URBAN BLIGHT
MATURE TREES CUT DOWN & KNIGHTSBRIDGE DARKENED!
Ebury Street and Cundy Street, London,
SW1
Johnson House is about to be pulled down, no great loss [a
utilitarian but ugly building], it will be replaced by flats with an adequately
designed, modernist façade overlooking Ebury Square, and a dismal facade on
Ebury Street – an uninspired attempt to fit in with the terraced houses and TODAY THEY ARE CUTTING DOWN SEVEN MATURE
TREES.
Alas, I became aware of this new urban blight too late, after
Westminster Council had granted
planning permission. The existing space between the building line and the
pavement is to be gobbled up, puny new trees are to be planted on the pavement.
It is despairing how the planners, the architects and the developer
do not ‘get it’ and have come up with yet another banal solution - and boy, are
there a lot of these in London!
No.1 Hyde Park, Knightsbridge
Many a Londoner watched in horror while these buildings were
built and overwhelmed their surroundings – now they are complete, you can judge
for yourself.
No. 1. Hyde Park has
fetched record prices for its apartments but it is an urban blight. Qatari investors or the Candy Brothers cannot
be blamed nor, indeed, Richard Rogers, he is, after all, a world-renowned architect
of talent. The culprit is Kensington & Chelsea
Council for allowing buildings to be erected which need double the land
area to ‘breathe’ and for substituting a pleasant central entrance into Hyde Park for a slip entrance [which is easy to miss], a
dark and dingy passage leading to the park.
When in 
Liwan, rue 
