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...