WMUD

conceptual, strategic and development work in urban design, town making, city planning, urbanism and place-making

St Helier’s character

This animation of the historical development of the beautiful Channel Islands town of St Helier was part of our study for the States of Jersey in 2005.

The study was commissioned by the Planning and Environment Department of the States of Jersey and originated in the Island Plan which was approved in July 2002. In particular, Policy BE1 stated that:

“The Planning and Environment Committee will initiate an appraisal of the urban character and townscape of the town of St. Helier as an aid to the process of preserving and enhancing its character and in guiding policy formulation and the assessment of planning applications”.

The appraisal of the urban character of the town coupled with design guidance for each character area forms the core of the study. The guidance is set in a strategic policy context which identifies potential change in each area and makes proposals for conservation and physical intervention. The design guidance could enable the States of Jersey to take a new approach to assessing and processing planning applications.

St Helier UCA Report Cover

The complete Final Report is available to download from the States of Jersey website (in chapters). and includes sections on the methodology, the key findings, issues from urban design perspective and proposition for the content of future planning guidance.

Our co-consultants were Drew Mackie Associates (consultation), Yellow Book Ltd (strategic vision), Gordon Urquhart (historical research and conservation) and Malcolm Fraser Architects (interventions).

See also our companion study of the Local Distinctiveness of Bolton Town Centre.

There is a image gallery of St Helier here.

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Network Mapping

by Drew Mackie It has become fashionable to talk of networks of organisations, people, computers, transport and so on. In organisations there is talk of being more “networky” and getting away from the older more hierarchical ways of doing things. Conferences are organised around “networking” both formal and informal. Yet, the more ...

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December 22nd 2007
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Eindhoven 2001

This is the first part of an atmospheric short film made by Wladimir Manshanden in 2001. It explores the city of Eindhoven mostly between dusk and dawn through its transport corridors, infrastructure, factories, construction sites, spontaneous landscapes, as-found objects and odd events. The gloss of the city centre ...
December 15th 2007
Tags: cities, comment, place making, strategy

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Terrain vague: place and landscape

In an article in the Guardian on 8 December 2007, Robert Macfarlane described a walk around the perimeter of London's Olympic Games site with Iain Sinclair. The walk was to be in Sinclair's words, "...a complex transitional ecology of CGI imagery, doomed allotments and virtual arcadias." Light industrial spaces, ...

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The major retrospective exhibition of the work of Gillespie Kidd and Coia currently showing at the Lighthouse in Glasgow features two films on the approach of this distinguished architecture practice. This short video clip made available by bd-online is a mini-lecture on St Paul's Glenrothes, Fife (1957) by ...