Design

odhamswalk.wordpress.com/design-and-architecture

June 3, 2016

Awards 2006

Awards 2005
Awards 1997-2004

Architect: Greater London Council Architects Department

Developer: Greater London Council
Contractor: G F Wallis
Planning Authority: Westminster City Council

In the late 1960s, plans were drawn up for the wholesale redevelopment of
Covent Garden. But a bitter fight by local residents and businesses, under the
banner of the Covent Garden Community Association (CGCA) forced the
withdrawal of these proposals, and in 1973 the government instructed the
Greater London Council (GLC) to draw up new plans “with full public
participation”. The GLC’s subsequent Action Plan was thrown out in favour of
the CGCA’s alternative plan “Keep the Elephants out of the Garden” after a
public inquiry. This included a substantial increase in provision to cater for local
families in poor housing, their sons and daughters, and residents who had
been forced out of the area and wanted to return.

The CGCA targeted the area’s main redevelopment opportunity – Odham’s

print works. Despite lack of GLC commitment, the CGCA steered the Odham’s
Walk development through, and even secured the bulk of nominations to the
new dwellings for people who met their local focus, a remarkable achievement
in the face of the new concept of housing ‘need’ recently enshrined in
legislation which favoured applicants who had no links with the local
community. Donald Ball’s design team produced an adventurous solution: a
perimeter rampart of 73 L-shaped patio flats cascading around 8 open stairs for
the first two storeys and rising to a lift-accessed upper level walkway serving a
further 29 flats; all above a podium of shops and parking, with ramped diagonal
access across the site.

At completion in 1981, Christopher Woodward launched a virulent attack on the

complex nature of the development as ‘indefensible space’, predicting
vandalism and muggers, and urging a return to the straight streets of the old
Covent Garden (though another critic pointed out that social problems are not
resolved by a clear field of fire for water cannon and rubber bullets). Woodward
attacked the terraced patios and upper walkway as leading to loss of privacy,
and doubted whether they would provide scope for individual treatment by
tenants. And he pooh-poohed the seductive renderings of the scheme by
Gordon Cullen as misleading and unlikely to be realised.
elephants in the garden
In fact, this is one of few housing developments where the original artist’s
impressions are not only matched but surpassed by the reality. The planting
has matured magnificently, and the patios and planters display every possible
variation in treatment, from minimalist austerity through an Italian family’s
vegetable garden to fiery blazes of crocosmia and pelargoniums. There is no
vandalism, no graffiti. And the overlooking patios and upper walkway has
proved an invaluable security feature: sharp eyes and tongues deter the
inevitable ne’er-do-wells in an area prone to drug abuse. Surveillance is
enhanced by a significant proportion of retired people, many original residents,
and again strengthened with CCTC at the two accesses to the scheme for non-
residents to make their way to small commercial tenants, such as a dentist,
optician and tanning house within the block. This is closed off again each night
as these premises shut up.
CGCA’s allocation policy has proved its worth, bolstered by the formation five
years ago of a Tenant Management Organization by the energetic residents’
association. This runs the block, employs an on-site manager, and maintains
the CGCA’s criteria for tenant selection. A strong community has weathered the
consequences of over-optimistic detailing (waterproofing, insulation,
inadequate planter depths), a multiplicity of stakeholders – Right to Buy has
spawned absentee landlords) – and the dead hand of bureaucracy
(Westminster Council, which retains overall control, will not let a resident
caretaker with a young son swap his one bedroom flat for a family flat tenanted
by an elderly couple who want smaller accommodation, because of ‘the rules’).
But the residents are resilient. Despite these problems, and those of dealing
with an investment company freeholder whose interest appears to be in the
shops and car park below (which Westminster should have purchased on
GLC’s demise), they would not part with their stake in a remarkable oasis of
calm in Central London, or the community they have struggled so long to
maintain.

Odham’s Walk demonstrates that design has to consider management to

produce a successful result for housing of any complexity. Good design by
itself can rapidly fail without effective management. Good management can
only alleviate the consequences of poor design. But the two working together
will succeed, even in the face of ill-considered legislation, conflicting ownership
responsibilities and a testing local environment.