ABSTRACT

This chapter shows how at South Bank a collection of hitherto loose spaces' may foreseeable is over-written as the transformation of the South Bank Centre continues. It argues that the South Bank Centre's transformation comprises a number of localised architectural interventions that seemingly countervail this openness. The chapter concerns the ways that the Mather Master plan, in particular, literally plans to improve and extend the public realm on the South Bank. It explores a number of architectural and semiotic schemes that have been proposed as a means to unify the Southbank Centre's public realm and give the sense that its estate and institutions are part of the same umbrella. William H. Whyte's comment that fixed seats are awkward in open spaces because there is so much space around them' is certainly evident at More London. In effect, existing conditions of circulation and social life in London were ignored in the South Bank's development in the 1950's-60.