"Milton Keynes Past (and Future)" presentation by Derek Walker
Presentation and slide show by Derek Walker on ‘Milton Keynes Past (And Future), held at the library on the 19th November 1997 filmed by John Hemson Associates.
The film opens with credits “DEREK WALKER” followed by “MILTON KEYNES PAST (AND FUTURE), 19th November 1997”. There is a round of applause as Derek Walker walks to the front of a room of people and starts his presentation.
Throughout the film the focus is on Derek Walker and the slides that he is showing.
After his introductory remarks Derek Walker goes on to talk about how they marketed Milton Keynes; both to the existing residents and to the people they wanted to move to the area. He also talks about what life was like in the 70s and how this influenced their strategies. He continues to talk about how he first came to Milton Keynes and how his past work and where he grew up influenced him . The idea of Milton Keynes was to be a “kind of perfect suburbia … catering for the motor car but … part of that long run of garden cities”.
At 10 minutes into his presentation he talks more about how they communicated with the existing inhabitants and the importance of the landscaping. Derek Walker goes on to talk about their influences from around the world and how Milton Keynes was to be a mix of both the traditional and the contemporary.
At about 15 minutes he talks about how a fifth of the designated area was allocated to a parklands system and the importance and purpose of the grid road landscaping. He talks about the System Building for Industry.
At 20 minutes Derek Walker is talking about the problems they had with hiring contractors and how that influenced the final designs and methods of building used. He talks about the target to “build and occupy 3,000 houses a year … that’s well over 10,000 people coming into the city each year”. He continues on to talk about the landscaping techniques in central area housing.
At around 25 minutes he has moved on to Central Milton Keynes and the layout of the area and how the designs changed and ideas were rejected. He talks in particular about centre:mk and how at the time it was very unconventional. He says that they were “trying to produce for the people of the city more things that they could really cope with so that in fact … if they were coming from London they were … not missing all the things that were there”.
From 30 minutes Derek Walker talks about things that didn’t work or happen. Including the City Club and the development around Linford Wood and the “quality spaces” they envisaged and how this has affected how people use the city. He talks in detail about their plans, which were not realised, for the Town Park. He continues on to talk about the planned sculpture park from 35 minutes.
For the remainder of his presentation Derek Walker talks about the difficulty of designing a city in a democracy. He mentions Joseph Paxton and how he worked and that Derek Walker would have liked to have had people like him working on Milton Keynes. He says that Milton Keynes does not yet have its monuments, going on to give examples of great buildings and structures in other cities and the influence and impact they have had; in particular he uses the examples of Kowloon Park in Hong Kong and the Royal Armouries in Leeds and how those buildings and spaces work. He talks about the types of buildings and architecture that had been planned and that he would like to see built, such as a stadium and a performance space.
In the last five minutes he concludes by talking about what he sees the future being like and the likelihood of new developments and buildings.
A full transcript of the presentation is available on request.
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