Poundbury

[puddleshark]

Dorset skyscraper, at Poundbury, Prince King Charles' model "village" on the outskirts of Dorchester. Though there's actually nothing at all village-like about it - it's like a small piece of city abandoned in some Dorset fields, and left looking rather bewildered.

Driving east from Bridport, up over the hills, when the towers of Poundbury appear on the skyline, they seem unreal, like an invasion by faerie, or a hallucination caused by lack of tea.

It's not that I hate Poundbury. If it's pretending to be something it is not, well, there's a long history of architecture pretending to be what it's not (see 19th century Baronial). But I wouldn't ever want to live there. Poundbury is built around the motor car - no cycle lanes, no pedestrian streets, no quiet traffic-free squares - and it always seems to me that it has no heart.

Comments

[benicek]

It puts me in mind of some of those surreal developments in Japan and China that replicate sections of old European cities.

[puddleshark]

Yes! That sense of the surreal exactly! Poor Poundbury, it never really feels like it belongs where it is.