PROJECT SUMMARY: HAMMERSMITH PLACE

The Hammersmith Broadway area was devastated by traffic planners in th 1950s who created not only the Hammersmith Flyover, but nine lanes of roads around the other three sides of St. Paul’s Church. That church, now Grade II listed, is skirted by the flyover to its south, and on its other three sides by the five lanes of the A4 slip road (to its west and north) and by the four one-way lanes of the western side of the gyratory (to its east). Seldom has a city centre neighbourhood been so damaged by 1960s road building. Today city planners aim to create congenial places for people, and balance that against the needs of road transport. No such balance is evident at Hammersmith Broadway, where road traffic dominates. The objective of our Hammersmith Place proposal is to explore how that balance could be restored. The 2018 Grimshaw master plan assumed the flyover would be demolished; it created a pedestrianised square around St. Paul’s Church by abolishing the A4 slip road (5 lanes) and the western side of the gyratory (4 lanes).

Our central argument is that this re-arrangement of roads, and the creation of a new public space (which refer to as Hammersmith Place) is achievable without demolishing the flyover or creating a tunnel.