RIBA honours Royal Borough design champion
10 October 2007
Cllr. Daniel Moylan has today ( 9 Oct 2007) been made an honorary fellow of Britain's top architecture body, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
He joins just 273 others to be so honoured in RIBA's 173 year history. Other fellows include Sir Christopher Frayling; the Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson; broadcaster Jon Snow and fashioner designers Vivienne Westwood and Sir Paul Smith.
In granting the fellowship, the RIBA awards panel cite Daniel Moylan's "contribution to the improvement of urban design in London".
For a number of years, Daniel Moylan has been a pioneer of a new approach to public space design in the UK, an approach he has outlined in articles and speeches and also put into practice in the Royal Borough where the transformation of Kensington High Street has garnered multiple awards while ambitious schemes for Exhibition Road and Sloane Square have provoked huge interest and debate.
Underpinning these schemes has been the idea of shared space as a "civilising" ingredient in urban design. Segregating road users with barriers, believes Cllr. Moylan, encourages excessive speed and general disengagement; reducing that segregation could encourage a return to older patterns of behaviour in which people are more careful and considerate of each other.
The Kensington High Street scheme involved the removal of nearly all guard rails and other barriers. The removals were complemented by new materials of the highest quality such as Yorkstone paving and granite kerbs and by simple even austere street furniture of stainless steel, The transformation won rave reviews from design bodies and accident figures for the High Street fell noticeably even though pedestrians could now cross where they chose rather than been funnelled into designated crossings.
"Of course I'm delighted to have been made an honorary fellow of RIBA," said Daniel Moylan. "But really the honour belongs to the Council staff and residents who have given such staunch support to the improvements we have promoted."
"My hope is that it means the ideas we have been putting forward in Kensington and Chelsea are widely shared by professional architects and will in time lead to better public space for all of us."
"In Kensington and Chelsea and in the Capital, the case for improving our public spaces has had no more articulate or determined advocate than Daniel," said Council Leader, Cllr. Merrick Cockell, "this is a well deserved honour."
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