“Bankside Urban Park
Bankside, London | Urban Framework | 2007
The Bankside Urban Forest framework aims to highlight the relationship between the less intensively developed urban interior and its active, increasingly corporate, edges. By recognising the capacity of the public realm to be shared by each, the framework identifies improvements to open spaces and connecting routes, to support interaction between residents, workers, visitors, local institutions and organisations. Existing projects are drawn together with our proposed ones to help to negotiate, informally influence and direct emerging projects and to secure additional funding for enhancing the public realm.”
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Project Design Case 
you can also download the full study at the end of this entry)
Summary
Bankside Urban Forest is a co-ordinated and strongly characterised urban design framework for the public realm within the area extending from the river edge down to the Elephant and Castle, bordered by Blackfriars Road and Borough High Street. The work has been commissioned by Better Bankside in collaboration with a broad group that comprises the London Borough of Southwark, Tate Modern, The Architecture Foundation, Transport for London, Land Securities, Cross River Partnership and Native Land.
Centuries of overlapping development patterns have created a pronounced ‘urban interior’ within the Bankside and Borough area that is less intensively developed and used than the more active edges – Blackfriars Road, Borough High Street and the river edge. The construction of the viaducts and Southwark Street have further served to isolate this urban interior from more diverse uses and activities. This quieter interior area is characterised by its scattered small open spaces and strong local identity, and it acts as a counterbalance to the increasingly international, corporate, large-scale developments that are being constructed and planned around its edges.
Bankside Urban Forest responds to these conditions with five principal proposals;
1. Increasing the opportunities for ‘sharing’ – that the existing social and physical relationships between the local ‘urban interior’, and the rapidly developing edges within Bankside and Borough, are supported and reinforced through significant improvements to the public realm and local amenities, and by increasing the opportunities for social engagement.
2. That the Urban Forest is the characterisation of this distinctive area of London, based upon the existing spatial qualities that underpin the area’s identity; meandering streets, multiple routes, clearings, clusters of vaulted and canopied spaces.
3. That evolutionary change takes place in a coordinated (not piecemeal) way, meshing existing projects and initiatives with new opportunities. Bankside Urban Forest must engage and sustain the commitment of the diverse individuals and groups in the area to take ownership of the projects over the long term.
4. That an ecological approach to urban regeneration based on networking, self- sufficiency, and ‘economies of small-scale’ will create a new sense of urban equilibrium between contrasting economic, social and cultural groups.
5. A collective project based on shared principles – that the Bankside Urban Forest establishes a new model for regenerating the public realm in London to attract significant public and private partners and investment.
We have identified a number of existing places which bring different people who use the area into contact with each other – ‘places of exchange’. These places and the activities that they support suggest sociable uses of the public realm. The framework supports these sociable places by drawing together many existing initiatives by Bankside Open Spaces Trust (BOST), LB Southwark, Transport for London, the Peabody Trust and private developers. We have proposed several projects that incorporate new trees, vertical planting, public art, hard landscaping and lighting in order to illustrate how the Bankside ‘forest’ could be realised.
It is intended that the Bankside Urban Forest framework can shape a common imagination between the many different interest groups in the area.
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the urban interior
The social and physical characteristics of Bankside and Borough reflect the area’s historical location in relation to the City of London. The foot of London Bridge was a place of great intensity, but no formal structure, being a meeting place for travellers and pilgrims upon leaving or entering the City. St Saviour’s offered a place of sanctuary (earlier St Mary Overie and later to become Southwark Cathedral) and the monastery, St Thomas’s, developed into a hospital. The market that originally occupied London Bridge was relocated to the ‘Triangle’, once the churchyard of St Margaret’s. Development in the area was not based on any formal models and was broadly linear, following the approach to London Bridge and the river edge. In 1769 the completion of Blackfriars Bridge led to a more formal urban model of tenement blocks and squares. The middle ground or ‘urban interior’ remained free from any identifiable structure or development, being ‘loosely’ occupied by tenter grounds and vinegar yards.
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The marginal use of the urban interior and its separation from the river edge was cemented by the construction of the viaducts and Southwark Street. This physical disconnection was reinforced by the change of use along the river edge through the 1980’s and 90’s. Large scale commercial, institutional and leisure uses rapidly replaced the grain of the wharfs. This pattern of development has continued with increasing intensity and is evident in the latest planning applications for large scale, high-rise office, residential and cultural buildings.
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pedestrian movement
Pedestrian movement is not always a reflection of the most direct route between places. It reveals complex, often sub-conscious, decisions; where other people are, things of interest, noise levels, presence of vehicles, what can be seen ahead and so forth. A few hours spent in Bankside and Borough demonstrates that for local residents and workers many of the quieter or less trafficked roads are favoured.
Visitors’ experience of moving around Bankside and Borough however, reflects the distinct change between the busy activity around the edges and the more secluded urban interior. Truncated views, reduced activity at ground level, narrow pavements and the dark viaducts that criss-cross the area give the sense of having moved ‘off track’, raising feelings of anxiety and fear that prevents many people from exploring the area’s rich heritage and open spaces.
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Understanding and supporting people’s natural wayfinding is therefore more than an issue of signage. It is how the layout of the streets and spaces affect what people see when exploring the street network, as well as the buildings and spaces that they see during their journey and which attract them along specific routes. Visibility analysis is a measure of how much space pedestrians can see as they move around at ground level.
For Bankside, the visual field open to pedestrians as they move around the street network has been measured using a computer programme. This calculates the visual field available to pedestrians for wayfinding at every step of any possible journey within the network, creating an overall measure of visibility of pedestrian space for the entire centre. A map of visibility in the study area is shown on this page. The visibility of the individual pavements is shown as a spectrum, where the areas in red have the longest views and the areas shown in dark blue are the most secluded.
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dominant land use
Bankside and Borough’s urban interior remains notably distant from the activity that characterises its edges. The severance caused by Southwark Street and the railway viaducts serves to isolate the interior from colonisation by external uses. This interior is mostly occupied by businesses. The lack of more diverse activities over different times of the day adds to the sense of it being concealed or ‘buried’. The meandering road layouts and larger plot sizes within the interior present an inherent resistance to comprehensive redevelopment and formal urban planning. This resistance to larger-scale change has however resulted in some noticeably beneficial conditions, particularly in that it has supported a strong sense of local identity through the community’s long-standing commitment to the area. This is reflected directly in the high proportion of residents that have lived here for all, or most, of their lives and the number of local initiatives that to some degree characterise this area.
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The above diagram includes some of the recent planning applications that have either been granted or submitted, where this will significantly affect land-use. It is therefore assumed that either these schemes, or alternatives with similar land-uses to them, will be constructed.
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institutional players
The area and its urban interior must serve a number of primary functions to ensure its long-term endurance and identity within competing London districts. The railway stations, Guy’s Hospital, Borough market, Southwark Cathedral, London South Bank University, Tate Modern and the Globe Theatre represent a diverse range of cultural and business interests. Between them, these ‘institutional players’ have the potential to support an active public realm over long periods of the day and week, a necessity not just in social and economic terms, but also in contributing significantly to the passive surveillance and use of small open spaces. It is important to resist seeing these highly specific and self-interested institutions as autonomous, and to understand how they can each contribute to a ‘common’ programme for the public realm and social engagement.
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‘Any primary use whatever, is by itself relatively ineffectual as a creator of city diversity. If it is combined with another primary use that brings people in and out and puts them on the street at the same time, nothing has been accomplished. In practical terms, we cannot even call these differing primary uses. However, when a primary use is combined, effectively, with another that put people on the street at different times, then the effect can be economically stimulating: a fertile environment for secondary diversity.’
Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of American Cities
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hidden places
The columned canopy of Borough Market, flickering lights of the trains, ruins at All Hallows, golden deer, Cross Bones Graveyard, long shadows from latticed bridge structures, shrine of the Most Precious Blood, hanging vegetation in Playhouse Court, Clink skeletons and deep viaduct arches all contribute to the sense of ‘losing oneself in the city’.
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The scattered ‘special places’ or clearings make manifest the long history of informal development in an area beyond the laws of the City; an incremental series of individual aspirations and isolated opportunities. The presence of this condition is so strong within Bankside that it is reasonable to say that it is characteristic of the area. It forms part of Bankside’s identity.
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places of exchange
supporting and extending existing places of exchange
There are a number of existing places within Bankside and Borough which in differing ways have the capacity to bring people who do not know each other into contact, places which ‘suggest’ social engagement between different racial, ethnic and class communities, where people can express differences of opinions and find mutual support, where civility can flourish – Places of Exchange.
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There is a significant opportunity to create a completely new ‘place of exchange’ on the south side of Tate Modern. The necessity for a place that has this capacity to bring people in contact with one another is particularly important here as this area is going to be shared by both the existing community and a significant number of new residents and workers.
Places of Exchange are often supported by, and indeed support, the scattered network of small open spaces, parks and gardens. The public realm must therefore contribute further to underpinning these more diverse and sociable places by improving the connections between them to form a more coherent and pedestrian orientated ground.
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the seeds of the framework
existing clearings and special places intensified
The columned canopy of the market, flickering lights of the trains, ruins at All Hallows, golden deer, Cross Bones Graveyard, long shadows from latticed bridge structures, shrine of the Most Precious Blood, hanging vegetation in playhouse court, Clink skeletons and deep viaduct arches all contribute to the sense of ‘losing oneself in the city’. The nature of this labyrinthine terrain establishes the roots the Forest. The scattered ‘special places’ or clearings are buried deep within the network of East-West rides and long meandering North-South streams. The framework weaves these fragments of the forest into a co-ordinated but loose structure.
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spreading roots
the existing spaces and new projects begin to connect
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maturing of the framework
active edges and urban interior are meshed
As the forest begins to mature as an idea, significant new areas and spaces are ‘unlocked’ and brought into life, for example, Tate Modern playground, Cross Bones Graveyard, a quarter of a million square feet of viaduct arches, Mint Street Park and London South Bank University Square. The roots and social influence of the key players begin to extend and embed themselves into the urban interior of the forest. The thresholds suggest exploration, the rich history and local identity are embedded and intertwined, streams and rides improve access to new facilities, jobs, clubs and spaces. The intertwining of the roots serves to make a robust and resilient quarter of the city.
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the planted arch
One of the main East-West pedestrian and cycle routes into the area runs from The Cut into Union Street. This is directly opposite Southwark Underground and runs alongside the Palestra Building. The first viaduct arch marks a very important threshold to the forest and sits just off an important crossing with Great Suffolk Street. The space is occupied by a café built into the viaduct wall, the Union Jack pub and the emerging night-time economy in and around the viaducts as far as the White Hart Pub. …
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flat iron square
The small traffic island, where Union Street crosses Southwark Bridge Road, occupies an important position within the framework. As well as the Island Cafe there is a thriving row of small shops and cafes and, opposite, the refurbished community centre and training school at 56 Southwark Bridge Road….
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redcross way
The Cathedral School of St Saviour and St Mary Overie, St Joseph’s School, Redcross Garden and Little Dorrit Park cluster around Redcross Way and provide a local ‘place of exchange’ for parents and children…..
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tate modern playground
Tate Modern presents a rare opportunity to create a significant new public space within the framework. It could also be the kind of place that London has not seen before, a place of exchange that weaves together something innocent and everyday with something more profound….
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viaducts
The viaduct that extends between Borough Market (Southwark Street) and Southwark Underground Station (Blackfriars Road) has contributed to the segregation of the urban interior at Bankside from the active river edge. This section of arches, which totals approximately 250,000ft2, is mostly closed off from the public, occupied by car parking and storage, both of which are likely to be placed under increasing economic pressure to survive as the congestion charging extends.
This viaduct now provides the opportunity to connect the urban interior into the broader area, in the way that the Westway has come to support the knitting together of the area around Ladbroke Grove. This type of ‘knitting together’ goes much further than providing improved pedestrian access through previously closed or poor quality areas, more importantly, it supports the intense occupation of them…
Witherford Watson Mann – Download the full study here
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About WWM
“Stephen Witherford, Christopher Watson and William Mann studied together at the University of Cambridge. They started collaborating in 1997, with weekly walks through London’s former and current periphery, and on their winning Europan 5 competition entry. They established Witherford Watson Mann Architects Ltd in 2001 after winning Europan 6. These early projects cemented their approach, based on careful observation, recognising the often surprising relation of city and landscape, and the mutual dependence of public buildings, collective space and everyday activities. The practice now has a staff of ten.”
Website: http://www.wwmarchitects.co.uk
