Piccadilly Circus Plans

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31772, 31 August 1968, Page 5

Piccadilly Circus Plans

(From

MARGARET JONES

in London)

It is a paradise and a prison, a cocoon and a giant womb, a conservatory for uncontaminated humans, a treeless, grassless marvel with oxygen piped in, a birth-to-death adventure conducted under glass, a never-set-foot-on-the* pavement wonderland with people raised up in glass cages looking down on the swirling traffic, and wondering how men and machines ever cohabited.

It is the pattern of all our living tomorrow—as foreshadowed in a scheme for the rebuilding of Piccadilly Circus, the spindle on which London revolves.

“Thank God I shall be dead before this comes to pass," an old gentleman from Eastbourne wrote in the visitors’ book.

“A shrine to the moving God,” someone else said enigmatically. “A terminus for troglodytes.”

“I prefer today, it is ugly and human, to tomorrow, which is ugly and inhuman.” “It is too frightening, there is no place there for people.” Popular Vote The city fathers, tired of being accused of foisting revolutionary schemes on the plebs, are submitting the plans for “Piccadilly Tomorrow,” to an informal popular vote in a marvellous exhibition at the Circus itself. The exhibition is so atmospheric. however, it hardly plays fair. It ardently seduces or actively repels, according to your age and temperament, subtle drum-beats stroke the nerves and stir the blood slowly (“Oh, God, why the distant drums, are they to stop us thinking?” one visitor moaned), and psychedelic coloured slides melt one into another above the crowd’s head. The rest is mostly darkness, except for the spots of light on the models.

Cost Put At s6oni

“See, you can dine out in the arcades, under the stars yet protected by glass,” said one of the scholarly guides provided for the public’s instruction. “It will be like

an over-sixty visitor snorted, regarding the city of the future with a sceptical eye.

The scheme to rebuild Piccadilly Circus, at a cost of about $6O million over a period of seven to eight years, is still only tentative. Massive public disapproval could kill it, or it could die a natural death as six other schemes over the last 16 years have done.

Nevertheless, the Piccadilly scheme looms far beyond the [boundaries of London. If the experiment is tried, it is going to affect the future development of every major city in the world, from Sydney to San Francisco, Saigon or Santiago. It is staggeringly important because it is the first serious practical, large-scale attempt to deal with the great natural and man-made factors influencing present-day urban conurbations—traffic density and movement; atmosphere pollution; the effects of the weather on man and buildings. i Traffic Below : The “Piccadilly Tomorrow” scheme, worked out by the Greater London Council, Westminster City Council and private developers, deals with this in two quite simple ways: It turns the streets over to the motor-car, and raises man up 25 feet above the roaring traffic, on continuous decking supported by pillarsAnd it protects him from smog, rain and snow—though not, it is hoped, from sunshine—by turning these decks into high-vaulted arcades with soaring glass roofs, air-condi-tioned, rather like giant, glittering conservatories for human flowers.

These high-rise arcades will house three of four storeys of shops, offices, galleries, or restaurants. There is optimistic talk of outdoor heaven . . .”

‘Or like a luxurious gaol,”

dining in palm court cafes, with the moon glinting down through the high glass roof.

The Piccadilly arcades will curve down Regent Street towards Oxford Circus, but these are only the forerunners of a whole network of elevated platforms winding all over London, so that pedestrians may walk for miles above their city without ever seeing or smelling a motorcar. By 1990, it is estimated these snaking walkways will stretch from Charing Cross to Oxford Circus and from Parliament Square to Covent Garden and the Aldwych. Perpetual Summer Pedestrians .in this trafficless paradise will also walk dry, on footpaths that have never known the hiss of rain, in a temperature unaffected by the ranging elements outside. It will be perpetual summer under the great glass roofs, no matter what the season. And the pedestrian will not even have to face the weather when his shopping is finished and he is ready to go home. He will descend on escalators to a tube station underground to catch his train. Only wljen he disgorges at his distant suburb will he feel the rude breath of the wind. Ungrateful as it seems, the idea of the hygienic and halcyon cocooned existence fills some people with revulsion. The conservatives find it too radical, the radicals think it is a sterile sort of hell. There are also, of course, the sentimentalists, who like Piccadilly Circus the way it is: dirty, sleazy, garish, whorish, raddled, but full of character and vitality. "Absolutely ruins a place known and loved the world over,” one dissenter wrote about the new scheme in the “Comments" book.

As every Australian who has been to London knows, the Circus is a marvellous

place to wander about. One of the world’s great meeting places, it suggests a sort of cheerful depravity, without exhibiting any of the heartsinking vice of its American counterpart, Times Square (full these days of narcotics addicts, male prostitutes in full make-up and sado-maso-chists in black leather, hung about with chains).

The Circus really hasn't changed much in years. The big neons still flash out the Cafe Royal—-where poor Wilde waited long and patiently for Lord Alfred Douglas still endures genteely, the street vendors sell flags, postcards and buttons which proclaim “I- was once a virgin," or “Love is lovely, war is ugly." Hippy Colony There are a few swinging London touches. The space round Eros has been taken over almost exclusively by a largish hippy colony—young men and girls who squat on the steps all day, expressionless and mute, prepared to wait for ever for enlightenment Across the way at the shop called I was Lord Kitchener’s Valet, you can buy Union Jack umbrellas (the latest ingenious way of making mock of the flag), a poster of a hippy declaring “I’m Backing Britain,” another poster of the Prime Minister designed to be defaced, and a newspaper which proclaims in a banner head: “Duke of Edinburgh loses wife at roulette table.” 30-Storey Tower The new Piccadilly Circus very properly retains the brash, vital vulgarity .which is the chief charm of the old. It is dominated by a slender 30-storey tower which will glow at night like a Japanese lantern. A hotel like an upside down hollow pyramid (the lift shafts will be sloping) is fronted by a right-side-up pyramid designed as a new London Pavilion, with advertisements spelt out psychedelically with lights on its facade. More orthodox advertisements cluster like shells on walls, echoing the traditional Piccadilly atmosphere. An unroofed central piazza with Eros at its centre is provided for those who still like old-fashioned fresh air, or as a gathering place for hippies, demonstrators, or Cup final hooligans. Exhilarating This central piazza is, rather improbably, poised some 25 feet above the ground (Eros and all) with traffic passing underneath, round the great pillar that holds it up. Unless a very high safety fence is provided—which would spoil the look of the piazza—there are obviously great opportunities here for dramatic suicides, with leaps over the edge into the paths of buses below. The concept of “Piccadilly Tomorrow” is fascinating. If it works, it will at one stroke give London the boldest and most exhilarating centre of any city in the world. More important, the experiment of putting the pedestrian above the ground, into a controlled environment, provides a taste of twenty-first century living from which every other city, for better or worse, can learn something. Copyright, 1968. Associated Newspapers Feature Services.