What Does The Apollo 11 Moon Landing Teach Us About The Importance Of Creating Emotional Centres Within New Residential Neighbourhoods

Victor Pasmore was Director of Urban Design for Peterlee Development Corporation between 1955 and 1977. Having previously been professor of Painting at Kings College Durham. By the mid-1950s Pasmore held an international reputation as one of the leading exponents of post-war Abstract Art. His commission to work in Peterlee within the Corporation’s architects and engineers team signalled the desire to challenge the typical suburban expansion seen nationwide during the inter-war years.

Pasmore’s focus on housing as a collective environment is evident within the cubic layout of the housing. Walking through the estate it is noticeable how clusters of houses are arranged around small green open spaces, with front doors opening out directly onto communal gardens, intimate spaces where children (and grown-ups) can play and be sociable.

The Apollo Pavilion

An architectural scale sculpture and man-made lake completed in 1969 when the world’s attention was tuned into the Apollo 11 moon landing. Pasmore had felt one of the main problems of urban design is its lack of an emotional centre. The psychological and emotional needs of a community had until this point been met largely by the Church. Indeed, the activity of a traditional urban residential neighbourhood would have often been dominated by going to Church, attending Sunday School etc. In the late 1960s, as today, new residential communities are being created without such universal ties that knit communities together – be it the Church, pubs, marketplaces or corner shops. All too often new residential developments are designed and constructed without sufficient consideration of their emotional centres. A s106 Play Area simply doesn’t cut it when it comes to the emotional needs of a community.  

Explaining his intensions in the design and placement of the Pavilion, Pasmore would later describe it as: “not only an object to look at, but also a precinct through which one could physically enter, through which to walk, in which to linger, and on which to play”. It certainly forms a focus to the whole neighbourhood by providing a place of scale and belonging – an emotional centre connecting the smaller clusters of communal spaces within the housing layout.