NEWS ARTICLE: Growing old with grace and style

(Building Design Online,10 August 2007,www.bdonline.co.uk)

Biking around Milton Keynes is a wonderful way to view the city's housing heritage, most of which is holding up extremely well, says Matthew Wood, a director at Conran & Partners Architects

Conran & Partners started out in 1983 as Conran Roche, when Fred Roche and Stuart Mosscrop left the Milton Keynes Development Corporation’s city centre design team to set up their own practice, supported by Terence Conran, who is still our chair.

The firm’s three architectural directors all studied at the Bartlett under Chris Woodward, so we’ve always viewed MK as more than the butt of cheap jokes about concrete cows!

Your coverage so far seems to have focused not unreasonably on the city centre and the rather embarrassing back catalogue of two current-day superstars - a cautionary tale of “radical” architecture in the hands of relatively inexperienced designers? - but there’s a lot of really good housing in MK if you know where to look.

A carefully planned sightseeing trip - by bike, of course - will reveal good and bad schemes by dozens of architects, some now well-known, some since forgotten, and others anonymous. I spent a very long, fascinating day there a few years ago, with a map annotated for me by Andrew Mahaddie, who worked at both the MKDC and Conran Roche.

This selection of pictures from my trip suggests that in contrast to Bean Hill and Netherfield, much of MK’s housing is growing old rather gracefully, aided by simple, well maintained landscaping. Not much here for SuperDutch or Swiss Made addicts, I’m afraid: lots of brick and pitched roofs that perhaps owe more to a British tradition of suburban design than to European modernism, and as such, long overdue for re-evaluation.

Matthew Wood, director

For more information please contact: Matthew Wood, Conran & Partners: cp@conranandpartners.com

August 2007

Milton Keynes Map
168.83kB