“Shared space” is an urban design concept championing multipurpose public areas that are safe, walkable, human-scale and economically vibrant, in which cars, buses, bikes, commuters, shoppers, residents and flaneurs co-exist in perfect harmony. Or at least in a kind of self-organising, flocking order. It throws up some interesting ideas and stimulating puzzles, not only for landscape architects but also for the manufacturers of construction products.

Shared roads and cycle tracks

The New York City based Urban Omnibus website features a rich and detailed article, “Cycle Tracks and the Evolving American Streetscape”. It’s written by David Vega-Barachowitz, Sustainable Initiatives Program Manager at the National Association of City Transportation Officials and coordinator for its Cities for Cycling project.

In the article he charts the history of designated bike lanes. They range from early experiments like the California Cycleway, an elevated toll road built in 1900 just for bikes, through to NYC’s 2007 Ninth Avenue protected bike lane, a figurehead pilot project.

The success and importance of the Ninth Avenue scheme, Vega-Barachowitz says, is about defining streets less in terms of traffic engineering and more in terms of public space:

In 2007, when New York City constructed the city’s first protected bike lane pilot project on Ninth Avenue and transformed Times Square from a tumultuous interchange into a public commons, the city not only created a safe space for cyclists and pedestrians, they set a new precedent in the design of city streets. Cycle track projects, along with a host of bold engineering and communications strategies, have helped to revive the notion of the street as a place not solely for cars, but a front yard in which commercial and pedestrian activities may thrive.

Whereas in the past, accommodating cycle lanes might have focused on safety precautions (at best) or just maximising traffic capacity (at worst), more recent approaches have emphasised a better understanding of what drivers, cyclists and pedestrians actually do and why they do it.

In practice, for designers and specifiers, this lowers the profile of barriers, buffers and furniture, and raises the profile of surfacing materials and how they are designed, arranged, used and combined.

Shared roads and pedestrian areas

Research into pedestrian behaviour and movement in public space also feeds back into construction product design and into the specification of landscaping products and materials.

Writing in The Independent in December, Will Dean looked at issue of shared space but this time through the lens of London streets, where “all too often roads are designed for cars – pedestrians are plodding afterthoughts”.

As part of this he cites Ben Hamilton-Baillie, the shared space champion, who gives the example of people’s tendency to cross areas diagonally, to choose the quickest route from A to B, and how these “pedestrian desire lines” can be used in intelligent urban design.

Describing the West London, Exhibition Road shared space project, Will Dean points out that the same rationale and the same patterns filter through the actual materials of landscape construction, like paving and surfacing products:

Different colours and patterns to regular streets make it clear to drivers that this isn’t an ordinary road – the diagonal patterns reflect how people will cross the road … Diagonal paving tiles encourage pedestrians to drift between the institutions on the street.

And the implications of shared spaces on use of street furniture and signage are given a different spin as well:

Benches in the middle of the road and distinctive street lights. These elements do two things – they make Exhibition Road a nice place to be and inform drivers that this is a public space and not just for them.

The creative and even counterintuitive use of landscape products and materials plays a key role in responding to and influencing the behaviour of people in the built environment.

Shared roads and product selection

So the concept of shared spaces does inject some fresh thinking into construction product design. Innovation is important in making projects achievable and effective, not least when it comes to designing surfaces that are equally fit for town centre footfall or through-traffic, and instilling an awareness of other (different) inhabitants or travellers.

Interpave’s review of Manual for Streets 2 (MfS2) and Scotland’s Designing Streets policy document in the e:Pave July 2011 magazine is good at articulating what shared surfaces spaces mean in practical terms: “MfS promotes a traditional grid of streets defined by buildings to give a ‘permeable’ network, particularly for pedestrians and cyclists”.

It outlines some exemplary shared space case studies: Cheltenham High Street, Home Zones in Bristol, social housing developments in Southminster, Essex, and the Stirling Prize winning Accordia housing project in Cambridge.

The article also makes some useful product selection points, naturally with a particular focus on concrete surfacing, especially in permeable paving schemes, pedestrianised areas, transition zones, and public transport interfaces.

Essential requirements for paving materials, from Manual for Streets and other guidelines, can be summarised as follows:

• visually attractive and able to deliver distinctive local character
• capability for visual or tactile differentiation between distinct areas
• durable and maintainable with reliable product supply
• accessible to all with consistent slip and skid resistance
• well drained to avoid standing water and compatible with SUDS
• sustainable – in the widest sense

Show and tell

In your own projects and experience, or in your research and scrapbook-keeping, what examples have you seen of surfacing materials and landscape products being used ingeniously to create shared space?

Tarmac and asphalt
There’s an interesting look at the idea of the road itself on cycling blog the Inner Ring. From the earliest history of roads to today’s asphalt, there are several eye-catching points, including the comparison of $25,000 per mile “chip seal” or “tar and chip” method of construction with the $350,000 per mile cost of asphalt.

And the impact of the seasons is as keenly felt in Europe as it is in the UK:

Other parts of Europe see winter damage and subsidence. Some Alpine roads get smashed by coachloads of tourists and subzero temperatures, they are relaid every year. But away from the resorts the frost is left to crack and shatter the road.

Stelvio Pass by Damian Morys Foto, on Flickr

Aggregates
There are also some diverting thoughts out there on unpaved or unsealed surfaces. Where a road experiences low volumes of traffic, it has been found that maintenance costs for gravel roads often exceed the maintenance costs for paved or surface treated roads when traffic volumes exceed 200 vehicles per day.

So for small community developments, and some longer private driveways it may make economic sense to specify aggregate surfaces.

Curvy Rails by Ed Thomes Photography.com, on Flickr

Concrete
In Belgium the betonweg or concrete road is found in rural areas. Large sections of concrete are separated by small gaps, partly for drainage but also to let the material expand on a hot day, to avoid the surface buckling under expansion.

Concrete road by LHOON, on Flickr

Concrete block paving is typically used for private driveways, car parks and hardstandings, as well as pedestrian areas, squares and shared-use urban spaces, and provides a surface that is durable and easy to maintain, while permeable installations can ease the pressure on urban drainage systems.

image by crinklecrankle

Cobbles
Ornamental cobbles and setts are still used in historic residential areas and town centres, while some agricultural tracks are still surfaced with original stones.

The simple but useful Paving Expert site has some design guidelines for cobbled paving construction. The Building Conservation website also has a very useful article on the best ways to design and specify cobbles and setts in historic townscapes.

Cobbled Street at Dinan by wwarby, on Flickr

More than just a buzzword in 2011, Building Information Modelling or BIM took centre stage last year when Paul Morrell, Chief Construction Adviser, announced government plans to have all public projects operating under a BIM framework by 2016.

Following that announcement, BIM has rarely been out of the trade press as more and more companies quickly move to adopt it as a key strategy to win business and improve working practices.

What was noticeable, however, was a lack of coverage and contribution from the perspective of landscape architects.

So it’s good to hear that the BIM Academy at the University of Northumbria are looking to speak with landscape architects who have experience of integrating BIM into their own practice.

They are specifically looking to get a better understanding of the potential requirements of the profession to improve workflows and support greater efficiency and collaboration within the BIM framework.

If you are a landscape architect and would like to contribute to this research, please contact:

Nahim Iqbal, BIM Development Leader, BIM Academy
Email: nahim.iqbal@bimacademy.ac.uk
Tel: 0191 227 4533

The BIM Academy are leading the field in developing research, courses and guidance to support the construction industry in adopting BIM. For further details about the BIM Academy and their work, visit the website: www.bimacademy.ac.uk

Lake Superior Stream.org, a resource from Duluth, Minnesota, offers a swales toolkit that covers this drainage feature in some detail.

A grassed swale is a graded and engineered landscape feature appearing as a linear, shallow, open channel with trapezoidal or parabolic shape. The swale is vegetated with flood tolerant, erosion resistant plants.

The design of grassed swales promotes the conveyance of storm water at a slower, controlled rate and acts as a filter medium removing pollutants and allowing stormwater infiltration.

When properly designed to accommodate a predetermined storm event volume, a grassed swale results in a significant improvement over the traditional drainage ditch in both slowing and cleaning of water.

In swales, stormwater is slowed by strategic placement of check-dams that encourage ponding and these ponds in turn facilitate water quality improvements through infiltration, filtration and sedimentary deposition. Collected stormwater is expected to drain away through the soil within several hours or days.

Google image search also provides lots of useful diagrams and photos of typical swale designs.

ESI.info has several categories that can prodvide a useful source of products when specifying swale designs and other drainage features.
Ground engineering
Drainage

Guest post: Claire Thirlwall is the director of landscape architecture practice Thirlwall Associates. She specialises in river restoration and water management, and also works on more traditional landscape architecture projects. Here, Claire outlines the pitfalls and opportunities presented by water in landscape design and construction schemes.

Water, and more precisely how you manage that water, can be make or break on a construction project. From the water falling on the roof of each building to flood water rising up through the drainage network, dealing with water within your site can be a real challenge.

Get it wrong and you could be facing claims from your client as their prestigious building fills with water every time it rains.

It is worthwhile taking time at the very start of the project to look at all the ways in which water could impact on your scheme. Simple decisions, such as which way large areas of paving will drain or the location of downpipes, can allow you to capitalise on the rainwater falling on your site, avoid damage to wildlife and even help reduce flood risk in your region.

So how can all these issues be covered by such basic choices? Rainwater falling onto a site is often wasted when it could be used to irrigate planting areas or tree pits, as long as there is no risk of contamination. Think of those small, raised areas of bare earth surrounded by high kerbs in supermarket car parks – they make no use of rainwater and create a hostile environment for plants to grow in. Carefully designing the site levels, with planting below the level of paving, allows natural irrigation.

Your aim within a site should be to match, as closely as possible, the way that the area drained before development. With no hard paved areas rain would fall onto the ground and slowly find its way into the groundwater and into local rivers. This would retain natural water levels and in turn support the habitat within the river or stream.

The traditional approach for draining paved areas has been to direct all rainwater into a piped system to remove it from site as quickly as possible. These pipes then either link into the sewerage network or run into the nearest water course. During heavy rainfall these pipe systems can be overwhelmed and cause surface water flooding or create dramatic surges in the flow in rivers.

By using a sustainable drainage approach, as much water as possible is kept out of piped systems and is instead allowed to soak into the ground as part of the water cycle.

We often make the mistake of viewing water in the same way as we view other resources such as energy or materials. However, water is in fact a sustainable resource that we reuse over and over again. When it leaves our site it has an impact, and through careful design we can ensure that that impact is always positive.

In the news

The past decade has seen widespread flooding in the UK, almost year-in year-out. Some of the most notable floods occurred in:

• 2000 – the autumn of 2000 was the wettest since records began with almost 10,000 homes flooded throughout England and Wales, causing £3.5 billion worth of damage.
• 2007 – the wettest May to July since records began was recorded in 2007, when the UK experienced further severe flooding.
• 2009 – in November 2009, flooding in Cumbria resulted in catastrophic damage to homes and infrastructure, with the town’s vital Northside Bridge collapsing.

This year, as Cumbria sees a new £1.7 million bridge lowered into place, Bournemouth recovers from severe flash flooding and the North of the country braced itself for hurricane Katia, which brought winds of up to 80mph and more flooding. Most recently, Northern Ireland was brought to a standstill and emergency measures were implemented when days of heavy rain caused widespread flooding, claiming two lives.

SUDS and the For a Rainy Day report

The London Assembly’s Environment Committee recently noted that if the City of London were to experience rainfall similar to that which caused severe flooding in parts of England and Wales in 2001, streets would flood within minutes, and the city would be unable to cope.

Published in July this year, the For A Rainy Day report called on the Mayor of London to address the risk of flood damage by improving public access to flood risk information, and to extend an existing funding scheme for green roofs to include other forms of sustainable drainage systems (SUDS). Earlier in the year, Defra had announced new funding for more flood and coastal defence systems, but this was met with criticism, as it appeared that the public would have to contribute to the scheme.

The For A Rainy Day report also states that SUDS are rarely retrofitted in London, placing blame on developers:

developers see obstacles to fully sustainable drainage, pointing out that 96 per cent of development in London takes place on previously developed land. Progress is therefore slow and the UK lags behind other countries in the extent of sustainable drainage.

Britain has an ageing drainage infrastructure. SUDS have been around for decades, and while other countries such as the US, Sweden and France have adopted them, uptake in the UK has been slower. Indeed, a report by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) states that tens of thousands of homes are still being built on floodplains.

Make room for WSUDS – SUDS are “so last year”

In September this year, in a parliamentary debate of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Anne McIntosh, Conservative MP for Thirsk and Malton, said:

Colleagues would be disappointed if I did not mention sustainable drainage systems. We need to know the commencement date for the relevant provisions of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. Are we really looking at a delay until 2012, and if so, do we as parliamentarians accept that? I put it to the Minister that we do not. I do not think it would be appropriate to have a phased introduction of sustainable drainage systems. The country is crying out for sustainable drainage systems to be introduced with a specific target date—I hope, by the end of this year.

But just as the UK finally starts to get to grips with SUDS, Alex Stephenson, Director of the UK Stormwater Division of Hydro International, has suggested that SUDS are “so last year … the concept is already being overtaken by international thinking”. Apparently, there’s a new buzzword in town: WSUDS (Water Sensitive Urban Design).

Developed in Australia, Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUDS) is about attractively integrating water cycle management into urban planning and design, to help create cities for the future. WSUDS aims to protect natural water systems; integrate stormwater treatment into the environment using multiple-use corridors; protect water quality; reduce run-off and peak flows; and add value while minimising costs.

Related blog posts

• Getting it right: water management and landscape design
• Resources for designers: sustainable drainage

Related products on ESI.info

• Drainage
• Stormwater storage
• SUDS paving

As landscape architect Sam Shaw of Ian White Associates advised me: “there is no one definite way to do a sustainable drainage system, as the design will depend on site location, the capacity of the scheme overall, ground conditions and other site-specific factors. There are a range of solutions, from fully urbanised below-ground storage to open, purely rural designs”.

Legislation

In England and Wales, the requirement for sustainable drainage systems is now part of by legislation – in particular, the Building Regulations Part H, which requires that where practical surface water drainage from any building development be drained, preferably to a soakaway or infiltration system. If this is not possible then the next preferred option is to drain to a watercourse, with connection to a sewer as the last choice.

The proposed Flood & Water Management Bill may even mean that the final option, connection to a sewer, is no longer available.

In Scotland, under the Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations 2005, new developments with surface water drainage systems discharging to the water environment should incorporate SUDS.

Hydro International offer a useful breakdown of the relevant legislation and guidelines.

Design guidance

The Environment Agency, and up north, The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, both have explanatory and introductory information on the design and theory of sustainable drainage.

SEPA’s SUDS leaflet (PDF download) provides some useful DOs and DONTs at an overview level.

CIRIA publications include an interim code of practice for SUDS. Further publications allow the specifier to get in-depth information related to specific types of SUDS designs, from The SUDS Manual and a site handbook for the construction of SUDS, to more detailed guides such as documents on Designing for exceedance, Sustainable water management in schools, and Source control using constructed pervious surfaces – all available on CIRIA’s publications page.

Controlling pollution

Reducing pollution is a key part of sustainable drainage. Contaminated surface water, such as water from a road or hardstanding, needs to be treated at source, and if discharging to body of running water will need two stages of treatment.

As an example, Ian White & Associates designed a car park in Dollar, Scotland, which featured gravel-filled parking bays for the first stage of treatment, followed by a swale (filter through grasses) for the second stage.

There is no single product for treatment of fuel-contaminated surface water, although fuel interceptors, as part of piped drainage systems, are available.

Swales are a graded, engineered feature that appear as a straight, shallow, open channel. They are planted with vegetation that is tolerant to flooding and resistant to erosion.

Flood risk management

Managing the residual flood risk, as well as reducing the total volume of surface water run-off discharged, is another important aspect.

Plastic infiltration tanks are often use to store stormwater to prevent flooding or overloading the sewers. Guidance published by CIRIA can be found in the Structural design of modular geocellular drainage tanks publication.

This case study (PDF download), shows how Bellway Homes designed soakaways as part of a residential development on a former airfield. The system reduces the risk of flooding, replenishes groundwater levels, creates habitat for wildlife and will save money throughout its lifetime, compared with a piped system.

Related product sections on ESI.info

• Combined drainage kerbs
• Permeable concrete paving
• Stormwater storage
• Geomembranes
• Gravel/aggregates
• Aquatic plants
• Interceptors/traps

Looting of a Primark store in Peckham, South London

As the rioting moved north from London, Building.co.uk contributor Ike Ijeh highlighted the correlation between society and architecture in his article The UK Riots: Is Architecture Irrelevant? Architects, he says, “have a clear social responsibility to improve the built environment and nourish a collective sense of citizenship and community.” But can we really blame architects, urban planners or designers?

Can we really blame the architects?

Urban planning expert, Walter Vanstiphout, draws similarities between the UK riots and Paris’s banlieue riots in 2005, suggesting that the cities may be suffering from the same chronic, urban condition: the “spectacular worsening” of a permanent crisis, which rises to the surface and then retreats into the shadows. Le Corbusier’s functional modernist concepts, which inspired the soaring blocks of flats in Paris’s suburbs, have often been blamed for that spectacular worsening of an existing crisis.

Vanstiphout argues that urban politics, planning and design are unable to seriously tackle these underlying issues:

I do not think that the reason is that politics and planning have realised their limitations to shape society. I think that the reason is that urban politics and hence planning and urban design are too often treating the city with ulterior motives, instead of actually working for the city itself. The city has become a tool to achieve goals, political, cultural, economic or even environmental.

Treating the city in this way means that we are constantly passing judgment on what the city should be, and who should be there, and what they should be doing, instead of trying to understand what the city actually is, who really lives there and what they are doing. This produces a dangerous process of idealisation, denying whole areas, whole groups their place in the urban community, because they do not fit the picture.

Although architecture and urban planning alone cannot tackle permanent and deep-rooted issues in the community, architects and urban planners are in no way exonerated by Vanstiphout. Instead, he argues that our cities are simply not designed to fit the people that inhabit them, but instead are designed to fit a grander ambition (growth, success, efficiency); ignoring what the people of the city need, for what the city wants.

Architects have not been blamed for these recent riots to the same degree as they were for the North London riots of 1985, when Broadwater Farm in Tottenham went up in flames, but accusatory tones have underpinned much of the industry’s reaction.

Looting at a Primark store in Peckham, South London

However, Editorial Director of  bdonline.co.uk, Amanda Baillieu, claimed that in the aftermath of the 2011 riots, “ there was a notable absence of anyone prepared to blame the evils of architecture”. Discussing the concept of community architecture related to Broadwater Farm, Baillieu writes:

The problem was not that architects weren’t doing a good job – many were. It was that the very people they needed to reach – now it would be the 14-year-olds rampaging around Chalk Farm or central Manchester; then it was (according to BD) Rastafarian men – have no interest in engaging in debate about their environment, or for that matter about anything much at all.

If the blame does not lie with architects, urban planners or designers, but in the general ignorance of residents not taking responsibility for, or pride in, their own built environments, then how can these issues be resolved?

The aftermath…

Almost three months on and this debate appears to have gone silent: politicians and the police, relieved that the rioting is over (for now), and the perpetrators, retreating back into the darkness where little has changed, just as Vanstiphout said they would:

After a riot your average city will become more afraid, more authoritarian, more segregated, more exclusive and less tolerant. That is the real tragedy of the post-war western urban riot, first it shocks and terrifies us, then for a moment it makes us see flashes of the kind of city we should be working towards, which then fades away into the darkness. Back to normal.

In the days after the riots, the Government launched a multi-million pound support package to help the affected communities re-instate normality. Perhaps more impressively however, was the #riotcleanup, a social networking campaign started by locals to facilitate the clean up in their local area. Two architecture graduates, Lee Wilshire and Nick Varey, launched Riot Rebuild, encouraging architects and experts to donate their time for free to help repair the businesses, homes and communities affected by the violence and “linking problems with the people who can solve them”. A sign that for the majority, there is no permanent crisis? Or  just momentary flashes of the type of city that people want to be working towards?

The successful Riot Cleanup campaign was started on Twitter

Indeed, Vanstiphouts claims that the city becomes more afraid are somewhat justified. The British Security Industry Association (BSIA) reported an increase in requests for security advice in the weeks following the riots. Colin Moore, Vice Chairman of the BSIA’s Security Guarding section said:

Customers are increasingly seeking reassurance that the security measures in place are effective, and are therefore reviewing all of their security systems to further enhance the protection of staff, premises and goods.

In practise, this might mean that we will see more security products on our high streets, such as CCTV systems, road blockers, anti-vandal street furniture and fittings, anti-ram raid bollards and high-security fencing. Of course, it is important that these products are well-designed and well-placed so as not to heighten fear, but reduce it: a tricky task for urban planners. Our post on “designing out crime” explores the ways in which urban planners can balance security with civic life, and why security products don’t have to look criminal.

Street security products on ESI.info:

• Security posts and bollards
• Automatic rising bollards
• Road blockers
• Security entrance gates
• High-security fencing
• Search ESI.info for more security products

Security versus liberty

In the process of reconciling urban planning theory with urban planning practice, “events” have a knack of interfering – a point made in our post looking at this summer’s riots in the UK.

Similarly, Vancouver’s Director of City Planning, Brett Toderian, recently explained how the events of 9/11 led at the time to a familiar urban planning dilemma, writ large:

Good urbanism is about avoiding silo (or single issue) thinking, and several of us lamented the rise of security in Lower Manhattan as a “super-silo”. This has led to bunker design that turns its back to the public realm in the name of safety. Although all could understand the impulse toward such thinking in the shadow of such a devastating attack on 9/11, most of us called for design creativity in addressing security within a more holistic design program, with clever solutions that achieve many goals without sacrificing “public-ness”.

Manhattan’s response was eventually more nuanced than Toderian feared it would be, with bold and public-spirited projects like the High Line park and Times Square’s pedestrianised plazas going from strength to strength.

Still, New York’s balancing act is typical of the age-old dynamic tension between a population’s demand for security and its desire for liberty.

Secured by Design

Prescribing security measures in construction projects can, at first glance, seem to be a blunt instrument, which puts the interests of property owners and insurers over those of the public. Standardisation feels at odds with the development of human-scale environments, but it is on the agenda.

In January 2011, Andrew Stunnell, the Communities Minister and champion of the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act (SSBA), was interviewed by Wilkinson Construction Consultants. They broached the question of legislating for security in construction projects.

WCCL: The coalition are looking at ways of removing conflicting and complex approval processes, do you see the SSBA as an opportunity to incorporate Secured by Design standards into the building regulations?

AS: It’s an area we are looking at, but again needs to ensure a balanced point of view, and we are speaking to colleagues in the home office and the Association of British Insurers and Association of Chief Police Officers to establish the best way forward. The Secured by Design standards are a good model but any regulation would need to ensure that costs were proportionate and did not introduce unnecessary burdens.

Aside from the question of standardisation and bureaucracy, Secured by Design and “designing out crime” best practice is notable for the discretion that it recommends when deploying security products and features.

The recurring theme is that openness and public visibility can encourage responsible behaviour. There could well be a place for secure and strict control in certain situations, such as insurmountable and forbidding access control and roadblocking at sensitive sites. However, making public environments safe is often more to do with ensuring visibility and accountability to the wider community.

Intentional urban design

Designer and researcher, Dan Lockton, writes extensively about this on his fascinating Design with Intent blog. On the topic of urban design and public behaviour, he refers to the different ways that areas can be protected:

Flusty (1997, p. 48) classifies “five species” of “interdictory spaces—spaces designed to intercept and repel or filter would-be users”, many of which occur frequently in residential contexts as well as public spaces: stealthy space—areas which have been deliberately concealed from general view; slippery space—spaces with no apparent means of approach; crusty space—space that cannot be accessed because of obstructions; prickly space—space which cannot be occupied comfortably due to measures inhibiting walking, sitting or standing; and jittery space—space which is constantly under surveillance (or threatened surveillance).

Again, intentional design and creative use of space and exterior furniture can be more effective than more immediately obvious security measures.

So, low-level fencing and railings that are designed and arranged to ensure good through-visibility are important in keeping sight-lines clear.

Good, well-designed lighting schemes are also a common and key requirement, as are less obvious interventions like painting walls and roofs white, which makes the most of illumination and makes artificial lighting more efficient and less imposing.

Where barriers, boundaries and demarcation need to be set out, attractive contemporary street furniture, heritage post and rail, and soft landscaping – grass verges, flowerbeds, shrubs or well-pruned hedges – provide “symbolic barriers” without obscuring areas.

Innovative product design

Along the same lines of using counterintuitive design to protect and secure the public realm, the Design Against Crime Research Centre takes a particularly creative and experimental approach:

Design Against Crime (DAC) is a research initiative developed at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, the first of whose aims is to “demonstrate why ‘secure design doesn’t have to look criminal’ via practice-led design and social innovation benchmarks aimed at public space and the public realm”.

The programme’s oblique methods result in overlooked scenarios being considered and unexpected solutions coming to light:

When looking at the experience of ‘dining’, DACRC have investigated how the user’s experience of eating or drinking in crowded public spaces links to predatory abuser behaviour, to generate understanding of theft MOs within the ‘system’ of use surrounding ‘dining’ and to catalyse the design of furniture and other objects to help prevent it.

It also moves from theory and analysis of case studies to innovative product design – “anything designed against crime should not only be user-friendly, and ‘abuser-unfriendly’ but ultimately ‘fit for purpose’”. Products have included cycle racks and stands made to stop lifting, leavering, picking, unbolting and cutting, and anti-theft clips and specially designed chairs to hold bags and prevent theft in public places.

Designing on the front foot

Both radical innovation in product design and smart use of more conventional products help to improve safety and security in public spaces.

But, in a way, products are morally neutral. The same perch-bench that is specified for a neurotic reason, such as to prevent homeless people from sleeping in public places, might be selected to encourage circulation in public concourses prone to congestion.

Designing for security does not necessarily mean that architects, landscape architects and planners have to batten down the hatches and compromise their public realm ambitions. As Dan Lockton again points out, it can be an opportunity to make a positive social contribution:

One point to which Katyal repeatedly returns is the concept of architectural solutions as entities which subtly reinforce or embody social norms (desirable ones, from the point of view of law enforcement) rather than necessarily enforce them: “Even the best social codes are quite useless if it is impossible to observe whether people comply with them. Architecture, by facilitating interaction and monitoring by members of a community, permits social norms to have greater impact. In this way, the power of architecture to influence social norms can even eclipse that of law, for law faces obvious difficulties when it attempts to regulate social interaction directly” (Katyal, 2002, p. 1075).

Companies throughout the UK have been producing stunning, technologically advanced bridges for hundreds of years, from The Iron Bridge in Coalsbrookedale, to more modern constructions such as the Gateshead Millennium Bridge. Infact, you could say that the UK has been a leader in bridge construction and design since the Victorian era.

The High Level Bridge in the North East of England spans the River Tyne between Newcastle and Gateshead. It might not be the most visually attractive structure but it was the first major example of a tiered, wrought iron tied-arch or bow-string girder bridge.

Designed by Robert Stephenson and built between 1847 and 1849, the High Level Bridge was once an integral part of the London to Edinburgh railway that is known today as the East Coast Mainline. It was officially opened on 27 September 1849 by Queen Victoria.

The High Level Bridge with the Swing Bridge below.

Picture from freefoto.com.

The High Level Bridge spans 408m of the river valley, with 156m of the structure over the river itself. It is made in six 38m spans. Each span is crossed by four arched ribs with horizontal tie bars. The railway crosses the upper deck of the bridge, which rests on the arches of the ribs 34m above the high water mark. The lower deck is suspended from the ribs on wrought iron rods and has a roadway and a pedestrian walkway.

Some 70 years later, after decades of debate over the price of tolls on the High Level Bridge, the Tyne Bridge was opened by King George V. At the time of its construction, the Tyne Bridge was the longest single span bridge in the world, reaching 162m just 26m above the river level.

Tyne Bridge with views of the High Level Bridge and the Swing Bridge.

Picture from freefoto.com.

The Tyne Bridge was designed by the engineering firm Mott, Hay and Anderson, who traded until 1989 before becoming part of Mott MacDonald. The through arch design was based on the Hell’s Gate Bridge in New York. It was built by Dorman Long and Co. of Middlesbrough who later constructed Sydney Harbour Bridge based on the same design.

Mott, Hay and Anderson went on to design another structurally advanced bridge, The Forth Road Bridge, which was opened in 1964, spanning the Firth of Forth between Edinburgh and South Queensferry.

The Forth Road Bridge, Scotland.

Picture from freefoto.com.

At 2,512m in length, the Forth Road Bridge was the longest suspension bridge outside the United States, and the fourth longest suspension bridge in the world at the time of its construction. In 2001 the bridge was awarded Historic Scotland’s Category A listed structure status and in 2002 it carried its 250 millionth vehicle. Plans are currently underway for a new Forth Road Bridge after investigations into the structural integrity of the bridge showed it may need to be closed by 2020 if the current rates of deterioration continue.

A more recent example of the UK’s prowess in bridge construction is the Gateshead Millennium Bridge or the “Winking Eye.” Designed by architects Wilkinson Eyre and structural engineers Gifford, the Eye is a tilt bridge for pedestrians and cyclists.

The Gateshead Millennium Bridge.

Picture from freefoto.com.

The bridge design was picked from over 150 proposals and craned into place in November 2000. It opened to the public in September 2001 and has since become yet another landmark on the riverscape of the North East. The bridge can be tilted on large bearings by six hydraulic rams to allow boats and river traffic up to 25m tall to pass through.

It won the architects, Wilkinson Eyre, the 2002 RIBA Stirling Prize. It also won structural engineers Gifford the 2003 IStructE Supreme Award.

These are my favourite examples of brilliant bridges in the UK because they show off the engineering skills of our companies that have been passed down over centuries. I’ll leave you with a few other examples of great engineering but I’d love to see some of your favourites if I’ve missed any?

Tower Bridge, London at night.

Picture from freefoto.com.

Glenfinnan Viaduct was one of the largest constructions undertaken using concrete without reinforcement. Picture by Paddy Patterson. Wiki Commons.

Galton Bridge was the highest iron bridge in the world at the time of its construction. Picture from Wiki Commons, User Oosoom.

The Iron Bridge in Coalbrookedale was the first arch bridge in the world to be made from cast iron.

Picture from freefoto.com

Tees Newport Bridge, was the first vertical lift bridge in Britain and the largest of its type in the world at the time of its construction. Photo by John Yeadon, Wiki commons.

Forthside footbridge in Stirling was designed by Wilkinson Eyre and engineered by Gifford. Picture by Bill Harrison.

Fun trivia fact: the Forthside footbridge was opened with the help of six William Wallaces’.