E&C Historic Map-1879

Historic map of E&C, 1875-79.  Interesting that the major road network hasn't really changed that much so it would theoretically be quite easy to reintroduce the historic street pattern in some places.  The map is pre-tube so pedestrian flows and desire lines would be different now.

Story Board ideas

Tamasin has proposed a presentation layout which looks rather nice, following the idea of a silent movie in black and white in a power point presentation as you can all see in the emails that have been going around today.
I proposed an alternative way based on Tamasin's idea, following the same principle but presented in a more compact way. It's still Tamasin's idea though, that can still be presented in Powerpoint or PDF as we wish.

Here is my way of presenting it: Black area for image presentation and white area for  titles and text. Yes, it is a template that will be the same as it goes along through the storyboard.

Tamasin's is a power point: - first two pages only. the rest of the presentation is presented in a sequence of Black sheets containing the titles and description and the white sheets containing the images which are sketches, drawings, concepts, etc...

Choose the one you like and then we'll decide which will be our way of presenting our work as a story.

Some notes on William Whyte's The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

William Whyte was an American urbanist, organisational analyst, journalist and people-watcher.  The theories set out in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces are based on mass observation of people's behaviour in public spaces in the United States and elsewhere in the 1970s.

As he admits himself, his findings are hardly revelatory but he does highlight a number of issues which are apparently overlooked in many designs for urban plazas, squares and parks and he makes a number of straightforward recommendations for making such spaces more 'user friendly' and therefore successful:

1. Circulating and gathering - somewhat against common sense, people seem to prefer to stop, talk and sit either on or as close as possible to active circulation routes.

2. Seating - people want places to sit, so provide as much seating as possible; walls, edges of planters or water features, steps and other changes in level can all be designed to be multi-functional without much effort (in fact, Whyte's view is that it is generally more difficult to make them 'unsittable'!); chairs (with backs) are better than benches; choice is important so make seating movable if possible. Specifics - length/quantity: min. 300mm length for every 2.75m² of plaza area; width: (single-sided) min. 400mm, (double-sided) min. 760mm; height: 300-900mm

3. Sun, wind, trees, and water - provide choice of sunny or shady areas (weather permitting); try to 'borrow' light (using reflective surfaces) if the space is north facing or overshadowed; wind and drafts are usually unwelcome, so small parks enclosed on 3 sides work well; tall buildings can often cause drafts and turbulence; trees - at least 6, of good size, for a space of 450m² or 1 per 7.5m of pavement (sidewalk), ideally close to seating - to moderate climate, provide sense of enclosure, shade (in appealing patterns), etc. Water - should be accessible and not just for looking at; moving water can help to create a quiet and restful feel by masking the worst aspects of street noise.

4.  Food - food outlets (even if only 'snack shacks') will draw people to a space, as will retail units; by compressing food outlets and any related seating into a small area, people are encouraged (forced) into unplanned meetings and conversations.

4. Connectivity to the street - it has to be easy to both see and get into the space, with a subtle transition from street to plaza/park; a slight rise in level can be inviting, but no more than a metre, and never (or rarely) sunken.

5. 'Undesirables' - Whyte suggests that the measures taken to control and keep out 'undesirables' are more detrimental than the people themselves: "Places designed with distrust get what they were looking for". Public spaces should be must be accessible to the public - if they are well designed they will be used and 'owned' by people and will become self-managing.

6. Indoor spaces - connectivity to the street and reason to use the space (food and/or retail) are even more important than for outside spaces; doors need to be open!

7. Catalysts - an external stimulus - the 'spark' - that gets people talking to each other - the street performer, 'character', physical object (e.g. sculpture), sight /view, etc.

It's worth noting that the spaces discussed in the book are in business districts in larger cities with high numbers of passersby. Whilst many of the principles will apply in any space, Whyte himself acknowledges that spaces only work with people, and sometimes people make the most unlikely spaces successful.

Updated version of the concept diagram. If you think it would be better without the colour, or want to suggest any other changes let me know.

Some Christopher Alexander-isms, 'A Pattern Language – Towns, Buildings, Construction' '(1977)

Despite the age and US origins of the text, it still has significant value for our site and could assist with establishing a design framework for our concept. Alexander advocates enabling, through urban design, the potential for sub-cultures to flourish. This is in tune with our aims of enabling an arts and creative quarter to develop; the communities that we are designing for can be considered a distinctive sub-culture, with further sub-cultures within.

Our project could therefore be less about the usual urban design objectives, integration, connections, legibility etc. and more about creating a series of 'citidels'; Shoreditch, Manchester Northern Quarter, St. Ives developed because they are both distinctive and separate from their neighbouring communities. Alexander argues that the more communities become integrated with their neighbours the more they influence each other, resulting in a 'dull' lack of extremes.

How we encourage this within our own sites could be entirely down to us as individuals, moreover, a lack of coordination as we do it could be useful for creating distinctive quarters within the wider city; this seems more radical to me.

'In the heterogeneous city, people are mixed together, irrespective of their life style or culture. This seems rich. Actually it dampens all significant variety, arrests most of the possibilities for differentiation, and encourages conformity. It tends to reduce all lifestyles to a common denominator.' (p43)

Alexander argues that useful design methods for realising this goal are:

• Public squares/forums for people to come together (within their sub-culture group)
• Quality of light
• Access to soft landscape/countryside
• Enable a specialisation of work within each sub-culture – live/work, employment units etc
• Reduce vehicles moving through a community (though I think we can also use roads as effective buffers)
• Design buffers between communities that enable them to thrive in isolation – 200m at least but with meeting points where services essential to various adjacent sub-cultures can be accessed – clubs, clinics, pubs etc
• Reduce entry/exit points to individual communities – more than 200 pcus per hour reduces the quality of life for residents.
• Turn buildings away from neighbouring communities, facing into the sub-culture zone
• Distribute essential shops across neighbourhoods so they can operate autonomously
• Limit building heights to four storeys-unless dealing with major civic buildings
• Build in water – of some sort
• Open up educational centres, so that they better interact with local communities 'a market place of education'

...Tailored to the sub-culture one is designing for.

Howdah - seating?

It seems that the elephant & castle name came from the pub with the same name.  How that cameto be named is unknown but the image of the elephant & castle would have been fairly familiar, though exotic, at the time, appearing in various cultural & even architectural places.  the castle would probably have been derived from the Indian "howdah" seats.  Some examples here  got me thinking about possible inspiration for seating for our "auditorium".....
                                                
                                   

 

The latest news on plans to redevelop E&C/Heygate:http://www.building.co.uk/5032369.article?origin=bldgdailynewsletter
Should we be thinking about putting our plans forward as an alternative proposal for the area??
It would be really good if we could do someinformal community consultation...

Hester's Principles for community designed spaces

Hester argues that community participation in design and planning is paramount. It brings to the fore the social, economic, and ecological issues at stake, as well as the dreams and hopes embodied in the spaces to be redesigned. Hester describes a variety of low cost and effective tools for community participation. He emphasizes, however, that participation must be facilitated by “a view” of the desired future on the part of city officials, designers and planners. He warns that participation for its own sake can lead to a gridlock where nothing can be agreed upon, or resulting plans run against social and economic goals.

“Two irrepressible forces underlie my work: the human desire for participatory democracy and ecological limits. There are many more democracies in the world today and resource limits are more critical, complex, and misunderstood. More than any other factors, democracy and limits shape public landscape design.”

According to Hester, people seeking to design sociable neighborhoods must clarify the concept of “residents’ own” spaces, and then they must decide how to delineate those spaces. The word “own” refers to a collective, symbolic community ownership and can often apply to highly contested areas. Hester points out that spaces such as trash dumps, phone booths, secret niches, ponds and transportation corridors often emerge as “owned” in community analyses. He emphasizes that we need to understand the value of those spaces for different groups in the community, and find ways of increasing this value without losing the sense of community and identity the spaces provide. He, too, describes a process by which to delineate neighborhood spaces.

My thinking about the corridor design

Information on Design Codes

If you haven't yet found this for yourselves, here are links to some info on Design Codes:

Preparing Design Codes:

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/regeneration/pdf/152675.pdf

Design Coding in Practice:

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/regeneration/pdf/143795.pdf

A small checking list for using it in the process of design for individual work. This will assure we can follow a design line across the whole site - different from the design philosophy.

Our design as a SHOW

We have our stage and auditorium, our aims for our design  and beginningto get ideas on how to go about this.  Is it worth perhaps pooling some ideas on the following to inform our design?

1.      Script.  What is the story, the scenario? – What is it about?  The story could be fairly straightforward or intricate? Familiar eg. rags to riches, happy endings ( I guess we only want a happy ending… or unfamiliar.  A local story or a universal theme?

2.      Type of production : Play, musical, concert, dance.  ( A musical would combine many forms..)

3.      Style? : Wikipedia provided these:-

Naturalism : Portraying life on stage with a close attention to detail, based on observation of real life.

Realism: Portraying characters on stage that are close to real life, with realistic settings and staging.

Expressionism: Anti-realistic in seeing appearance as distorted and the truth lying within man. The outward appearance on stage can be distorted and unrealistic to portray an eternal truth.

Absurdism: Presents a perspective that all human attempts at significance are illogical. Ultimate truth is chaos with little certainty. There is no necessity that need drive us.

Modernism: A broad concept that sees art, including theatre, as detached from life in a pure way and able to reflect on life critically.

Postmodernism: There are multiple meanings, and meaning is what you create, not what is. This approach often uses other media and breaks accepted conventions and practices.

Classical: A type of theatre which relies upon imagination (and therefore limited props) to convey the setting and atmosphere of the play. Classical theatre usually contains lofty, grand prose or free verse dialogue. Good examples are the Elizabethan dramatists William Shakespeare

4.      a)  Set design,

b)      Costumes and make-up,

c)      Lighting

etc  appropriate to our show. 

The main focus of this is the stage - the Elephant – with the auditorium & aisles of course also giving the flavour and advertisement of the show in their through-ways and stopping points

Just seen this on BBC2's The Culture Show... Gary Card, set/costume designer and illustrator, in a shop for LNCC. This is made from cheap timber - the lesson is that it's the idea/feel that's important, not (necessarily) the materials. Lighting is also really important.



more at http://www.dezeen.com/2011/06/03/ln-cc-by-gary-card/

and another example of his work:

If you didn't see it the show is probably worth a look on iPlayer. There was also this intro sequence for 'The Kermode Awards' (these are screen shots) - idea for quick and easy sketch models?

Design Principles/Objectives

In no particular order, some initial thoughts to get the ball rolling:

·         Increase the appeal of Elephant & Castle as a destination in its own right;

·         Improve the pedestrian experience of the E&C to South Bank area;

·         Introduce/improve green infrastructure in the E&C to South Bank area;

·         Provide high-quality public open spaces, including spaces for formal and informal performances;

·         Work with/complement/enhance existing activities/uses, culture, population, features, etc (i.e. avoiding ‘instant gentrification’ if at all possible);

·         Sub-areas to retain their own character, but be linked thematically (performance theme) and possibly with use of similar or the same materials/features;

·         Enhance the public experience and usability of the key corridors: Waterloo Road and Blackfriars;

·         Avoid the provision of prescribed or directed route(s) between E&C and South Bank, aiming instead to encourage exploration/discovery within the area.

Concept diagram

First attempt at a Concept Diagram - you need to imagine it rotated 90 degrees left as for some reason it keeps turning round when I try to upload it! It would need 'beautifying' if we want to use it, but the idea is that E&C is the 'stage', Heygate the back-stage area/scene shop (hub of creative activity), South Bank the front of house area - welcoming the audience - and the bits in between the 'auditorium', with the two key corridors as aisles; the college area could be the orchestra pit if you like. Think it kind of works?!

Revised areas for us each to focus on in developing the design.

1. Heygate (backstage/scene shop)
2. College 'zone' (orchestra pit)
3. Residential 'zone' (auditorium - stalls)
4. Stations 'zone' (auditorium - circles & boxes)
5. South Bank (foyer/entrance)
6. The two main corridors, Waterloo Rd and Blackfriars Rd (aisles)
Plus separate E&C area - The Stage

[Old version -
  ]

Rough costs for some of the areas:

Slogan

Updated list with all our suggestions. Now it's time to choose...
My favourites (in order) would be 'Elephant goes to the theatre' (hybrid of 3. and 4.), 6. which I don't think is necessarily too long, and 13.

1. Swans reflecting Elephants (Dalì's painting)
2. Stage the Elephant
3. Elephant at the Theatre
4. Elephant goes to the South Bank
5. Acting the Elephant
6. Dressing up and Stepping out - the Elephant goes Theatrical (a bit long!)
7. Bright Elephant
8.  A man's elephant is his castle
9. The elephant in the artist's room
10. Scene change in Southwark
11. Set for change in Southwark
12. All the world a stage - in Elephant & Castle
13. Elephant & Castle set for 'dramatic' change
14. Dramatic new scenery for Southwark/ Elephant & Castle
15. Southwark and Elephant & Castle Revamp
16. New Street Scene for Southwark and Elephant & Castle
17. The elephant's creative castle
18. A green river runs through it
19. A creative river runs through it.

According to the brief, the slogan should "summarise the group response to your agenda... like a heading [ ] in a newspaper summarise the content of the urban design proposal." It should convey the idea of the scheme to someone who knows nothing about it. With this in mind, my own feeling is that it should include Elephant and something related to our theatre theme.

Are there any more suggestions? Do we need another vote?

Final version Sketch Proposal:

Second impression version 1

Second impression version 2

SketchDesign - FirstImpression

I Must say, it was quite straight forward putting all this together.
There is still lot of work to do but just wanted to show you how the Sketch design looks so far.
Most of the general areas were treated in the same way by all of us with particular details and different thoughts in smaller areas.
I combined the thoughts and an even greater detail showed up, which is good. I personally added the "green touch" to it as it was missed from most of sketches.
Overall, good group exercise .. well done guys!
If my son gets tired of pulling me, beating me, creating mess and shouting I hope I can finish this today.
Feel free to add comments about what else needs to be added and will make the changes as the work progresses.

First Impression - Sketch Design