Retrofit City

Walking home from college I called in to The Architecture Centre on Narrow Quay, to look at the exhibition called Bristol: Retrofit City.  

This was a small but extremely well presented and interesting show, looking at how some of the city's old and otherwise neglected buildings have been revamped and re-vitalised through sensitive architecture and careful development.  Not everyone in the city would agree, of course, and Bristol has had at least is share of planning horrors, and some others only narrowly averted over the pat few decades.  But the examples on show in this exhibition were impressive, and uplifting in terms of confirming that there is scope, and hope, for really sustainable and imaginative alternatives to Tesco-style new building.  

Cook's Camden

I visited the exhibition, Cook's Camden (gallery website link is here), at the Architecture Centre in Bristol.  It is a small exhibition, but very well designed and informative.  there was a large wall-chart showing the development of housing and town planning legislation since about 1750, which hd masses of information in it (and is going to be published in a more accessible and portable form in due course).  The main items were details of about a dozen separate but linked housing projects in the london borough of Camden built in the 1960s and early 1970s.

The housing schemes were innovative in several ways, including social and play space away form vehicle access points, and lots of balconies so people could have a sense of garden and outside private space, even when several floor up. The buildings were not high rise, generally only about 5 or 6 floors high, and ranked back so that there was as much light and privacy as possible.  Some of the schemes included shops.   One of them, the Brunswick Centre near Coram Fields and Tottenham Court Road, has been upgraded recently.  I was there a few months ago and was amazed at how chic it all seems now.
The exhibits included site plans and photographs, and a video piece with interviews - generally extremely posit still - with the present residents of one of the bigger housing schemes.