Interview with Stuart Mosscrop part 1

When, in 1970, Derek Walker became Chief Architect and Planning Officer at Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC Stuart Mosscrop was his first architect recruit; this despite their earlier disagreement at Derek’s practice. Stuart knew nothing about MK at the time, but agreed to meet Derek, who offered him the job of designing the new city centre. Derek also asked him to suggest more names to approach for his team. Stuart comments that: ‘until MK, the British new towns movement was not very highly regarded amongst modern architects, it was kind of second league stuff … Milton Keynes changed that because of its size’. He recommended some of his fellow students from the Architectural Association (AA) and comments on Derek’s incredible ability to spot and recruit talented practitioners. Stuart describes how his initial diagram of CMK moved from the ‘squiggly’ design in the Master Plan to an orthogonal grid. He praises the Master Plan as a ‘brilliant piece of work … absolutely second to none in the British new towns movement’, discusses his rationale for the straight grid, and explains the iterative process by which the CMK team produced the layout, using ‘comparative analysis’, a practice he learnt while working in Chicago. Stuart suggested to Derek Jamieson, Chief Engineer, that the levels of the horizontal grid roads H5 and H6 on the south and north of the city centre should be depressed, so that visitors perceive they are going up to the city centre, on the highest point; it would also reduce the level of traffic noise. This was agreed, as was the proposal to service the shopping building at first floor level.

Before Executive Management Committee (EMC) existed, approvals was gained from Fred Roche (General Manager) and Jock Campbell (Chairman), there was also a CMK steering committee. Stuart remembers that in 1972 he and Derek presented Jock and Fred with walls of huge diagrams of city centre layout, taking up the whole board room: ‘overwhelming’. So they said go ahead. Stuart notes that: ‘the genesis for that scrawl [his very first diagram] was actually two-fold: Lou Carnes’ Philadelphia study, and Colin Buchanan’s work: ‘Traffic in Towns’ …where he talked about noise, disruption and so on’. Stuart & Derek were convinced that early opening of a railway station was vital.