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We haven't had much about or from the ITC (Independent Transport Commission) on this forum. Maybe it's work too academic, and at times incomprehensible, and so rather tedious.

Here's something a bit more provocative - intentionally so. There was a debate on 31 October at the ITC, on "good design of our transport infrastructure", featuring Transport Minister The Rt Hon John Hayes MP. There will be a report on the ITC site in due course, but the text of the minister's speech is on the DfT site (https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-journey-to-beauty).

The Architects' Journal reported it thus (https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/10014431.article?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=AJ_EditorialNewsletters.Reg:%20Send%20-%20Daily%20bulletin&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiT0dObU5qUXpaREUwTURBNCIsInQiOiI4TmdrOWh1SURycEhYeDVLcW5QVDhPOGdodHg0ODJ0MEs4NWV3Q1JxdGJcL2ZQZDdIT0NYZmpFOW5BZm5CeFlhNHdzdTBPT0ZYelQ1QzQ0cFprbEo5bXVvcjJjY3h3cXY4RWVLOHZpb1dnWFU9In0%3D):


"Huge concrete slabs"? Where's he been for the last thirty years? What strikes me about recent architecture, including those transport structures that get architected, is glass, steel, glass, tall atria, and even more glass.

I agree with you Stuving, that there is lots of glass in most of today's designs. But I also agree with the minister, that these modern designs (despite the fact they don't use as much concrete as he suggests) are massive structures which share no relationship to their older neighbours. For me, the 'neighbours' bit is key; I actually like some of the glass and steel designs when they are stand-alone structures (eg. at brand new stations) but sticking a tall glass extension on a traditional station (or, worse, demolishing all or part of the old structure to build the new one) tends to detract from the older building.

Unlike the minister, I wouldn't say Kings Cross' new concourse is "recognisably spawned from its parent", but they seem to have got away with it because it is on the side and not in-your-face, allowing the orriginal frontage to stand out.

The minister also mentions new trains at one point in his speech. Such a shame that Hitachi hadn't embraced European door technology at the time the AT300 was designed, so that the new intercity trains for the GWML and ECML will have untidy pocket doors rather than much-neater plug-doors. Pocket doors supposedly open/close faster than plug doors, so make sense for short-distance stoppers (I call the passenger doors on the likes of class 150s and 376s 'metro sliding doors' for this reason), but should have no place on express stock.

Not sure where the "The Prince of Wales foundation for Building Community has found that 84% of those asked want new buildings to reflect historic form, style and materials" quote comes from, but the traditional design won (https://kenilworthstation.wordpress.com/2014/11/24/design-of-new-kenilworth-rail-station-revealed-after-public-vote/) when the design of the new kellingworth railway station was put to a public consultation.

Regarding pocket versus plug doors. The Japanese use them on all their high speed stock so I think they know a thing or two about them. Function should come ahead of form in this area of train design. Pocket doors are quicker, have simpler mechanisms which are easier to maintain, and can be larger in single leaf form.

And on long distance stock where the doors are at each end with no central doors, if they slide behind a toilet cubicle or luggage rack, they don't really impact on the passenger space or window spacing in the way they do on the 1st generation sprinter models, particularly the 150's

That is probably so, but we are talking about aesthetics here, and plug-doors are neater and provide a higher-quality look to the outside of a train.

The trouble is on the IEPs/Class 80X/AT300/whatever the pockets are beside a row of seats. As a result there is no window and the seats have no armrests because of the reduced internal width of the coach.

High quality design...  (Sounds of raspberries being blown off-stage...!)

If you are talking about aesthetics, having seen a pair of 801's in Bristol TM last week, I'd be more visually offended by the clutter along the roofline, below the solebar and at the corridor connections. Unless there are some cosmetic bits missing.

Good point, that is another problem with them.

I didn't think there were any 801s yet (I think so far there's an 800/1, which is the 9-car set with Virgin branding, and several class 800 5-car set, but I might be wrong). I don't think there is any electrification at Temple Meads yet either, so an 801 (if they even exist yet) would be limited to a rather low speed and thus very unlikely to be seen there. From photos of the 800s (I've not seen one in the flesh yet) I think I see what you mean about the join between the coaches on the new trains though, there seems to be a lot more cables strung between the coaches (certainly more in plain sight) than a mark 3 set.

Two points:

1. During my time working on LUL tunnel cooling, I saw the aerodynamic drag figures for tube stock of various types. Those with flush doors had half that of stock with pocket doors. In tunnels both were doubled. Drag goes up with the square of the velocity so above 100mph, it becomes a serious energy consumer. I'm surprised (or perhaps not) that the new GW stock does not seem to be optimised in this respect. With modelling, the life costs (and Carbon emission) are easily computed and are phenomenal when capitalised over 40 years.

2. The architecture complained about by the Minister seems to have been the post-war concrete bunker brutalism, typified by Megastructures, quite out of scale with the individual. You can see bits of this on London's South Bank. Some, such as Birmingham NS, is now succumbing to the wrecking ball.  21st Century architecture, hemmed in by environmental considerations and regulation is generally better, with respect for space and light and allows co-existence with contrasting older structures. Thus a new Euston could quite happily co-exist with a rebuilt arch, as Reading copes with the 1865 Italianate station building and clock and Manchester Victoria with its new (but failing) roof. The British Museum's new court is another example.

What we do need is more emphasis on customer amenity, for example more, but modern, platform awnings and even an overall roof for larger stations (as at Leeds), the glaring omission at Reading. When one thinks of what is spent on disabled access and for how few....

OTC

No doubt cost plays a huge part but the architectural orthodoxy seems to be that new additions/extensions/adaptations MUST be in a strikingly different design to what was their before so that the original architecture is not compromised by blending something new in  with the old. (ie so you can see what is new and what is old) 

I make no comment as to whether this is a good idea or not in general because it will depend on the circumstances, but the planners do seem to take it to a stupid degree.  For example, I live in a road of unremarkable 1950's pebble-dashed 3 bed semis with no architectural merit (but in Bath so our planners are prissy to say the least).  We are the only house that has not (yet) added an extension onto the side.  The front wall of every extension is set back by about 8 inches from the front wall of the original house for no reason other than the insistence of the planners that the line between the original and extension must be visible.  It makes the extensions look "tacked on" and spoils the appearance of the buildings, and it creates difficulties with the roof line (which have been solved in different ways none of them very satisfactory) .  But the planners deem that a house that looks like "small house + extension" is better than a house that just looks like "big house"

Here's another thing. It's not news (though Historic England has just had a pop at it), but it is to be sited in front of Paddington station - if you call the H+C entrance a front (it's for the Post Office site).

From Dezeen (http://www.dezeen.com/2016/07/18/renzo-piano-paddington-pole-skyscraper-14-storey-cube-london/):


It's not what attracted John Hayes's invective, but it's still architects designing for other architects, isn't it?

Quote "to a new Bakerloo line tube station."

Is Paddington getting a new Bakerloo tube station?

"....entrance" is missing

I am probably being very naive, but I thought that St Mary's Hospital occupies the site where 'The Cube' is shown?

The hospital's just behind, and I think is using a bit of space - and the front door - of the empty Royal Mail building. And they have a redevelopment plan for their site,too.

There is no H&C entrance near this proposed cube, surely?   The new H&C entrance is a couple of hundred yards away towards Bishops Bridge.

Apart from being a near neighbour, it isn't really transport infrastructure at all.  Ground floor entrances to tube stations below modern blocks don't really count do they, there are dozens of fairly anonymous tube entrances all over central London.

Paul

I was thinking of the exit at the London Street end of the taxi rank - if it's still there. The developers of this cube appear to want to open up the (as of now) main entrance to London Street, but again I don't know if that's part of the plan for the station already.

New entrance, but I think the plan is that they rebuild the concourse as part of the project. 

Ah right, I see what you mean now, basically at the east end of the side extension for the new rank.  Google street view doesn't show that open, but may be well out of date.

The area of the render between the station and the new building seems to ignore the level change, isn't the station approach ramp a good few metres below London St level as it gets down to the start of the concourse?   I wonder if they can remove the need for road vehicles to use that ramp as they do now...

Paul

The most recent Google Streetview was for Jun2016. The Bakerloo station was closed for several months for maintenance but is now open again.

That's an interesting point. There is something to be said for making clear which parts are original, but I've yet to see it done in a way that is sympathetic to the original structures. Therefore, I think I would in many cases tend towards recording any alterations in great detail so that interested parties could find out what is original and then building in a similar style to the original. Perhaps new parts built to the same style but with slightly different materials would work; at Shrewsbury I seem to recall that an alternative design for the new waiting room at Shrewbury (not my pic) (https://www.flickr.com/photos/9361089@N08/16533294806/) would have used blue bricks, which may or may not have worked with the red brick of the existing station (what they ended up building certainly doesn't seem to work from the photos I've managed to find, although I've not seen it in person). In that case I objected to the new waiting room planned not just on the grounds of aesthetics but also because it appeared to offer less space than the previous one (again not my pic) (https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisbell50000/5264262366/), which itself wasn't big enough, and would be draughty with pepole using the lift and walking through the waiting room to reach the platform. The old Shrewsbury waiting room shows another way of building something (presumably) non-original and making it stand out from the original buidling. The colour doesn't work, but I think if that had been a dark, varnished, wood it may have looked in-keeping and yet still have been distingishable from the rest of the station.

This was the first thing that occurred to me in terms of pocket vs flush doors. It's nice to see it confirmed by someone who actually knows! I suppose hinged doors and concertina doors would be other forms of flush doors. Not sure if I've ever seen concertina doors on a train but I can't think why not, when they're very common on buses.

Class 142s and 143s have concertina doors - but then again they are just buses on rails!

As it's on topic here - anyone worked out what sort of doors are being fitted to Scotrail's HSTs? It's not mentioned in the quote on the Scotrail HST topic.

Question here as it's doors we're talking about!

And FGW/GWR have/had notices above the door windows on the HST saying something along the lines of please close the window which (by reducing drag) saves the environment.

they are pretty unrealiable on those classes.

It has just been announced that the Mayor will not, after all, be calling in the application to build the Cube. So presumably shovels are being sharpened right now.