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       Rules are one of the hallmarks of civilization. In a civilized society, most people follow rules. After all, rules are our invisible safeguard against chaos. But rules aren’t always invisible — they exist in physical form, too. Roads and sidewalks are rules that separate the hard surface for cars from the soft surface for pedestrians. Lane markings, crosswalks, and steel railings are another layer of rules. Do we need such a “nanny”? What happens if we relax the rules a little?
       That’s exactly what’s happening on Exhibition Road in London. This Victorian boulevard runs for half a mile from South Kensington tube station to London’s Hyde Park. Over the past 18 months, it has been completely torn down and redesigned to almost completely eliminate the boundary between road and pavement. In its place is now a continuous pavement with brightly coloured criss-crossing lines carved into black and white granite. Pedestrians can stroll as they please: they just have to keep their distance from cars and bikes. It’s all been very liberating, and a bit of an experiment.
       The idea for this unconventional design came about in 2003 when the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea decided that Exhibition Road was not living up to its name. Exhibition Road was once the main route to the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, and remains arguably London’s greatest cultural artery. Leading to the Royal Albert Hall at its northern end, Exhibition Road is bordered on one side by the Victoria and Albert Museum and on the other by the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum, institutions that receive more visitors each year than Venice combined.
       But now the site has become a posh car park, often choked with long queues of buses. Add to that the dreary two-lane Cromwell Road that runs through it, and it’s no wonder many pedestrians choose to walk through the damp Victorian tunnel under Exhibition Road from the tube station to the Science Museum.
       Today, Exhibition Road is in the final stages of its extraordinary transformation. With the exception of isolated sections, it is now a continuous, seamless “shared space” – shared by drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. The focus is on pedestrians, who now have two-thirds of the road’s width at their disposal.
       The elegant scheme was designed by Dixon Jones Architects, who won the competition in 2003, but they do not take credit for the “shared space” concept. The concept was first proposed by Dutch road engineer Hans Monderman and has since been adopted by master planners such as Denmark’s Jan Gehl. The model is common in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, with Kensington and Chelsea particularly keen to try it out.
       The idea is that when traffic zones are clearly demarcated, drivers tend to act autonomously, focusing on other vehicles rather than pedestrians or cyclists. That’s why London has so many barriers on either side of pedestrian crossings, to stop pedestrians wandering onto parts of the road where they shouldn’t be. But 10 years ago, Kensington and Chelsea tried removing the barriers on Kensington High Street and found that pedestrian accidents fell by 60%. It seems that when drivers are forced to be more vigilant and pedestrians are forced to take more responsibility, everyone becomes safer. The rules seem counterproductive.
       On Exhibition Road, the scheme is being rolled out in stages, with bollards still blocking vehicle access and signs still indicating the route. It’s taking time for locals to adjust. In the meantime, vehicles have been moving along cautiously at 20mph. Strictly speaking, it’s not exactly a ‘shared space’. Technically, the pavement is still there, but it’s distinguished only by a row of ribbed ‘corduroy’ tiles, specially designed for the blind. Like all the details, they’re very minimal. From the parking pins to the driveways, everything here is a suggestion, not a definitive reality. The whole system will continue to be closely monitored when the road officially opens to traffic next month, but as a path from the tube station to the park, it’s already a liberating experience.
       But it’s not just about pedestrianising Exhibition Road. “The question is how do you make it more like a street,” said Edward Jones of Dixon Jones. The road is so called because it is a route from A to B. But as the museum, and later Imperial College, was built, it needed to become more like a street, defined by the entrances to the buildings along its route.
       Now all three museums have main and secondary entrances on the road, and entry is free, so the architects intended for people to walk from one entrance to the other. That’s the idea behind the cross-hatching, which suggests diagonal lines on the road. Obviously, it has a strong subconscious effect, because you actually see people crossing the street diagonally. But graphically, the pattern also somewhat denotes Exhibition Road as a recreational area. It’s reminiscent of Roberto Burle Marx’s undulating promenade on Copacabana Beach: a stereotypically Nordic option. And it’s extremely well made, paved with carefully cut Chinese granite slabs. The craftsmanship reminded me of the sidewalks in Lisbon, only they were so perfect. Nowhere are sidewalks as poetic as in Lisbon.
       The American architect Louis Kahn once said: “Streets are the rooms of communities.” The long street is like a series of rooms. Exhibition Road is made up of four separate halls. At the southern end, behind the tube station, the street seems to turn into a public square. There are cafes and restaurants, and people enjoy lunch sitting on the curbs around the tunnel skylight – in what was once the centre of a busy road. On the other side of Cromwell Road are museum halls filled with tourists. The next gallery is outside Imperial College, where visitors give way to groups of students gathered on the steps. Finally, as we approached the Royal Geographical Society and the park, we felt like we were in a residential area, and the road again divided into two separate lanes. In this decadent atmosphere, it was like travelling from the city centre to the suburbs.
       Despite the approaching cold, people were visible leaving the underground tunnel. The number of pedestrians seemed to increase, filling the new space. At the same time, the outside walls of many of the buildings along the road were cleared. “They’re dressing up and sitting at this table,” said Jones. In the middle, a row of tall flagpole-shaped street lamps creates a clear line of sight from the tube station to the park. Exhibition Road will be quite a spectacle, as Hyde Park will host several events during next year’s Olympics. On the other hand, this tartan tablecloth has a more romantic English feel. At the end of the street is a Polish restaurant.