a general thing.
I’m sure other businesses, like myself, are
struggling. We haven’t started anything
on-line yet [but] we might consider this.
The future of this High Street depends
on the new shopping mall, Westfield, which
is opening in Stratford. In business terms
it is likely to affect the local community
here. [However] when something new
comes up there’s a period of excitement
initially drawing the local community there,
after that this area might get back to its
feet again. I don’t yet know how to tackle
this problem, I’ll have to take it as it comes.
The future of the ‘high street’ depends
on your perspective. Already the internet
is having an effect, but that has its
disadvantages as well because people
want to see what they buy. High street
businesses are also dying because of the
bigger enterprises, but when it comes to
the pharmaceutical profession, when you
are ill you want to see a professional so in
that sense it is better to walk down to the
place yourself. You can’t do better than a
pharmacist when it comes to the retailing
of medications, because that is what we
are trained to do. We also discuss other
things: social services, various forms of
health. If you see customers as the means
of sustaining a business, you are bound to
try and understand what they think of it.
It’s about people, and the need to create
a good relationship with them.
The future of this High Street is likely
to be big players taking over. With the
Olympics and Westfield coming up, we
are expecting an influx of people from
other nations and we believe that more
businesses will be created in this locality,
but the whole nature of local retail may
change. We read a lot about changes,
and we see them – the face of the area
has been changed – but nothing has been
said about how to support local retailers.
There used to be little clothes shops here,
but now people will want to go to the big
boys to buy clothes. That is going to kill
a lot of retail businesses. Only God knows
how long this will be sustainable, but I’m
putting in my best.
5
6
Hannah Tourell
London’s High Streets are constantly
in flux. As the shops change use or
ownership signage is replaced, shop-fronts
ripped out and replaced in a matter of
days and security shutters bolted to the
fronts of buildings.
Surviving the continual change of
the street are the richly ornamented
ends of the party walls, a small sliver of
shared matter between buildings. Here
there is less change, as any alterations
require the negotiation of a party wall
agreement, and so they collect traces of
the modification and inhabitation of
the adjacent buildings.
“Continuous, subtle
adaptation rather
than radical changes”
The rhythm of these walls along the street
describe property boundaries some of
which date from Medieval times. A typical
plot of land in London has long comprised
a building and a yard on a long strip of
land with a narrow street frontage. This
arrangement of land has an enduring
influence on the character of the High
Street, encouraging a continuous, subtle
adaptation rather than the overwhelmingly
radical changes that result from the
acquisition and development of large
parcels of land.
“They make manifest
vibrancy, adaptability
and density”
At an urban scale, the existence of these
‘party walls’ preserves the fine grain of the
city, and when visible on the street they
make manifest the vibrancy, adaptability,
and density of occupation characteristic
of our high streets. If high streets have a
future, then the diverse ownerships and
rates of change expressed by these ‘party
walls’ must surely be part of it.
Project produced at Kingston University School of
Architecture and Landscape. Photographs depict
the ‘party wall’ ends of Rye Lane, Peckham.
Oliver Wainwright
Who could have predicted that it would
turn out like this?
When the London Plan identified
Stratford as an area for tall buildings all
those years ago, little did the planners
realise that they were beckoning forth
what would become known as the
“glittering gauntlet of the East End”.
Ever since the English Heritage
Design Council Cabe Foundation bestowed
their hallowed gold standard on the
High Street last year – once and for all
declaring it Area of Outstanding Modern
Architecture – I’ve been wondering why.
So I thought it was time to take stroll up
the A11.
Standing at the western end of
the street, just east of the Bow Spaghetti
Junction, where the tangle of tarmac
tendrils collide, it all looks impossibly
futuristic. The 6-lane motorway is now
lined either side with shimmering towers
that march relentlessly towards the town
centre, reaching ever higher to the skies
in ever more iconic shapes. It is as if the
Hilberseimer plan has been reinterpreted
by Will Alsop.
Over the past five years it has grown
into a street of endless landmarks and
signature buildings, each one shouting a
little louder than the next in a desperate
attempt to signal that they, not their
neighbour, are in fact the Gateway to
East London.
Each distinctive silhouette is matched
by an equally inimitable palette of
materials, fruity panellised concoctions
of coloured render and anodized aluminium
competing with swathes of glass and
steel, powder-coated in every hue of
the rainbow.
And each tower has of course been
christened with its own alluring brand
name. Stratford Gate, Stratford Eye, the
Spirit of Stratford, Olympian Tower,
Athena, Aurora, Icona, Velocity, the Edge.
Which to choose? It was a tough decision
for the Legacy Pioneers, that brave group
of settlers who were the first to be lured
east in the wake of the sporting circus,
attracted to being part of the most exciting
new development in Europe.
“Most West Londoners get a nosebleed any further east than Holborn,” the
estate agents had joked. But the Pioneers
were made of sterner stuff. Most of them
had survived the trial acclimatisation
period in Barratt Homes’ gritty Dalston
Square development – although it had been
tough before the Waitrose came along.
“People call it London’s own little
Dubai,” one resident tells me jovially,
peeping out from behind the security
grille of her ground floor amenity space.
“And now we’re living in our very own
mini-Burj Khalifa.” She seems happy here,
with access to a communal roof terrace
and a car club.
And why not?
She is living at the very pinnacle
of Newham’s Arc of Opportunity, the
charged nexus of the Thames Gateway
Enterprise Zone and the Lea Valley
Technology Growth Corridor. She is on
the edge of what will one day become the
Queen Elizabeth Park, the largest new
green space in Europe, and minutes from
Westfield Stratford City. This was the
biggest attraction for most Pioneers, a
reassuring reminder that it wasn’t so
different to Shepherd’s Bush after all.
It was a beautifully sterile leisurescape,
a pleasure palace of 300 shops, 70
restaurants and a 17-screen multiplex, not
to mention London’s largest casino. 1.9
million sq ft of safely patrolled semipublic space – with a John Lewis to boot.
The transport links are also unrivalled.
It is “the best connected metropolitan
centre in the UK”, as the brochure
trumpets, served by two tube lines, the
overground railway, DLR, plus the highspeed Javelin train to Kings Cross –
taking you to St Pancras in only 6 minutes.
The Eurostar doesn’t actually stop here,
but people still like the glamorous ring of
‘Stratford International.’
In case you were in any doubt that
you had arrived at an international hub,
when you step out of the station you
are at once greeted by a vast iridescent
wall of titanium pillows – the Shoal. This
strange billboard of public art was
originally installed to hide the town’s
decaying shopping centre during the
Olympics, to ensure the world’s media
wouldn’t catch sight of the boarded-up
pound shops.
It now supports a big sign emblazoned with the title ‘Stratford Village’,
signalling that this is home to a local
produce market and alternative village
fete – collectively organised by the
Stratford Spacemakers. But no one goes.
Westfield’s Great Eastern Market sells
the same stuff, but under the ethereal
glow of an LED waterfall.
Outside the perforated golden
carapace of the shopping complex, things
are beginning to get interesting across
the railway tracks, as Olympic Legacy
Transition Mode grinds into action.
There’s been a buzz of activity ever since
the fences came down to make way for
Meanwhile Fields. 200 hectares of empty
tarmac, this was to be a deregulated
zone for temporary activities, a hasty
stop-gap in the absence of developers –
paralysed by the depths of the tripledip recession.
It was to be a non-plan utopia, a
bottom-up free-for-all for experiments
in community-led social enterprise. It
continues to play host to all manner of
projects, from last month’s pop-up
community compost heap, to the wildly
popular Whole Foods’ temporary
allotments – a productive urban plot,
rebuilt out of the fragments of the
relocated Manor Gardens, on whose
grave the community gardeners merrily
dance in their organic hessian wellies.
The future of the park and its
permanent flat-pack stadium remains
7
uncertain. The Kingsway International
Christian Centre continues to battle it
out with Tablighi Jamaat – mega-church
and mega-mosque vying for control of
the arena since the premature dissolution
of the Olympic Park Legacy Corporation.
The High Street, meanwhile, for all it’s
glistening glamour and phallic ambition,
remains eerily deserted.
“Each distinctive
silhouette is matched
by an equally
inimitable palette
of materials”
Walking back down, past the triumphant
portal of Ikea City – which, for all its
promise, ended up being just a self-build
version of Bow’s Tesco Town – I pass a
faded poster of the original High Street
Vision. It is a captivating Photoshopped
scene of bustling street life, armies of
avatars enjoying their 20,000 new homes
and 46,000 new jobs, the canyon of towers
“animated with commercial frontages.”
Active frontages, that were never activated.
Indeed, they remain boarded up, peeling
billboards promoting a plan, planned
by planners who failed to bother planning.
Future Stratford: all schemes depicted here
are built, under construction, or have planning
permission. Left to right: Icona, Spirit of Stratford,
Velocity, Athena, the Edge, Three Mills West,
Olympic Tower, Broadway Chambers, Stratford
Eye, Duncan House, Aurora.
8
Tom Hunter, ‘Prayer Places’, 2008
9
10
Sam Jacob
The high street, perhaps because it is the
most normal and unexceptional place
also acts as a kind of dip-stick that gives
us a clear measure of an era’s idea of the
city. It is exactly its unexceptionality
that makes it such a telling description
of what it the city is: how it is organised,
what we do with it and in it. By tracing
the development of the high street, we
also trace the development of the city.
Its own story mirrors, and sometimes
drives, the city’s waves of development
from centrifugal industrialism via suburban
dispersal to inner city gentrification,
regeneration and even abandonment.
Through the narrative of the high street
we can read how, over the course of the
twentieth century, the city has turned
itself inside out and upside down.
If we think of the traditional
conception of the high street we think
of a row of shops, of butcher-bakercandlestick-maker located at the centre
of a community. It has agglomerated a
variety of public and private uses, and
developed along with the growth of a
town. It is both formed by and has formed
the urban fabric around it, densifying
the city around a centre. This centrifugal
attraction drew uses together into
symbiotic proximity – both supporting
and taking advantage of one another and
the city itself.
But we should wipe the nostalgia
from our eyes. The high street is only the
product – both social and economic – of
its own era. It only operates in relation to
a particular moment in the development
of urban technology, infrastructure and
economy. We should recognise that this
was not some ideal state of social
cohesion but something born out of the
limitations of transport, logistics and
communication, out of the strict hierarchies of the social and economic milieu.
This form of the high street
came under attack from Retail’s own
agglomerative tendency. The invention
of the supermarket is one that dissolved
the boundaries between previously
distinct uses. It assimilated shops into a
single spatial and economic entity.
As aisles replaced streets the
relationship between shopping and the
city underwent a radical shift – the activity
of shopping was interiorised. Though
still sited within the high street the
supermarket began to operate as a black
hole that sucked surrounding bodies
into its gravitational field. Into its interior
it pulled not only the functions of the
high street but its public network of relationships. The figures then of J. Sainsbury,
of Marks and Spencer cast their shadow
over the idea of the city and we began
to see the changing nature of Retail exert
its force on the physical fabric of the city.
As Retail agglomerates, it monopolises
and privatises not only the city’s economy
but its spatial and social orders. In its
own densification and acceleration it
de-stablises (and de-densifies and
de-accelerates) the traditional urban fabric
around it.
The extent of privatisation exerted
by the supermarket seems quaint to us
now from the other side of the next great
leap forward in retail economics which
saw the development of out of town
retail. This concept accelerated Retail’s
agglomerative tendency to a conclusion,
deploying multiple stores within a single
entity: a mega high street folded in
on itself. It is a pseudo high street that is
sited not in the centre but at the periphery
of the city in a zone that it itself owned.
It completes the project of interiorisation
of the city that the supermarket began.
From Brent Cross to Bluewater, this
flip in the city’s polarity challenged not
only high street retail, but the very idea
of the city. By reconfiguring its audience,
out of town retail also effectively
atomised the idea of neighbourhood
and community. Located at the edge, it
mirrors the outwards expansion of the
city into suburbia. Yet its own vision is at
odds with the suburban ideal as developed
by planners and architects, instead
seeing the periphery as the intersection
of the city with transport and motorway
systems. While it simultaneously seems
to pledge its allegiance to the suburbs
it also operates against the idealised
urban-village that the Metroland suburbs
had promised.
“The city has
turned itself inside out
and upside down”
The combined effects of Retail’s advancing
models on the old centres – the high streets
that have been left behind – still exist at
the centre of our communities. Here we
see three resulting scenarios:
First, we see the logical and obvious
result of Retail’s inversion of the city:
an eviscerated and hollow centre. We
witness this in high streets as strings of
pound shops, charity shops, discount
retailers and boarded up units.
A second model sees the high street
evolving into a mechanism for the selfcannibalisation of the city. Rows of estate
agents and designer furniture shops
represent a machine for re-furbing and
re-selling the city back to itself, ways of
further commodifying the city into product.
The third model is a stranger
phenomenon still. In areas of dense
gentrification a nostalgic resurrection has
re-appropriated the high street. Speciality
cheese shops, nu-bakeries, chi-chi
fishmongers, artisans and independent
retailers have recolonised the high street.
They directly recall the traditional high
street, often directly through their function
and retro-branding. This ‘retrofication’
reconstructs the sensation of the village
or the suburb within the inner city. In
this, it acts as a perfect mirror to out of
town mega-retail. We find then that the
traditional idea of the city is inverted: the
centre appropriated by the periphery and
the suburban re-sited in the centre.
Across all these models we see Retail
shifting from something that emerges out
of the life of the city, to the point where
retail generates the city itself. In Stratford
for example, it’s the retail offer that drives
the finances and planning of the areas
regeneration. Retail is the de facto urban
condition – it is what the city does and what
we do in the city. Entirely commodified,
not only is retail the primary function of
the contemporary city but the city itself
has become entirely commodified.
If retail has consumed the city, then
the high street, in some way, is now
everywhere. Yet in its moment of victory
over other conceptions of the city, Retail
faces its own crisis. On the verge of
double dip recession, with retail figures
pointing downwards and the visible creep
of the hollow high street as unit after unit
closes down, our faith invested in retail as
the future of the city seems precarious.
Twentieth century experience
suggests that Retail has performed a
series of aggressive attacks on the status
quo of the city. In order to achieve growth
Retail has destroyed the environments
that created it. The question then arises:
If the city has been totalised into retail
entity, perhaps its only logical conclusion
is to destroy itself. Having sucked
everything inside its own event horizon
perhaps, like a black hole, it might
swallow itself.
SS LIBERTY CARGO SHIP, REPLICA
OLYMPIC TORCH
ZENIT E
Standing from left: my grandfather Zalman,
my uncle Saul, my grandfather Biker, my
father Ranjit and me. Sitting from left:
my great uncle Dudi, my mother Ava, my
grandmother Judith, my grandmother
Parminda. Sitting in the foreground and a
bit out of focus (metaphorically, as well)
is my sister, Ida. Not pictured: Uncle Max
(who took the photograph).
After having watched Churchill’s
Island in 1941, my grandfather Zalman
was convinced the war would end
in a year or two. Swept along by a
patriotic fervor, he began producing
memorabilia for the 1944 London
Olympics. Working with a Canadian
manufacturer, he placed an order
large enough to fill 5 shipping containers of replica medallions, banners
and flags, pins, miniature trophies,
and glassware. The cargo ship was
scheduled to arrive in London, via a
Liberty convoy, in the fall of 1943.
Months before the cargo ship was due
to arrive, the Olympics were officially
cancelled – thus assuring, it seemed,
the Lövy family’s financial ruin. To my
grandfather’s unbounded glee, the
convoy was intercepted by German
U-boats, and the cargo was destroyed.
The insurance value of the lost
Olympic goods supported the family
for the next two decades.
FARM
When I was eight or nine, my grandfather
Bikram told me a story, a secret one, that
he made me swear never to retell. I could
live with it only by translating it into the
most expressive language I knew, which
allowed me to tell it over and over again
without ever speaking one word of it
to anyone. It was an incident, a dramatic
situation, a series of perspectives and
objects and structures I built and rebuilt
in varying configurations until, finally, I
had come to an end of needing to figure it
out. My grandfather died on a Wednesday,
mid-day (my parents took me out of
school), and I took my building bricks to
the attic that evening.
MILK BOTTLE
Noam Toran, Onkar Kular & Keith R. Jones
’I Cling to Virtue‘ is an artwork that
assembles a (fictional) archive of the Lövy
Singh clan, a twentieth-century East
London family of Punjabi and Lithuanian
descent. Constructed from the standpoint
of Monarch Lövy Singh, this collection of
stories and objects at the border of
artifact and artifice, document and fantasy,
history and myth in order to complicate
the effort at ever fully, or even adequately,
archiving one’s past. Because forgetting is
a kind of remembrance and remembrance
a kind of forgetting, the narratives that
Monarch tells and the objects that he
chooses to collect are not intended to
capture a singular truth of his family, nor
do they seek to produce a complete picture
of the century through which he and his
family lived. Rather, his memory attempts to
curate a series of emblematic impressions.
From a police report displayed in our
sitting room: Judith Lövy, aged 26, of
87 Fieldgate street, Tower Hamlets,
was charged:
m"1AL@"):KLJM;LAF?"*"1=::"AF"L@="
execution of his duty
m"1AL@"L@JGOAF?"FME=JGMK"9JLA;D=K"9L"
B.U.F. demonstrators
m"1AL@"MKAF?"AFKMDLAF?"OGJ<K"":=@9NAGMJ"
Fine for charge of Obstruction is
five pounds, other charges to be dealt
with separately
STORM TROOPER BAR MITZVAH CAKE
In the tradition of his ancestors Monarch
Lövy Singh will be called to the Torah
as a Bar Mitzvah.
DENTURES
Ida stole these from Maji’s bedside glass
of white vinegar. She dared me to put
them in my mouth. Always fearless, she
did then started talking funny. We took
turns and laughed until we almost wet
ourselves. Then got terribly afraid of what
might happen if we got caught. We buried
them somewhere in Weavers Fields.
Please join Ava Lövy and Family
Saturday January 26, 1985, 10 am
Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue 41
Fieldgate Street, London E1 1JU
Originally commissioned and exhibited at the
Victoria and Albert Museum in London, 2010.
11
12
The Gentle Author of
www.spitalfields.com
For a couple of years now, I have enjoyed
photographing the colourfully-painted
‘white vans’ of Whitechapel – those
shabby old jalopies that the market traders
use as overnight storage, which you see
parked in all the back streets. But, just
recently, I realised that the imposition of
shop in Bacon St – a popular location for
street artists – and there Keith learnt
of the powerful culture of respect that
exists between the painters. “They’re a
tight crew,” he informed me, “If someone
sprays over another’s painting, it’s war!”
And so Keith devised a cunning plan to
invite one artist to paint his entire van,
which thereby became sacrosanct to the
taggers, and then, instead of attention
from the police, he found that wherever
he went people wanted to photograph his
van out of admiration.
The notion quickly spread, because
others traders had the same problem, and
today there are dozens of these painted
vans which bring the romance of the circus and the fairground to the markets of
the East End – and are especially concentrated around Whitechapel Market. This
unlikely alliance between the traders and
the street artists has led to an unprecedented flourishing of popular public art
in which the market traders, acting simply
out of the wish to keep their vans neat
have become unwitting art patrons – I
call them, “the accidental Medicis of
Whitechapel.”
“If someone sprays
over another’s
painting, it’s war!”
artist Eska upon his van, which is of the
evolved mode, filled an entire side of
the vehicle. Over this period, since it all
began, Keith had his van repainted by
several artists and has delighted in
becoming something of a connoisseur,
developing a discriminating sensibility
of his own with regard to the painting of
vans and always insisting now upon
seeing examples of artists’ work before
he will let them loose on his vehicle.
the Low Emission Zone in Central London
in six months time will see the end of all
these vehicles, causing the gallery of
paintings to vanish along with them.
Even as I have photographed them,
I have observed an evolution in the
designs and so, as we approach the final
flowering of the white vans of Whitechapel,
I thought I would play the art historian
and attempt to trace the development
of these paintings through the early
to this late period, just as if they were
Renaissance murals in Tuscan churches.
Keith, who proudly parks his painted
van in Sclater St Market where he stalls
out each Sunday, explained to me how
it all began back in 2005 when, like many
other traders, he found that his beloved
old truck was attracting taggers and
this in turn was drawing the attentions
of the police who began to stop him
regularly. Keith’s brother Des runs a junk
Once this phenomenon took flight and
the artists saw each other’s work upon
the vans, then an immediate development
took place in which basic tags were
replaced by more elaborate and complex
versions of the artists’ monikers filling the
vans – possible now, since once they were
invited there was not longer any need
to be covert. As time has gone by, these
evolved tags have been supplemented
and then replaced by images, until now
artists are composing each side of the
van as if it were a canvas and their tag
is only present in a corner as discreet
signature upon the artwork. These
ambitious compositions – some of which
are photographed here – that have begun
to appear in the last year, comprise the
mature and, possibly the final period of
the white vans of Whitechapel.
When I spoke to Keith, he was eager
to show me the new painting by street
“It makes me feel calm,” he said,
stroking his chin and tilting his head, to
contemplate the newly painted green
abstract with satisfaction, before adding
in disdain,“What’s on the other side is
too busy, all squirls and clowns – it’s like
something out of the hippy sixties.”
In fact, Keith had parked his van against
the wall to conceal the aesthetic offence
of the reverse of his van, which is due
for repainting imminently. “But what are
you going to do next year?” I ventured,
“When all these vans have to go…” And
Keith replied without taking his fond gaze
from the new painting. “I’m hoping to
take the box off this van,” he said, “and
put it on a new one.”
There may, even yet, be a future for
the white vans of Whitechapel.
13
14
Louis Moreno
On a Saturday afternoon, floating above
the corridor of flimsy steel frames lining
the busy Roman Road market, a pair of
heavy-duty icons demarcate London’s
new speculative horizon. At one end the
barbed vectors of the Olympic Stadium
represent the ‘city’ of Stratford. At the
other lies the cornichon form of 30 St Mary
Axe which sexed-up the City for the 21st
Century. Connected by an unobstructed
eye line, the stadium and the tower seem
to plot out the co-ordinates of the global
city’s palatial east-wing.
Right now a wave of urban restructuring is busily remapping the metropolis’
eastern hemisphere. The Shard at
London Bridge, latching onto the ongoing
development of Bankside, is steadily
fabricating a new inner-edge to the City;
whilst Crossrail carves up sections of
the west-end, wiring Heathrow into the
financial zones of Canary Wharf, the City
and Mayfair. All these projects, including
the 2012 Olympics, were spawned from
the re-development of Docklands in the
1980s and 1990s. Which makes Canary
Wharf a kind of seed-crystal – an emergent
urban form, crystallizing out through
the seams and lineaments of London’s
metropolitan fabric.
Perhaps from a certain vantage
point London’s new spatial matrix
represents the global city equivalent of
urban thoroughfares. But since they
accommodate trade operating at an
altitude far removed from the everyday
street, we might ask what kind of social
transformation is this new urban form
intended to produce. For those working
on the shop-floor of London’s economy,
the long term significance of these schemes
is – in spite of all the glass and steel –
hardly transparent.
Of course, there is no reason to expect
the form of buildings to explain the intent
of speculation. Architecture’s record
in the history of urban capitalism
demonstrates a consistently ambiguous
commitment to the public realm. For
example, in his extraordinary novel ‘The
Kill’ Emile Zola showed how aesthetics
and fraud were the woof and warp that
fabricated the excessive splendour
of late 19th Century Paris. And in the
economic history ‘One Hundred Years
of Land Values in Chicago’ Homer Hoyt
suggested that the innovation of the
skyscraper was only made possible
because it allowed speculators to monetize
fresh air. Architectural aesthetics were
called on to convey the democratic
principles of a civic realm; whilst attention
was drawn away from the rampant
exploitation supplied by the opportunity
of development.
However despite the financial
chicanery and land expropriation that
accompanied the boulevards of Second
Empire Paris and the Chicago World’s
Fair, buildings were still products of
their environment. Even as residues of
speculative subterfuge Chicago tall
buildings and Parisian bourgeois
apartments synthesized new expressions of
urbanity. But the artificial ‘quarterization’
of London into zones of investment,
entertainment and media, torqued by
infrastructure towards the centre of
banking, indicates a highly abstract and
selective urban form. One that attempts
to package up the ‘blooming buzzing
confusion’ of urban society like a raw
material for export.
In the boom the qualities of urban
diversity and dynamism were excitedly
touted by politicians and officials. The
public realm of London was presented by
City of London planners and the London
2012 bid team as a kind of complex
commodity, encapsulating the spirit of
competition, creativity and enterprise
international markets thrive upon. This
conception of urban creativity was translated through a new style of graphic
urbanism. The modified form of the City of
London and the Lea Valley were designed
to represent a new image of the city
adjusted for the risk appetites of ‘world
class’ traders, athletes and companies.
Since the crash of 2008 the gilded
rhetoric of global growth and urban
whether the chains and clone towns have
caused the erosion of the public life of
high streets and town centres or merely
contributed to its decline, but attractive
and well maintained public realm and
buildings are an important component
of success.
“Perhaps the high
street ought to make
more of its role in
providing services
and not goods”
Photo: Rubbina Karruna
competitiveness has been compromised
by the grim reality of recession and
austerity. Which means that the steel
secretions of a catastrophic boom represent
an unreliable image of what the future of
London holds for its citizens. Nonetheless,
it seems the new urbanism of what
The Economist calls ‘Londonism’ – where
all roads lead to the City – seems to have
taken the popular imagination hostage.
A recent piece of boosterism in the
Evening Standard advertising the new
Westfield ‘Stratford City’ mega-mall –
the gateway to the Olympic park – argued
that the “launch will transform many
Londoners’ ‘mental map’ of their own
city”. As the Standard put it the Olympic
‘legacy’ is banked on the success of
“London’s latest and biggest ever temple
to Mammon”.
Ben Van Bruggen
& Steve Smith
At a time when retail sales volume is
declining on the high street, and shop
closures and job losses are making the
headlines, internet sales are still growing –
we are still buying stuff, still consuming –
stay calm and keep shopping.
But our high streets and town centres
are no longer seen as the only places to
go for shops. Limited car parking, and high
rental levels are most commonly cited, but
poor quality public realm and built
Given current uncertainties, the idea that
a place will be regenerated off the back
of a shed propagating consumer debt
would be a fantastic joke if the facts of
the matter were not so stark. The riots
that began in Tottenham, swept through
Wood Green Shopping City, spread
out into the suburbs of Croydon, and
ransacked the regenerated precincts of
England’s industrial towns exposed
metropolarization on a national scale.
The networked trashing of high streets
across the country should, at the very
least, provoke a reexamination of what
is leading the rush to mentally and
materially restructure London’s landscape.
Looking beyond 2012 what endgame
does the transformation of East London
have in store?
environment have played their part in
the sustained decline of the high street.
Our high streets have grown as
Meccas of retailing when towns and cities
flourished and growing your own veg,
baking your own bread and making
candlesticks became a chore rather than
a necessity. There are more streets with
this name than any other in the UK by far.
In London you are never more than a few
hundred metres from a high street.
Many high streets have been in
decline for years. It is difficult to assess
However, while internet purchase and
home delivery increases then so too does
the inconvenience of not being home
when they deliver. Perhaps this is an
opportunity for the high street. Ocado, the
company famous for delivering Waitrose
food within the M25 area, recently had a
pop up shop or rather a shop window, at
One New Change on Cheapside, the City
of London’s High Street. Using an app,
what else, customers could scan pictures
of food and add to their shopping
basket for delivery to home. This internet
company wants a high street presence.
Amazon too has announced that it wants
to have collection points for goods rather
than the lottery of delivery times. Could
the town centre or high street be the
place for this?
Perhaps the high street ought to
make more of its role in providing services
and not goods. What we might also
want from our connection of place is a
connection to people. A significant number
of people in Starbucks on my local high
street appear to be working, either as
students or employees, self or otherwise.
These lone workers seek out human
contact and interaction not just coffee.
Undoubtedly, residential is a key use
in most places. Living on the high street
might still be seen as an inconvenience
but in our crowded Isle we have to
consider it. The types of properties are
often open to being altered, giving a
blank canvas; but empty shops could
easily become places of live and work.
Why not set up an office downstairs from
where you live?
There will always be a part for
retail, particularly in places with strong
local economies, and service provision
can’t hope to match the rental levels
of successful retail, but perhaps some
landlords won’t have a choice.
New inventive uses and entrepreneurial
endeavour might be encouraged. An
example is The Hub in Kings Cross, a
working community where you hire space
and facilities as you need them, you get a
PO Box address and the benefit of forging
networks with people that might otherwise
be hard to do. If more of us are working
locally then we will need support for
business in terms of IT but also meeting
spaces and printing facilities.
“Whitechapel will
remain the hub for
community life:
working, exchanging
and playing”
Delivering social infrastructure, health
and beauty could also be the next big
thing. Education and training might be
a big winner, with schools and colleges
looking for new premises as their existing
buildings crumble. Large vacant office
or vacant Victorian buildings could be
schools. How about hotels occupying now
redundant Town Halls? However, these
Shaun Young
The high street is not just a linear
condition. Its decline may not only be due
to lapses in its commercial frontage but
also to the gradual de-densification
of its backlands; the spaces behind the
street which once played a key role in
its economy.
London’s high street backlands
are strange agglomerations born of
philanthropy, opportunism, accident and
abandonment. They are a prevalent city
structure, as rich and strongly identifiable
as the Georgian square, Victorian terrace
and mews block. Their densification
and subsequent inhabitation could
contribute to the continued success of
the high street as a sustainable economic
infrastructure.
Backlands are punctuated by yards,
brownfield sites left over as light industry
moved out of the city to units in London’s
eastern sprawl. My speculative project
15
are unlikely to give rise to high rents but
could be long term uses and so we need a
change in expectation too.
We may need local authority property
managers to demand best value, not just
highest price, and to think holistically
about the mix of retail, services and
residential that makes a place successful.
We may need to brand the high street
to be as familiar and of consistent quality
as the mall, company or a hotel chain.
We may have to find new ways of
rating property on the high street and
encouraging new uses of vacant units
rather than seeing them empty or turned
over to high turnover, short lived uses.
We have to be smarter about allowing
rapid change of use. Town centres and
high streets should be able to be mix and
match uses, so long as building regulations
can be satisfied what does it matter a
high street building changes from retail
to office, residential or cafe? We need
different development logic, that includes
those with a stake in the area and not
focus solely on retail growth. Whitechapel
will remain the hub for community life:
working, sharing, exchanging and playing.
Whitechapel has great flexibility and
adaptability and an important mix of retail,
health and culture so should fare well in
the future but it needs to be cared for
and its community to forge a place with a
unique identity.
proposes the opportunistic densification
of 4 vacant ‘yards’ along Assembly
Passage, just off the Mile End Road. The
four new buildings reinstate a mixed
programme of light industry and affordable
housing, whilst suggesting that the
backlands are capable of holding more
formal activities through the construction
of a Pentecostal church and churchyard.
This strategy of small scale infill would
provide a framework for future
development in similar sites across the
city. In an economy where large scale
projects are too risky small buildings allow
a site to be developed incrementally as
and when the market requires.
“Strange
agglomerations
born of philanthropy,
opportunism, accident
and abandonment”
With over half of London’s brownfield sites
within 200m of a high street it seems
important to envisage the high street to
be as deep as it is long.
Project produced at Kingston University School
of Architecture and Landscape.
16
David Benqué
Did he really want to be here? It was
boiling, and he’d turned that date down,
he would be better off sipping a fresh
cocktail in good company right now.
The sunday PETA demonstration was
marching on, his T-shirt read “MEAT IS
MURDER (not anymore)”.
Animal Rights activists had been the
only ones receptive enough to support his
invention back then, and yes, he went along
with it. In-vitro meat was a perfect match
for even the most radical ideologists
amongst People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals. Even though it was also vegan,
halal, kosher and fat-free, these people
were the only ones to welcome his samples
with other words than “Eeew! Why would
I eat that?!”.
It was almost five years ago, and the
initial euphoria was fading. It had been
so easy, since no one had claimed the
$1 million prize in 2012. Even though he
wasn’t growing chicken, they gave him the
money, and it was more than enough to
scale up the production. He threw himself
in the community spirit. The meetings,
action-teams, and press conferences now
seemed like the biggest shift in this whole
adventure. Social activities and ethical
causes, let alone speaking in public,
weren’t really a big part of his life before,
and the loner in him felt exhausted.
He embraced the cause without too
much effort, I mean seriously, who would
openly argue for being mean to animals?
He’d never felt a particularly strong bond
with other multicellular species though,
and his scientific education and rational
thinking had to be put on hold for this
whole time. In the beginning he tried to
have discussions, “no actually, most lab
tests don’t do any harm at all” and
“without the protein from cooked meat, we
humans wouldn’t even be here anymore”,
but he soon learned to keep these thoughts
to himself, especially after he quit his job.
He missed the nerds from the Centre of
the Cell. The few he ran into since leaving
ignored him at best, some yelled at him.
He remembered that night, like so
many others, when he locked up the lab,
leaving a bunch of cultures to grow overnight. Shalamar kebab house had become
darkly familiar and he now sat down to
eat his doner and chips. Drifting away, he
wasn’t even looking at the rotating grill
when the idea hit him. In-vitro meat
exploited the same technology he used
to grow organ tissue for patients, and
advances in the field were often discussed
at the coffee machine. He even tasted
samples at a conference. Neither the
numbers to make it profitable nor the
aesthetic to make desirable had been
cracked by anyone though, which made
Keith, his bench neighbour, increasingly
sarcastic about the whole thing. Yet there
was a solution, staring him in the face
most nights of the week at around 10.30pm,
a kebab grill. The people who enjoyed
this kind of delicacy surely weren’t too
regarding as to what the meat looked like,
wouldn’t they go for a healthy lab-grown
alternative? and once they ate it, the rest
would see, it was perfectly fine. Leaving
half of his wrap and a full portion of chips
on the table, he ran home to start working
out the details during the first of many
sleepless nights.
Further Reading:
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their hard work:
David Benqué, Ben van Bruggen,
The Gentle Author, Tom Hunter, Sam
Jacob, Keith R. Jones, Onkar Kular, Louis
Moreno, Cristina Monteiro, Steve Smith,
Noam Toran, Hannah Tourell, Wouter
Vanstiphout, Oliver Wainwright and
Shaun Young.
Edited by
We Made That
Guest edited by
David Knight
www.dk-cm.com
Designed by
Correction
It has come to our attention that the
article ‘Wentworth Street: Then & Now’
in Issue I, was missing the full and correct
credit: “This survey was produced by
General Public Agency with research
conducted by Kate Rich. It was
commissioned by the Whitechapel Gallery
as part of the ‘The Street’, a programme
of artists projects, events and research
which focused on Wentworth Street”.
We apologise for this omission.
ISSUE III — PROPOSITION — OCTOBER 2011
2
3
Olympic Park
Stratford
ΩΩ
Victoria Park
STRATFORD
HIGH STREET
Eleanor Fawcett, Olympic Park
Legacy Company
Three Mills
Green
Ω Bow Church
Ω
Bow Road
Bromley-by-Bow Ω
Ω Mile End
BOW ROAD
Stepney Green Ω
MILE END ROAD
Whitechapel Ω
Royal London
Hospital
Aldgate
East
Ω
Mile End
Park
WHITECHAPEL ROAD
WHITECHAPEL
HIGH STREET
ALDGATE
June 2012 at: www.wemadethat.co.uk
It’s a curious thing that the High Street
2012 initiative has emerged as a real
pioneer for a host of ideas that are now
influencing city-wide policies and projects.
Thinking back to the first discussions
on the project – then called ‘Olympic
Boulevard’ – between the newly formed
Design for London and the London Borough
of Tower Hamlets nearly 4 years ago,
it’s extraordinary how far the project has
come, and how influential it has been.
Take the ‘High Street London’
initiative – this important research by
Gort Scott and The Bartlett, UCL, shines
a new light onto what most Londoners and
certainly everyone involved in the High
Street 2012 project instinctively knows:
High Streets matter (See Fiona Scott, p14).
But little did we know just how
significant they are for London’s wellbeing. In fact the city has 500km of high
streets, which support more jobs than
central London. Two-thirds of Londoners
live within a 5-minute walk of a high street.
The High Street 2012 project is a perfect
example of one of the initiative’s key
recommendations – that investment in
projects large and small should be
prioritised for High Streets, in recognition of
just how important they are for Londoners.
The Mayor and his Design Advisory Panel
are now working on ways of capturing
the potential of High Street London to
support the capital’s sustainable growth
and regeneration, and the Mayor launched
‘The London High Streets Possibilities
Primer’ earlier this year – which of course
showcased High Street 2012.
The complicated relationship between
the High Street 2012 project and the
Olympics is another of its great strengths.
Brilliantly opportunistic in embedding
the reference to the Olympics in the whole
naming and definition of the project –
‘linking the Olympic Park to the City of
London’ – High Street 2012 has expertly
levered in funding and momentum to get
things done and will have delivered a rich
mixture of projects before the immovable
deadline of next year’s Olympic and
Paralympic Games. In many ways this
can be seen as a blueprint for securing a
tangible ‘Legacy’ from the Olympic Games
for surrounding communities – a challenge
which I hope will become even more
of a focus once next summer’s events
have passed.
STARTING WITH WHAT IS THERE
In this and past editions of The Unlimited
Edition you will have seen pieces of
research and projects which have been
focused on getting under the skin of the
places and people that make up High
Street 2012. Some have been critical and
some have been celebratory, some have
been looking at the most minute details
and others have examined where some of
the street’s businesses sit in the context of
global trade. The clear-eyed understanding
of places as they really are, and not
idealised or abstracted, which is evident
in lots of this work is absolutely critical
to working out how best to steer future
change and investment.
I was recently asked to present some
of this work in the context of a discussion
with Denise Scott-Brown as part of the
V&A’s Postmodernism exhibition. I was
struck by the parallels between her work
and the sensibility that can be seen in
the work of Design for London and many
emerging practices working across London
today, and that permeates the High Street
2012 initiative. Her seminal ‘Learning
from Las Vegas’ project took the visually
chaotic, messy and marginal Las Vegas
of the 1970’s, which didn’t have any real
status amongst architects and urban
planners, and was able to present a whole
new take on its role and importance as
somewhere rich and wonderful.
At their heart, Learning from Las
Vegas and High Street 2012 are projects
which carefully and thoughtfully celebrate
and reveal the special character of places
by starting with what is there already,
and reject the notion that new models
must be imported to ‘improve’ such areas
(see Oliver Wainwright’s essay in The
Unlimited Edition, Issue II).
Even the proposals for the redevelopment of the Olympic site post-2012 –
perhaps the ultimate tabula rasa project –
have scaled up this philosophy and
the vision for the Olympic legacy is really
all about ‘Learning from London’. The
challenge of introducing a fine grain and
‘growing’ places within the Olympic site
which are really part of East London is an
© London 2012
amazing opportunity for the creativity
and inventiveness which the High Street
2012 project showcases.
THE VALUE OF DELIVERING
This issue of The Unlimited Edition focuses
on actually delivering projects against
the backdrop of all the complexities of
the High Street that have been explored
in previous issues. So, this is where things
start getting really interesting. No matter
how much talking and writing and strategising happens, for most people the
project doesn’t really exist until there
are diggers on site. Here we can start to
see the ways that the High Street 2012
initiative is going to affect the day-today life of regular people.
The results can already be seen on
the ground along the whole corridor –
Braham Street park and new public realm
along Stratford High Street are completed,
as are important projects providing
brand new connections with High Street
2012 such as Bow Riverside Towpath and
the Stratford High Street DLR station.
The revitalisation of the buildings lining
the High Street adds an important layer to
the project – the impressive restoration of
clusters of historic building frontages, and
the pop-up shops and other projects which
have occupied spaces along the street.
The next wave of projects will soon be
completed, including Altab Ali Park and
Mile End Waste.
Seen alongside major projects such
as the Olympic site, Westfield, and the
flurry of towers which have emerged on
Stratford High Street, each of these
projects represent small changes. The
determination and time it often seems
to take to make these small changes
happen can seem out of all proportion to
their scale, so each of these projects
are a triumph. But it is precisely these
small changes, with their generous and
celebratory spirit, which can make the
biggest contribution to creating successful
urban places.
Eleanor Fawcett is Head of Design at the Olympic
Park Legacy Company
Courtyard
Semi-Public
Living
Private
Gift Shop
Public
Semi-Public
Threshold
TK: At the time we were doing all the
drawings for the planning permission, so
Andreas (Lang, Public Works) developed
this wallpaper from the planning drawings.
And he did a fanzine of patterns at
different scales. So that was his gift to the
gift shop. My product was rubbish so let’s
not even go there!
HL: Was there a relationship between the
programme of the space and the design?
Public
Threshold
The Whitechapel Gift Shop
the other traders and shop keepers
understood what we were doing they also
got involved either by ordering bags,
sending customers to us or by helping us
fix the machines.
HL: How important is your agency in those
relationships? Can they happen if you
just make opportunity, or to you have to
make them?
Torange Khonsari, Public Works
Torange Khonsari is one of the 3 core team
at Public Works, an art and architecture
practice working within urban and rural
public realm. She teaches a design studio
at London Metropolitan University Faculty
of Architecture and Spatial Design.
Holly Lewis: When did you first become
involved with work in the High Street
2012 area?
Torange Khonsari: We did a project as
part of Whitechapel Gallery’s ‘The Street’
project in 2009. It took place in Petticoat
Lane market, and was called ‘1,000 Bags
Here and Now’. Initially the Whitechapel
Gallery invited us to design a cotton bag.
Instead of designing the graphics to print
on the bags we proposed to set up a
market stall on Petticoat Lane and over a
2 week period produce 1,000 bags from
materials donated by local shops, passers
by and waste material we picked up from
the market. The stall was fitted out with
2 hand powered sewing machines and we
produced bags which we would give away
free of charge to whoever wanted one.
The market stall turned into an ad hoc
design and production studio. Some people
came to order bags according to their
own needs and designs, others were more
happy to give us advice on how to handle
the sewing machines.
HL: And did people return to the stall?
TK: Yes. some people were coming and
going “I gave that to my uncle, can I
have another one?” or they ordered bags
and returned later to pick them up. Once
TK: I think you do have to trigger them,
I don’t think they will just happen if you
make the space. Creating social exchange
is very complex.
HL: And have you been working in the
area more recently?
TK: Another project in the area was the
Whitechapel Gift Shop. That was a
straightforward architecture commission
initially, and at the interview I floated
the idea of the shop space attached to the
“You can always
challenge a brief. Some
clients might go for it”
house becoming an art space – a short
artist residency program, where artists
engaged with the rest of Whitechapel,
such as the market, the homeless shelter,
the hospital. And Pilar and Pele (the
clients) really liked the idea, they really
wanted to do it, and they did.
HL: And did those public ambitions come
completely from you?
TK: They came from us but could not have
happened without them. It was the reason
we got the job. I think you can always
challenge a brief. If you come up with an
interesting brief, some clients might say
no, but some might go for it. However
what I didn’t realise was that the client
wanted to just do it and set up the space
as an artist residency almost immediately,
I thought we might fundraise for it and
have a bit of budget, but she said no, let’s
just do it, which was great.
The client, Pilar, was reading a
book called ‘The Gift’, so she was really
interested in the idea of the gift economy,
which was again connected to the ‘1,000
Bags’ project. She said “Look – we gift
the space to interesting new artists and
they gift to us what they think their time in
TK: The clients had this very eclectic taste,
which totally suited me down to the
ground, after having done minimalist
architecture for years which by now bored
me to tears, I found it exciting to try
something different. We created uncluttered clean backdrops that hosted one-off
objects, up-cycled pieces mainly from
eBay. They became certain ‘moments’ or
characters in the house.
We soon discovered that all these
pieces that we were buying from eBay had
narrative and a past history. So, suddenly I
started asking people that we bought from,
what the stories behind the objects were.
HL: What kind of items did you get
from eBay?
TK: They ranged from a sink from an
arts and crafts house to chapel doors from
Milton Keynes, to filing cabinets from
the coast… and some of them had really
interesting stories, and some really didn’t.
Although this space of the
‘Whitechapel Gift Shop’ no longer exists
as it’s been sold, the project is still on
going. I would like to do a book where we
collate all the stories from the house
and create a fictional story. The project
as a cultural project continues and the
building refurbishment was just part of
that process. The architecture just happens
to be part of that process, rather than
‘The End Product’.
So it also becomes interesting that
we started to become playful with very
mundane bits of architecture, like planning.
Planning drawings become a wallpaper
pattern. The negotiations we had to do
with the contractor because we were
using second hand eBay items, and he
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Wallpaper design developed from planning application drawings
“All these items
from eBay had
a past history”
The students, are doing a structure, which
will be a cross between a shop, market
stall and by now a fair. They’re going to
construct it in front of Toynbee Hall and
they’re going to programme it for a week
in November. They’ll have fashion shows
to games to garage sales, weaving, street
theatre, tea and cakes and haircuts by
Richard from The Haircut Before the Party.
The students have mapped different
aspects of Aldgate. They all came up
with different points of interest, which
informed their stall design and has started
to give it an eclectic 19th Century fair feel.
There are two students who designed
a monopoly game – Monopoly Aldgate
edition and they’re going to work with a
graphic design student from London
Metropolitan University to realise the
game. The money earned through the
game is the money you spend at the Stall.
So you have to play to earn.
We are also going to work with
Toynbee Hall residents. The chairman
of Toynbee Hall Graham Fisher is on
board with the project and we hope is
not disappointed.
We will construct the Stall from waste
material found in Aldgate and up cycle
them into design projects. Students are
making contacts with people they collect
materials from and also program them
for when the Stall goes live on site.
‘Let’s Take Time’ will be outside Toynbee Hall from
30 November – 7 December, 10am – 4.30pm.
‘1,000 Bags Here and Now’ on Wentworth Street
Eclectic interiors: the bathroom of the Whitechapel Gift Shop
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TK: Yes, we’re working there with the
architecture students that we tutor at
London Metropolitan University. Its
interesting talking about this straight after
the ‘Whitechapel Gift Shop’ as Henrietta
Barnett, who started Toynbee Hall, got all
her wealthy friends to bring their famous
paintings to Toynbee Hall and opened
the doors to the residents of Whitechapel,
but of course what the Barnetts did is
not comparable.
Toynbee Hall has an extraordinary
social history, which is incredible to
work with. I can’t wait to get into their
archives. The Welfare state and Unions
came from people that were residents at
Toynbee Hall.
At Public Works we are so involved
in art and architecture, and we have been
for the last 12 years, we became really
interested to do this Aldgate Project, which
is initiated by Publica in collaboration with
London Metropolitan University.
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HL: And I’ve heard that you’re now doing
a project at Toynbee Hall?
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HL: And did you ‘gift’ something to the shop?
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could not guarantee them. The discussions
you have around contracts become
really interesting.
o ile
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the shop was worth in whatever currency”.
So we advertised it, interviewed
artists and selected our preferred artists.
So one was a photographer – Victoria
Nightingale who did photographs in the
hospital, and we had Verity Jane Keefe
who did a skill exchange at the market.
That was amazing, she had a list of skills
that she could offer and she suddenly
found out that there were stallholders
that could paint and all sorts of things.
And that in a way we created this
amazingly informal art space, without any
need to comply with institutional
constraints or compliance with funders
requirements, evaluations etc., which was
very interesting and refreshing.
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The Unlimited Edition has set out to
explore and record the many facets of
High Street 2012. Against the backdrop
of huge changes to its physical, cultural
and economic context, we have
documented the high street’s delights and
eccentricities and speculated about its
possible futures.
The high street is a diverse, vibrant –
and sometimes contentious – setting.
In this feature we celebrate the joyous
potential of its multiplicity. Taking one
typical high street plot: a narrow frontage
7
with several floors above, our contributors
have been asked to imagine new uses
for this familiar location. The submissions
have been combined into a ‘pick ‘n’ mix’
high street – a game of urban Consequences. The collective result is a vibrant
and creative parallel to the High Street
2012 as it currently exists. It is both a
demonstration of the delights of this
particular feature of the built environment
of our cities and a reminder of the vitality
and creative talent that surrounds them.
What happens above that?
What happens above street level?
What happens on this plot?
What happens on the pavement outside?
B
C
Plot Use: The High Street Public Toilets /
Power Station
Opening Times: Always open as long as
shoppers need to visit the toilet
Activities: Using the toilets, petting the
cows and collecting energy
KEY
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
Daniel Eatock
Catrina Stewart
Charles Holland
Andy Friend
Yemi Aladerun, Stuart Darling,
Alex Jenkins, Rob McCarthy
William Haggard
Nick Wood
Daniel Frost
David Knight
Erin Byrne
Mags Bursa
New public toilets will be installed
along the high street to provide the busy
shoppers and residents with a quick
stop-off point. The collected donations
of faeces and urine will provide water
and electricity for all the shops along
the high street. Biogas digesters will be
used to convert the waste into methane
gas. The more visitors the building can
attract the more power and water will
be produced for the high street. Cows
will be kept as pets and farmed for their
methane gas to then be used to generate
additional energy.
D
Plot Use: Market
Opening Times: 7am – 7am
Activities: Trading, Eating, Drinking
A Multi-Storey Market that makes use of
a vacant site and extends the full height
of the plot. A distinctive market canopy
forms a continuous cover for stalls and
stairs. The roof is a market cafe with views
over the city.
E
F
Plot Use: Retail / Education
Plot Use: Public House
Opening Times: 10am – 10pm
Opening Times : Monday – Friday,
11am – 11pm
Activities: Selling sweep equipment,
dance lessons, cockney supplies
‘Would You Adam & Eve It?’, chimney
sweep supplies and cockney outfitters –
this is east London after all! On the
second floor there's a dance studio, and
above that, the roof tops of London.
Activities : Eating, drinking, socialising
A facsimile of The Mitre Tavern in Holborn,
built by Bishop Goodrich in 1546.
8
9
H
Plot Use: Bank / Social Club
Opening Times: Monday – Saturday,
9.30am – 4pm. Other times available
by booking
G
Plot Use: Garden of Remembrance
Opening Times: Dawn – Dusk
Activities: Relaxation, Events,
Sandwich eating
A national ‘chain’ of parks inhabiting
the shells of bankrupt chain stores; the
shop is stripped out and the terrace
stabilised with an open steel frame. The
plot is planted with trees, and the defunct
signage made into park benches and
picnic tables.
Activities: Advice on saving and spending
Money / Credit. Weekly ‘Meet the
Managers’ Hog Roasts
K
Plot Use: High Street Museum
I
Plot Use: Rainy Days Umbrella Emporium
Further Government legislation regarding
honesty of big businesses meant High
Street Banks decor had to be unified
according to brand identity. Despite
marking a return to their historical
grandeur, the style change was not met
well on the High Street. (The) Piggy Bank
was established in response to this.
The growth of online banking left many
of the Banks redundant. Now instead of
changing address details on accounts bank
employees have become ambassadors
to spending.
Opening Times: 9am – 7.30pm
Activities: Retailer of bespoke umbrellas
and repair services
Rainy Days Umbrella Emporium is a
retailer of bespoke umbrellas for all your
weather dilemmas. Founded in 1955 by
Bob Merryweather after he was sacked as
a weatherman for a local TV station, the
company is now run by his dastardly sons,
who will do everything in their power to
increase profits.
J
Opening Times: 9am – 1pm, 2pm – 5pm
Plot Use: Vacant retail unit
Activities: Unknown / Memorial
Activities: Historic Tours, café, battle reenactments. This Weeks re-enactments:
Queues for Northern Rock, Glasgow City
Centre circa September 2007
The missing section of Wickham’s
Department Store on Mile End Road is
finally built, not on its intended site but
elsewhere on High Street 2012. Apparently
unoccupied, it serves as a civic tribute to
the small shopkeeper. A ceramic ‘welcome
mat’ is set into the pavement in front of
the vacant retail unit’s plywood entrance,
and the phone number on the ‘To Let’
sign is never answered.
A High Street Museum commemorating
the death of the high street. Subsidized
evening classes to include: ‘John Lewis
does carpet’ – Getting over Allders (over
50s); ‘Tactile shopping’ – how touching
things before you buy them can be
beneficial; Eye contact and conversation
classes for internet shoppers; Pick ‘n’ Mix
Club with the Woolworths seniors and
Looting for beginners.
Opening Times: Unknown
L
Plot Use: P.Y.O
Opening Times : Seasonal
Activities : Growing and picking fruit
and vegetables
This is a pick your own shop where
everything that will grow is grown on site.
The shop then sells all the seasonal
produce as it ripens. Customers harvest
their own shopping. The shop includes a
greenhouse, shed, frames and wormery
to maximise production.
10
11
south-facing side of the park, so they’re
facing the sun, and two, it gives a very
theatrical relationship to the street where
you become slightly removed from it.
HL: So how did you involve those groups
in the delivery of the project?
Katherine Clarke, muf
Katherine Clarke, Artist Partner at muf
Architecture / Art LLP, presents their
recently completed work at Altab Ali Park
to Holly Lewis.
HL: When did you start working in the
High Street 2012 area?
KC: We tendered to a very extensive brief
for 4 sites and we won 3 of these: Aldgate,
Mile End Waste and Mile End Park. East
Architects won Whitechapel Market,
which is also currently on site. The brief
was produced by Fluid and that had been
about 2 years in the making.
HL: What were you trying to achieve with
the scheme?
KC: Our ambition was to make accommodation for all users of the park without
prioritising one over the other, and to
understand the site as a microcosm of the
wider neighbourhood of this part of
London, where historically many different
cultural, religious and political influences
have shaped the fabric and the people
who live here. We actually diverged from
the original brief quite extensively, and
chose instead to focus all of the budget
in the park as we thought this was better
value to the people who live in the area
and who use the park.
HL: Did research into the local area
influence the project?
KC: One of the things that struck us
immediately about the park was the fact
that it was very, very well used at particular
times of the day by different kinds of
people. And one of the most dramatic
transformations was at about half past
three and lunch time, when the young men
who come from Bangladesh to attend
the business schools in the area came out
of the schools either for their lunch or at
the end of the day. They would come to
the park in quite large groups of twenty to
thirty, and there was nowhere for them to
sit, so they used to colonise the childrens’
play equipment. The mere presence of a
large group of young men immediately
gave a very particular atmosphere to the
park, and one that – we discovered through
talking to other people – made it less
attractive a place for young women or
for people with children to come to.
And yet, when we began conversations with these young men they were
incredibly sociable and they came to this
park, partly because it was the only green
space in the area, but also because of
the monument in the corner, which is
called the Shaheed Minar. It is a replica
of a monument in Dakar that marks the
beginning of the independence movement,
of the creation of Bangladesh from eastern
Pakistan, which began with the assassination of what are called the Language
Martyrs. So the park was very much a home
from home for these young men, who very
often come without knowing anyone, for
months at a time, and have this enormous
cultural dislocation. The park was very
precious to them, but it was also very
precious to other people who came here,
families with children and young people,
older people, people on their lunch break.
And yet the park had this very strange
Overlapping walls of two previous churches clearly visible
sense of being a forgotten, ‘non-place’, it
didn’t seem to have any identity at all.
However, in our research – as the rest
of this area reveals when you start to
look – it had this immensely interesting
and rich history. We found an image
of the church that stood on this site until
1952, with a huge banner in Hebrew on
the side of it. The celebration of the
Language Martyrs also happens here every
year on International Language Day, when
between 3,000 and 10,000 people from
the Bangladeshi community come to this
park and lay wreaths on the monument.
It’s very much to do with the politics of
Bangladesh, so it’s really interesting ‘homefrom-home’ evidence again.
classical style, and stood on the site from
probably about 150 – 200 years. And then
architectural fashions changed, and that
church was considered too classical in its
form, so that church was demolished, funds
were raised, and the church was rebuilt
in the gothic style.
So when we came to make this first
conception of how we would transform
the park it was very much about finding
that hidden history, finding those many
different layers and also finding a way that
the park could have a better relationship
to the street, and could invite people in
much more. And it wasn’t simply about the
history of the site as a churchyard and
hosting churches, (although in fact the
first church on this site was made in white
KC: The detailed design process meant
that it felt very important to think about
how we could include the different
constituents that use the park, and to
almost socially engineer meetings between
those young men and other users of the
park. With the Museum of London and
with the support of Design for London,
we organised an archaeological dig. This
image (see opposite) is the dig in the park,
and you can see here the walls of the
church from the 1800s intersected with the
walls of the classical church. The dig was
used as a means to invite people in to the
park, so we had about 800 people coming
through and either partaking in the dig
or coming and seeing the exhibition that
we laid on. We had interns that actually
worked alongside the Museum of London,
and we had young women and girls from
“The park was a
home from home
for these young
men who arrive not
knowing anyone”
HL: How did your early proposals develop?
KC: The research that we did continued,
both through conversations that we had
with people who were using the park
and through a historical study that was
commissioned through the Museum of
London. We found that there was a church
from the 1600s which was built in a neo-
“It was very much
about finding that
hidden history”
stone, which is how the area gets its name,
the White Chapel), but it was also all
of the other influences that have been
brought to bear.
The first move that we made was this
idea of opening up this route, so that you
could come in through the gate in the
West corner, you could walk through the
park and come out through the other end.
So you could still be on your journey
along the high street, but you would just
segway very gently into the park. In
order to make that walkway, what we did
was trace the edge of the wall of the last
church that stood on the site, and then
intersected that with the previous church.
We made a sort of collage if you like,
with the idea of the White Chapel and
the previous classical church.
Raising the walkway does two
things: one, it makes a very elongated set
of social spaces for people to sit in the
Results of the archaeological dig with the Museum of London
Mulberry Girls School come along as well
as primary school children, as well as
those young men who came to the park
for their lunch. So we sort of orchestrated
this cultural space where they all met.
As part of the dig we organised what
we called the ‘Artifact Exchange’, and it
was a way of demonstrating to people that
history is just made up of the everyday.
And the reason that historical objects are
precious to us is because of the stories
Recently completed Altab Ali Park. Photo: Sakiko Kohashi
that they tell about how people lived in the
past, and that those lives were probably
just everyday lives. In exchange for a piece
of cake, people gave us everyday objects
which we then displayed alongside the
historic objects.
There was also a second event of
layering that we commissioned. In Dakar
Language days are a time of celebration
and procession, they paint the roads
down to the monument with this beautiful
traditional painting, called Alpana. So we
commissioned three Bangladeshi artists,
one who was recently arrived from
Bangladesh, to come and make Alpana in
the park and they covered all the paths up
to the monument with painting.
HL: So, what were the final proposals?
KC: The main moves that we made in the
park were to make this east-west route
through that traces the footprint of the
Alpana being created in the park
church and intersects with the earlier
church. And there’s lots of references to the
ecclesiastical furniture. The interpretation
of the park is a really long strip that runs
along the outside of the railings and
which tells you about how the park got its
name, it tells you about the Shaheed Minar
monument and it tells you about the White
Chapel. The artifacts that came out of
the Museum of London dig have been cast
into terrazzo and ground down, the result
is almost like a faux grave marker.
You could almost conceptualise the
south side of the park as being a memorial
to religion, and the north side of the
park being much more about landscape
and the relationship to place. We made
a landscape setting that gives you this
view from the eastern high street corner
straight down to the Shaheed Minar,
there’s this grand, processional view to it
through this very simple device of English
landscaping. And then we brought in
these rocks and tree trunks to give it this
sense of being a landscape. We re-clad the
base of the monument with pink terrazzo
and made an area in front that kind of
leads you into the landscape. So it was a
very contrived way of making a landscape
that would be populated at different times
of the year in different situations by
different people.
One of the ambitions to make this
park that children could play in, but there
was a lot of anxiety about having play in
the park, because for some reason children
seem to be synonymous with misbehaving
very often. And so the play almost came
by stealth. We made this landscape here
with these fallen trees, that again mimic
ecclesiastical furniture with red rope and
cast cushions that are put onto the trees
for children to explore.
There are also these white carved
stone pieces that are made in such a way
“A way of
demonstrating
that history is
just made up of
the everyday”
that they offer up play opportunities for
young children. One of the pieces is
designed as a carum board and another
as a ‘marble run’. The making of the stone
pieces was done in collaboration with the
Building Crafts College in Stratford, and
that picked up on one of the qualities of
the east end as a place of philanthropy,
a place of bringing education to the
working classes. The Building Crafts college
is affiliated to the Carpenters Association,
which was founded by John Cass, who
was actually buried in this churchyard, so
there’s a nice circularity in inviting the
students from the craft college to make
the pieces.
HL: And are there plans for you to have
any future involvement in the project /
project area?
KC: It is unlikely we will continue to be
involved as there is little funding
for the future, though we have a number
of projects we would like to implement
one of which is an extension of the
Alpana project.
Altab Ali Park is now open to the public. Many
thanks to Katherine Clarke and Cristina Monteiro.
12
Penny Wilson, PATH
With the East End getting all spruced
up in preparation for the Olympic
extravaganza it was obvious that Mile End
Park should have a souvenir of the
remarkable occasion.
It also seemed clear that the focal
point for the location of this souvenir
should be on and around ‘the Green Bridge’.
This extraordinary feature creates an
archway over ‘High Street 2012’ the Mile
End Road, the arterial route through the
East End of London. This bridge gives the
public pedestrian access over this busy
road, providing an uninterrupted stroll
along the length of this linear ‘green lung’.
I work for the Play Association Tower
Hamlets, PATH. We have had a close
working relationship with Mile End Park
since the very earliest days. Together with
the park director, we developed a vision
of park that had a play offer running right
the way through it. We had worked on
this vision, starting with the Children’s Play
Park and the adventure park adding two
liminal play spaces in the northern tip of
Wennington Green and beside the railway
bridge north of the Art Pavilion. The areas
either side of the green bridge had no
obviously playable elements.
In addition, the original design for
the green bridge had design quirks that
were misused and not very conducive to
playfulness. The funding from High Street
2012 allowed us to address these issues.
We agreed with the design team
that the platforms to the east and west of
the bridge should be planted with native
broome. This would perfectly compliment
the colouring of the bridge, provide a
rich splash of colour and attract bees and
other pollinators whilst deterring any
misuse of the spaces.
PATH was able to work directly with
the design team at muf, and together we
developed a series of play artefacts made
from natural and unadorned materials that
would punctuate the passage of the public
from Solbay bridge over the Green Bridge
and through to the bus stop to the north.
Following the theme originally
identified by muf, we decided to locate a
magnificent felled tree beside the play
pod on solbay bridge, a buried tree crown
nearby, a series of what appeared to be
felled tree stumps rising up the incline of
the green bridge and a gorgeous natural
tree base to climb up and watch the world
of passing by above the bus stop.
To our delight, the lead designer from
muf and I watched as children began to
use the new additions to their park. These
magnificent tree segments look as if they
have been there forever and they are
already enhancing the play value of the
environment.
It is a tribute to the design firm muf,
that they listened to the contributions
made by PATH. It is easy for large
companies and organisations to refuse
to acknowledge the local, dedicated
expertise of the play world.
We are now closer to having an
utterly playable park in Mile End. This is
not a luxury, but an urgent need. Children
in this area are growing up divorced from
nature. They do not know how to climb
trees or use the natural environment in
their playing. Nature is alien to them. They
are brought up to be biophobic.
With these new artefacts to explore
and discover through their playing,
they will come one one step closer to
a relationship with nature which the
increasing pressures of development in
the area are in danger of denying them.
This addition to High Street 2012 will
enrich the play environment for children
and adults for many years to come.
learn workplace skills; or Dalston’s Arcola
theatre, which became the UK’s first
carbon-neutral theatre after a journey that
started by sharing its building with local
entrepreneurs. Some examples have been
around for a while, such as the Bromley by
Bow Centre, a hotbed for social enterprise
since the mid-1990s; others are very recent,
like Space Makers Agency’s initiatives to
re-think underused town centres as
community-driven marketplaces, or the
New Zealand peer-to-peer car-share
website Jayride.
What these examples have in
common is how their protagonists create
platforms and invitations for others to join,
collaborate and contribute. They manage
to unlock a new type of abundance,
unleashing the resources that people
already have, whether innate curiosity to
invent or assets that can be shared or
co-invested. And they do something that
the dominant organisations of the late
20th Century were very bad at: creating
productive interfaces between large scale
entities and issues (utility infrastructures
and providers, landowners and real estate
management, the education or transport
system, etc.) and the micro level of citizens.
This more porous interface is what
allows, for example, people to co-invest
13
“One should
never let a serious
crisis go to waste”
in renewable energy or broadband
infrastructure. Or grow food in the public
domain. Or hack existing online data for
unexpected use. Or commission their own
homes, or get easier access to vacant
premises for new projects. Or do whatever
it is that makes people tick, unleashes
their ideas and liberates their imagination.
Scaling and building on these
approaches is the way forward to building
a new economy, generating real impact
and deep value. We used the term ‘fertile
ground’ for civic entrepreneurs and the
ventures they create to grow and prosper.
Sometimes, this is about scaling successful
initiatives, or even replicating them
elsewhere. In many cases instead it means
creating the conditions for mass proliferation – enabling similar ideas to spring
up and linking them to each other. Our
collective challenge is to recognise fertile
ground where it exists, grow it where
it is scarce, and utilise its opportunities
creatively whilst others talk of crisis.
The Bromley-by-Bow Centre, both local and social
Here we have included two examples of
the ‘civic economy’ in action: one literary
and one local.
Natural play proposals in Mile End Park. Drawing: muf
BROOKLYN SUPERHERO SUPPLY CO.
A tutoring centre on the high street
Joost Beunderman, Architecture 00:/ Ltd
www.architecture00.net
It seems so long ago now: that famous
dictum of Rahm Emanuel, the then-chiefof-staff of then-recently elected president
Obama, that one should “never let a
serious crisis go to waste”. Almost three
years later, some would say that across
the world, many opportunities have been
wasted. What is certain is that the crisis
is still upon us: our economies, both
globally and in the UK, have stalled; the
mood across society is brittle, and the
quality of the environment keeps eroding.
In order to grow a more resilient and
inclusive prosperity, re-imagining and
re-building our economy has never been
more urgent.
In this context, many social pioneers
are getting on with it. Realising the
importance of their initiatives to inspire
The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. in New
York City is a small shop selling all types
of superhero gear from photon shooters
to invisibility potions. Here’s the surprise…
hidden behind a trick bookshelf is 826
NYC, part of a network of non-profit
organisations supporting young people
with their writing skills.
The store fronts of 826 chapters
are a central aspect of their success:
originally established to overcome zoning
constraints, they establish an ambient
culture of non-institutional fun and
creative achievement. They reduce barriers
to participation by removing the stigma
often associated with tutoring spaces. In
826 chapters across the US, almost 24,000
students have received tutoring, with
the help of over 5,000 volunteers. As such
they show how a local high street could
evolve towards a different type of use
and experience.
policy debates and other practitioners,
my practice recently published a book
about what we call the ‘civic economy.’ We
recognised that this new type of social and
civic impact ventures can be found across
the economy – and that understanding the
behaviours of their protagonists can help
us create the fertile ground for a wholly
different economic development story.
The examples in the book – called the
Compendium for the Civic Economy – go
across a wide spectrum: from Manchester’s
FabLab, a high-tech community product
development workshop originated in
the ‘How To Make (almost) Anything’
course module at MIT, to Livity, a socially
responsible marketing agency-turnedalternative-youth-club that helps young
people from often tough backgrounds to
Creative writing in a surprising setting, Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.
BROMLEY-BY-BOW CENTRE
A platform for neighbourhood well-being
The Bromley-by-Bow United Reform
Church in East London had a congregation
of just 12 people and almost no funds
when the Rev Andrew Mawson arrived
in 1984. Faced with a near empty church
in a low-income neighbourhood, the
minister and his congregation decided to
open up the church hall to the community.
Incrementally, this has grown into a
revolutionary organisation changing both
the social and physical fabric of the
neighbourhood.
From the initial offer of a carpentry
workshop and artists studio space,
facilities now include a 40-seat sanctuary,
the nursery, a gallery, a theatre space
and a flexible community room. In 1997,
an integrated health centre was set up,
combining a public park with a GP practice,
a families project, a social landlords’
office and other local services. The centre
now hosts more than 2,000 people every
week and has become the third largest
provider of adult education and training
in the borough of Tower Hamlets, a
vibrant ‘third space’ in between public and
private space just off High Street 2012.
14
From our surveys, we found that typically
two thirds of trips to high streets were
for activities other than shopping: so to
understand them as a retail phenomenon
is both to underestimate and to misunderstand them. High street retail is
undoubtedly suffering: this erodes local
economies, and drags down the appearance of the street front leading to a
vicious circle of decline. But all the other
uses that were observed are potentially
what sustain the shop-front retail and
services: multiple functions are woven
together in a web of interdependency on
a micro level, and we need to reinforce
all the functions of the high street if we
want to make them better.
High streets are about the everyday:
worldly, commercial, and rather traditional.
Many impressive high street buildings were
“Look behind the
façade, down alleys,
side streets and mews”
not designed by architects but are derive
from pattern-book building. High streets
are also resistant to a singular vision, either
from architects or developers, and to that
extent, they were somewhat resistant
to the sweeping gesture of Modernist
urbanism, which has had such a lasting
legacy. Making better high streets is
about embracing plurality and ordinariness,
and confronting questions about what
designers can meaningfully contribute
today, to parts of the city that have often
got along without them.
What projects do we hope to see emerging
with the millions of pounds worth of
funding available? Almost-impossibly
fragmented projects made up of multifaceted work streams: bringing a vacant
property back into use here, improving a
junction there, strengthening links with
traders, helping landlords upgrade their
premises or improve their shop displays.
Projects to make better spaces for play,
planting, new seating and lighting.
Projects that make affordable workspaces
available, site purchases that unlock better
uses of space, land assembly processes to
de-risk sites to stimulate investment.
All these projects involve the cooperation of large numbers of people across
the public and private sector, from
landowners to shop keepers. And many of
them will need multi-disciplinary teams
of urban designers, social entrepreneurs,
artists, lighting designers, marketing and
15
brand experts, graphic designers. And
these people will need to give up the usual
sense of order or control, as some of the
outcomes will be unpredictable because
first you need to get to know the high
street area inside-out. Those involved will
need to develop new skills on the job, and
they will need tenacity and determination
to cut through the daunting statutory,
organisational and time constraints.
These projects involve finding
whatever momentum, ambition or skills
there are in a local area, and corralling
them into actions that make a placespecific difference. The range and breadth
of collaborative working needed to reverse
the decline of our high streets is an
immense challenge, but one that could
generate almost immediate, positive
results, that affect the broadest possible
cross-section of Londoners.
The fine grain of a High Street carefully recorded
James Pallister
Forget the hassle of temporary uses or
pop-ups, James Pallister reports on a very
pragmatic way of sprucing up unloved
high streets.
Fiona Scott, Gort Scott
It is almost impossible to over-state the
importance of high streets to London’s
fabric and culture. The network of varied,
characterful non-residential streets
encompasses so much of what we think of
as the city, that it is sometimes easier to
define high streets by what they are
not: they are not business or retail parks,
not typically vehicular priority routes, not
shopping malls. But they are the structure
for almost every other kind of public and
civic function in London, particularly
outside the very centre of the city. And
where planning decisions over the last
few decades have failed to recognise or
respect the significance of the high street
(which they have frequently), highly
dysfunctional pieces of city have emerged.
It is an important time for London’s
high streets, with £50 million Outer London
Fund money to be spent on projects
related to the capital’s high streets by 2014.
This summer the Mayor also announced a
£50 million Regeneration Fund dedicated
to high streets and town centres, partially
in response to the August riots. Political
will and popular consensus are galvanising:
ideas and actions are growing. There is
a palpable sense that we can restore some
of the vigour and dignity of these valuable,
working places, that have been taken for
granted for decades.
I am an architect, and I first started
studying London’s high streets fairly
recently, in 2008. The ‘death of the high
street’ was common rhetoric, but I was
surprised to find very little in terms of
critical observation of what London’s high
streets are really made of, and what role
the streets and buildings play spatially
and functionally. I could not even find a
map of high streets in London. Everyone
seemed to have a vague sense of what
a high street was or should be, but there
are many, many different kinds of high
street. High streets tend to be complex,
disorderly and mixed: they are not just
shops with flats above. And the London
condition – the network spread over some
1500 square kilometres – is quite unique.
In our work, we have tried to frame a
sensibility to some of the more ‘ordinary’
elements of the high street. A lot of
the street is background, and aesthetically
“High streets tend
to be complex,
disorderly and mixed:
they are not just shops
with flats above”
Mapping London's High Streets
unremarkable. But by careful on-theground observing and recording the scale,
form, use and physical structure of
certain high street blocks, we have tried
to understand their value and develop a
renewed appreciation for something that
has been both unfashionable and unloved
in recent years.
At the same time, using Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) – a form of
digital data mapping – allowed us to plot
London’s high streets as a spatial network.
According to this work, there are over
six hundred high street areas outside the
very centre of London (see image), and
mapping them onto a single drawing was
a big step towards appreciating what they
mean to the city as a whole. These high
streets comprise only 3.6% of the capital’s
road network, and yet they represent
some of the most important spaces: two
thirds of Londoners live within 5 minutes
walk of a high street. And outside the
very centre of London, they support more
than half of the capital’s jobs.
We have found that physically, high
streets are very much more than parades
of shops. Look behind the façade, down
alleys and side streets, and mews. Look
at what goes on inside adapted industrial
and civic buildings and the rooms above
shops. You will find colleges, bakeries,
mechanics, mosques, film studios, pictureframers, accountants, timber yards,
council offices: places of work, culture and
community, and every kind of activity
that sustains the city. In terms of floor area,
shops and services may account for only
half the non-residential use.
The British High Street is in trouble. There
are too many shops, the rates are too
high and everyone’s skint. Between July
2008 and July 2009 the number of vacant
shops doubled, with Derby, Blackpool and
Liverpool three of the hardest hit places,
each with over 20% of retail capacity
vacant. And no one likes to go shopping on
a grimy street with a fifth of its units
boarded up. As Sarah Cordey, spokeswoman for the British Retail Consortium,
puts it “Empty shops are a categorically
a bad thing. There’s the danger of a spiral
of vacancy if there are several empty
shops on a high street as the unpleasant
environment scares shoppers away from
the area”.
This was the situation which Karen
Goldfinch and her colleagues at Whitley
Bay Chamber of Commerce feared for
their town. Faced with a number of vacant
shops they came up with a novel solution –
to put in place printed foamex boards
inside the shop window that gave the
illusion of there being an occupied unit
within. A graphic designer and property
specialist teamed up to provide the service
and later formed their own company –
Shopjacket. The idea is to minimize the
blight of vacant shops and – best case
scenario – to perhaps entice in some new
tenants. For Goldfinch its definitely
worked. “It’s been very successful and a
year on we’ve reduced vacancy rates on
our high street. Some retailers have been
here for years, through thick and thin, so
reducing rates to encourage occupancy
isn’t really an option as it’s perceived as
unfair. This is a good way of livening
otherwise dead shopfronts. Some people
complained, thinking that we must be
spending lots of money on it, but it costs
about £2,500 – 3,000 to do each one, and
they are reusable.”
It may seem bizarre, but serious
thought went into what type of faux-shop
they put in place. Sensitivity was needed,
Goldfinch says, as they didn’t want the
fake shopfront to introduce unwanted
competition to existing (real) tenants.
So the first shop was a delicatessen,
something which the high street didn’t
currently have. Neil Wilson and Paul
Murphy’s Shopjacket, has since worked
with several local authorities including
North Tyneside Council, Sedgemoor
District Council, Harrow Council and West
Dunbartonshire Council.
“The premise was not to hide a
problem, but to encourage shopkeepers to
think about design, to help bring top
quality design to the suburban high street”,
says Neil Wilson. His colleague Jo Atkinson
of Shopjacket explains she is wary of
accusations of filling up the high street
with fake shops. “That’s not what we want
to do. We’ll only do one or two per high
street, normally in a cluster, and then
ideally back them up with one-to-one
retail merchandising workshops with
existing retailers, as we did in Dumbarton.
The aspiration is that you create a
successful cluster which then spreads.”
The Potemkin-shopfront seems
fairly bizarre, but it has a surprisingly long
line of precedents, especially in the
construction industry. In the US window-
Shop Jackets: Before and After
sized stickers on the boarded up windows
of vacant homes showing signs of
habitation (pot plants, blinds) have been
used to cut crime rates. And years after
Christo and Jean Claude wrapped buildings
conservationists in cities like Rome and
Venice had to cover buildings during
repairs. They soon got wise to the fact that
one way of helping fund repairs and keep
residents happy was to sell advertising
space on these hoardings – or better still,
print giant versions of what the pristine
building would be once the covers were off.
The shopjacket solution is without
doubt a practical, low-cost one. Sanitised
they may be, one can imagine these pieces
of bittersweet pragmatism proliferating.
Shopjacket has recently been taking
enquiries from towns and cities in mainland
Europe. Like hospitals and schools built
under PFI – another British product being
enthusiastically adopted overseas – one
can imagine them being adopted by many
well-meaning councils and retailers
looking to staunch the flow of shoppers
from the High Street. They give tired high
streets a temporary facade of aspiration,
operating somewhere between – to inject
a little American glamour courtesy of
T.S. Eliot – the ‘pain of living and the drug
of dreams’.
A longer version of this piece appeared in the
November issue of Creative Review. James Pallister
is Senior Editor at The Architects’ Journal.
16
A HOME THAT IS A PLANT GROWING CLUB
Proposition: House (C3a Dwelling houses)
that is a tomato cultivating club (D2
Assembly and leisure)
Oliver Goodhall, We Made That
Out of town shopping centres, the retail
price index, the mall, big sheds and Pay
Pal: all now characterise our high street,
either directly or indirectly. Trade, sales
and commerce have long formed the
focus of our high streets, yet today they
are under threat.
Declining sales and the proliferation
of online consumerism bear witness to
a shift in the urban and social relevance
of the high street. This shift is outdoing
the planning of our high street. If retail
can no longer be relied upon, what will
replace it?
The way high street plots – and
indeed all pieces of land – can be used is
currently controlled through ‘Use Classes’.
For example, shops are grouped as Class
A1, restaurants as A3, houses as C3, and
so on. Use Classes are used to categorise,
but also to control – once a plot has a Use
Class, its possible future uses are strictly
laid out. Sometimes changing between
classes is easy. A butcher becoming a
chemist is fine. A bank becoming a butcher
is also permitted... but what if we want
something else from our high street? In
the face of uncertainty, how can we
increase flexibility in how our high streets
might be put to use? As the shape of the
street adjusts and the notion of high
streets is re-thought, should we plump for
better ‘Mis’-Use of these categories?
By subterfuge and slight of hand,
these examples increase the possibilities
for the future of our high streets:
By allowing lodgers a spare room in
the house, and by employing others as
gardeners, a group of professionalamateurs set up a hobby network.
“The sofa and kitchen was only for
occasional use, and that’s why both were
squeezed between the plant pots. The
land lady now provides tutorials in tomato
growing and holds parties for birthdays
and celebrations, some organised through
the Royal Horticultural Society’s network.
She had to make her spare bedroom
into a living space for the ‘lodgers’ – but
they only resided for up to 2 hours each.
A super-short term tenancy agreement
needed to be signed each time. That was
the only inconvenience, other than that it
was a roaring success.”
A MONEY EXCHANGE THAT IS AN AUCTION HOUSE
Proposition: Money transfer (A2 Financial
and professional services) that is a live
eBay auction shop (Sui Generis)
Employees act as brokers operating online
to gain best possible prices on second
hand goods being sold on eBay.
“They’ve amassed a feedback score
of well over 4,000 on eBay in such a short
time. Plus, they have a well known
reputation for getting those hard-to-find
items. The array of widescreens really pull
in the crowds and it’s a mesmerising sight
as the professional brokers flit between
bid windows.
The best thing is that they have the
items sent to them and there’s always
someone there to sign for it. They arrange
a convenient time for you to pop by
to collect your item. The fee they take is
just a percentage of 2.5%, although
there’s a minimum charge of £1.25. A small
price to pay for online shopping on the
high street.”
A SHOP THAT IS A LOCAL LIBRARY
Proposition: Shop (A1 Shops) that is Library
(D1 Non-residential institutions)
Through selling books to philanthropists,
reading material is moved from one
side of the shop to the other, where it
can then be read freely within a public
library section.
“It was pretty straightforward. When
customers went to the till to pay the
security tags were left on. Then, before
leaving the ‘shop’, each would be directed
to the filing system assistant who employed
the Dewey Decimal Classification in order
to re-shelve the book in the correct place
on the separate rack.
It was also possible to purchase
furniture. The delivery and handling charge
on chairs, tables, reading lamps was set
at £4.95. This would cover the relocation
from the one side to be appropriately
placed for use on the other. This continued
for close to six months, relying mainly
on the good nature of people wanting to
build this into a success.
Now the only items the shop still
sells are those bookmarks personalised
with your name written in a swirly font.”
their hard work:
Yemi Aladerun, Joost Beunderman, Mags
Bursa, Erin Byrne, Katherine Clarke, Stuart
Darling, Daniel Eatock, Eleanor Fawcett,
Andy Friend, Daniel Frost, William Haggard,
Charles Holland, Alex Jenkins, Torange
Khonsari, David Knight, Rob McCarthy,
James Pallister, Fiona Scott, Catrina
Stewart, Penny Wilson and Nick Wood.
Edited by
We Made That
Designed by
This issue of The Unlimited Edition marks
the end of our series of newspapers about
High Street 2012. Here we present a
folio of the first three papers, combined
with reflective articles on each of our
themes of ‘Survey’, ‘Speculation’ and
‘Proposition’. As a set, we hope that the
papers form an intriguing record of this
unique and vibrant area in this landmark
year of 2012.
We Made That
When we began this newspaper series
about High Street 2012, we wanted to
reflect an exciting range of ideas about
the High Street. It was really important
to us that those ideas would be based in
an understanding of the area, and the
people who live, work, shop and learn
here. As part of our ambition to celebrate
and explore High Street 2012, we have
been speaking to the people that actually
use it – you! The following findings offer
a snapshot of the life of Whitechapel
High Street, Whitechapel Road, Mile
End Road, Bow Road and Stratford High
Street, as we lead up to the London 2012
Olympic Games, when the eyes of the
world will be on East London.
The first striking thing that we found
is how familiar so many people are with
the High Street. Of the people we spoke to,
the majority come here everyday, or nearly
everyday. Most people also live nearby,
within half an hour’s travelling distance.
Despite the hustle and bustle of the market,
or even Stratford town centre – this is a
thoroughly local destination.
We saw that the High Street and the
areas around it are a hive of activity
during the week. Nearly 60 % of the people
we stopped to speak to on a weekday
were here for work. Predictably, this
changed at the weekends when nearly
everybody was on the High Street for
shopping or socialising. There can be few
places in the city which are so consistently
busy, but for completely different
reasons day-by-day.
We also discussed with people the
changes they have seen in the area,
both recent and longer term (one person
we spoke to had lived in the area for 68
years). Particularly in Stratford people
spoke about recent improvements, such
as taking out the railings and returning
the High Street to the open feeling of the
1950’s. Although, we have to admit that
some complained about the problems of
how busy it is to go shopping now!
In light of the recent improvements
along the High Street, we also asked
what else you think should be done.
You gave us a whole host of ideas, but
the most common response was that
there should be more open spaces to sit
with more flowers, trees and greenery.
Hopefully some of the projects described
by Paul Harper in his ‘Proposition’
article, such as Altab Ali Park will help
on this front.
We have been struck by the number
of people for whom this is ‘their’ High
Street. Many people had memories of
the Market over a number of decades,
and several spoke to us about the area’s
violent past: Jack the Ripper and The
Blind Beggar pub, where George Cornell
was killed in front of the pub’s patrons by
Ronnie Kray in 1966.
You also told us about your positive
experiences of the High Street: the market
trader who looks after your bike whilst you
go shopping, and restaurants that you’ve
been going to since childhood. Even those
who spoke about the violent side of the
High Street did so with fondness – the
life of this street is intertwined with our
own lives. This familiarity and affection is
just one of the things that has made High
Street 2012 a fascinating study subject
over the course of The Unlimited Edition
newspaper series. It is an area with a rich
history, a diverse cultural make-up and
site of continuous change and excitement.
We hope that Issue I, ‘Survey’, and indeed
the entire series, did justice to the
vibrancy of the area, and that it might
help people to value the familiar and
sometimes overlooked greatness on this
High Street.
Julian Dobson, Urban Pollinators
It’s hard to find an American city without
a sign warning pedestrians: ‘No Jaywalking’.
The road is the domain of the car, and
walkers should know their place. If you
want to get to the other side, there are
designated crossing points.
We’re less intimidatingly anti-people in
the UK. But while we don’t fine pedestrians
for jaywalking, we still screen them off
with safety railings and push them to the
sides to allow the traffic to get through.
It’s a physical fact, but it’s also a reflection
of a psychology that says the high street
is for traffic. We give over the roads to
motor traffic, and the buildings to retail
traffic. Yet with all this movement and
throughput we create few spaces for the
really important traffic: the exchanges
between people that create social value.
As retail guru Mary Portas came to
understand while doing her review of the high
street last year, it’s the social traffic that
creates economic traffic: when you want to
get together with other people, commercial
exchange and business ideas follow.
So imagine high streets where
jaywalking was encouraged. Not just the
physical jaywalking that values informal
movements, such as crossing the road to
say hello to a friend, but psychological
jaywalking that refuses to be hemmed in
and constrained when thinking about
how we can use a particular space or
what activities should take place on our
high streets. Instead of just designing
for safety, why not design for fun? And
instead of just designing for commerce,
why not design for conversation?
The high street of the past has gone:
academics and policymakers have been
warning of the change for 25 years, and
by now an entire generation has grown up
with out-of-town shopping, car-centred
retail parks and big-box superstores. The
trend on the majority of high streets is
retail shrinkage. More than half the leases
in our shopping centres and high streets
are coming up for renewal in the next
three years, and as they do the big chains
will reduce their costs, concentrating
their energies in a smaller number of prime
locations. Meanwhile mobile technologies
are likely to accelerate the trend that
began with home-based online shopping.
According to Barclays, the amount we
spend on shopping via mobile phone in
the UK will rise from £ 1.3 bn in 2011 to
£ 19.3 bn in 2021. Much of this spend will
disappear from the high street.
So we need to think how the high
street can become something different:
a place where social and civic functions
attract commerce and activity, not just a
shopping destination. We need a ‘right
to roam’ for the high street. Town centre
property is usually privately owned. But it
only works when it attracts the public.
The high street is a public place: it is
open, accessible, and its value is in its use
and enjoyment by ordinary people. But the
people who create its value are too often
ignored by those who reap the benefits.
Just as the ‘right to roam’ established
by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act
in England and Wales created the concept
of access land, which people could use
and enjoy without compromising the
owners’ rights, we need a right of access
in the high street. Landlords should release
idle or underused property for community
or cultural activities as an alternative to
paying empty property rates. Start-up
businesses, artists and educators should
be able to identify unused space they
can occupy, with the landlord receiving a
proportion of first-year profits. Local
authorities should encourage communities
to come forward with ideas for events
and activities that can take place on
public highways on certain days.
The purpose of a ‘right to roam’ in the
high street is twofold. First, it recognises
the value of the place as a shared good
that all should be allowed to enjoy, while
recognising the contributions and
responsibilities of the owner. Second, it
aims to encourage activities that enhance
and increase the value of the place,
attracting new activities, uses and users.
By releasing space for enterprise and
imagination, the high street is restored
to landlord and user alike as an asset
rather than a liability. Researchers and
community representatives need to work
with landlords and local authorities to
identify how such rights of access can work.
What incentives or penalties would bring
landlords to the table, and what facilitation
would be required to manage disputes?
What can be done using existing powers,
and what new powers may be needed?
One question above all should inform
the discussion. It’s this one: ‘Why not?’
Paul Harper, Design for London,
Greater London Authority
It’s June 2012 and on Whitechapel High
Street, Mile End Road and Stratford High
Street there is lots going on: diggers are
on site, trees have been planted, shops
and building have been spruced up and
people are banding together to celebrate
it all. High Street 2012 has been a model
for improving parts of the city that
carefully works with what is there, that
celebrates the everyday and that injects
creativity into the process of change.
So how are we doing?
In Aldgate, Braham Street Park has
emerged from the unravelling of a one-way
traffic system. This project was funded by
a private developer who recognised that
offices next to a park would be much more
attractive than offices next to an urban
motorway. EDCO Design worked with a
broad client team through many iterations
to create a park at the edge of the City
that is not a corporate plaza but a softer,
more welcoming park accessible to local
residents as well as office workers.
At Altab Ali Park amazing things have
happened, guided by muf architecture / art.
An archaeological dig literally excavated
the history of the site and an Alpana
street painting event highlighted the
richness of the culture of the Bangladeshi
community living in the area. These
events opened up a meaningful dialogue
between those using the park and those
living, working or studying nearby.
This helped the design team to produce
a sophisticated, layered design that
provides space for sitting, chatting, play,
for social and political gatherings and
a space where you can learn about the
history of the area. A similar process of
engagement with a remarkable history
and dynamic present are about to reveal
a similarly multi layered landscape at
Mile End Waste.
At Whitechapel, the market was
probably the most logistically complex
project. East Architects have designed
improvements that do not shout change
out loud, however they will make the
market work better, with improved lighting,
drainage and servicing for the large
numbers of people that Crossrail and the
enlarged Royal London Hospital will bring.
The changes are complemented by the
work designed by Julian Harrap Architects
restoring magnificent historic buildings.
In these careful restoration projects
there has been space for freshness in the
approach to signage where Julian Harrap
worked with graphic designers Objectif.
At Ocean Green plans were already
well advanced when it became part of
the High Street 2012 project. However PRP
Architects have worked with Adams and
Sutherland to craft a design of quality
for the landscape at the edge of the
estate, re-connecting it to the high street
but still providing privacy and protection
for residents.
Access to Mile End Park has also been
improved and the green bridge replanted.
A magnificent floating towpath has
appeared on the canal at Bow and the
Cycle Superhighway now snakes its way
down part of the street. Paving, lighting
and carriageway changes have started
to make Stratford High Street a little
more like a street than an urban motorway.
It has not been easy to nurture
change of real quality whilst negotiating
a way through the complex network of
ownership, responsibility and regulation
that characterises work in the public
realm. Getting good designers on board
has been crucial, but as important for
success has been the holding together of
an expanded ‘client team’ for them to
work with. This team has included highway
authorities, local authorities, heritage
organisations, private developers, parks
departments, artists, market traders,
schools, museums, women’s groups,
religious organisations and many more.
It is a long list that has allowed the project
to tap into shared imaginings of how
good things might be, reveal shared and
hidden histories and make changes to the
physical environment, and the experience
of everyday London life.
High Street 2012 is a great example
of the many initiatives that are now
taking place across London to help improve
our high streets. It can be seen as a
productive precursor; informing decisions
being made and actions taken elsewhere;
designing changes to London’s high street
places so that they can remain at the
heart of our shared social, economic
and civic life, rooted in history, fit for the
demands of the present day but also
designed flexibly so that they can respond
to changing patterns of use.
To the Thames
Aldgate East Ω
1
Whitechapel Ω
WHITECHAPEL
For a full tour, as described by Laura Oldfield
Ford and Douglas Murphy, see page 12 of
The Unlimited Edition Issue I
6. Matt’s Gallery (42 – 44 Copperfield Road)
2
and the Octagon Library (Queen Mary University, Mile End Road)
5. Walter Beasant’s Peoples’ Palace (Queens Building)
4. The Ocean Estate (South of Mile End Road)
3. Wickhams Department Store (Mile End Road)
2. The Grave Maurice Pub (269 Whitechapel Road)
1. Wentworth Street
4
Ω Stepney Green
STEPNEY
3
5
To Victoria Park
6
Ω Mile End
MILE END
To the Olympic Park
Code: Meat-was-murder-2012
This coupon is non-redeemable
As featured on page 16 of The Unlimited Edition Issue II
2-4-1 !
2-4-1 !
F
B
O
G
O
F
B
O
G
O
F
B
O
G
O
2-4-1 !
Do YOU have experience of biogas
digesters and cattle herding?
∫
UMBRELLA EMPORIUM
Assistant Vacancy
*
ATTENDANT REQUIRED
Public Toilet / Power Station
Must be good with hoses
Own wellington boots required
Use your skills to contribute
to the high street’s power supply
*
Call Bob Merryweather:
T: 0–00-rainy-days
Poor sense of smell preferable
.) &."
m"
.) &."
m"
.) &."
WICKHAM’S DEPARTMENT STORE FRAGMENT
Do not visit or call · T: 0 0 0 0 0 0
.) &."
m"
.) &."
S W E E P WA N T E D
Freelance sweep required for chimneys
and general cockney knees-ups
www.wouldyouadamandeveit.co.uk
To place your advert here, or for
more information, refer to pages – – –
of The Unlimited Edition, Issue III
m"
.) &."
SOUGHT:
ENGAGEMENT OFFICER
High Street Museum
Join our under-motivated team to
deliver our wide range of classes:
—
Eye contact and conversation
for internet shoppers
—
Tactile Shopping
—
Pick ’n’ Mix Club for Woolworths
Seniors’ and others
Published by
We Made That
Designed by
This issue of The Unlimited Edition has
been printed locally by Aldgate
Press, with recycled paper by local
supplier Paperback
www.aldgatepress.co.uk
www.paperback.coop
ISSUES I — II — III — IV
Many thanks to all our contributors
for their hard work

issues i - We Made That

Transcription

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