Your review of John Grindrod’s book Iconicon refers to Derek Walker as “the architect who laid out Milton Keynes”. In fact, the plan for the new town – including the main features of the grid road pattern, the linear park, the location of the centre and the districts, and the separation of housing and employment in the grid squares – was laid out in the Milton Keynes interim report by Llewelyn-Davies, Weeks, Forestier-Walker and Bor, published in 1968. The master plan published in March 1970, when Walker appeared on the scene, refined the layout but did not alter any of the main components.
Walker did lay out the first grid squares of housing in geometrical forms, in which his preference for modernist characteristics produced houses of faulty design and construction. These areas were identified as socially deprived in a 1986 report. After his departure in 1976, the housing grid squares took on the character intended in the master plan and the houses reflected residents’ views. These were established in a 1979 study by the School for Advanced Urban Studies at Bristol University, as consultant to the Milton Keynes Development Corporation. Jeff Bishop, who led the study, wrote that “many of the results [were] a rediscovery of common sense”.
It is time to lay to rest the erroneous opinion of the architectural press that Walker was the master planner of Milton Keynes. He was not, and what he did do caused much dissatisfaction.
Peter Waterman
Social development director, MKDC 1972-88
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