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Southwestern England and Devon in particular have a unique character that distinguishes them from other English counties. One of Devon’s most unique places is the market town of Totnes (pop. 8,200), whose easy-going atmosphere, historic buildings, and situation on the River Dart contribute to the town’s special character (Barber 1996; Lane 1998).

I first became interested in Totnes’ town center when, in 2004, a group of residents ran a campaign called ‘Design Our Space’ which was about a local council’s plan to develop a site close to High Street, the town’s main thoroughfare. The council was seeking to unite different functions such as more affordable housing and parking. Some Totnes’ residents, however, did not entirely agree with the council and were given six months to develop alternatives.

Through this group, I became interested in Totnes’ main street, which I immediately liked: interesting buildings and lots of people taking advantage of cafés, pubs, restaurants, book stores, clothing shops, and the like.

As a civil engineer from Berlin, I had been involved in administrative approaches to roads as well as in the design and management of making designs come into place. Administrators usually ground their decisions in surveys, mapping, and economics. But what experiences do people have who walk, ride, and drive on High Street? How does one see the street, the buildings, the shops, and the people? What do we experience as the users? Do places evoke something that should be considered in the design process?

In exploring these questions in regard to Totnes’ town center, the method I used was Goethe’s way of science—a holistic-intuitive method for a direct, thorough, and accurate assessment of phenomena that includes feelings as well as the full spectrum of sense perception (Bortoft 1996; Seamon & Zajonc 1998).

Most often, the Goethean method has been used to explore qualities of natural phenomena such as plants, animals, and landscapes (Colqohoun & Ewald 2002; Seamon & Zajonc 1998; Wemelsfelder 2001). Here, I use the approach for an assessment of the built environment (Day & Parnell 2003; Ferris 2004). I suggest that Goethe’s participative, intuitive approach reveals something that goes beyond the conventional way of mapping and evaluating a cityscape.

First Impression

I begin my study on a Friday morning in the beginning of December. The sky is a bright blue. I start my walk at a roundabout connecting the city center with roads beyond. A considerable part of any motorized traffic arriving in and leaving Totnes has to pass through the roundabout, including public transport. Noise from the roundabout wells into Fore Street almost as far as the East Gate, which divides the town center into Fore and High Streets. This noise seems to affect my underlying feelings for my surroundings.

Moving up Fore Street away from the roundabout, I feel squeezed to the edge of the pavement and to the walls of the buildings on the side where I walk. There is a certain sense of coldness. Words that come to mind include “noise,” “stench,” “black,” “cars,” “buses,” “lorries,” “faceless entities,” “buzzing,” “screeching,” “deafening,” “scary.” Despite the same intensity of ongoing activity as I walk farther up the street, an arch and arcades along Fore Street give me more a feeling of security.

Activity & Noise

I ascend the slight slope of Fore Street. Cars are everywhere: moving, accelerating, and parking. People are passing on both sides on the narrow sidewalks. Parents with prams try to avoid colliding with other pedestrians. In front of a cash machine, customers line up. Most doors of stores are open. Christmas colors are everywhere. People crowd into shops and onto the pavement, between parking and slowly moving cars. I feel caught between noise and activity.

Two- and three-storied buildings face both sides of the street. Their ground floor usually hosts a business—banks and bookstores, shops for sweets, vegetables, clothing, shoes, stationery, craft, art, drugs, organics, and fine food. Again there are cars and lorries. Stale smells emanate from the pavement and vehicle exhausts. This seems to be the rush hour for deliveries. I wonder where all the cars are going. Not all seem to stop and park. They just work their way through the most clogged artery of the town.

I see a woman I know and we chat. Other people stand in small groups and exchange a few words. I feel a sense of warmth. I ask my friend how long she has lived in Totnes. She says she came 17 years ago to study but then never left. It was “love at first sight.”

She is one of many “outsiders” who make up a remarkable part of Totnes’ population. She pushes her shopping cart over the curb because there is no space on the narrow pavement. A van approaches and the driver pays little attention, almost squeezing the cart between curb and van. Passers-by slide between us and the curb. It is difficult to continue conversation and we part.

I continue my walk. On the right side of the street, I find an island of calm in the flow of pedestrians. A gap between the buildings gives space for light, a small garden, one or two trees, and a patch of lawn. The name on the entrance door reads Presbytery. The low stone wall winds around two benches, the first I have seen so far.

I next approach King William, a hotel and pub. Then comes a flower shop with pots neatly piled on the pavement. I pass a corner with a bookshop. Here, the pavement offers slightly more space. There is a small green courtyard, surrounded by a low brick wall where one can easily sit. I rest on a bench shaded by overhanging conifers. Another tree stands leafless, a laurel grows at its foot. I look at a building on the other side of the street—a very old, half-timbered house, slightly lopsided.

Moving onto High Street

I pass through the East Gate arch, a structure that bridges the street and is also known as the clock tower, though it is not a tower in the typical sense. At the East Gate, the thoroughfare becomes High Street. Here, my earlier sense of oppression diffuses, replaced by a feeling of coziness. The street under the archway is even narrower; the sidewalk to the right practically does not exist. But the street feels much better from now on. I pass the language school. The placement of buildings is irregular, stairs lead up into stores, and columns border the pavement unevenly.

On the right side of the street, the churchyard of Saint Mary Church opens, built from large blocks of red sandstone, surrounded by grey stone tiled pathways, lawn, and people in conversation. High Street is much wider in front of the church, and double-parked cars occupy the space. In front of the entrance to Woolworth’s, a cardboard Father Christmas advertises latest editions of Hollywood blockbusters on DVD.

I enter the market square. Friday and Saturday are market days in Totnes, and shoppers move among the colorful stalls displaying antiques, clothes, vegetables, and much more. Above the square, the box-shaped Civic Hall sits heavily against the sky. I pass by and walk along arcades to the intersection with Charles Road. Looking up, I notice the high vaulting of the Barrel House across from which is a news agent, antique dealer, and grocer.

A Shift in Mood

Beyond this intersection, I sense a sudden shift in feeling. The street narrows and then bends. I am now on “The Narrows.” In the curve and beyond there are still small businesses but in between are interspersed private residences. The street becomes increasingly quiet and peaceful. The endless stream of traffic has faded as vehicles sporadically distribute themselves along two streets branching off from the Narrows at an intersection marked by a shop named “Indian Connection.”

Continuing along the Narrows, I arrive at Rotherfold Square, an open space surrounded by ancient, two-storey houses. Beyond is the main traffic road—Western Bypass—which directs traffic around Totnes’ center. My walk ends. As I return, I realize there is a remarkable number of small streets, throughways and footpaths branching off the main street, leading to pleasant spaces filled with backyard lawns and gardens full of flowers.

I stop at a tea salon and observe more closely the surrounding buildings. While I was walking, there was little opportunity to pause and look. The intensity of business and activity captured most of my attention. I now notice that the red-brick buildings housing the Arcturus bookshop and the King William Hotel are very old and handsome.

I leave the tea salon and walk to my bus stop. I notice that traffic has decreased. I look at my watch and am surprised it is now afternoon. Three hours have passed but it seems only half that. I hear the shrieking of seagulls. A man playing a harmonica passes. The bus approaches and I get on. A military helicopter appears above and annihilates all other noise until the bus door closes behind me.

Impressions on Other Days

I continue to study Totnes’ town center regularly. On one visit, a dazzling sunbeam catches me by surprise, and a sudden opening appears to the left. A five-step stone staircase leads to a tiny yard surrounded by a pale yellow wall. Grass pushes through the cobbles. On the far side an old, rickety bicycle leans against a leafless tree next to a high wooden gate leading to Gallery House, No. 10. A serious-looking man in a suit standing beneath the little slated roof over the house entrance stares at me.

From the direction of the square, I hear people shouting. I cannot make out if the noise is angry or happy, so I cross the street to find out. I sit on a bench next to an elevated flowerbed. A theatre group of young people with black and white painted faces leap about the pavement, but few passersby appear to notice.

A young couple takes turns standing behind a camera on a tripod, recording the actors. The unintelligible mix of running and shouting slowly turns into distinguishable phrases. I decide the troupe must be presenting a modern interpretation of some Shakespeare play.

A Friday morning. On bicycle I explore the lanes that lay behind the front row of houses on High Street. The pattern of the labyrinth on the east side of the street follows no recognizable logic. Several times I find myself at a dead end. Laundry on sagging lines restricts the view into balcony windows at the back of High Street’s houses.

Eventually I find an alley that leads parallel from the Guildhall to the footpath of Saint Mary Church. I open a wrought-iron gate, and winding walls form the boundaries of a tiny alley. I cycle downhill on the steep incline.

At the corner of Fore Street and Station Road two men in black brassy suits smile, and one says, “behave.” I realize they are policemen and that I am riding in the wrong direction on a one-way street. I smile and turn around. The street is relatively quiet, apart from the noise of a truck rattling over the cobblestones. A large dog sits next to the bearded driver. The scent of incense wafts from the door of a crystal shop.

Imagining the Past

On an early Sunday morning, High Street is quiet at Station Road. A couple tightly wrapped in their coats strolls by the United Free Church. Two beggars sit on the bare pavement near the entrance to Somerfield supermarket. Street lights illuminate the buildings and shine on the cobblestones. Here the past seems to have been preserved, giving a hint of how the street might have looked like some four hundred years ago.

I let my thoughts wander. Before my eyes the street lights change their appearance, turning into gas lanterns, then they vanish entirely.

A night watchman with a torch in his hand stands at the corner. I hear a horse-drawn carriage coming from the East Gate. The wealthy merchant snoring in the backseat has just left a well-attended advent dinner given by the Mayor at the Guildhall.

The carriage had been waiting for him under the East Gate, when he staggered down the small stairs under the arch that descends from the footpath to the Guildhall toward High Street. His wife also in the carriage is feeling slightly nauseous. She is pregnant in the third month and would rather not have left her bed tonight.

The driver stops briefly at the corner, yielding to two obscure figures heading toward the open door of a pub. A beggar emerges a short way up the street. He grabs the horse’s headgear, hoping to be given a penny. The driver demands that he let go, and the carriage continues its way towards the river.

A few hundred yards farther down Fore Street is the merchant’s mansion where he lives and works. In the back is a herb garden, a stable, a chicken shed, an orchard, and a run for pigs. The merchant and his wife enter their home, while I continue my walk down to the river.

In the early morning, the buildings fade into mist, the cobbles disappear. Eventually there is not even a path anymore. I stand between high grass stalks, surrounded by shrubbery and pines. The light of the full moon is reflected off the waters of the river that has not yet been named. I slowly pivot and see the dark forest covering the hill. Owls scream. I hear a faint howl gradually becoming stronger, coming toward me. I complete my turn and see that I am only a few hundred yards away from the river, yet I cannot reach it. The underbrush is a barricade. In the far distance, above the woods beyond the river, a grey streak dawns on the horizon.

More Imaginings

A Thursday night. A neighbor drops a friend and me at the traffic light where Western Bypass and Plymouth Road meet. We hurry to escape the cueing automobiles and enter Plymouth Road leading to the Narrows. The street is empty, illuminated by the entrance lights of houses. My friend says everything looks strange. She senses we may get lost. I have been near here some time ago and know we are not far from our destination. I take time out for imaging the past.

A goose runs across the soggy street toward the absolute darkness behind us, followed by a bare-footed little girl in a knee-long shabby dress, her shoulders covered with a thin brownish woolen scarf. She manages to catch the lead trailing from the goose’s neck and scolds the bird for running away. Other people hurry past. Several carriages urge the passers-by to give way.

It has been raining the last few days, and the mud is churned up. We lift the hem of our wide skirts above the brim of our galoshes and walk cautiously to the corner where the cobblestones begin. Trying to avoid sinking into the mud, I can hardly breathe, my corset bound tight.

From the corner the walking becomes easier. We follow walkers ahead around the curve, and there we can see we have reached familiar ground. High Street stretches before our eyes a long way down to the river, illuminated by gas lanterns, coach lights, and candles behind windows. People turn their heads to see from where the violin and piano sounds arise.

We enter the corner house. Servants relieve us of our galoshes and gowns. We ascend the staircase and enter the ballroom.

A Shift in Conversation

High Street goes on telling stories forever, and this seems one of my central findings—that human activity is what makes a street. At some point I came to give less attention to gathering these “street stories” and instead gave more attention to particular locales and things that I tried to understand better through drawing. These drawings became part of a communication with Totnes’ town center and part of the stories the place has to tell.

For example, one drawing [above] presents a typical day on High Street, while another drawing [below] I made while sitting in High Street’s Bistro 67 on several occasions. I made this latter drawing because I was struck by the way the facades of the Totnes Museum and an adjacent building interlock so closely. I realized that not only the facades do so, but also often the insides of the buildings. Many of the structures on High Street and Fore Street are so closely connected that one cannot say which walls or even rooms belong to what building. In short, borders are very fluid in Totnes.

One important conclusion of this study is that Totnes’ High Street should be a place for pedestrians. Particularly annoying are the vehicles that use High Street as a short cut, even though officially the thoroughfare is for local access only. Instead of using the modern bypass provided, many drivers use High Street as a connection between Paignton and Kingsbridge—a route that may not even save them time, some critics say.

Over the three years I have been a regular visitor and resident in the area, I have learned that the effort to make High Street a pedestrian thoroughfare has been a recurring topic of concern on the part of residents, businesspeople, and council members. On one hand, there is considerable agreement that a pedestrian-only High Street would make users’ experience more convenient and comfortable. On the other hand, there is fear that local business might be adversely affected.

A central dilemma here is the conflict between car dependency and business size. Local businesspeople with their smaller stores often selling local products go hand in hand with pedestrians—users who typically have the time to browse, appreciate, converse, and haggle. The potential result is familiarity, trust, communication, diversity, and sustainability. The exact opposite of local shops and lively pedestrian street life is car dependency and corporate chains. Their mutual relationship is premised on such characteristics as speed, lack of time, globalization, product uniformity, buyer-seller anonymity, and producer-user separation.

My conclusion here is that a pedestrian-based town center—a comfortable street that invites users to look and linger—strengthens local businesses that in turn strengthen the town center.

As I just said, pedestrians and businesses are crucial to High Street’s continuing success. In the broadest sense, High Street is about trade. Unlike modern commerce, Totnes’ central market emanates a kind of veracity in that the market does not disguise its purpose. Market sellers are not employees of a company and do not trade on behalf of somebody else. They are entirely responsible for their commercial exchanges, so conversation and haggling are possible. In this way, commerce regains its socially connecting function—there is offered through place a relational situation that makes commercial exchange much more than simple buying and selling.

Shopping in a corporate chain like Woolworth’s or Boots most typically involves anonymity. The regional shopping mall and High Street’s market are colorful in different ways, but I would argue that the market offers and requires a greater degree of honesty and rightness. The local trader is a person many of the shoppers know, so they are better able to trust the quality of the product. In contrast, mall shoppers are typically not familiar with mall employees. There is much greater dependence on imposed regulations that guarantee the quality of products and services sold.

The features that make Totnes’ town center unique are the diverse and concentrated presence of local businesses that allow for personal contact and “fair deals.” This local presence distinguishes Totnes considerably from other small towns in the area, where corporate chains dominate the market. Local business presence is a quality that all communities should strive to preserve and further develop. The presence of many businesses potentially guarantees that each of those businesses will more likely flourish. Each business needs others nearby so that would-be shoppers have a wide range of shopping possibilities.

I’ve come to realize that the stories that I have watched and taken part in are about what Totnes as a place is and what it might become if the needs of people and place were better taken into account.

Totnes’ High Street is a living center. The street is architecture, buildings and human movement in fluid change but, even more, the street is a fluid assembly of stories of the people who use the space, involved in an endless variety of possibilities.

The street has its own life. It changes historically, seasonally, weekly, and daily. People have constantly shaped and been shaped by the space since the first inhabitants came here in the late first millennium A.D. High Street is as old as the town itself, and it has been the living centre of Totnes from the early beginning.

At one point, Fore Street was a muddy path connecting people to the river as long as the town kept itself within its walls. Over the centuries, Totnes’ population grew, and people extended thoroughfares and replaced buildings worn out or devastated by fires. New structures were almost always characterized by the fashionable style of the time, and not every building can be called a “spiritual” success. The variety in built structures, however, is similar to the variety of peoples’ characters and ways of being. The fact that “everything has a place” can tell us a story about truth and deception. We can decide what we make of the situation and, if we want, we can change it.

The tarmac has been removed and curbs have vanished. For ease of movement, flagstones, rather than cobblestones, now cover the whole street between the walls of buildings. Without sidewalks, the street seems much wider now, offering more space for pedestrians and cyclists. I secure my bike in one of the bicycle parking facilities in a side alley. The green bicycle next to mine carries the inscription Devon Bike. If tourists spend their holidays in Devon without a car, they can borrow these bicycles for free from a local office funded by Devon hoteliers and the South-Hams Council.

I walk by the Lord Nelson Pub, a soulful old building snugly sitting between its neighbors, one of which is covered by scaffolding. Workers install wooden mullioned windows that mimic the old style but have double-glazing. The artificial tar slates of the pub’s façade are gone.

Encountering an acquaintance, we stop to chat. We continue to talk and shift to a conveniently placed bench between two fruit trees at the entrance to the yard of St. Mary’s Church. The acquaintance has just come over from the nearby town of Paignton on the commuter shuttle. Since this service was established two years ago, the number of commuters has doubled, and far less cars clog Totnes’ bypass.

The flagstones leave an open patch of earth around the tree trunks, which are surrounded by grass and dandelions. An elderly couple sits next to us watching a robin that peers down from an apple tree. A horse carriage laden with cardboard boxes hurries by since deliveries must be made before 10 a.m. The Somerfield supermarket has changed its appearance, getting light from a central glazed atrium beneath which several tropical water plant containers are situated—a sewage treatment facility not recognizable as such.

On my way back downhill, I take a quick look into the window of Bistro 67. A man in his forties sits at a table, a three-year-old, red haired girl on his lap. They laugh. He tries to eat a cheese baguette—a difficult feat, since his daughter is turning around and around, rocking back and forth on his legs. I smile. I have seen them before.

Barber, Chris, 1996. The Great Little Totnes Book, Obelisk Publications, Totnes.

Bortoft, Henry, 1996. The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way of Science, Floris Books Edinburgh.

Colqohoun, Margaret & Ewald, Axel, 2002. New Eyes for Plants: A Workbook for Observing and Drawing Plants, Hawthorn Press, Gloucestershire.

Day, Christopher Day & Parnell, Rosie, 2003. Consensus Design, Socially Inclusive Process, Architectural Press, London.

Ferris, Sean, 2004. Goethean Observation of a Modern City Square, unpublished essay.

Lane, John, 1998. In Praise of Devon: A Guide to its People, Places and Character, Green Books, Dartington.

Seamon, David & Zajonc, Arthur, eds., 1998. Goethe’s Way of Science: A Phenomenology of Nature, State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.

Wemelsfelder, Francoise, 2001. Assessing the ‘Whole Animal’, Animal Biology Division, Scottish Agricultural College, Edinburgh.

Page 8: High Street looking toward East Gate, before 1877. Buildings on the left burned sometime later; Saint Mary Church occupies their place today.

Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology Newsletter

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