Discovering the Landscape #23: New Towns, Landscape and Gordon Patterson

<<<<<<Guest post written by Penny Beckett, Chair of FOLAR

MERL is to host FOLAR’s third AGM and Study Session: New Towns, Landscape and Gordon Patterson – Celebrating mid 20C Design on Saturday 19 March 2016. MERL staff will mount an exhibition of related New Town material selected from the Landscape Institute’s archive and from other collections held at MERL, including the CPRE and Land Settlement archives.

The theme of the afternoon study session (and exhibition), is to shed light on various aspects of twentieth century New Town design and planning and explore how the ideas generated last century can help inform the designs of such new settlements in the 21st Century.

Click here for more info & to book.

Boys fishing on the lake at Stevenage Town Gardens. Copyright HALS.

FOLAR has an impressive line up of speakers:

Elain Harwood: Housing, Traffic and Landscape – detailed urban planning in the New Towns.

Senior architectural advisor at Heritage England (HE), Elain is responsible for post war research and listing programme and has been an active member of the Twentieth Century Society for many years. Her most recent book Space, Hope & Brutalism; English Architecture 1945-1975, was published by Yale University Press in 2015, and she is currently working on a book for HE about English New Towns.

Radburn planning at Brontë Paths, Stevenage, 1962. Image Elain Harwood — Radburn planning at Brontë Paths, Stevenage, 1962. Image: Elain Harwood

Tom Turner: Landscape planning for London and the New Towns in the 1940s (talk and video).

A landscape architect and garden historian, for many years Tom taught at the University of Greenwich. He is a firm believer in the need for open and vigorous debate on all aspects of landscape architecture and garden design. In 1998 he launched www.gardenvisit.com and in 2015, with Robert Holden, he launched the website of the Landscape Architects Association to promote the profession’s capabilities. Tom’s presentation will include a short film, drawing on his books, Landscape planning, 1987, and City as landscape, 1996, and making a recommendation for a landscape urbanism approach to the design of new towns in the 21st century.

London’s Green Belt and proposed location of New Towns. Image: Tom Turner

Oliver Rock: Landscape without Boundaries.

Rock is a landscape architect with HTA Landscape Design practice. In 2011, the practice won the Landscape Institute’s Heritage & Conservation Award for their restoration of Stevenage Town Gardens.

View of Lake, Stevenage Town Gardens, c. 1960. Copyright HALS.

These gardens were originally designed (1959-61) by Gordon Patterson. As the award citation puts it, HTA’s design ‘captures some of the optimism and civic spirit of the original (design) while ensuring the gardens remain relevant today’. Oliver will also be talking about the practice’s current restoration of Hemel Water Gardens, a scheme originally designed by Geoffrey Jellicoe.

Restored lake, Stevenage Town Gardens, 2011. Copyright Tim Crocker.

FOLAR hopes that Gordon Patterson, for many years the landscape architect for Stevenage New Town will be able to join us. His archive is one of the latest additions to the Landscape Institute’s collections at MERL.

From the Land Settlement Association Archives at MERL. CR_3LSA_PH1_A_15_1 — From the Land Settlement Association Archives at MERL. (CR_3LSA_PH1_A_15_1)

Lastly, Caroline Gould, the University’s deputy archivist will be talking about the New Town related material from other special collections held at MERL, including the CPRE and Land Settlement archives.

For further details and to book for the FOLAR study session and exhibition email: info@folar.uk or click here. Tickets for the FOLAR study session and exhibition: £10. Bookings are limited so please book early.