Architects all ears at success of prince's 'Noddyland'

The Prince of Wales' pet architecture project is winning over some of the sceptics, reports Frank McDonald, Environment Editor

Poundbury. The name provokes winces and worse from serious architects. Even its own 10th anniversary brochure concedes that this picturesque extension to Dochester was "excoriated by much of the press and routinely scoffed at in bien pensant conversation" when it was first mooted.

Was it not a "vanity project" for the Prince of Wales, "a colossal folly slung up with haughty disdain for the wisdom of professionals"? Leon Krier, the Luxembourg-born architect and polemicist who master-planned it for Prince Charles, was almost seen as a traitor who had gone over to the enemy.

One of the Dublin-based architects who travelled over to see Poundbury at the invitation of Treasury Holdings took one look at the brochure and dismissed it as "Noddyland". But that was before he saw the place itself and realised that there was something of substance beneath all those quaint façades.

Tony Reddy, president of the RIAI, visited Poundbury last year and came away convinced that it contains a "big message". Though he, too, queries the relevance of its traditionalist architecture, he says Krier has managed to create an antidote to the sprawl of conventional car-dominated housing estates.

Only last week, the chairman of An Bord Pleanála, John O'Connor, complained about the "astonishing number" of poorly-designed 1970s-style suburban housing estates - most of them architect-free - being "tacked on" to towns and villages throughout the State with no regard for their setting.

This problem was highlighted two weeks ago at a conference in Limerick jointly organised by the RIAI, the Irish Planning Institute and the Institution of Engineers of Ireland. It concluded that much more careful design is needed if we are to extend towns and villages in ways that enhance them.

Precisely the same issue confronted Prince Charles in 1987 when, fortuitously for him, some 400 acres of agricultural land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall - his main source of income - was rezoned for an extension to Dorchester. So he turned to Krier to prepare a development concept.

Poundbury perfectly encapsulates the "Vision of Britain" which Prince Charles put forward in a 1989 book and television documentary, and the 10 basic "principles" that lay behind it, dealing with place, hierarchy, scale, harmony, enclosure, materials, decoration, art, signs and community.

Krier's most radical idea was to decide first where to place the buildings "before" allowing the road layout to emerge, rather than the other way around. He was helped by the fact that councillors in west Dorset had already decreed that no more cul-de-sac housing estates were to be built in the area. The nail in their coffin, according to the Duchy's consultant architect, David Oliver - himself a retired county architect for west Dorset - was Solway Ash, where an early-1980s scheme left local people "distraught" over the loss of a sense of place to "anywhere housing"; it was never to happen again.

Another convention that was turned on its head in Poundbury was the notion that motorists need good "sight lines" to avoid accidents. Instead, right-angled corners force motorists to slow down. "We wanted streets where five-year-old kids could play," says the Duchy's development manager, Simon Conibear.

Other radical innovations in the plan include mixed use, with shops, offices and even factories cheek-by-jowl with houses, and the provision of 20 per cent social housing which would be indistinguishable from private housing; it is managed by the Guinness Trust, as the Iveagh Trust is known in Britain.

Everybody who lives in Poundbury must also sign up to a "building code", which prohibits inappropriate alterations, referred to by Oliver as "gob-ons". By comparison with other covenants, "agreeing not to fill the front garden with bathtubs of purple gnomes seems reasonable", the brochure says.

There are no television aerials or satellite dishes anywhere. It's not that the residents are deprived - the widest variety of programming is available to them via underground cable. Street lighting is also unobtrusive; because the lamps are fixed on buildings, there is no need for a proliferation of poles.

And no traffic signs either. Most of the houses do not have front gardens and open directly onto gravel-surfaced streets, often without footpaths. Car-parking (a generous 2.3 spaces per house) is generally grouped to the rear in courtyards which also form part of Poundbury's child-friendly public realm.

"Front lawns are a waste of agricultural land," Conibear says firmly. Thus, the scheme is relatively high density - 16.5 units per acre - at least for an extension to a provincial market town. That's what is needed for "critical mass" to sustain community facilities, such as the Poundbury Village Stores.

Located in the main square, it took eight years to let. Spar, Centra and other multiples all turned it down, fearing that this convenience store would not be commercially viable. But it is trading successfully in local hands, as is the Poet Laureate pub just across the square, which was packed with cars.

The architecture of Poundbury is "unashamedly traditional", paying homage to the rich variety of Dorset materials such as stone, slate, brick and render. Even the factories, which include Dorchester Chocolates, and office buildings like Poundbury Publishing's block, are done in a traditional style. But the brochure's claim that there are "no structures here which do not have their aesthetic correlatives in the region" is belied by an apartment block with a conical red-tiled roof. Nicknamed "Disney Towers", it looks as if it was imported from Luxembourg or somewhere else in continental Europe.

There was a determination from the outset to avoid a "one size fits all" approach. Within the aesthetic guidelines laid down by Krier, with the close personal involvement of his patron, all of the houses and other buildings have been designed by architects - unlike in Ireland, where most housing isn't.

With the first phase now complete and 800 people living in it (plus another 600 who come to work there every weekday), Poundbury has become a destination for architectural and planning tourists, drawing visitors from as far away as Shanghai. "There's almost too much interest," Conibear says.

A survey of residents in 2003 found that 85 per cent believe it has "broken the mould". When complete by 2020, it will have 2,200 houses and apartments, with a population of 5,000 - nearly a third as many people as Dorchester itself - and it is expected that there will be some 2,000 in the area.

Treasury Holdings' interest derives from considerations about what to do with its extensive landbank, which includes development sites on the fringes of Dublin as well as other cities and towns. Its chief executive, Rob Tincknell, is from the West Country and he sees Poundbury as an interesting model.

Tony Reddy would like to see Irish architects apply themselves to developing a contemporary-style version of Poundbury. For at its core is a set of principles that offer a sustainable way of dealing with urban extensions - much more sustainable than most of what is being built in Ireland today.