Product Description
London's royal parks and palaces play a vital role: they highlight the difference between the City of Westminster and the City of London, or the seat of government and monarchy, and the seat of commerce. Sir Terry Farrell, an international architect based in London who has done some of his most sensitive work there, sees them as anti-urban set pieces: great country houses set in rural parkland, originally intended as hunting grounds. Over the years, they have evolved and become assimilated in the dense urban fabric. He believes that in a democracy they should be accessible as a glorious public realm. Published here for the first time are his plans for their full integration into the fabric of London in a positive, creative, and visionary way. The primary motivation for drawing up these concepts on Buckingham Palace arises from the long-held belief that the Royal Parks and palaces are London's primary public realm and virtually the only world-class public realm in the urban metropolis of this great capital city. Yet the parks and the palaces as they now exist are not as splendid as their designers intended: walls separate them from their parklands, very busy roads travel through and around them and pedestrian movement and visual connectedness are ill-served. It is to resolve and enhance the urban design importance to London that these masterplanning suggestions are put forward. The work shown is masterplanning and as such is at a very broad concept stage. Therefore, as with all concept masterplanning, the proposals are not 'architecture' as such, and all buildings shown are purely illustrative of masterplanning concepts.
About the Author
Principal of Terry Farrell & Partners, Sir Terry Farrell is an internationally recognised architect and urban designer with offices in London, Edinburgh and Hong Kong. He has worked on high-profile building schemes and masterplans in cities as diverse as Seattle, Hong Kong, Dubai, Lisbon, London, Edinburgh and Seoul. And the large body of work generated by his practice over forty years comprises art galleries, exhibition spaces, museums, commercial and retail developments, banks, housing, industrial buildings and transportation centres. He has transformed the London skyline and animated the banks of the Thames with his Charing Cross Station and MI6 headquarters building. The tourist building at the top of the Peak in Hong Kong is the most visible structure on the city's skyline. When complete in 2008, his 1,500,000 sq m station and air-rights development in Kowloon will be one of the world's largest new urban complexes. Urban regeneration combined with a sensitivity to site, context and history are particular concerns.
