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Completed in 1946, Stevenage, Harts is a first generation New Town. Fieldwork in Stevenage reveals an intricate and segregated network of subterranean paths that run throughout the town. The paths, a cycle-way, were the first layer of the town to be constructed and are subsequently woven inexorably into the fabric of its transport system.
By comparing modern maps with ones that predate the new town, it is clear that the route contains remnants of older roads that predate the new town and that one section on the western side of the town is comprised of a segment of the 1,000 year old Great North Road. In certain areas the network has complex intersections that would seem to suggest that a much larger flow of traffic had been expected than actually use the system today. Indeed records predicted that approx 40% of the population would use the network on a daily basis, and so it has links between every housing estate, schools, factories, and town centre. Subsequent growth in car ownership and changes in lifestyle has meant that the system has become under-used and desolate.
Walking the route immediately brings to mind Joel Sternfield photographs of the abandoned Manhattan ‘High Line’ snaking through a seemingly abandoned urban landscape of billboards, apartment buildings, and warehouses. The Stevenage cycle-way is like a reverse High Line: instead of towering above the landscape abandoned and unnoticed, it runs beneath it, beguilingly apparent, but still overlooked.
I am looking at re-visiting an old project from my MA, which I started, but never really finished. It examines the omnipresence of Durham House in Washington.
Peterlee, Co Durham was intended to facilitate a new economic, social order in the North East and in particularly the coal mining districts of East Durham. The new town was designed to represent everything that was modern, and was seen, at least by its creators, as a place that had no past, a place that looked forever forward.
One of the design consultants for Peterlee was Victor Pasmore, an abstract expressionist painter and sculptor. Pasmore explicitly saw town planning and abstract expressionism as equivalent applications of the same modernist ethos.
He applied the principle of what he called ‘Synthetic Constructionism’ to the layout of houses and roads in specific areas of the town. His intention was that if it was viewed from the air the flat roofs and prefabricated timber panels would resemble one of his abstract geometric paintings: similarly the orthogonal blocks and painted black lines of his relief’s are modeled in the pedestrian routes which cut through the housing blocks.
The centerpiece of the whole design is the Apollo Pavilion: an abstract concrete sculpture surrounded by a lake. The sculpture, now known as the Pasmore Pavilion, and described by Pasmore in the following terms:
“An architecture and sculpture through which to walk, in which to linger and play, which can lift the activity and psychology of an urban housing community onto a universal plane”he
However, over the years the radical rooftop and brickwork designs have been surreptitiously converted into a more acceptable style by their owners, and if people from the housing estates did linger and play in his Pavilion it was not to ascend to the universal plane, but to use it as a canvas for graffiti, or a nocturnal meeting place.
The pavilion’s condition deteriorated to the point where local residents had begun to press for its demolition as an eyesore. However as a result of recent favorable publicity and a concerted effort by local community groups, the pavilion has been returned to its former glory…
I hope to become part of the group that care for the pavilion, giving tours and talking about its history, etc. I also hope to gain entry to the upper deck to take some shots with my 5×4…
