Fortress Westminster
I went to a lecture on public space yesterday. At one point Spencer de Grey showed a slide of a proposal Fosters And Partners drew up in the mid-Nineties for the area between Parliament Square and the Palace of Westminster. Amongst other things this involved pedestrianising the south side of the square and installing a series of fountains. The reality, ten years later, is rather different:
As de Grey suggested the collision here between security concerns and public space is not very succesful. When Portcullis House was opened in 2001 there were complaints that it was out of place in a modern democracy. It was bulky, bombproof and oppressive. They are now doing the same for the Palace of Westminster, on the quick and on the cheap. Still things evolve: we have now progressed from metal barriers to concrete barriers to metal canoes:
Further up the road, outside Downing Street, is this rather odd piece of railing:
At first it looks like a prime example of dead space, one of those arbitary encirclings Whitehall delights in. It's more than that; it's killing space designed to swing shut and prevent pedestrian access.
As de Grey suggested the collision here between security concerns and public space is not very succesful. When Portcullis House was opened in 2001 there were complaints that it was out of place in a modern democracy. It was bulky, bombproof and oppressive. They are now doing the same for the Palace of Westminster, on the quick and on the cheap. Still things evolve: we have now progressed from metal barriers to concrete barriers to metal canoes:
Further up the road, outside Downing Street, is this rather odd piece of railing:
At first it looks like a prime example of dead space, one of those arbitary encirclings Whitehall delights in. It's more than that; it's killing space designed to swing shut and prevent pedestrian access.
