Planning a Monumental London in the Early Nineteenth Century. Projects, administrative machine, time and people around Regent Street

The thesis is on the transformation of Regent Street in London in the early nineteenth century. Regent Street was conceived within the London Metropolitan Improvements, and its design and execution are considered a different model from every other street. Within its history, Regent Street suffered several transformations, adjustments and at last complete rebuilding. Currently, even if the street has been completely rebuilt, the original Regent Street perspectives left a sign that remains not only in the plan but also in the image and the imaginary of the city as part of Cultural Heritage. In this research, the street is studied in the context of several proposals and ideas of improvements. The study looks to the new and to the old city. The new project enlightens also some aspects of the old city thanks to the kind of sources written and illustrated produced. It enlightens the process of construction by surveying the procedures and the pre-existing conditions. The study discusses time, causes and events that from an idea of project led to a demolition. Finally, it also aims to discuss if this interruption represents a fail within the project. Some questions still remained open by the published literature. The thesis, through the discovery of new documentation by the author, aims first to enlighten the conceiving and constructing processes of Regent Street. It also aims to study the relationships between the project of John Nash and the other projects, the receiving of the street and issues and matters after its construction. Therefore, the most emblematic part of Nash’s project, the Regent’s Quadrant, had never been a specific object of study before. Thanks to an unpublished sketch by hand of Nash found during this research, new inputs emerges in order to understand the peculiar shape of the Regent’s Quadrant. Another corpus of unpublished documents, related to the modifications to the original project of the street, has been found during this research in the archives, then dated and contextualized by the author in order to create a new chronology of the street building site.