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PRIMARY OBJECTIVES
• If Chelsea Barracks is to be satisfactorily and appropriately integrated into the fabric of the city that surrounds it, then land that in the Roger’s mas- terplan was allocated to green space will have to be redefined as public realm, as roads, and footpaths, in the same way as in the neighbouring residential streets.
• Create areas of green space that are not merely the residual space left over from the new development but are clearly defined places that consti- tute a fundamental part of the overall plan
6.3.9
• Create an extension to the fabric of the existing city, not a separate, hermetic housing estate.
• Identify key pedestrian and cycle routes across the site and shape the configuration of the new buildings to give them significance.
• ‘Make good’ the existing, fragmented urban blocks to restore the continuity of the urban fabric.
• Develop an appropriate architectural response to the very different scales and characters of the small-scale streets to the north of the site
and the panorama of Ranelagh Gardens on the frontage to Chelsea Bridge Road. • Establish appropriate typologies on each of the individual street frontages which reflect the role of the street in the urban hierarchy and the physical setting that it
provides.
• Develop a plan which includes a wide variety of building typologies which will
ensure a rich and complementary mix within the resulting urban fabric and a range of house and apartment types to facilitate future sales.
• Establish a strategy for the site that has within it sufficient flexibility to al- low the masterplan to evolve during the course of its implementation. A good masterplan provides enough confidence to allow development to proceed, but does not inhibit its further evolution. A bad masterplan imposes so many long term obligations and constraints that it proves
too dawnting even to embark upon.
• Avoid being seduced by a big idea and make sure that the me-
ticulous detail of the masterplan – how this building meets that wall, how this tree stands clear of that structure – is as fully resolved as
the large strategic idea.
• Site individual buildings and configure development parcels
in such a way that they will stimulate the highest quality of ar$Wchitectural response (don’t simply couple architects to
work within narrow constraints).
• Configure public space – roads, footpaths squares in
such a way that their management can evolve and adapt over time. Don’t fix pedestrian, cycles or vehic-
ular uses now.
• Focus ground floor commercial activity in the bus-
iest part of the site, where footfall will be greatest, to ensure the long term viability of shops and restaurants and therefore the long term sustain-
ability of the site as a whole.
• Establish clear guidelines for how buildings
meet the ground, whether forming a single street frontage with shops, or set back be- hind an area, or standing within a garden. • Ensure that the physical sub-division of the masterplan is aligned with the commer- cial imperatives relating to planning and
construction.
• Make small spaces as well as large ones to establish an appropriate domesticity and initimacy within the urban environment.
• Avoid the creation of a singular identity for the whole site but encourage individual architectural responses.
• Think of the site not as a single project but as a series of individual proposals, each with its own identity and character, while at the same time conforming to the material vocabulary of the whole.
Chelsea barraCks, london sw1 Urban Masterplan Pre-Qualification Questionaire
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CHELSEA BARRACKS, LONDON, UK OBJECTIVES