Interview with David Hartley
David talks about his early life and inspiration to study architecture at Manchester University, where he met Derek Walker while researching. In 1972, Derek invited him to join the Milton Keynes team, initially to design Woughton Marina, ‘which didn’t happen’. He then joined the CMK team, initially working with Ken Baker on road layouts, plot sizes and design and development of the overall ‘look’. Detailed topics discussed in the interview are the reasons for the plot sizes, the design of special pre-cast paving slabs using granite chippings, the naming of boulevards; also the design of porte-cochères, which house a lot of engineering equipment to provide hidden access to services for buildings. When David joined the Shopping Building team he worked with Tony Southard on landscaping and plant irrigation, ‘and on Queen’s Court and City Square, which I designed and which is no longer’. He describes how the design of Queen’s Court links to the geometry of sunrises and sunsets.
When the CMK team split, David became project architect for the railway station, working with British Rail, who designed the operational side, while he worked on the square and buildings. He describes how initial plans for a single storey building developed into a much larger development including offices. He notes that Station Square was in a valley which had to be filled in, involving major engineering work.
After fifteen years at the Corporation, David joined Conran Roche in 1987 and later set up his own practice. In the following years he was asked to do various projects connected with Milton Keynes. In particular, he was asked to join Stuart Mosscrop and John Seed in work for English Partnerships (EP), reviewing how CMK should develop, for example considering the site for the theatre and how the public could be persuaded to use Midsummer Boulevard more. David disagrees with David Lock’s view that all the infrastructure should remain as originally planned: ‘I don’t think anything’s sacrosanct… Cities have to evolve’. He notes he is pleased to see some ‘massive tower blocks’ being built, like any successful city. David says: ‘I felt privileged to work on the City Centre … it was a unique project for its time’. He praises the visionary architects who drove the whole MK project ‘…and Jock Campbell… who could fix anything and himself was a visionary’. It’s successful in his opinion because: ‘There is space and there’s quality of finishes which the general public, although they may not understand it, they know they like … It looks a place of quality’.
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