WONDER LONDON

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20914, 14 October 1942, Page 2

WONDER LONDON

BASIS FQR FUTURE RE-DEVELOPMENT PLANS EXHIBITION OF DESIGNS (By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) (9.30 a.m.) RUGBY, Oct. 13. A wonder city of broad, airy streets, parks, squares and open spaces, a city of eolonades, crescents and noble vistas, a city fit for civilised people to live in—that is the London of tomorrow as envisaged by the Royal Academy Planning Committed established in January, 1940, to plan a scheme for the architectural redevelopment of the metropolis. The series of plans it has drawn up are now on exhibition at Burlington House. They are intended to stimulate the imagination of those who will be responsible for reconstruction after the war rather than to lay down any fixed solution now. The committee-worked on the basis of the Bresse'y-Lutyens report in 1937 for dealing with London’s traffic requirements. - A leading feature of the plan is produced in the Ring Road connecting ail the main” lifted terminal stations. This circular route goes- by Way of Paddington. Euston, Bishopsgate, Tower Bridge, crosses the Thames,and returns by way of Waterloo anc * Victoria. London Bridge station is moved south of the river."'"Waterloo is shifted to a new site cin the south side of Vauxhall. Euston. St. Pancras and King’s Cross are telescoped into one station. Within this ring there are no surface railways, but" the terminal stations-are connected with a circular electric underground railway. Drastic Transformation The area within the ring sees the most' drastic transformation under the committee’s plan. For instance. Covent" Garden would be converted from an amalgam of music and cabbages, in which the market jostles the opera house, into a civic art Centre with the opera house, concert hall, theatres and pleasure gardens, complete with fountains, while the market would be banished to a more convenient site somewhere on Ring Road. The exhibition also • pictures the Thames'With thb embankment gardens extended along' either"bank, arid 'the whole "fiver frontage'opene'd, up from Putney t'O Tower Bridge! The conglomeration of buildings crowding upon the British Museum would be cleared, permitting a view of its graceful cOlonade from" New'Oxford street. The suggested re-development of the vicinity j of Victoria station Would permit the building of a processional way from *■> Buckingham "PrilaCe‘ ,vt T6 Victoria 'Station,offering unlimited opportunities fob pagefihtry. '" '