Examination of Witnesses (Questions 16140
- 16159)
16140. Mr Wilkinson: I think beauty is
in the eye of the beholder, some buildings do have an intrinsic
value and perhaps this building here has an intrinsic value behind
the paint and its particular dimensions, how it addresses the
street and how it works as an added point. It is next to a very
powerful building indeed, the Grade II star listed meat market,
Horris Jones, from the 1860s. It has a very powerful corner and
this turns the corner in a more gentle way and addresses that
and works with it, the subtle interplay between the two buildings.
That is the same for much of the area, it relates to the operation
of the markets, a little butcher shop which is tiny in comparison
to the platform market yet it works architecturally and functionally
as well.
16141. Chairman: On the point you raised
about Centre Point?
16142. Mr Wilkinson: Yes.
16143. Chairman: I know hundreds of people
who think that should be totally demolished.
16144. Mr Wilkinson: So do I. I am not
saying we should save Centre Point. I was trying to keep away
from that sort of discussion and talk about things that people
are more familiar with than are not necessarily controversial.
A lot of these buildings may not individually be controversial,
people probably do not notice them individually, but as a whole
they look at that corner of, say, Oxford Street and Tottenham
Court Road and say, "Wow, this is pretty nice", but
will not tell you directly why and seeing those individual buildings
and describing them in a way we have tried to do today.
16145. Chairman: I was not advocating
it should be demolished, but I am just saying a lot of people
do, and, therefore, in the eye of the beholder it is not to be.
16146. Mr Wilkinson: Yes.
16147. Chairman: If you look at the plans
for the whole of that area, that is probably one of the key points
in the whole of the West End where interaction and integration
can take place.
16148. Mr Wilkinson: Yes, it is a very
complex operation, I appreciate that.
16149. Chairman: Do you not think the
new architecture will come with plans, architecture that will
equally be very important for the future?
16150. Mr Wilkinson: You would really
hope that would be the case and there would be safeguards to ensure
that, but it comes out of a question of how you value what is
there already. Although this end of Oxford Street in front of
us has not been valued greatly because it has been left to get
dirty and filthy, cleaned up there are some great buildings and
alternatives. If you look around the corner from here behind Centre
Point, St Giles Court is going to be demolished, surely that demolished
site could be used for a few years by Crossrail as an alternative
site as storage or to put their machinery or whatever they need
to do in the meantime.
16151. Mrs James: I wanted to come in
here because, as I remember, when we visited this area there are
not plans drawn up yet for what would replace these buildings,
there are no plans so we cannot compare what could be better in
the future. We are left knowing these buildings will disappear
and something else is coming in their place.
16152. Chairman: One of the reasons I
said that is because there are designs to come for the finished
article, that is why I asked whether you had managed to meet with
Crossrail and discuss?
16153. Mr Wilkinson: That did not seem
to come up in the discussion. It was focused around looking at
the alternatives and what could be done on the sites to mitigate
these less desirable effects of what is important to a major scheme.
Usually, we are of the opinion of where there is a will, there
is a way. As an organisation for the last 30 years, we have come
up with numerous alternatives for historic buildings which have
been threatened. It is not me who is straight-talking, it is my
organisation which has got a range of expertise available to it
in architects and planners and, of course, a few engineers as
well. There can be alternatives, you can do alternative things.
It is just often what seems like a logical thing to do has side
effects to the historical environment that are not properly considered
and often are only considered later on in the game once the plans
are largely in place.
16154. Chairman: I hope that when Mr
Taylor brings Mr Berryman in, he will raise one or two of those
things and you will have the opportunity to talk with the Chief
Executive of Crossrail.
16155. Mr Wilkinson: Thank you.
16156. Chairman: Thank you very much.
Mr Taylor.
16157. Mr Taylor: Thank you, sir. I am
going to call Mr Berryman.
Mr Keith Berryman, Recalled
Examined by Mr Taylor
16158. Mr Taylor: Mr Berryman, could
you introduce yourself to Mr Wilkinson, please?
(Mr Berryman) I am the Managing Director of
Cross-London Rail Links which is the company established by the
Government and Transport for London taking forward the Crossrail
project.
16159. Can you explain how Crossrail has selected
properties for acquisition and demolition and how many of them
are listed, please?
(Mr Berryman) We have tried throughout the
process of designing the scheme to minimise the amount of property
acquisition and demolition that is needed. We have tried to avoid
the demolition of listed buildings which is now no small task
because there is a very large number of listed buildings. However,
due to the positioning of Crossrail stations and the need to interchange
with the London Underground lines and other features such as highways,
this has not always been possible. Where the demolition of listed
buildings has been proposed, we have always undertaken to satisfy
ourselves there are no feasible alternatives and, indeed, the
design has been changed in several areas where listed buildings
would have been affected, most noticeably on Liverpool Street.
Between Paddington and Whitechapel there is only one listed building
that will be demolished and that is one you have heard about on
Dean Street. One building will be internally demolished, it is
the site of which its fa[lcced]ade is listed. Given the number
of listed buildings and monuments on the route, it would be impossible
to do the scheme with a smaller number. If we had tried to select
bad buildings that we did not like, it would have compromised
the integrity of the route and many of the interchanges Crossrail
is building.
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