Nicholas Boys Smith @boys_nicholas Twitter profile

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Nicholas Boys Smith

1 year

Coming to a bookshop near you soon! Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the book shops, here comes #NoFreeParking The paperback! Obviously please tell all your friends and family to buy 10 each😉

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

It takes 24 years to save for a deposit for a house compared to three years in the 1980s. Arguably the most important fact in modern British domestic politics.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

9 months

“The most important fact in modern British domestic politics: in the 1990s, a first-time buyer couple on a low-to-middle income saving 5% of their wages would have enough for an average deposit after three years. Today it would take them 24 years.”

A generation has been cut adrift because of unaffordable housing

Britain simply does not have enough homes in the right places to offer young people a meaningful stake in society

www.telegraph.co.uk

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

What a melancholy comparison. It’s time, lavishly & liberally, to replant street trees, widen pavements, rip out ugly lights & reclaim streets from their highways officer overlords Dickens Street, Toxteth, 1911 vs 2023 📸 via the great @keithjones84 who is very worth following

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

8 months

Ten storeys. Five of them mansards …

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

The more I read about postwar European architecture, the more I realise how peculiar was Britain’s approach to postwar reconstruction. These were built in Munster between 1950-1958 #DiverseModernities

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

9 months

We could start by getting rid of the assault currently being waged by building regulations on decent window sizes

𝓢𝓪𝓶𓄂

@samofsamshire

9 months

🇬🇧 New builds for the middle classes in 1900 vs 2023

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

The fact that @BBCNews is (right now) featuring Philip Schofield’s departure from ITV Breakfast as more newsworthy than death of Martin Amis seems to me to be deeply unserious, an abnegation of public sector broadcasting. I want to defend BBC but they’re making it hard. 😬

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

3 years

Nothing is perfect in this world but the Gilbert Scott phone box (this is one of the original K2 designs used from 1926) & the London terraced square come pretty close....

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

Do this. Not that. 🖼 via @morss_alex

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

Whenever I pass through Paris I marvel afresh at how late C19th & early C20th Europe “solved” the problem of creating wide & high buildings without them feeling oppressive or tedious, a lesson we promptly forgot. If this was created in last 70 years it would be a tediously ….

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

Look how a few decorative details (dentils, brick lintels, string courses, a portico, textured bricks) lift the building on the left above that on the right &liberate it from the tyranny of transitory utility. It’s 200 years older. I bet it will last>200 years longer. #DeepGreen

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

5 months

Intensifying existing streets beautifully is the best, fastest & most sustainable way of creating desperately needed new homes but our high risk, high cost uniquely discretionary approach to planning in UK makes it jolly hard. Meanwhile in Paris 📸 via @michael_diamant

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

This should be one of Britain’s, indeed Europ’s, most famous buildings. ⁦ @ThePieceHall ⁩ in #HeavenlyHalifax Tomorrow I am lucky enough to be going there thanks to a hugely kind invitation from ⁦ @civic_voice ⁩ I am very excited 😊

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

4 months

Thank heavens for late Victorian and Edwardian excess …

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

This is the right decision by @michaelgove who deserves huge praise for withstanding aggressive lobbying from @marksandspencer . The case for demolition was always gossamer thin, destroying a fine inter-war facade, making Oxford Street worse and …

Marks & Spencer refused permission to demolish and rebuild Oxford Street store

M&S says ‘short-sighted act of self-sabotage’ leaves no choice but to review position on UK’s premier shopping street

www.theguardian.com

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

This is good news. I hope that @michaelgove is able to reject this deeply flawed proposal. It creates no new homes, destroys an elegant & important interwar building, makes Oxford Street less lovable and...

M&S Oxford St demolition scheme halted by Gove

Just days after London Mayor Sadiq Khan decided that the controversial project could proceed despite...

www.architectsjournal.co.uk

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

Arriving by foot for the first time in my life to Nottingham’s glorious train station, I give my regular paean of praise that the Victorians built our railways. Infrastructure with dignity

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

3 years

What is London's oddest building? Here's one suggestion: former Wickhams department store on Mile End Road. Built in 1927 to be 'Harrods of east London'. But one business, jeweler's named Spiegelhalter, refused to sell up so facade was never completed. 📸David Sankey

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

11 months

The best cities have trams. And the best trams have grass. Warsaw. 📸 by ⁦ @edwest ⁩

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

9 months

Ok, I have the answer. We give back the Elgin Marbles and Greece gives back the Ionian Islands which we’re given by UK as a gift to Greece in 1864 and which also had this rather natty ensign….. Does that help?

Chris Mason

@ChrisMasonBBC

9 months

NEW: Rishi Sunak cancels meeting with the Greek PM in a row over the Elgin Marbles. Read more from me here @BBCNews :

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

6 months

New #GentleDensity on a tight site in Chelsea. Sleek & chic. Little by little detail & texture is reentering the architectural canon

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

4 months

In the 1920s, Le Corbusier, funded by a car producer, dreamed of sweeping away the boulevards of Paris & replacing them with 60 storey concrete towers, zoned by class & linked by fast roads in open countryside . It never happened…..

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

11 months

A few people (actually quite a lot) have asked me what I think of recent announcements on “the war on motorists.” Here is my reply which I suspect will annoy people on both sides …

Street Fight: why we should fight the good fight for happy, healthy and beautiful places - Create...

A few people (well actually quite a lot) have asked me what I think of recent announcements and media reports on “the war on motorists.” Here’s my reply. I suspect it may annoy everyone. But I...

www.createstreets.com

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

3 years

Terraces go with trees like strawberries and cream , orange and chocolate.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

“The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men & women … now all gone, 1 generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow”

Historic Southampton

@HistoricalSoton

1 year

The Duke of Wellington. It’s amazing to think that people have been buying beer here since the 1490s.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

10 months

Can a car park be good urbanism? The New Street Garage in Staunton, Virginia is surely as good as one can imagine. Brilliant use of pilasters, rustication etc on one side …

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

10 months

I am sometimes told that modern commercial buildings NEED to be featureless and fancy-free because of “windows.” This is, of course, nonsense.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

Royal Leamington Spa, in 1910. Note how naturally & safely pedestrians move over & through the carriageway in the age of the tram, the bicycle & the cart. Cars bring liberty but they also take it away. Charming colourised 🎬 via @bo66ie29

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

9 months

I always struggle to use “medieval” as an insult …

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

3 years

Bill Bryson once said that if the Martians invaded earth, they'd think Vienna was the world capital. You can see why Here's #GentleDensity with extra fiddly bits. "Mixed use" sounds like tedious planner speak but it should be ornamented & beautiful

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

9 months

Salzburg. A city whose beautiful walkable streets would be unbuildable today and yet which … seems to be fairly popular. 🤔

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

Is it curtains for fake grass? I’m not a natural banner of things but it really is indefensible stuff. Needlessly wasteful and foul to the local natural environment.

Fake grass crackdown planned by Michael Gove in war on plastic

New proposals would enable local authorities to block developments where artificial lawns were due to be laid

www.telegraph.co.uk

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

Ask AI for a beautiful street and … that’s not bad. Didn’t do so well on “no cars” though !!

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

The press has reported recently that residents in Poundbury want to install upvc windows rather than wooden ones because they are “greener.” But the idea that upvc windows are “greener” than wooden ones is for the birds. A quick thread....

The tricky politics of window snobbery

Disgruntled residents in Prince Charles’s model town of Poundbury have been blocked from replacing their wooden window frames with uPVC ones

www.telegraph.co.uk

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

Before daybreak, on 25 January 1533, a young English gentlewoman rose early in her chambers near the Thames, was dressed by her attendants & walked down a long Tudor gallery with linenfold panelling, blue & gold moulded ceilings, carved doors & rush mats upon the cold floor….

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

Is this the church of England’s most extraordinary rural parish church? From the outside, St Lawrence, West Wycombe appears superficially sedate, a Georgian nave and a knapped flint medieval tower but …

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

Heavens. Fourteenth century wooden fan vaulting probably designed by Hugh Herland, Richard II’s carpenter. Still in situ, still performing the role for which it was designed, attempting a semblance of the celestial and the divine for those at morning or evening prayer. Winchester

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

To arrive by train in Newcastle is to upgrade to first class in life's journey. Here's why. My love letter to Newcastle in @unherd

The rebirth of Newcastle

Corrupt politicians defiled the magnificent city

unherd.com

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

7 months

These are (& should be thought of as) good ordinary homes. Nothing more. But nothing less either. Three terraced homes, two semi-detached, one detached. That such London homes can be worth up to £4m tells you something profound about London’s housing under-supply.

RopesToInfinity

@RopesToInfinity

7 months

Fascinating to watch the media campaign to force Apsana Begum to move out of her council house, so they can eventually do this to her when she buys a new inevitably overpriced London gaff

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

The joy, the joy. Look at people’s faces. Zadok the Prince flashmob via @ClassicFM

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

Heaven be praised for the lengthening days. There is nothing like the low light on London stock bricks, turning the long burnt clay from yellow to gold.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

It is impossible to imagine a building further removed from contemporary architectural taste than the Palais Garnier, Paris…

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

5 months

Plastic grass. Bad for you, your property values & the environment: a uniquely foolish amalgam of self-harm and contempt for nature.

Ben Goldsmith

@BenGoldsmith

5 months

Installing a plastic lawn is a pretty good way of putting PFAS “forever” chemicals inside you.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

3 years

Dear landowners, neighbourhood groups, councils, & investors, @createstreets unashamedly uses the wider evidence on what makes for popular, beautiful, resilient & sustainable places for people, prosperity & planet. Could we help you? Please do get in touch

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

Why is The Strand the start of London’s continuous history not the city of London or Westminster? The clue is …

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

10 months

A wall with six holes and yet in the proportions, the texture, the details and the composure there is so much to love

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

What a joy it is to walk down this street on a sunny summer evening. Create Streets which bring joy.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

9 months

How do we regenerate cities so that they are fulcrums of local pride, encourage visitors to the city centre & generally encourage happy & healthy, beautiful & prosperous places? Here’s a brilliant video about the brave & important work done in Dresden…

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

3 years

I am pleased that @MandSnews 's foolish, & given what they say on sustainability deeply hypocritical, decision needlessly to demolish their fine 1930 store has been widely criticised & covered in @thetimes @MailOnline @Telegraph & @ArchitectsJrnal They....

Oxford Street M&S: Fury as plans to bulldoze iconic site get go-ahead

Marks and Spencer will wave goodbye to its largest and most prestigious store - on London's famous Oxford Street - after council chiefs gave the chain the green light to tear down the site,

www.dailymail.co.uk

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

3 years

As expected, the embodied carbon case for pulling down this beauty is gossamer thin at best. @marksandspencer have got this one badly wrong& I suspect they know it. That’s okay. We all make mistakes. Cultural and corporate leadership now would be having a rethink & starting again

SAVE Britain's Heritage

@SAVEBrit

3 years

🔥THREAD 1/4 📢 PRESS RELEASE: New report blasts bulldoze and rebuild plan for M&S Oxford Street HQ📒🧱♻️Full details on the report and the ongoing campaign here➡️ #RetroFirst #ClimateCrisis #UKGovt

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

Some saying "I did it in X years" so it cannot be true. Sadly, it's not that simple. 25 yrs ago first-time buyer couple on low-to-middle income saving 5% would have average-sized deposit in 3 yrs. In 2015 would take 24 years. (Should have said 90s not 80s which makes worse)

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

Most ancient surviving image of London is a gold medallion of 10 aurei struck for emperor Constantine Chlorus. London is symbolised by towered walls besides the river …

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

The Grand Place, Arras on a very wet day. One of Europe’s great urban squares though over-parked at present. Almost entirely rebuilt after WWI from 1919-23 so most of what you see in these photos is twentieth century.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

3 years

His and hers #Brixton Homes should be playful not sterile

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

How every day should start …

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

9 months

This is the England I love, the England of place and of humour not the England of pronouns and of abstractions.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

This is rather good: "The socialist case for Trad Architecture. Conservatives don't have a monopoly on beauty" by @AaronBastani for @unherd . His basic point...

The socialist case for Trad Architecture

Conservatives don't have a monopoly on beauty

unherd.com

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

Always such a relief to rediscover King’s Cross Station. Lewis’s Cubitt’s masterpiece was named after a very short lived statue of George IV. Otherwise this might be Battle Bridge Station. Thank heavens they cleared all the 20th century tat away.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

What a joy it was today to be able to “pop in” to Paris for lunch on way home by train from Toulouse. I don’t think anywhere in the world (with exception of Vienna?) achieves the “top end” of #GentleDensity (5-9 storeys) so consistently well. Look at these exquisite balconies

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

10 months

One of the questions we often ask in neighbourhood workshops is; “where would you like your children to grow up and spend time?” Beautiful homes clustered around a village green onto which children can safely run is a theme that comes up time after time after time.

Helen Day

@LBFlyawayhome

10 months

Other work by the Ladybird artists ‘Autumn scene’ Artist: Ronald Lampitt

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

8 months

Build public buildings to last for 500 years not 20 … 😞

Architects’ Journal

@ArchitectsJrnal

8 months

Hopkins’ leaky Portcullis House atrium ’needs complete overhaul’

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

3 years

English bond. Rows of stretchers over rows of headers (some lightly burnt black with Georgian soot)

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

3 years

I have an unfashionably positive view of politicians. Nearly all are well-intentioned - even when they're wrong ! Nearly all put in long, thankless hours, give up evenings, weekends - all to be insulted & to be told they're corrupt & evil. (Which vast majority are not). All ...

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

The evidence is clear that good design is good for you and good for our neighbourhoods and civic life. Too many of the lives our fellow citizens lead are affected by poor places, no friends round the corner, less sense of community, less walking, less local pride...

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

3 years

Meet Yvonne, a fine old French lady, perhaps a little dusty in the corners but she still "puts on her face" (as they said in her day) and welcomes the street with pride and dignity each morning

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

I actually want to be on the side of the BBC but if they’re not prepared to use the depth & breadth of the license fee to fund high culture that the market does not then is very hard to defend their current scope. What a melancholy, self-defeating & idiotic decision this is.

Emma Cleobury 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

@EmmaCleobury

1 year

Letter to BBC signed by 150 Directors of Music and Organists of Cathedrals and Chapel Choirs and Lecturers at Music Faculties in the UK and abroad. #WeAreTheBBCSingers

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

How lucky I am to work across the river from this tower of high Victorian Gothic pastiche. And what a mad, mad Genius was

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

Beautiful buildings, street trees, wide pavements, gentle density: four of the crucial components of great places for happy humans

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

7 months

This afternoon I visited one of London’s worst #StreetScars in Monmouth Street to talk to Shaun Ley for @BBCRadio4 #TheWorldTonight about #StreetScars …

createstreets

@createstreets

7 months

Great to see our work on #StreetScars and how to fix them picked up in today's @guardian by @horton_official - if you agree please sign here. Only takes 30 seconds:

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

… anaemic grid of spreadsheet architecture (probably) but instead look how playfully the facade is chopped with faces, corbels, rustication, 4 balcony “string courses” & 8 different window designs from full fat aedicule to oeil de boeuf. The everyday genius of the beaux-arts…

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

10 months

Now available in paperback. This is what you need for Christmas . The history of London & her streets as you’ve never quite read it before …

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

There’s a coup in Russia and the news is telling me about wild swimming and Glastonbury ?

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

4 months

Deep England on a rainy May morning.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

“Had I but plenty of money, money enough to spare The house for me no doubt, were a house in a city square. Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!”

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

I hope I never lose my delight at a bowl of blackberries foraged straight from the hedgerows …. 😃

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

Believe it or not these 2 matching buildings on either side of Orleans Cathedral are modern (well post-war). The more I study the detail of post-war rebuilding the moreI realise what an outlier was Britain’s almost exclusively traffic-modernist approach.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

9 months

“If you consider only utility, the things you build will soon be useless.” I wonder how long this barcode urbanism will last before it is demolished in a future round of state-funded parasitic regeneration.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

When I started my @createstreets journey 9 years it seemd quite a lonely road but the movement to create & steward more beautiful, liveable & sustainable places is (thank heavens) going from strength to strenght. I'm particuarly proud of the excellent work the team is doing...

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

Please forgive some shameless promotion, but here between two covers are all your Christmas present needs answered! #NoFreeParking The curious history of London’s Monopoly Streets. Available on pre-order here. It’s a snip ! ✂️

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

The gothic towers of Westminster. A world heritage site. Not one of these towers is medieval. Architects used naturally to create the future in communion with the past.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

Quite right. "Units" is banned within @createstreets and we always, always (very nicely) challenge clients or fellow professionals who say it. Create: Homes not units Streets not roads Town squares not central business units Words matter because design flows from them.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

The Office for Place is this week becoming a legally constituted Arms Length body & moving to Stoke-on-Trent. We’re delighted. Nowhere could be more appropriate for the Office for Place’s home town. The very derivation of the name in the Old English …

Office for Place - A Statement from the Chair

Office for Place established in Stoke-on-Trent to help councils create beautiful, successful and enduring places.

www.gov.uk

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

9 months

As an interesting coda to @networkrail ‘s grotesque proposals for #LiverpoolStreet rightly being resisted by @thevicsoc the comparable proposals to erect this inhumane lump above New York’s Grand Central in 1968 led to an important 1978 judgement in the US Supreme Court ….

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

I am sure this is the right decision by ⁦ @michaelgove ⁩ to review the new 1.1m window height rule which will make homes darker & less attractive to no purpose...

Gove demands rethink of ‘ugly’ window rule introduced to stop people falling out

Rules for new build homes require upstairs windows to be at least 1.1 metres from the floor

www.telegraph.co.uk

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

Rome? Milan? Paris? No, Halifax in the wonderful West Riding of Yorkshire

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

What a joy to be back in Venice after four years. I was just thinking “I would plant a few trees in some of the piazzas” when …. #GreeningUp

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

4 years

Penny of Alfred the Great, late ninth century. Look how the reverse has a beautifully elegant monogram for every letter of LVNDONIA. On the obverse, Alfred seems more like a Roman Emperor.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

Reading about urban history continually surprises with the SPEED with which we used to change places.According to Wikipedia, Herbert Gribble won the design competition in March 1869 & they started building in June the same year. Inconceivable today.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

3 years

When all is said and done, there is nothing new under the sun. This is very good (and oddly reassuring) via @colvilleandersn

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

8 months

Create places that catch the soul and lift it to the far heavens ….

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

This is an excellent new report on how to design new streets from @HomesEngland Huge congrats to @AmyBurbidge2 who led work & to those involved including the wise @joyofstreets my colleague @djjmilner & @Phil_PJA Anyone creating streets should read it

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

8 months

One could quibble with details but this is good new infill housing in Bedfordshire…

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

… this (admittedly much bigger) lump is down the road, one of traffic modernism’s thankfully rare intrusions into the city of Paris. Comparative comment seems superfluous.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

The hotel de ville in Arras dates from the 1920s and is a UNESCO world heritage site. Almost everything you have been taught about the history of twentieth century urbanism, architecture & “heritage” is wrong or at best wildly incomplete. #DiverseModernities

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

My son's blog on star wars urbanism was so good that they turned it, with a little paternal help, into an academic article (really). Forgive a little fatherly pride but this really is worth reading and will only take a few minutes. Sometimes children see things more clearly

createstreets

@createstreets

2 years

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away: what does Star Wars tell us about architecture for goodies and baddies?

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

1 year

God save Barry Humphries. Any chance of a coronation knighthood for services to happiness ?

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

5 months

As a proud Briton and an unapologetic Francophile with a half French family I am a complete sucker for this sort of thing & find it very moving. #EntenteCordiale 🇬🇧 ❤️ 🇫🇷

The Army in London

@ArmyInLondon

5 months

History about to be made as @Gendarmerie arrive at Buckingham Palace to take part in the Changing of the Guard ceremony with F Company @scots_guards marking 120 years of Entente Cordiale 🇫🇷 🤝 🇬🇧 @RoyalFamily @BritishArmy @FranceintheUK @UKDefenceFrance

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

9 months

The fact that the state sold the freehold to this seems to me spectacularly wrong.

Bobbie

@bo66ie29

9 months

London’s Admiralty Arch in the 1920s. Commissioned by King Edward VII in memory of his mother, Queen Victoria. Designed by Aston Webb, it served as the official residence of the First Sea Lord but was sold in 2012 for a proposed hotel redevelopment.

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Nicholas Boys Smith

@boys_nicholas

2 years

My younger son has just finished reading the Da Vinci code. thank heavens, he made me take him to Saint-Sulpice in Paris which features in the book. Architecture as poetry.

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