Exhibition Road

Exhibition Road, in the South Kensington area of London, is a straight boulevard lined up with various museums housed in neoclassical buildings and Norman Foster's Imperial College (see this post), connecting South Kensington tube station on the south end to Kensington Garden on the north end. It also serves as a path from the tube station to the Royal Albert Hall, a classical music concert venue, just off the Road.

In recent years, the pavement and the street furniture on Exhibition Road underwent a drastic makeover. The pedestrian area got expanded. Tall, thin poles were erected in the middle of the street to divide the traffic. And the asphalt surface was replaced with the tiling pattern featuring vast letters of x (probably inspired by the name of the road). The result is a cosy coexistence of cars and pedestrians. 

There is no kerb stone dividing pedestrian areas from car traffic. The tiling pattern unites the car traffic with pedestrians. The big x-shaped white tiles create a diamond area larger than a single car. All these, together with the reduced speed of cars, soften the intrinsic scariness of car traffic to pedestrians. Car traffic always looks frightening and even ugly to pedestrians. On Exhibition Road, it doesn't. Even car parking areas naturally fit into the whole streetscape.

A reviewer on The Observer newspaper also points out that the street lighting provided by central poles lets different buildings along the Road speak for themselves. Indeed. See the photo at the top again.