Figure-ground: history and practice of a planning technique

Figure-ground plans show the footprints of buildings and the pattern of unbuilt voids in urban space. Compared historically they reveal the erosion of the public realm over time and provide an analytical basis for tissue repair. The paper traces the communicative power of figure-ground technique to its roots in gestalt psychology, and follows its revival from Colin Rowe’s studio at Cornell through to controversies in post-reunification Berlin. The impact of computerisation is discussed and the paper ends with illustrations drawn from current practice in the representation of urban past, present and future

Megaproject as keyhole surgery: London crossrail

London's east-west Crossrail is a civil engineering megaproject designed to produce a minimum of visible change at surface level. The paper explains the origins of Crossrail's 'keyhole surgery' approach, describes the station design process and considers its outcomes in a review of all eight subterranean stations with their twelve surface ticket halls along the central London section between Canary Wharf and Paddington. The strategy is compared and contrasted with Frank Pick's design thinking for London Underground and with the closer precedents of Paris's RER Ligne A. We show how the discreet keyhole concept has to be balanced against the requirements of (a) glazed façades to bring daylight into interior circulation spaces, and (b) design and management of exterior circulation spaces, given the increases in footfall anticipated around each ticket hall when Crossrail opens in 2018. Urban design of station sett ings remains unfinished business

Anatomy of The Street - The Thomas Sharp lecture 2016

Seventy years from the publication of Thomas Sharp’s classic Anatomy of a Village, Michael Hebbert considers the importance attached by Sharp to the shaping of street-space through built form, whether in rural or urban settings. The lecture applies an anatomical approach to the street canyon, showing how its component elements of facade, frontage, pavement, furniture, lighting, planting, carriageway and microclimate have fared in intervening decades

Crossrail: the slow route to London's regional express railway

The Crossrail project was inaugurated in 2010 and is due for completion in 2018, allowing regional trains to run through rail tunnels deep under London and out the other side instead of terminating their journeys at one of the city's nineteenth-century termini. The long-established S-Bahn systems of German cities and the Parisian regional express network, RER, have proved the value of regional urban express networks as infrastructures that facilitate compact, polycentric metropolitan development. London is a very late comer to the RER concept, yet the potential for joining up its radial routes was recognized more than a century ago. Many different combinations have been promoted, but none until now has left the drawing-board. The paper explores the long, unsuccessful history of cross-London rail planning, highlighting the significance of comparison with Paris, and drawing lessons for the contribution of rail to ‘save the city’

Observations on an Epidemic of Infective Hepatitis in Germany, June-December, 1945

1. An account is given of certain important descriptions of epidemics before and during the recent war, and of observations made with regard to them, 2. Recent work on the nature of the infective agent and of trans- mission experiments is described, 3. An epidemic among troops on occupation duties in Germany is described and its features discussed. 4. Some suggestions are made regarding prevention of infective hepatitis in units, based on aspects of recent work. This includes the superchlorination of water supplies, and general hygiene measures, the avoidance of blood spread, the early recognition of pre-icteric cases by urine examinations, and immunization with gamma globulin