Exhibition Road is an unusually bold urban transformation. Indeed, one might reflect that it is the kind of project that usually doesn’t happen. There have been plenty of examples of similar ambitious intentions that haven’t seen the light of day. The history of Exhibition Road and its relationship to ‘Albertopolis’ includes a number of previous attempts to give the street appropriate significance.
In the 1850s, Prince Albert provided the vision for a cultural quarter using funds generated by the Great Exhibition. The recent reinterpretation of Exhibition Road was made possible by a latter-day visionary leader, Daniel Moylan, deputy leader of Kensington & Chelsea Council.
The initial purpose of the project was to recognise the international significance of the group of major institutions along Exhibition Road, and thereby acknowledge the importance of the original vision. Moylan had a clearly constructed position with respect to the simplification of city streets that enabled us to pursue the topic of a shared surface.
The need to do something was obvious. The national museums and other institutions along Exhibition Road were attracting 12 million visitors each year. The pavements were overflowing with pedestrians and the road was clogged with parking and through-traffic.
Moylan was adamant that the whole width of the street should be treated as a single surface to be shared between pedestrians and vehicles. The ‘shared surface’ idea had been tried and tested in other countries but a straight street of this scale – 800 metres long and 24 metres wide – was unusual.
The project required courage and conviction, and all the adjacent institutions needed to be brought on side. A ‘cultural group’ representing everyone involved was therefore formed to focus the necessary support. Complex negotiations ensued with Transport for London, Westminster City Council and English Heritage as well as Kensington & Chelsea officers. A construction programme was devised that kept the street open by working on half of the carriageway at a time.
The design comprises a diagonal pattern consisting of 1.75-metre-wide bands of pink granite at 12-metre centres against a grey granite background. The idea of the pattern was to suggest diagonal movement, the interaction between the different institutions, the way pedestrians might cross from one entrance to another. The diagonal also challenges the orthogonal movement of traffic.
One million 150mm cubes of grey and pink Chinese granite were required and the whole surface had to be detailed and crafted into the overall design. A great deal of care was needed to ensure that the broad diagonal pattern ran through all the paving conditions.
Specially-designed lighting masts were made taller than necessary to reflect the monumental character of the streetscape. Functional street lighting halfway up the masts is complemented by ‘jewel’ lighting at the top, producing a dramatic perspective of light at night.
A dose of pragmatism intervenes to modify the purity of the shared surface vision. Traffic continues to move on one side of the street and pedestrians tend to walk on the other. In spite of this, the diagonal pattern does create the perception of a single space, a generosity that has completely changed the experience for the visitor.
The scheme is a self-evident success that has given new life to the buildings along its edge and has rapidly become one of those project phenomena – everyone now thinks it was always like this!