Interview with Ken Baker
On arrival in the CMK architects team, in 1970, Ken was asked to look at potential road layouts. As an architect rather than an engineer, he was determined to: ‘make the best road layouts that we can … that is why there is a degree of architectural intent in the infrastructure’. He discusses in detail the decisions such as the choice of quality granite for kerbs; the design of paving slabs; the innovation of block-laying concrete bricks for car parking areas; the use of porte-cochères for crossing places and the design of shallow underpasses.
Ken describes the logic behind the orthogonal grid: ‘The initial ideas were that you had the grid … a two and a half grid square basis plus a grid for what was to become Campbell Park’. He describes the hierarchy of boulevards, streets and gates, and the modelling of alternative car parking layouts before the final agreement on perimeter car parking. They discuss the distance between buildings, which is sometimes criticised, and attitudes to cars & pedestrians. Ken comments on aspects of the Shopping Building: ‘the architecture is the structure’; the proportions are classic golden sections; it was a ‘High Street’ for a new town, so its layout was different from other centres. He praises Middleton Hall as a great ‘democratic space’; he talks of the flat roof, the ‘clear storey light’, the servicing at first floor level and the lack of doors to make the building a public walkway across the centre. He notes that Thomas Heatherwick has praised the Centre as ‘unique in itself’ in an EDAW study.
He talks of the working atmosphere in the CMK team, praising Derek Walker for making things happen and wanting ‘the best in the world’, but he says: ‘it was a punishing working regime’. They discuss other aspects of the centre: the railway station decision, and the difficulty in establishing office developments at this time due to government restrictions. He was involved as part of the ‘hole in the wall’ team, in the design of the Central Business District (CBX), following an exploratory trip to the USA to visit MXDs (mixed developments) there. Asked what he is most proud of in CMK, he says: ‘The fact they built it … I’m as staggered as anyone that they built it from one end to the other…. including the station’.
No Comments
Add a comment about this page