Urban planning architect Sir Terry Farrell has detailed plans to turn London’s notorious Euston Road into a boulevard to rival Paris’s Champs Elysees.
The proposition – which the GLA’s Architecture and Urbanism Unit commissioned Farrell to look into – includes removing the underpass at the junction with Tottenham Court Road.
One of the concepts would involve erecting a commercial building on the site of the underpass, which could in turn pay for pedestrian-focused” improvements along the road, dubbed an “urban motorway”.
Farrell spoke to Estates Gazette about his plans after he gave the RIBA’s Milo lecture this week. He said several developers and landowners – including Grosvenor, Chelsfield, Hammerson, British Land, Argent and St George – were interested in the project.
Farrell said projects such as this could not be delivered by council planners because, he claimed, they had become little more than “traffic wardens of the public realm”.
He added that too much attention was paid to the built “objects”, such as office buildings, and not enough to the spaces enjoyed by people.
