Indecent exposure in the park ARTS

STEPHEN GARDINER

They are cutting down trees in Rotten Row. The reasons given are plausible enough: the old trees take the goodness out of the soil and spoil the prospects for the new ones just planted. It sounds a bit like life:

the old trees screened Hyde Park from the noise and ugliness of modern London and, if they have come to the end of their time, it seems a pity that the young trees are so small that they can't put up a fight with the huge hotels and so on that have sprung up all round. One can't help feeling that the cutting down of trees is a bad omen.

When the Broad Walk from Kensington to Bayswater was demolished in 1954 it seemed to anticipate, perhaps unreasonably in this case, curtains for the Park.

Nevertheless, despite everything, this Park and all the others are still with us.

13y what seems an impossible piece of luck, those magic touches of green scattered across any map of London cannot be blocked out. It is reassuring to feel that they will never change: that the leaves will come out punctually and just as clean every spring, that the grass will always be there, and that there will always be that walk (if one can face the terrible traffic jam at Hyde Park Corner) of continuous green from Bayswater to Westminster, and from Kensington to Marble Arch; that all those odd incidents happening on the way—the stables for Police horses and the network of cottages which surround them, gate houses by Decimus Burton, and Temple Lodge—are permanent fixtures; that the Nash terraces round Regent's Park will never disappear, that there will always be deer at Richmond, and that the walk along the tow-path from Teddington to Hammer- smith (past Syon and Kew) will remain one of the most perfect riverside land- scapes anywhere between here and Oxford.

One hopes that there will always be a Serpentine to reflect the moon, and a lake at Battersea to receive the boats. These are real possessions and one knows with abso- lute certainty that they cannot, like the river and the weather, be stolen from us. The developer can't snatch them away, and nor can the Public Authorities. They're Ours.

People need space: a house needs a garden and cities need parks. People must escape from the imprisonment of rooms, basements, bed-sitters and themselves in the same way that architecture needs a rest from the hardness of brickwork and stone If people's eyes are not to be hurt—it must have a complementary quota of soft sur-

faces. And London parks, like the squares and private gardens, are unique; there is nothing like them on the Continent, for instance. Their character has nothing to do with the country, either.

What is it, in fact, that makes them so special? To start with, most of them have

a lake. Then, each has its own peculiarities.

Holland Park has peacocks, rare birds and rums. St James's has the background of

N'■ estminster and the Palace. Green Park has one of the loveliest views in London from Constitution Hill—the gentle con-

tours that follow the slopes of Piccadilly, Battersea has the river and Greenwich has its village, the 'Cutty Sark', the docks and buildings by Wren and Inigo Jones. But one of the main pleasures of any park is that London is invisible and, at the same time, not very far away—the distant boom of traffic is always beautiful, the occasional spire, or some other familiar landmark, equally reassuring. It is, in fact, that illusion of endlessness-- psychologically necessary to a big city if nothing else— which is so vital. And with this one returns to Hyde Park. Is it really safe from outside invaders? No; intruders have already shattered the illusion.

There are two ways in which an area can be reduced: you can lop pieces off it, or you can build tall structures round it. and the latter method is just as effective, if not more so, as the former. Hyde Park, for instance, from certain viewpoints, has con- tracted, visually, several miles since the Hilton Hotel was built. This thirty-storey tower, rejected by the then Ler planning department but allowed on appeal by the government of the time- a classic example of visual blindness—was the beginning of something else. Once it was built there was less reason to take exception to other towers: the first case is always the test case. After that nobody cares—once the foot is in the door it can never be closed. Look at what has happened to Park Lane in fifty years—only a fragment is left of what was one of the finest terraces in London. Look at what has happened to Hyde Park in the last live.

Not long ago, certainly, it was possible to stand on the bridge over the Serpentine and see only a romantically arranged land- scape with a background of trees and the pinnacles of the Houses of Parliament and the Foreign Office. Now your view is dominated in one direction by the Hilton. those frightful flats by Walter Gropius and the Esso tower in Victoria, while in the other there is the Royal Garden Hotel and worse—arising almost on the centre line of a little Christopher Wren shelter the Lancaster building. The heavy planting that thickens round the edge of the Park no longer shelters us from London, al- though, like a belt of insulation, it still does its best with what has now become an intolerable roar of traffic. But with towers it hasn't a hope. They mark out the boundary like flag poles, but they are poles with eyes and they destroy the privacy of the Park as well.

And now the army is watching you: the new barracks has just shot up thirty-odd storeys (one hopes there will be no more

identical layers) of grim concrete and strip windows and the Park again reduces in size. This building. by Sir Basil Spence and Partners, is probably the tallest of the lot, and certainly the most prominent. It can be seen from anywhere in Hyde Park and the cutting down of the trees in Rotten Row makes it all the more exposed.

It is an example, moreover, of what is now called industrial melanism. This means, very briefly, that dirt and soot have brought their o‘‘n brand of life and cam- ouflage to cities: white and ■ellow butter- flies, for example, die out because they are too obvious and people, presumably sur- vive better in dark suits and shirts. Equally. buildings like this new barracks and the Hayward Gallery are built dirty: the excuse for such gloomy structures can only be that they need no maintenance.

But is this really sufficient justification? The stucco round Regent's Park (the per- fect answer to an urban scene) can he freshened up very easily and economically with a wash now and again. And why a tower anyway? It could have been laid horizontally across all those neo-Corbusier outbuildings with just as good effect. Any- way, the Fine Art Commission claims to be opposed to tall buildings. So why this one, now, designed by a member of that Commission and the worst offender on what is surely the worst possible site?