The State of France

Last summer I attempted to fulfil a long-held ambition: to travel down the Loire valley in France from its source to the sea.  The journey began at Le Havre which provided an excellent opportunity to see the most comprehensive  collection of buildings by Auguste Perret in France or indeed the world. Le Havre is a city whose centre was almost entirely destroyed by war  in 1944; the responsibility for reconstruction was basically the responsibility of one architect, Auguste Perret.

The whole centre has strongly formal Neo-Classical quality, based as it is around  axis and squares. This Neo-Classical approach extends from both the urban design strategy to the individual buildings. When Le Corbusier came to design the great sequence of spaces that form the entrance to the Capitol complex at Chandigarh he apparently based many of the proportions on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris.  In Le Havre  Perret  draws on a different architectural precedent, in this case, it would seem, the Parisian apartment block. The proportions are not reproduced exactly; there are nods in the direction of modernity, the  buildings shoot up from the bench-mark average of around four stories to mini-Rockefeller Centre proportions. Perhaps the greatest difference here is one of materials, the buildings here are not constructed of stone but of reinforced concrete.

Walking around the centre of  Le Havre  I felt that Perret and his team had avoided the  monotony often associated with system buildings of the 1960’s. Perret and his team seem to have found different ways of detailing concrete ensuring that, though there is a degree of unity, there is sufficient variety too. It is possible to argue that the ultimate uniformity comes from repetition of the  window unit. Christian Norberg-Schulz  argues that the proportions of French windows were determined by the quality of French light, something felt to be unique, from the age of stained glass to the time of the Impressionists. The proportions of the classical French window ensure that the window reaches down to the floor. The  balcony frontage ensures  “inhabitants can participate in the life of the street below”, indicating that “mixed-use” was once a natural component of the French city.

There are several sites within the city with a claim to the city’s  Stadtkrowne or city crown , such as the  Oscar Niemeyer buildings or centre of municipal government, Hotel de Ville. The Church of Saint Joseph by Perrett is for me my nomination for  candidate for this title. As an ecclesiastical architect, Perret tends to be remembered  for buildings such as Notre Dame du Raincy, often viewed as a sort of reinterpretation of a Gothic idiom. This attitude was always simplistic, stylistic and shallow. In that building he employed vaulting techniques in innovative ways even if the stained glass seemed to owe something to precedent. At St Joseph in Le Havre, he allows his modernist instincts a much freer reign. It  side steps any attempt to reproduce the spatial qualities of France’s medieval cathedrals. If you are looking for a historical precedent perhaps the centralised, Greek cross plan is a relevant example here or the Adolf Loos design for the   Chicago Tribune building. Quite unprecedented is the  single unified space at the centre of the building,  a column of light extending some  84m into the air. Highly impressive are the concrete finishes, detailing and structure such as the cross-bracing to the tower. Concrete as a material with architectural potential occasionally comes back into fashion.  Here Perret’s  building sets   exemplary standards which are still relevant today.

                                                                          St Joseph by Perret

The rectilinear architecture which makes up most of the centre of Le Havre, of course, seems highly fashionable today. More surprising is the evident success of the centre, devoid of the stigma of social failure often associated with  high-density  housing and “New Towns”. Although you can  argue how successful the French New Towns program has been, Le Havre  certainly seemed a great improvement  on many British new towns and does not require the sort of regeneration currently being undertaken in  Bracknell.

Travelling through France, by car if not by train, it is surprising to what extent out-of-town retail parks have been given the “green light”  by French authorities.  Again and again, I came across towns whose outskirts consisted of large retail parks, developments which would make Las Vegas look like a model of restraint and elegance.  This is certainly not the case in Holland where retail is usually integrated into mixed-use developments. When I arrived at Tours I stayed in a hotel in  a huge retail development, with the small consolation of a tram line that would take me into the town centre. Public space is generally well designed in France so perhaps they need to re-invent the notion of mixed-use.

The French are not exactly famous for an addiction to suburbia so how exactly has the vitality of French town centres seeped away?  An interesting article appeared on this subject in The New York Times   where it seems that the decline of provincial towns has reached the level of a  malaise.

The route I traversed passed by many key sites  of Gothic architecture. The theorist seeking a guide to these buildings  can turn to many sources; Ruskin was often considered to be the essential source of authority on this subject, though, in fact, he had some very strange views on the subject. He regarded Venice as the essential home of Gothic architecture when, in fact, it originated in France. Venice and Britain were regarded as nations with parallel destinies; one  the home of a once-great  maritime empire, the other  Britain when its own empire  was at its height. Many of his writings  should be regarded as poetic interpretations of architecture and, in that sense, they excel. Another potential theoretical source might be Pugin though he  tended to see everything in terms of religious fundamentalism.   For a rational, technical, Cartesian interpreter of Gothic a   better guide  to Gothic  would be Viollet-le-Duc.

Viollet-le-Duc had an upbringing rather typical of his time; anti-clerical, secular, republican. He became one of the chief figures of the Gothic revival in 19^th Century Europe. His success as a restorer of Gothic architecture was cemented by the commission to restore   Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris; the support of Victor Hugo, the author of the novel “Notre Dame de Paris” , was crucial in obtaining this commission.         

The period of Gothic architecture can be rightly seen as one of the most innovative periods in the entire history of architecture, a period made possible by two technical innovations, the pointed arch and the flying buttress. Roman (and Romanesque) Architecture utilised semi-circular arches, which because they usually rise to the same height, usually imply square bays. With pointed arches, however, by varying the steepness of the angle of the arches or ribs it was possible to achieve rectangular bays or indeed rhomboidal or polygonal shaped structures. Gothic Architecture was thus able to achieve a level of spatial complexity not previously achieved by Roman and Romanesque Architecture.  The flying buttress was also a technical innovation of equal importance. Buttresses had been used before, for example, in large works of Roman architecture such as thermae and basilicas. Buttresses of this type had been built at regular intervals along walls whose top consisted of the springing for groin or barrel vaulting. Their mass helped to resist the spreading movement of the vaulting above. The innovation that Gothic architecture made was to separate the buttress from the building, joining it with an arch. This made large clerestory windows possible and removed shadow-casting buttresses instead flooding the interiors with natural light.

Viollet-le-Duc  argues that many of the features of Gothic architecture were generated by the nature of the construction process in France in the 12^th and 13^th Centuries. Stone was the natural material to use as  quarries were plentiful. Stone was an expensive material which had to be used economically hence it had to be used in an efficient way. Features such as ribs in the vaulting had been generated by the needs of the construction process. The ribs had been erected first on timber centering; the shell infill added later without the need for more centering (Viollet-le-Duc argues unconvincingly that this was necessary due to timber shortages).

He finds a functional justification for every aspect of the finished design. The ribs in the vaulting act, for instance, act as reinforcement to what is basically a groin vault. In a typical Gothic cathedral the buttress is separated from the main building by an arch, partly to let more light in through the clerestory and partly to allow people move around the outside to clean the windows. The buttress is surmounted by a large mass of stone in order to weigh the buttress down and prevent it from overturning. The opening between the arcade and clerestory, known as the triforium, is there to help lighten the structure. All the mouldings have a functional justification too. Externally they throw off rain-water; internally they act as footings to vaulting or corbels to indicate level. Viollet-le-Duc is not opposed to ornament but believes it is secondary.  All ornament is based on local flora or  an enrichment, never  a distortion, of the essential structure.

Most of Viollet-le-Duc’s theories about the functionality of Gothic architecture are to some extent rational and to some extent hypothetical; a more genuinely scientific answer to these questions might be found  in the writings of the American  academic, Robert Mark.

When one reads a writer like Christopher Alexander, it becomes clear that it is something of a myth that the origins of Gothic architecture lie in the work of Abbot Suger at the cathedral of St-Denis. The reality is rather more complicated. I recall my surprise, many years ago, at seeing pointed arches in Durham Cathedral in what is clearly a Romanesque building. Alexander  states that these arches were built between 1120 and 1133.  The West front and Choir  of the Abbey of St. Dennis were begun  in 1140 , followed shortly after by the commencement of construction on the Cathedral of Notre Dame between  1150 and 1155.

The first major Gothic building   I visited was the cathedral of Chartres. With its vertical quality and green roof it appears like a great ship sailing across rural France, dominating the surrounding countryside. One of its most initially arresting qualities is the asymmetrical towers. Their disparity can be explained by their construction dates. The rebuilt north tower was finished in 1514, whereas the south tower was finished in 1155. The latter was built  at a time when the new architecture was ridding itself of the last vestiges of Romanesque  influence whereas the influence of Flamboyant tracery was at its peak  when the north tower was completed. 

                                                                         Cathedral of Chartres

In addition to its tectonic qualities, Chartres is a triumph of decorative art. It has the most admired stained-glass of any cathedral in France. Almost equally admired is the stunning sculptures on its west, north and south portals.

When I arrived the building was surrounded by French soldiers, a reflection of the state of emergency the French government had placed the country under. I was not even allowed to take a penknife inside. However,  I was able to walk round the outside, admiring  the flying buttresses. The roof is covered by quadripartite vaulting, i.e. a single bay of what is basically a pointed groin vault covers one bay of the arcade.

From Chartres I went onto Le Mans to visit the cathedral, almost  the only outstanding piece of architecture I saw in a very disappointing town. I paused to admire the  flying buttresses, one of the most impressive examples of this kind of tectonic form along with Beauvais and then travelled onwards to Bourges.

                                                                        Cathedral of Le Mans

The Cathedral of Bourges provides much food for thought regarding the development of Gothic. Rather like the Cathedral of Wells, the west facade    is dominated by two towers,  albeit that in this example, the main feature  seems to a rather curious lozenge-shaped window.  The interior, despite the fact that it has no transept , is one of the most extraordinary of any French Gothic cathedral. The building has double aisles, unlike Chartres where these occur only at the ambulatory towards the east end. The clerestory windows are much smaller. The overall vaulting feels much more spacious, the sense of rhythm, regarding the spaces and the way in which they progress towards the east end is entirely different. This is hardly surprising since Bourges utilises  sexpartite vaulting. Each bay of vaulting covers two of arcade. The vault has a six-fold division instead of four by the addition of ribs across the central space, half way between the diagonal ribs. This means the top of the arcades alternate as a springing  point for one rib on one pillar and for three at the next.

                                                                        Cathedral of Bourges

When compared to Chartres it becomes a moot point regarding which building is more progressive in terms of aesthetic and technical development. Bourges was begun in 1192, Chartres in 1194. The buttress system used at Chartres is massive apart from the relatively light upper flyers. Each tall pier buttress weighs about one million kilograms exclusive of its foundations. This can be contrasted with Bourges where each pier weighs four hundred thousand kilograms, a more economical approach. The more acute flying buttresses at Bourges transmit the vaulting load directly to the ground. The buttresses at Chartres have three elements; the light upper flyer, the two heavy lower flyers linked by a series of colonettes and also the triangular wall under the side aisle roof.

By contrast the flying buttresses at Chartres are described by Robert Mark as  “relatively ponderous – even somewhat clumsy from a technological point of view.”

The purpose of the upper flyer has often caused controversy among writers on architecture. In Chartres the clerestory windows drop well below the springing of the vaults. The upper flyer connects with the exterior of the building on a level equal to the top of the clerestory and hence cannot receive any of the outward thrust of the roof vaults. To understand their real purpose, it is probably necessary to visualise a ship’s sails. By conducting analysis tests on models, Robert Mark concluded that their purpose was to resist wind loading.

In the development from Early to High Gothic  there is also a development from sexpartite to quadripartite vaulting. This can be explained in both in aesthetic and technical terms. 

It can be argued that the crucial building in Gothic structural development is  Notre Dame in Paris. The vaulting in Notre Dame in Pars is sexpartite, that is each bay has six ribs in it. One bay of sexpartite vaulting covers two bays of the arcade. In French Gothic cathedrals vertical shafts usually run from the arcade to the vaulting visually connecting the two. If the cathedral has sexpartite vaulting, the springing alternates between a pier capital receiving one rib and  alternate pier capitals receiving three. This rhythm was often accompanied by an alternating rhythm in the wall shafts i.e. in Laon cathedral the support shafts alternate between three and five. It also has horizontal bands .

From an aesthetic point of view, quadripartite vaults have an entirely different spatial  quality. Each bay is rectangular in shape. Each bay of vaulting covers one bay of arcade. This helps to create a sense of unity to the interior. Rectangular bays have a sense of movement to them, unlike the stasis of square bays. Whether or not this was an aesthetic advance is debatable. 

Alternatively, the development from sexpartite to quadripartite vaulting can be justified on technical grounds. Some people have thought that quadripartite vaulting was actually lighter but scientific tests have shown that sexpartite vaulting is actually lighter. The technical advantage of quadripartite vaulting lies in the way they transmit longitudinal forces. These are the forces that run along the axis of the main nave and choir. The force of the thrust of the roof vaults as it meets the  springing usually translates into three components; a downward thrust down the nave wall, an outward thrust perpendicular to the axis of the nave, resisted by the flying buttresses and finally a longitudinal thrust against the adjacent wall. As Early Gothic developed into Highly Gothic clerestories became larger. On either side of the vault there was no longer stone, as at Bourges, but  glass as at  Chartres. Hence ways had to be found to reduce the longitudinal thrust along the nave and choir. Sexpartite vaults, because the greater angle they meet the wall and the way in which the number of ribs alternates, exert more longitudinal force. Quadripartite vaulting directs more of the force directly out to the flying buttresses. Hence the move towards  quadripartite vaulting and larger clerestories are part of one technical development.

There remains the question: how are these building to be run and maintained? The journalist Simon Jenkins has argued that cathedrals should now be viewed as part of a city’s cultural assets like a city art gallery or symphony orchestra.

At  Tours  I was able to visit the  Vinci Conference Centre designed by Jean Nouvel.  This building has three auditoria and exhibition space enabling it to host a variety of activities, from music performances to pharmaceutical conferences.   The exhibition spaces are largely column-free: the load-bearing structure only touches the ground at a few points, the auditoria being suspended on cable structures. Here one of the building’s administrators, Monsieur Henry Rivoire, demonstrates the top of one of the junctions of column and cable structures. 

  

When photographing a Jean Nouvel building I really think you should take the Claude Monet approach: visit the building in every conceivable state of natural light and try to capture every variety of image. However, time constraints made such an approach impossible to I was left with the possibilities of one sunny afternoon. To quote Jean Nouvel as narrated by Conway Lloyd Morgan:

“Traditional architecture was based on fixing solid and void. This approach overlooked the primacy of light….For me, light is matter, and light is a material, a basic material. Once you understand how light varies, and varies our perceptions, your architectural vocabulary is immediately extended, in ways classical architecture  never thought of. An architecture of ephemerality becomes possible…..mutable ones, changed by light and changing with light. Not only through changes in daylight, but through changing the interior lighting of the building, and playing with different opacities and transparencies………..My buildings are planned around five, six, or seven different sets of lighting conditions, from the start. Had I started with just one set -  as some other architects still do -  the result would be very different: but not acceptable to me!”

                                                       Conference center in Tours by Jean Nouvel

The journey  ended at Nantes, near the mouth of The Loire. I visited  newly regenerated  residential neighbourhoods which seemed like places where people would actually want to live, unlike the Le Mans, desperately in need of regeneration.    I did not have time to photograph these neighbourhoods in Nantes.  I did, however, have time to visit and photograph a  new cultural quarter, on the banks of the river in the southwest of the city.

The foundation project in this quarter seemed to be a building which housed the function of law courts, a work also by  Jean Nouvel. With characteristic Nouvel thoroughness, it seemed as if a whole range of light conditions had planned for the building. The Cartesian grid which is carried throughout the whole building might, I suppose, be seen, as a symbol of fairness and rationality.

                                       

                                                     Law Courts building in Nantes by Jean Nouvel

The quarter also contained  an architecture centre which contained  an exhibition of projects for the region, both planned and realised. As well as residential projects there seemed to be an ecole des beaux arts  going up next door. Pride of place seemed to belong to a new school of architecture by Vactal & Lasson.

The demise of French culture, often  predicted,  seems premature; on the contrary, French architecture  is alive and well today.

                                                     Gothic-revival  building in London

                                                                Notre Dame, Paris

(In writing this piece the author referenced texts by Viollet-le-Duc, Ruskin, Christopher Wilson, Robert Mark and Conway Lloyd Morgan. All photos and drawings by author.)

The British Garden City Movement: Bedford Park

Jane Jacobs attacked the Garden City movement when she stated that “its prescription for saving the city was to do the city in.” Was this criticism justified? Well, the answer is surely yes and no. Firstly, the original Garden City movement was an attempt to deal  with the growth of existing cities by proposing satellite communities. The size of existing cities would be limited by green belts. These would help  define a city’s  size, maintain a balance between city and country and by forcing new developments into existing sites in a city  act as a catalyst for urban regeneration.

The idea of satellites was basically an offshoot of its concern about  the issue of city size. Bedford Park, in west London, is often taken as a good example of the Garden City Movement though its proximity to central London ensures it should really be viewed as a neighbourhood of an existing city rather than a true satellite.
An important fact about Bedford Park is the date of its founding, 1875, which gives it some claim to be the origin of the Garden City Movement.

The development is often viewed as the work of Richard Norman Shaw although Shaw was actually the second architect to be appointed by the client, Jonathan Carr. Other architects who worked on the development included Edward W Godwin, Maurice Adams and EJ May.

The development is centred around Acton Green Common and the adjacent Turnham Green  tube station. Here are the non-residential uses such as parade of shops, church and pub. 

Shaw was  responsible for buildings which compromise centre pieces of the development such as St Michael &  All Angels Church  and  the Tabard Pub.

                                     Shops on The South Parade.

A series of residential streets fan out from this heart of the community.

                                                     Priory Gardens

The houses by Shaw at 22 Woodstock Road  are surprisingly not the best in the development.

High density housing has been allowed on part of the site.

Richard Norman Shaw is remembered as one of the most eclectic architects of the Nineteenth Century, responsible for buildings such as New Scotland Yard  on the Thames Embankment and the less interesting Piccadilly  Hotel.

Much of the development has been designed in what became known as The Queen Anne Style.   It is something of a historical curiosity that Richard Norman Shaw, a   half-Irish, half-Scottish architect should devote his career to this English, or to be more precise, Dutch style of architecture.

Dutch motifs such as bell gables can be found throughout the development. Many of these houses are not actually by Shaw himself.

Should this approach be regarded  as something simply producing surface effects rather than any deeper, spatial qualities, the sort of criticism sometimes leveled at the  work of John Nash? Well, to give an informed answer to that question I would have to have seen more Shaw interiors and I can only recall visiting the interior of two buildings by  Shaw ,  Swan House on Chelsea Embankment and The Royal Geographical Society in South Kensington and  both indeed provided a memorable experience.

At any rate, the development contains some of the prettiest houses in London.

The development has provided a home for famous residents such as W.B. Yeats, Camille Pissarro and, in more recent years, John Humphrys of the  BBC. It also appeared in the  G.K. Chesterton novel The Man who was Thursday under the name Saffron Park.

It is true that the garden City movement as conceived by Ebenezer Howard had little to say about existing cities and hence offers little guidance on issues such as the regeneration of inner-city  sites. It that sense, it cannot be said to be a comprehensive theory of urban design. Its concern for issues such as city size and satellites did evince an ability  to think in regions, something often sadly amiss from today’s thinking on urban design.

Bournville: an example of business-led urban design.

If I keep adding posts dealing with The Garden City Movement I fear  I will start repeating myself at least as far as the writing goes. Nevertheless even a generic form can allow for  fascinating, infinite  variations, providing lessons which are eternally relevant. For this reason I am posting a piece on Bournville, Birmingham’s great example of The Garden City Movement. This can be seen as a photo essay with perhaps similar postings to come.

                                               Typical semi-detached housing


Bournville was created by  George and Richard  Cadbury  who wished to relocate their chocolate factory from a cramped, city centre site to a location more amenable to expansion. They chose a site four miles from the centre of Birmingham well connected by the new railways and canals, close by the Bourn Brook.

The original move took place in 1879. In 1893, 120 acres of land was purchased to create a model village. By 1900, 313 cottages and houses had been built, at which stage ownership passed to the Bournville Village Trust.

                                 Shops with other uses above by the village green

                                                    Bournville Rest House

                                                     Bournville Primary School

                                               Bournville Center for Visual Arts

A factor of urban design which must always be considered in, of course, the economics of a  creation of a  proposal. We live in an age of small government whose most overriding concern often seems to be  shifting financial responsibility away from the public to the private. It is heartening to see a business-led development of such high quality. Businesses should take note that there are a huge number of benefits entailed when a development like this is undertaken. Firstly, naming a town after a company’s product generates a massive amount of favourable publicity for a company. Why, indeed, should the provision of things such as affordable housing and good schools be left to the government? Businesses with access to good financial resources should realise that provision for staff goes way beyond mere wages. Businesses which find it difficult to recruit high-quality staff could look at Bournville and see what is being offered here. I hesitate to use a word as  repellent as “lifestyle” and would rather focus on essential matters such as affordable housing and good schools.

                                                                    Map

                               Cadbury Factory with cricket pitch in the foreground

                                                                 Church

I think it clear that my photos convey what a remarkable achievement Bournville is. It has, as I never tire of saying, the four qualities that really make a neighbourhood; access to public transport, a walkable scale, a mixture of uses and public spaces of real quality.

The British Garden City Movement: Hampstead Garden Suburb

When trying to describe a specifically British type of urban design, some people fall into the error of recommending the British Garden City Movement justifying their argument on the reason that suburbia, they say,  is basically what British people want. The British Garden City Movement was one of the most remarkable urban design movements this country has ever produced. But it had nothing whatsoever to do with suburbia.

In order to justify that statement, I have chosen to look at an example of the Garden City Movement from 1909, Hampstead Garden Suburb. It is true that the typology of the house with garden is still relevant. However, I would argue that there at least three basic ideas that distinguish a Garden City from conventional suburbia:

Firstly, although both contain houses with gardens, A Garden City will also contain places for work, education, worship, shopping etc. In short, although a Garden City will try to create quieter, residential areas, it will also try to embrace the principle of mixed-use. It is worth remembering that the Garden City movement took place at time before mass-car ownership ( although it did take place during the age of the railways; all of the original garden cities have railway stations at the centre i.e. Letchworth, Welwyn, Hampstead and Bedford Park.) Modern development which includes out-of-town shopping centres plus suburbia cannot be considered an equivalent because a genuine garden city would contain shops within walking distances of residential buildings.

Secondly, in order to maintain a balance between built-up space and green space, a balance vital for health  and happiness,  a Garden City can only be allowed to reach a certain size, at which point a new Garden City must be started elsewhere. The ideal size  is based on a module of a neighbourhood or pedestrian-shed. One such module is a village really; how many such modules can be allowed to accumulate before a new city must be founded? Ebenezaar Howard  considered that the population of a garden city should be 32,000. According to the Rogers-led Urban Task Force the number of people necessary to support a hub of local services is 7500. So according to Ebenezar Howard’s approach, a garden city will contain about 4 neighbourhoods or pedestrian sheds. The illustrations to “Garden Cities of tomorrow”  don’t seem to bear this out but these  were only meant to be diagramatic.

The third principle is green belts, which define the edge of the city, maintaining a proper relationship between town and country. Strong planning controls would be necessary to prevent people building on them. Ebenezer Howard’s original proposals  allowed various activities on the green belt such as convalescent homes and agriculture; he envisaged them as growing their own food. A public transport infrastructure was provided though these were the days before mass car ownership and its attendant congestion had become a real problem.

This vision was realised at Hampstead Garden Suburb and indeed a host of other lessons can be drawn from this example as well. If one was going to learn lessons from this, one might as well be honest and admit that the some of the original principals have  been eradicated. Features such as a green belt and finite size were part of the original design but  are no longer there. The relentless growth of London meant this satellite was absorbed into Greater London.

One key  quality has been conspicuously retained, that of a mixed-use neighbourhood. Within a walkable-scaled area you will find housing, shopping, education and places of worship. What other qualities have been achieved? As a way of answering that question, perhaps the best method would be to walk the reader through a sequence of spaces, starting with what was conceived as the gateway to the entire project, the following buildings at the North of the site, at the junction of Finchley Road and Bridge Lane/ Temple Fortune Lane.

One of the eternal rules of good urban design seems to be that density can be increased where there is access to good public transport. Strangely, this rule is broken here. The high density part of the development is placed at the opposite end to that where the tube station is, Golders Green tube station.  These buildings are consciously modelled on medieval examples but can be seen as exemplars of what is now taken as a commonplace of good urban design; mixed-use. These buildings contain shops at ground floor and flats above. One might contrast this with single storey shopping buildings, without a different use above, which might be taken as a leitmotiv of bad urban design. As well as a failure to adopt the mixed-use approach, another fault of this type of building is the lack of height and hence a failure to create a sense of enclosure in the external spaces.

Several types of external space have been created. The first might be taken as a busy road with activities for pedestrians at the bases of the buildings.

Quieter residential streets have been created.

One of the great types of space created in this example of the Garden City Movement, and indeed in most of them is the green set in the close. Here they vary:

From closes surrounded by large detached houses.

To those enclosed by smaller, it would seem terraced houses.

This type of housing is also found at the Central Square which forms the centre of the whole community. 

The main public  buildings here  are by Lutyens. Whilst many agree that neighbourhoods need a centre, opinions differ as to what this should consist of. Whilst some would like to see all types of communal buildings at the neighbourhood centre, others take a  different view. Some take the view that whilst communal buildings such as schools should be placed at the centre, shops should be placed on  arterial road on the neighbourhood periphery, where they can attract passing traffic. This does seem to be the approach taken at Hampstead where Henrietta Barnet, the client for the whole project,  took many of the strategic decisions. With true Victorian zeal, believed that alcoholic drinks were a form of wickedness. She would not allow pubs or even shops around the main town square. The result is  a square occupied by two churches and the Henrietta Barnett School for Girls.

This has recently been subject to an interesting extension by  Hopkins Architects.

Streets are aligned to frame the views of the main public buildings

Hampstead garden Suburb has lost its character as a village separate from London though part of its green belt was preserved as an extension to Hampstead Heath. It remains as  a good example of a neighbourhood. I would argue the generic neighbourhood has four qualities: mixed-use, pedestrian scale, access to public transport and public spaces of real quality. Hampstead Garden Suburb has these in spades.

( Thanks to HGS Trust for the map of Hampstead Garden Suburb and Simon Kennedy, architecturalphotographer, for the photo of the extension to Henrietta Barnett School © Simon Kennedy 2011).