The Byker Wall, a Modernist Success Story?

“If the measure of a successful place is that people want to live there, then it has been very successful” says a friend, and built environment academic. The subject of our conversation is the Byker Wall Estate – a large-scale social housing project designed by Ralph Erskine in the late 1960s and constructed throughout the following decade. Grade II Listed since 2007, and recognised by UNESCO’s list of outstanding twentieth century buildings – the Byker Wall Estate is a most singular example of the non-traditional social housing genre. My colleague’s measure of success is absolutely valid as we reflect on the enduring qualities of places as they (and we) grow older. It is always worth reminding ourselves that the true clients of our profession are the people who live in the places long after the designers have moved on.

The centrepiece of the Byker Estate is Erskine’s Byker Wall – a one-and-a-half mile long, 180 home, gargantuan piece of townscape which first grabbed my attention upon arrival in Newcastle upon Tyne at the start of my postgrad-studies in 2005. Of course my own fascination had been nothing new, as the Byker Wall has been fascinating students of architecture, urban design and social history ever since the wrecking ball entered old Byker – a tight-knit, working-class community of Victorian back-to-back terraces – more than 50 years ago.

Much has been and will doubtless continue to be written about the Byker Estate, and much of this rightly focuses on the original Byker community and its displacement. This article is not an attempt to add to this weighty subject but rather takes the Byker Wall as it finds it today, observing it through the lens of urban design.

In the interests of keeping this as concise as possible I have chosen to explore four elements of design that may have contributed to the endurance of the Byker Wall Estate. No grand hypothesis is offered, rather an exploration of the qualities that seem to set it apart from many of its contemporaries from the often ill-fated genre of post-war non-traditional housing estates. How have design decisions taken in the late 1960s and 70s played out more than a half decade later.

Responding to Context

In its most simple form Erskine’s Byker Wall is the result of a design decision to shelter the estate and its inhabitants from the roar of traffic along A193 that booms along the northern edge of the estate, linking Newcastle city centre and the east end. This principle is evident in the scale and massing, but also in terms of the internal layouts and architecture – kitchens and bathrooms on the north side and small austere windows to the north face. In stark contrast the interior on the south side has active and open facades allowing light to penetrate more generously into living spaces, and with regular entrances and balconies looking across the interior of the estate, and down the sloping topography towards the banks of Tyne.

Interior of the Byker Wall has active and open facades

Tethered to the Landscape

The beauty of writing retrospectively about place is that the passing of time has allowed the natural landscape to mature and to take hold becoming entwined with the built forms. A half decade on it can be difficult to discern what was planned and planted, from what is the result of nature’s urban wilding. What seems certain is that the estate was originally laid out around existing natural features as many of the trees found there today are far more advanced in years than the estate itself. What can be observed from this is that a characteristic the Byker Estate shares with many sought-after traditional residential neighbourhoods, is the structural landscape that elevates a sense of hierarchy, and tethers the estate to the land.

Buildings appear tetherd to the land through maturity of the landscape

Eyes on Streets and Spaces

Whilst the estate is non-traditional in its design and layout – there is no grid and block structure – the design has delivered the sense of public fronts and private backs far more successfully than is the norm for post-war non-traditional estates. In the Byker Estate whilst streets and spaces lack the uniformity and legibility of a traditional layout,  the buildings and landscape provide a comfortable sense of enclosure, and a network of generally well-overlooked pathways, communal squares and play areas – some large and some more intimate – which reinforce a sense of community. At this point it is necessary to offer a counterpoint by identifying that like much of post-war Britain, the Byker Wall Estate was made by men for men. Women have a different perspective of their environment from the men who created it, and the labyrinthine routes through the estate and their perceived levels of comfort are an example of this gender bias in design.

What is apparent when exploring the estate today is that the design team understood how to use distinctive architecture and open spaces to act as wayfinders and local landmarks to help people orientate. This has to an extent alleviated for the absence of a more traditional layout that people are able to navigate intuitively.

Society at the Heart of Design Vision?

What of Erskine himself? A British architecture by birth, but a designer who lived and worked in Sweden for the vast majority of his life. It is perhaps a generalisation to say Scandinavian values of community and co-housing are present in the design approach, but there is weight to the argument that Erskine’s approach was progressive at the time for placing such values at the heart of a design vision. According to research Erskine set up base in a former funeral parlour during the destruction and subsequent rebuilding of Byker from where he attempted to pivot his approach on a desire to keep social and familial ties intact. A further explanation of the sinuous form of the Byker Wall is to be found in the aspiration of rehoming households street-by-street. Such ambition it seems was only partially realised, and depending on which source you read fewer than 25% of the existing Byker population came to live in the Byker Wall Estate.  

Anecdotally at least the Byker Wall Estate as viewed through the lens of this urban designer is a place where families appear content to leave children’s toys and bikes out in communal spaces, under no apparent fear of them being taken. A place where outdoor theatre companies are encountered on what seemed at the time the most innocuous of Tuesday mornings. Therein lies at least a partial understanding of its enduring success: its design engenders a sense of ownership that many of its contemporaries contrived to eradicate.