Signage of the times

Once dominated by derelict warehouses and seedy alleys, the area across the Thames from the City is being reborn. Grand projects aside, Bankside is also benefiting from a more subtle rebranding at street level, discovers Katherine BatesonBankside is generally not considered one of London's more glamorous districts; it gets picked as a location for films such as Lock,Stock&Two SmokingBarrels precisely for its grainy, down-at-heel character. The warren of railway bridges and warehouses has remained largely untouched since the 19th century. But film directors should get a move on if they want to capture the authentic grittiness: the area is undergoing dramatic change at macro and micro levels.It is an area that has long been defined by where it is not - east of the South Bank, south of the City. Now a concerted attempt is under way to give it an identity of its own.The borough of Southwark, which encompasses Bankside, attracts a 10th of the visitors who swarm around Westminster, but the balance is starting to be redressed with the opening of the Globe Theatre and Vinopolis. From next year, Herzog & de Meuron's development of the Bankside Tate is expected to lure an extra 2 million people, and Foster & Partners' Greater London Assembly will undoubtedly prove a big draw. All of these attractions have provided the impetus for developers to tackle the chronic shortage of accommodation in the borough - Chelsfield, one of the frontrunners, has applied to transform Riverside House into a hotel.Access to the area is also being improved, with the opening of new Jubilee Line stations and Foster's Millennium Bridge which will enable pedestrians to cross from St Paul's Cathedral across the Thames.Changes are also happening at street level which, although quieter and on a smaller scale, are in their own way no less radical than the prestigious new developments sprouting up all around them. The improvements to the street fabric, furniture and signage are intended to firmly define the area between the South Bank and Bermondsey as "Bankside" and create clear pedestrian routes through the area.The improvements have been largely driven by Fred Manson, the energetic former architect who is Southwark's head of development and regeneration.Determined to stop his borough becoming a bastion of twee Victoriana replete with curlicued "antique" signposts, Manson developed the #3.65 million Southwark Design Initiative three years ago in conjunction with the Architecture Foundation. Although it started out as an ideas competition, it provided the spark for a series of hard landscaping and environmental improvements around Bankside, among them the dramatic wayward spike of Eric Parry's Gateway to Southwark (see box page 21), via green spaces and benches by Muf, and extensive pavement improvements along Borough High Street by East Architects.The improvements are ongoing: East is about to start work on a route from Southwark station to the Tate with grey limestone paving, white tiling and angled mirrors on poles to provide views of the railway viaducts, while Patel Taylor's riverside walkway, which extends out over the Thames, will get underway shortly."Each project in the initiative is effectively a fragment of a bigger picture," Manson explained at the outset. "There are clear benefits to petit projets in the public realm: they have greater respect for present uses and users and they retain more of the past."As Manson pointed out, it has been an experimental initiative because it has been achieved without a masterplan: each designer has just got on with work in their allocated area and collaborated with the others where necessary. Using one designer, he says, would have led to "identity by blunt means"."Bankside has a tremendous history, and we didn't want to change that," he says. "It is already a strong urban context. The architects we picked understood the need to use additions to reinforce what was already there."Cabe head Stuart Lipton has described it as marvellous patronage because it is taking a radical approach to town planning. "It has led to planning disappearing as a structure," Lipton said in 1996. "They've actually bothered to look at what is going on and to look at it as a research project."Although some of the developments are startling, the overall effect is intentionally subtle and piecemeal, regeneration almost by the back door. Southwark council says it hopes everyone will benefit from the increasing prosperity of the area, and the street-level improvements are the main way in which the residents can see some practical results. Pavements have been widened where possible, decades of street clutter have been removed, pedestrian crossings have been prioritised and clear signage has been installed."The first things we addressed were simple dysfunctions of the place which were straightforward to improve," says Mark Brearley of East Architects. "We were basically resistant to the idea of changing the identity of the place. What we have done is self-consciously fragmentary, based on the idea of creating a decent background."Texture has been an important feature of the improvements. East has experimented along Borough High Street with rubberised matting in front of ATM machines (which has proved a surprise hit with passers by), contrasting with the polished Italian terrazzo paving and the "bobbled" paving units to enable disabled people to locate street crossings.Muf, meanwhile, has created pavement panels of shingle dredged from the Thames, which form an undulating kerb along Southwark Street. Some of the pavement tiles will appear to tip upwards to form precast concrete benches. A black concrete bench with an inset white seat and logos by local children, created as part of the pilot project for the area, has already been installed.Muf has also been busy greening the area around Southwark Street, encouraging local businesses and residents to help create window boxes, small green spaces and vertical planting."Our project has focused on giving some sort of ownership of the public spaces to the local people, and dissolving the barrier between public and private ground," says Muf's Melanie Dodd.Muf created a video of residents voicing their opinions on what they want to see happen in the area, which Manson says had an empowering effect on a lot of local people. For many it was the first time they had been asked to express an opinion about where they lived.Other practices have also become involved in the Bankside improvement programme. A signage strategy developed in a design brief over the past year is being implemented by CarusoSt John. The aim is to highlight key pedestrian routes across Bankside through street signs, fingerposts in shot-blasted cast aluminium."Small things such as traffic calming, signage and ground surfaces seem to have a spatial effect here," says Adam Caruso. "They seem to be turning the character of the area just a little. Our signage is not universal branding, it's not like the ubiquitous golden arches - the scale and material changes depending on where it is. The physical quality of the signage system has a quiet presence which I think contributes to the area."Not all of the street improvements are subtle or discreet, however. Caruso St John has courted controversy with its huge "Bankside" signs being installed at five sites around the area.Among those already in place is the spectacular shiny stainless steel sign fixed to the graffitied and lime-stained red brick of a railway arch at the southern end of the district.Another sign in tropical hardwood, to be unveiled next week, is attached to the riverbank close to the Bankside Tate below the high water mark which will only be visible at low tide.The LWT documentary series on the area, The Borough, revealed many local residents to be either bemused or indignant at what they see as the attempt to create an artificial identity for the area so that it will appeal to trendy out-of- towners. "They're losing the plot, to be quite honest," said one resident. "This is not something superficial called Bankside."Manson dismisses this argument. "Calling the area Borough or London Bridge would have created huge confusion. With the Bankside Tate and the Globe Theatre here, it makes sense from the visitors' point of view to call the larger area Bankside, and the locals will call it what they want."As to whether the urban regeneration he has instigated will be socially divisive, Manson is equally firm: "The real problem between the local residents and the incomers is social and economic. It would be sad if design became an emblem of that, but I don't think that here it will."It is certainly hard to imagine that the local residents can find much to object to in Caruso St John's functional and deliberately understated enamelled street signage, or in East's beautiful speckled Italian terrazzo paving outside each shop with bronze inset lettering proclaiming the name of each establishment.Manson and the architects he has commissioned are emphatic that the changes constitute regeneration rather than a rebranding exercise or the gentrification of the area."What the borough has been trying to do is to bring about regeneration," says Dodd. "It is definitely not a commercial rebranding. It is for the people who live and work here. Southwark is laying down a carpet of regeneration and possibilities."Some of the ideas dreamed up by the architects have yet to come to fruition: East's plan for a huge mirror reflecting views of Southwark Cathedral on to Borough High Street is in abeyance, although Manson is keen for this to go ahead. The practice is planning a giant tilted tray of flowers at a major junction towards Elephant & Castle, but its plans for huge panels of pink gingham underneath railway bridges seem unlikely to get very far with Southwark's planners. But, as everyone involved with Bankside points out, the projects are gradual, and incremental by their very nature, so you never know.