Master Bui I der One of the early decisions of
the Board was appointing Frederick Gibberd to draw up the master plan of the new town. During the early Thirties Gibberd had belonged io the revolution- ary group known as MARS—the Modern Archi- tecture Research Society—a coterie of about thirty young men, most of them now famous, Who set themselves to overthrow the architectural Establishment. The coterie, which included Ralph Tubbs, Maxwell Fry, Jim Cadbury-Brown and F. R. S. Yorke, agreed never to put up a Georgian or Tudor building, even though they were des- perate for work. At the time most of them, in- cluding Gibberd, usually were desperate for work. Gibberd has never forgotten the misery of being an unsuccessful architect: 'A writer, you see, can always write, even if nobody publishes him, and a sculptor can sculpt. But an architect cannot design in a vacuum.' At Silkin's invitation, Gibberd had already produced preliminary sketches, mostly aimed at showing where the best site for the town would be. Silkin had sent for him in 1946 and explained that the Government was toying with the idea of placing a new town near the Essex/Hertford- shire border. It wanted an architect to visit the area and make drawings working out (with the help of the appropriate government depart- ments) the best way to make use of existing trans- port and agriculture, and of the natural beauty of the area. Gibberd, with his known interest in town planning, seemed a good man for the job, and was to be paid a fee of £1,000. Gibberd accepted the idea with enthusiasm and went down to live for about six weeks on the site. He went over the whole area on foot, mark- ing off every pond and stream, building, field and copse, in detail. As he got to know the district well he noticed the especial beauty of the valley which ran down the north-west corner of the area and then turned at right angles and passed in towards the centre. He thought that any town built on the site should respect and preserve this. The recommendations of the Ministry of Agri- culture about what was and was not good agri- cultural land tended, he discovered, to determine the outline of the site for him; and it seemed a perfect site, partly because the natural landscape (green and undulating, studded with copses grown to house the Arkwright pheasants), though beautiful, was not so beautiful that it seemed a sin to touch it.
Since Gibberd had already put in so much work on the site, it seemed natural for the Board of the Harlow Development Corporation to ask him to draw up the master plan for the town. His original enthusiasm for designing buildings had long since given way to a longing to design them in appropriate settings. Sick of doing buildings in surroundings that were all wrong, he had acquired a passion for imaginative landscape, and a conviction that good architecture changes people's lives for the better. 'You can influence people with your architecture provided there is enough of it'; an imaginative modern building here and there, in his experience, evokes little but abuse and contempt from people with no knowledge of architecture or art; but if they live in a whole town of it as they do in Harlow, seeing it every day, gradually they come to enjoy the effect and sympathise with what the architect is trying to do. Any' planner working on a clean slate can
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begin by doing the obvious. He can make life convenient for the town's inhabitants in a way it can never be in old, congested towns. There can be plenty of car parks and good wide roads. People's houses can be within easy reach of the places where they work, shopping centres can be easy to get to, infants' schools can be zoned so that little children do not have to cross any dangerous roads, and places for children to play can be plentiful, exciting and safe. But Gibberd was worried about the overwhelming feeling of newness which was bound to permeate any town built almost entirely within a period of twenty years or so, a raw, institutional atmosphere• which would destroy all sense of homeliness. It was important to preserve old landmarks among the new streets. `Every possible use,' he instructed the Corporation Board, 'must be made of exist- ing buildings, villages, trees and place-names to give a feeling of continuity with the past.' Gibberd also abhorred the waste of land in suburban development, and believed that Harlow' ought to have a much higher housing density than had been fashionable for years. He wanted industry placed in two areas instead of one s° that, in theory at least, no one would have to travel right across the town to work. Above all he wanted to bring farmland right into the town. CI remembered my own youth in Coventry and Birmingham where it was a whole day's excur- sion to get to the country'; and 'I didn't want any of these children to grow up without having seen a cow.') He suggested preserving wedges °I agricultural land up to the edges of the town centre, and this was how the town eventually took shape, with large areas of parkland (often including the schools among them) between the housing areas.
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