Memorandum by the Bradford on Avon Preservation
Trust (CAB 27)
CABE has published various guides to the design
of new developments, including Building in Context: New development
in historic areas (2001). It describes the right approach
for successful design in historic towns and villages as being
to examine the context and relate the new building to its surroundings
through an informed character appraisal. In an earlier guide,
By Design: Urban design in the planning system: towards better
practice, CABE says that one of the objectives of urban design
is to promote character by responding to and reinforcing locally
distinctive patterns of development, landscape and culture (p
15). Further on it elucidates that "responding to local building
forms and patterns of development in the detailed layout and design
of development helps to reinforce a sense of place", and
"The use of local materials, building methods and details
is a major factor in enhancing local distinctiveness" (pp
20, 21).
If these were the criteria applied by CABE's
Design Review Panel, its work would be universally approved, but
the examples chosen to illustrate Building in Context show
that quite another set of criteria is being applied. Buildings
are shown, eg Case Studies 8, 11, 12 and 14, where the designers
have made a point of not relating to the context, using forms,
materials and colours chosen to jar with the surroundings. Our
own experience in Bradford on Avon is of a scheme produced by
architects for Taylor Woodrow (Broadway Malyan Partnership) for
a sensitive site in the heart of the Conservation Area. The Development
Brief adopted by the District Council after extensive public consultation,
specifically called on the development "to respect the character,
materials, scale, form, colour of the listed buildings . . . as
well as the historic townscape generally". Local buildings
are of Bath stone, with pitched roofs of slate or tile. Yet the
scheme submitted (but subsequently withdrawn) made extensive use
of zinc, both for wall cladding and for roofs whose slopes were
broken at the apex by a vertical strip of glazing. Elsewhere large
areas of glass and timber boarding displayed an architectural
treatment which we thought totally out of sympathy with the local
character. This scheme was looked at by the Design Review Panel
early in 2001 and commended for its "pleasing richness of
treatment within a consistent architectural language". (The
accompanying illustrations show part of the scheme compared with
typical Bradford on Avon domestic buildings, to the same scale.)
We submit that the "secret agenda"
followed by the Design Review Panel appears to be to promote incongruous
designs in modern materials, regardless of the local character
of the historic areas in which they are set. For CABE to act as
guardian of the quality of the built environment, it needs to
apply the criteria which it writes about in its design guides.
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