Prince's Foundation leads drive to restore Waterloo's heart
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Announcement coincides with foundation’s rebranding
Prince Charles today shared his passion for the redevelopment of the area around Waterloo Station in London.
And during a visit to the area where the Prince’s Foundation has been working on community engagement, he also announced that the words “For the Built Environment” would be dropped from his charity’s name.
He visited Lower Marsh, the ancient market street behind the station, with Prince’s Foundation ambassador Kirstie Allsopp to see an example of projects undertaken by the charity.
The foundation has been working with the local community for more than a year, at the invitation of the Waterloo Business Improvement District (BID), to come up with ways to boost the area.
Waterloo Station is visited by 86 million passengers a year and is the only major station left in London without a comprehensive regeneration plan for the surrounding area.
Next week the Prince’s Foundation and Waterloo BID will publish a report detailing their recommendations, which will include strengthening the neighbourhood hub area at the junction of Waterloo Road and The Cut, with improved visual and physical links to the station, Lower Marsh and Millennium Green.
It will also suggest the redevelopment of a group of sites to the east of Waterloo Road, including Mercury House and the bus garage, to create a major new development fronting Waterloo Road.
The Prince of Wales said: “As I walked around Waterloo, it was rather extraordinary to think that it was over 25 years ago that I first started on what turned out to be an extremely lonely road towards establishing my foundation to tackle the lost art of community-building. I believed then, as I do now, that the nature of the built environment significantly determines our quality of life.”
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Readers' comments (10)
Robert Klaschka | 27 January 2012 3:50 pm
His lonely road to tackle the lost art of community building. This is an astonishing territory grab. I've never been a fan of what the Prince does, but this sort of self indulgent comment just shouldn't be published. More so even than Paddy Schmacker and his parametricists.
Drop me a note if you'd like a few self promotional headlines, after all I deserve it, I'm not funded by the Britsh tax paying public. I'm keen to share thoughts about my lonely road to improve tall buildings in the city of London, improve educational buildings and restore the quality of British housing.
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Scepticalaboutthewholething | 27 January 2012 4:30 pm
Prince Charles ought to keep his mouth firmly shut, as his mother so admirably has all her life.
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Caggie Dunlop | 28 January 2012 1:01 pm
Let me guess, loads of developer led office space and high rise buy to let residential, a room for community activities, a cafe and an organic market on Sunday?
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K Seydo | 28 January 2012 7:03 pm
Its good to see Waterloo's BID approaching the Prince's Foundation to take a lead on this issue. The Prince has gathered a group of professionals committed to repairing the urban environment working alongside local communities. Comments demanding censorship of the Prince's views are regrettable and out of step with the consensus that has emerged on urbanism in recent years.
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Nicola Raye | 28 January 2012 7:29 pm
He is ensured much publicity which highlights the concerns of the gagged majority in their frantic lives. No one with any sense would ever take on his role. This is only backing others who do the work.
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elbchaussee | 29 January 2012 1:00 pm
"Prince's Foundation ambassador Kirstie Allsopp" tells you all you need to know. This is a woman who has made a career out of the overblown/second-home property market and its accompanying repellent television programmes, and now has the gall to suggest the way out of the ensuing mess is to make more cakes and cushion covers.
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zecks_marquise | 30 January 2012 12:02 pm
Haven't you read the memo? middle class home making is now so repugnant that it has become avant garde
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Getafix | 30 January 2012 5:30 pm
I've never understood the mindless vitriol that is hurled at the PoW. I may not agree with everything he says about architecture (although, frankly, much of it is plain common sense), but I do welcome the obviously genuine interest he shows in the built environment. The fact he favours traditionalist design over modernism is, for me at least, of secondary importance to the fact that he draws attention to architecture, cities, and explicitly questions whether we attach enough importance to the way in which we build our environments. Rather than simply telling the old duffer to 'shut up', it might be more interesting to hear some considered responses to the genuinely serious questions he raises.
Poundbury is for a wide range of reasons one of the most thought-provoking attempts at creating a coherent new urban environment in the UK for the past four decades. That is not only an extremely sad indictment of the UK, but should provide a fairly resounding kick up the backside to a complacent and arrogant profession.
Or we could all just bury our heads in the sand and go back to building developer tat and pretending we're working for the greater good...
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Eckard Schuette | 31 January 2012 1:16 am
I work close to Lower Marsh and am out and about there almost every week day. I came to love this little street with its quirky little shops and almost no branch of a chain. This can be rarely found in the rest of London. As an architect with urban planning background I strongly recommend to abstain from redevelopping this area and be it only the public space. Once you destroy these microstructures, they will never grow back! I want to see the planning project, which created this pluralism and social sustainability from scratch.
So planners, please look at improving the nomanslands in so many other parts of London - probably your former projects.
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Scepticalaboutthewholething | 31 January 2012 9:28 am
Good god no - the planners need to keep their hands off the no-man's-lands: the beautiful, chaotic, scruffy parts that make cities interesting. Stop trying to "improve" them.
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