Leon Krier

     Over the weekend I got to thinking about the late Leon Krier - it is just a year after his death - and I wondered if there were currently any plans for a retrospective exhibition of his work here in the UK.  A brief internet search drew a blank.  Perhaps you dear reader know otherwise?  If so let me know.

     

     A retrospective exhibition would be very appropriate, I feel, as Krier, architect, town planner, author, and  polemist lived in London for some twenty years from the late Sixties to the late eighties.  He initially worked for James Stirling and then taught at the AA (1972-74) and the Royal College of Art.  He was part of the intellectual life of the city, a key thinker in the emerging Post Modernist/New Classicism movement.  He was active in the Urban Design Group, as was Terry Farrell; and both were habitues of the Leinster Gardens headquarters of Andreas Papadakis's Academy Editions.  It must have been very exciting, very intense time.  During his time in London he published 'James Stirling: Buildings and Projects 1950-1974' 1975; 'Rational Architecture', 1978; 'Leon Krier; Houses, palaces, Cities', 1984.  And of course, it is here in the UK that, with the patronage of the then Prince of Wales Poundbury, was created.

Oxford

 St Patrick

     Yesterday news reached 'X', Twitter as was, of a proposed new development for Oxford city centre - a place, I think, in sore need of help.  The proposal, by GP Clarendon Square Ltd, and designed by the traditionalist  Quinlan Terry Architects, is for the wholesale replacement of a shopping centre (in America called a 'mall'), the 'Clarendon Centre' dating from the 1984.  The images so far released into the public domain are very interesting.  This is from the planning application:

     "This proposal is for the refurbishment of the existing buildings through the opening up of the existing thoroughfares by removing the roof coverings and the opening of the very centre to form a large 41x42 metre landscaped square.

     "Quinlan Terry CBE has designed new classical design stone facades to the square and the existing elevations. These key elevations are Cornmarket Street and Queen Street."

     They represent a welcome return to traditional Urbanism, with a street and a large public square.  There are stone facades and neo-classical detailing, and correct scale.  All to the good.  (I suppose the usual suspects will complain.)

     And what I wonder will be the knock-on effect on places such as Newbury, in Berkshire, where there is a shopping centre of a similar age - empty and forlorn - awaiting redevelopment.

     Here are a couple of images of the Clarendon Centre proposal.  They have appeared on 'X' and in the Oxford press so not quite sure who to credit the images with except either 'Goldman Properties'/'GP Clarendon Square Ltd' or 'Quinlan Terry Architects'.

Cathedral Quarter

     More madness from Lincoln...

     Not content with the new cultural quarter in Lincoln, the 'Uphill' area of Lincoln - the ancient 'Bail' and not quite so ancient 'Close' - has been renamed the 'Cathedral Quarter'....in fact the 'Bail' - the part of the City that lies within the walls of the Roman upper city - has be known by that name for the best part of a thousand years. Up until the 'reforms' of the nineteenth century it lay outside the jurisdiction of the City; being the outer bailey of Lincoln castle it was under the authority of the Duchy of Lancaster and was administered by a Steward and Court Leet. The 'Close', which encircles the Cathedral, was a later division of the City and formed a fortified enclosure for the protection of both the cathedral and its staff; two of the gates survive, another is a Regency/Victorian 'creation'. It was administered by the Dean and Chapter via a Court Leet that met within the Galilee porch of the cathedral.

Cultural Quarter? Cultural ghetto....

     Apologies for not having blogged for a while (he says euphemistically!) but life has been getting in the way of late....

     In my time away from this blog I have made two trips up to Lincoln - my county town. I knew it had a 'masterplan', but little idea that it involved the creation of a 'Cultural Quarter'. I find I really hate such designations...all it does, in effect is to create a cultural ghetto, perhaps planners and the City fathers of Lincoln believe that artists should be corralled away somewhere safe, where an ever watchful eye can be kept on them? Not that I believe that artists are in anyway as 'subversive' as the avant garde, or liberal intelligentsia, would have us believe, or wish they were....
     Still it seems to be to just another case of all that loopy post-war planning that did so much untold damage to our historical cities....shopping here, working there, sleeping somewhere else. It is merely the same old stuff dressed up in fashionable planning talk....if the arts are to mean anything in being the leaven in the lives of the inhabitants of Lincoln, or any other city, museums etc have to be spread throughout the whole. Public sculpture, for instance, and especially that of an official nature, should be placed everywhere in the city. Institutions too. For it is through them that civil society is created and maintained. To create a 'cultural quarter' is to impose a form of segregation upon the city, to create an area that is tourist destination in a world view that sees and cultural 'product' simply as that - product, something to be merely consumed like something on a shelf in a shop, not something that conveys higher meaning, or even spiritual value for those who use art as a god substitute.
     I remember standing at the end of Danes Terrace and looking down Danesgate past both The Collection and the far more lovely Usher Gallery and not seeing a soul, the place was dead...not vibrant, not living, just a quiet English provincial town. Dead.
     Reading Lincoln City council material on the web I see that the Library and Drill Hall are also part of the 'Cultural Quarter' even though there is no visual link between them and the Danes Terrace area, and therefore no direct pedestrian route. This is ludicrous. They are two separate quarters not one. Apart from the general vacuity of 'The Collection' - the building is what it's about, not the contents, the move up hill has left the old museum empty - what a waste. This is no way to re-construct a city.