Tomorrow's landscape: Sylvia Crowe + the brutalist public spaces of the Cumberland Basin Road Scheme

Plans are afoot to regenerate the 'Western Harbour' area of Bristol with a new road layout which will supposedly improve matters for drivers and local residents alike. We've been here before: the Cumberland Basin Road Scheme of the 1960s hired the pre-eminent landscape designer of the era, Dame Sylvia Crowe, to create a public piazza brimming with modernist optimism, and yet within a decade or so we ended up with reviled public spaces described as "an apalling eyesore".

In this video I look back at the '60s plans, how and why reality turned out differently, and ponder whether the 'Western Harbour' scheme can do better.

0:00 Intro
2:47 The Cumberland Basin Road Scheme is horrible... right?
3:44 Reality warping staircases
4:22 The 'spomenik' bench
5:18 Swing bridge control tower
7:14 Dame Sylvia Crowe
11:12 Motion, transition and liminal landscapes
14:09 Cumberland Piazza: design vs reality
20:02 The need for a road
22:12 Swing bridge in action
23:54 Graffiti, skaters, outcasts and exiles
27:03 Outro

Sources, credits, transcript: https://pedestriandiversions.github.i...