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The architecture and planning of Milton Keynes
Pick 'n Fix Boilerhouse Exhibition, with catalogue 'Robots', Bayley, S and Woudhuysen, ], Conran Foundation, London, UK (1984) 60pp The stated aim was to show how they will affect product design. In the words of the catalogue: For two hundred years the history of design has been a list of styles and ideologies . . . But this is going to change. A new technology is beginning which is so universal in its scope and potential that . . . will change design and many other things besides. About half the word's robots are welders. Sprayers and loaders are the next largest constituents of the robot population. Assembly accounts for a good fifty per cent of manufacturing operations. Recent advances in sensor technology have made very intricate assembly operations feasible by robot. Assembly robots demand parts that are machine recognisable and, preferably, designed for pressing or snapping together. It is asserted that: Products will only be built by robot if they can be made in large volumes • . . The other main industrial sector is defence... Robots reduce the cost of detailed machining. More decoration and more variety could well become a characteristic of products designed to be manufactured by a robot. [For designers robots] will mean that mastery of a whole number of different areas of knowledge will become crucial... The designer will have to keep up with innovations in computer hardware and with software technology, of new capabilities in tool performance and with industrial relations as well. The above statements h a v e been taken from pp5, 43, 46, 49 and 57 and stitched together. In the Exhibition what particularly caught the eye was the collection of Japanese robot-inspired toys. The ancient sci-fi film sequences were a yawn. None of the household robots
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was cuddly. The literary references Mary Shelley and all that - were the most profound and scholarly part of the exercise. Colleagues present thought the material to be shallow, the treatment non-interactive, and the layout claustrophobic which is something difficult to avoid in the Boilerhouse anyway. At the press viewing it was notable that what appeared to be representatives of Bunty, Chick's Own and the like were present in high proportion. The inspiration for the show is attributed to the thesis: The Modern Movement arose out of the first age of industrialisation when • . . machine production undermined the traditional notions of ornament and craftsmanship. Anne Drogheda
Milton Keynes today Walker, D 'The architecture and planning of Milton Keynes" It is 15 years now since LlewellynDavis first published his plan, or rather his strategy, for Milton Keynes (1968). Two years later Derek Walker became chief architect and planner to the development corporation. He got things moving on the ground and now one can see what kind of city is emerging. So it is appropriate that he should write a (beautifully illustrated) progress report with an introduction by Steen Eiler Rasmussen which puts the whole thing into context. Walker's account covers planning strategies (based on a grid of motorways), housing, industrial and commercial buildings, leisure and recreation, the city centre--such as it is--and so on. This division of the book into planning and building types reveals very quickly the nature of Milton Keynes. As a visitor you spend most of your time driving along the motorways--with roundabouts--in the drizzle• There are long, low
buildings on the skyline. And when finally you get to the centre you are reminded, inexorably, of Gertrude Stein's 'There is no there, there.' For the central building itself is a long, low glass-faced shopping centre. The railway station is a long, low glassfaced shed; there are long, low office buildings, factories, community buildings, a sewage works and so on. But why should the major buildings for such a wide variety of functions take this long, low form? Walker describes them as 'packaging' and he says: 'We may be better served by a pride which looks to its lavatories, planting and the cleanliness of its streets . . . ' than to 'architectural grandeur' But whilst he is committed to such things he seems less convinced about the housing. Housing he thinks has been in chaos since the collapse of the high-rise prefabricated flats. Mass housing, in his view, has had enough of Ministers, now it needs a Messiah. It is the nature of a Messiah to preach the Gospel, whereas Walker and his colleagues have provided a splendid variety in neighbourhoods such as Netherfield, Neath Hill, Fishermead, the Village, Langford Heath, the Bridge, Pennilands and so on. There is variety too in the housing by private architects such as Richard Macormac, Ivor Smith, Martin Richardson, Ted Cullinan, Stephen Gardiner, Frost Nicholls, Ralph Erskine, Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, Evans and Shaler, Spence and Webster and others. Some of this is very good indeed. Comfortable, pleasant and humane--although one of these architects, to my knowledge, spent two hours on the motorways of Milton Keynes looking for the houses he had designed and never found them. So let us agree with Derek Walker that Milton Keynes is very good in parts, whilst disagreeing as to what those parts are. But still our trouble is finding them! Geoffrey Broadbent
DESIGN STUDIES
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was cuddly. The literary references Mary Shelley and all that - were the most profound and scholarly part of the exercise. Colleagues present thought the material to be shallow, the treatment non-interactive, and the layout claustrophobic which is something difficult to avoid in the Boilerhouse anyway. At the press viewing it was notable that what appeared to be representatives of Bunty, Chick's Own and the like were present in high proportion. The inspiration for the show is attributed to the thesis: The Modern Movement arose out of the first age of industrialisation when • . . machine production undermined the traditional notions of ornament and craftsmanship. Anne Drogheda
Milton Keynes today Walker, D 'The architecture and planning of Milton Keynes" It is 15 years now since LlewellynDavis first published his plan, or rather his strategy, for Milton Keynes (1968). Two years later Derek Walker became chief architect and planner to the development corporation. He got things moving on the ground and now one can see what kind of city is emerging. So it is appropriate that he should write a (beautifully illustrated) progress report with an introduction by Steen Eiler Rasmussen which puts the whole thing into context. Walker's account covers planning strategies (based on a grid of motorways), housing, industrial and commercial buildings, leisure and recreation, the city centre--such as it is--and so on. This division of the book into planning and building types reveals very quickly the nature of Milton Keynes. As a visitor you spend most of your time driving along the motorways--with roundabouts--in the drizzle• There are long, low
buildings on the skyline. And when finally you get to the centre you are reminded, inexorably, of Gertrude Stein's 'There is no there, there.' For the central building itself is a long, low glass-faced shopping centre. The railway station is a long, low glassfaced shed; there are long, low office buildings, factories, community buildings, a sewage works and so on. But why should the major buildings for such a wide variety of functions take this long, low form? Walker describes them as 'packaging' and he says: 'We may be better served by a pride which looks to its lavatories, planting and the cleanliness of its streets . . . ' than to 'architectural grandeur' But whilst he is committed to such things he seems less convinced about the housing. Housing he thinks has been in chaos since the collapse of the high-rise prefabricated flats. Mass housing, in his view, has had enough of Ministers, now it needs a Messiah. It is the nature of a Messiah to preach the Gospel, whereas Walker and his colleagues have provided a splendid variety in neighbourhoods such as Netherfield, Neath Hill, Fishermead, the Village, Langford Heath, the Bridge, Pennilands and so on. There is variety too in the housing by private architects such as Richard Macormac, Ivor Smith, Martin Richardson, Ted Cullinan, Stephen Gardiner, Frost Nicholls, Ralph Erskine, Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, Evans and Shaler, Spence and Webster and others. Some of this is very good indeed. Comfortable, pleasant and humane--although one of these architects, to my knowledge, spent two hours on the motorways of Milton Keynes looking for the houses he had designed and never found them. So let us agree with Derek Walker that Milton Keynes is very good in parts, whilst disagreeing as to what those parts are. But still our trouble is finding them! Geoffrey Broadbent
DESIGN STUDIES