Interview with Derek Walker (part 1)
Derek Walker describes how he was ‘semi-headhunted’ in 1970 for the post of Chief Architect for Milton Keynes, his interview with Jock Campbell and his reasons for accepting: ‘the project, to me, seemed so fantastic and the opportunity so good that you could never get it in private practice’. He comments on the ‘sea change’ in MKDC general management at that point when Fred Roche was appointed. Derek chose Stuart Mosscrop as head of design team for CMK because he was tough: ‘… if you’re going to be talking ‘Centre’ … it’s going to be, in a sense, the most aggressively criticised project’. In the early days he needed to be on top of all the many architectural projects, one of his main concerns being landscape: ‘I think if I’m ever remembered for anything in Milton Keynes it’s talking the Board into allocating 20% of the land for public parkland and linkage elements.’
Derek then discusses the CMK template: a formal orthogonal grid, with plenty of parking (18,000 spaces initially) close to the ground. Their vision was that the city should have ‘desire lines artistically through it … provided by the landscape’ and should be about ease of movement’. The CMK infrastructure was set up following the template: ‘we established the median strips, the planting, the secondary tree planting, the lowered car parks, everything was organised so that it could not be brutalised in any way.’ He talks of the reasoning for the large size of the shopping building, and persuading Commerce Department of its economic feasibility.
The final design of the shopping building (covered streets, in daylight, and with no doors) went against all the current ‘sacred cows’ of shopping centre design, in the UK and abroad. But once John Lewis had agreed to come to CMK : ‘… we knew the Shopping Building would be successful.’ In Derek’s opinion, CMK is now becoming an urban centre; but he expresses strong views against the decision to put doors on the shopping building: ‘That was absolutely the end … those are pedestrian streets… never designed for a door.’ At the end of CD1 Derek comments on the strength of the Board of the Development Corporation, his admiration for Jock Campbell, and the advantages of having a young team for MK, with ‘unbridled enthusiasm and bravery’.
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