weekFAN46_071114

plymouth AfTeR LiFe
there is a nice city center. I am sorry but I can't keep my hands off it. this peace of urban structure just attracts me.
we'll even if it wouldn't there is no way on e can escape. last week we went to the swimming pool and I discovered a whole new world. its what I call here "plymouth after life".
it is some kind of secondary structure that serves the main streets in the city center. I discovered the space earlier on the map as I draw the sketch with all the parking facilities, but this time I experienced it, not only by going into, rather by navigating trough a really complex structure of connections.
it is mainly about parking spaces. the blocks in the city center are used as parking spaces. very often the courts are filled with a multi story parking. these parkings then are usally connected to a larger retail unit via a elevated walkway. there are secondary connections where visitors can sneak into other areas of the city center.
it can be looked at as a backdoor of the city center. as described earlier the center of plymouth acts as a main attractor as all the shops are located here. lots of people travel here from all over the wider area. mainly they travel by car so they have to park somewhere. and this is not anywhere, this is actually in the heart of the heart, in the center of the block. this means that the visitors/shoppers experience this piece of urban structure from the inside out.
there is from this sied no point in having this large scale axis thing in the master plan as non of those visitors experience it.

I tried to find a path trough those spaces and actually found more or less a route trough from east to west. cheque the map... some impressions will follow.
the amazing thing is, that from those top floors of the multi story parkings one has a beautiful view on plymouth.

weekFAN45_071108

backside





plymouth parking lots
as a backup for all the shops in the city center there need to be backup space to host service utilities. in this case the major service space is occupied by car parking facilities.
as the shopping area is isolated from the rest of the city this causes a lot of traffic as people have to travel in and back. this is already very well known. there is enough books and studies about the products of modernists, functional citys and its isolation of functions.
from this perspective the plymouth city center is quite a good study object as is represents exactly this.
back to the parking space, the planners have basically put parking space every where. all the blocks courts have been filled with multi story car parkings. the car parks share the space only with the lorries that supply the shops from the backside.
the blocks work therefor from the inside outwards onto the "pedestrianized" streets.
the planners obvious task to hide all the service facilities to create the ultimate shopping experience seems to bee successful.
the idea seems to be that the city serves it self from the inside out without having a clue how to achieve this. its especially surprising interpretation of the masterplan. the whole concept of the plan is to create grand streets and main axis to establish plymouth as an great city. this demands that the visitor [if not user] experiences the grandez. this would include entering into and exit out of trough those streets to experience the layout.
but with the current setting exactly this is not possible. all those people enter the center trough the backdoor. sneak in trough a gap and stumble out trough the fire escape. and most of all surprising to me is the fact that all those visitors come in along the lorrys and goods the planners wanted to separate from the shopping experience. in the current layout they are the first and last thing the shoppers see while using the shopping center.

just as a note here. there seems to be a similar patter used by planners wile planning the residential areas. plymouth was quickly rebuilt after the ware. this resulted in one type of building. its mainly terrace housing. the rows are arranged to form a simple block [kind of, its actually not a proper block, but could be read as one...]. so the rows stand back to back [back = private garden]. then they run a really narrow street trough, between the lots. this road is not articulated so one normally does not go in there [usually there is just rubbish and dumped stuff...] in fact this becomes a secondary private [a defined user group] access.
within the urban structure, this strange area of not defined level of privacy creates an uncertainty wile navigating the space and leaves people feel uncomfortable. especially because here in the uk the planners usually try to establish very strict boundaries.