Forgotten Spaces
‘I’m up and down the Westway, in an’ out the lights. What a great traffic system - it’s so bright I can’t think of a better way to spend the night Then speeding around underneath the yellow lights’
London's Burning, Strummer/Jones 1979
The overlap of water, fixed rail and automotive transport at Royal Oak in West London is at once one of the most exhilarating and neglected urban compositions in Central London.
By its own merits the mega structure of the A40 Westway, opened in July 1970, must be one of the more beautiful additions to London in the 20th century; however as The Clash sardonically alluded the form is by no means matched by the mundane nature of most people’s experience of it and its immediate environment.
This is all the more extraordinary given the location of this formal nexus; between the economically self-assured neighbourhoods of Notting Hill and Maida Vale – an area with amongst the highest property values in the UK.
Starting at the edge of the Paddington Basin Development and ending at the Trellick Tower, this proposal identifies 8 sites suitable for the development of community, private or commercial interventions. The development of all the sites is considered as one single operation where constraints on one site can be alleviated by the development of an adjacent site.
Despite the obvious shortcomings of land below and adjacent to the viaduct, there are opportunities for useful concentrations of built volume intermingled with the infrastructure, and if these sites can be exploited to their maximum potential – perhaps requiring the quid pro quo development of community and landscape interventions - new concentrations of activity could be inserted.
The proposal transforms the study area into useful and robust piece of city that takes full advantage of the glamorous and beautiful spaces provided by the three transport routes while imbuing them with a variegated and rich set of new functions.
