Culture + Commerce: Appropriate Measures – Can Established Planning and Preservation Measures be Adapted to Protect More Radical Forms of Culture?

Weds 11 September 2013 7pm

  • Courtesy Flickr user Garry Knight
  • Courtesy students at the School of Architecture and Landscape, Kingston University

Can the Southbank Skatepark be saved, by registering it as a Village Green? Can the London Pub be preserved through a lobby for it to qualify for UNESCO World Heritage status? An exploration of the creative legal loopholes that might be employed to stall the city's mall-ification.

Simon Ricketts is a leading solicitor from SJ Berwin, and a planning law expert. Whilst his day-to-day job entails brokering some of the capital’s most significant new developments, he is providing the legal support for Long Live Southbank's campaign to stop the transformation of the undercroft from a historical half-pipe into another cappuccino retailer. Can 'conservative' planning measures be adopted for more radical means? Designer David Knight is leading a live project at Kingston University to explore if the London Public House might be saved by placing it on equal footing with Vienna's coffee houses and France's prehistoric caves. Seeking to uncover the essence of the typology of the pub, the project seeks to use the generic to save the extraordinary, to influence policy and planning to preserve a case of intangible heritage housed within four walls.

Panel:

Simon Ricketts, Partner, SJ Berwin
David Knight, Designer and Educator, DKCM
Catherine Croft, Director, 20th Century Society

Chair:

Iain Borden, Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture, Bartlett School of Architecture