Development dispute means battle stations at South Ken

Marcus Binney, The Times

15 December 2003

FURIOUS opposition has led to the withdrawal of proposals to build a massive 11-office tower over South Kensington Tube Station, with no fewer than 125 luxury apartments and 85 parking spaces crammed on to the narrow wedged-shaped site.

Local people, and indeed many Londoners and London visitors, delight in the village nature of the streets of small shops around South Ken. The modest scale of the station itself, combined with open-air platforms, are a real bonus when the sun comes out, especially when so many workers are forced to spend the whole day in air-conditioned offices.

The fight begun by the splendidly named SKUD, The South Kensington Underground Development Action Group, raises fundamental questions about the nature of London. The idea that London is a collection of villages was promulgated by Steen Eiler Rasmussen in London – the Unique City (a book long revered by architects).

London Transport and the developers Stanhope and Hutchison Whampoa talk blandly of the need for a new enlarged station to match the expectations of the millions now flocking to the newly free museums of Albertopolis.

But if the South Kensington museums can be restored to their Victorian and Edwardian splendour, why not the Underground station too? It’s classical entrance arcade, inset with ornamental ironwork and fine lettering, could, with just a little tweaking, be as memorable as the handsomely restored Sicilian Avenue in Holborn. Equally in character are the oxblood terracotta tiles and Art Nouveau cartouches, introduced when the Piccadilly Line arrived in 1907.

Old photographs show a parade of shops along Pelham Street where there is now just a blank wall and an abandoned railway track below. It could easily be reinstated. But the modes tow storeys of this parade are utterly different from the seven storeys of apartments proposed by the developers, which would overwhelm the scale of the handsome stucco terraces nearby.

South Ken station has a place in history. The world’s first Underground passenger railway, drawn by steam-powered trains, opened in 1863 from Paddington to Farringdon Street. Thanks to its popularity, work began in 1865 on an extension from Paddington to South Kensington, which opened in 1868. When the Circle Line was completed in 1884, linking the principal London mainline railway termini, the opening ceremony was performed at South Ken.

The improvements to the station cited by London Underground hardly justify a vast property development. They include a new staircase down to an improved ticket hall, escalators down to the District and Circle Line platforms, lifts and improved staff accommodation – not major works in any sense.

Stung by the opposition, the developers now say that they will review their scheme, “and if possible and appropriate, revise it”. This in turn is dependent on “maintaining the value required for the project to progress”.

Yet, an enormous gulf remains between the parties. A properly sensitive solution would allow no more than two or three storeys over the curved nose of the site and the reconstruction of the low Pelham Street parade. It would not permit building over the platforms, or demolition of all but the facades of the Italianate houses in Thurloe Street, home to the popular Polish restaurant Daquise.

The residents need to be firm. They are fighting part of a battle to preserve other distinctive early open stations on the Circle Line – like, say, Farringdon – from being obliterated by development. The success of London as a world financial centre is due in no small part to its extensive and well preserved residential areas, which retain a village or small town scale and are not overlooked by massive developments.

Just as the energetic Association of Waterloo Groups saw off a destructive proposal for a towering galleria of offices running from Waterloo to the Oxo Tower (which would have been demolished), so SKUD should prepare for a long sustained fight, eschew all fudges and compromises, and accept nothing but a modest and sensitive station refit that leaves the essential scale of South Kensington untouched. The station is not the property of the developers. The duty of London Underground at a busy interchange is to serve its passengers, not to disrupt the station for years with works that will achieve frankly minor improvements.

It took a fight to preserve the delightful streets of bookshops in front of the British Museum from being flattened. A six lane highway would have been bulldozed through the centre of Covent Garden market, and flanked by high rise offices and hotels, if planners and developers had had their way.

South Ken station stands in a conservation area protecting a neighbourhood full of life and bustle – the best possible contrast to the institutional grandeur of Albertopolis. Such contrasts will always have to be fought for against those who despise any cluster of lively small businesses as tacky, and see them only as opportunity for vast overblown developments lacking any sense of place.