On the architectural battles between the traditionalists vs the minimalists
Or rather Charles’s / Gove’s lot vs Le Corbusier’s / Norman Foster’s lot. For want of another set of descriptors.
I’ve moaned a lot about this subject because it’s something that stayed with me ever since we did a project on old buildings at primary school in the late 1980s. I was still in single figures when I decided I didn’t like new buildings. Few have managed to persuade me since. Related blogposts include:
- The risk of Gove imposing Poundbury everywhere – esp in Cambridge
- Culture wars – linking old buildings to oppressive political systems of times gone by
- A new Urban Room for Cambridge where we can debate and shape our city’s future
- Rob Cowan’s lovely book on Essential Urban Design
- Hideous Cambridge – ugly buildings
- Planning, art, and placemaking in rapidly expanding Cambridge
- What new town squares in expanding Cambridge could be like
- ***Involving the public at design stage***
- Helping people understand how Cambridge (The city of) functions (so as to influence decisions and design stage things).
- Visions of Cambridge 2065 from the 2010s
- Cambridge’s public art
- A reminder for organisers of conferences about Cambridge’s future to involve residents – and not just the affluent ones either.
“So…is that the blogpost?”
No – just a reminder to myself about what I’ve written before – and making ease of reference too.
This post stems from this extended piece by Steve Taylor that reflects the complexity of policy-making.
“Some Scrutonesque views linger, though, such as holding the ’”educational influence of the Modern Movement” responsible for a purported “disparity between popular taste and professional advocacy” and for “intimidating” planners.”
“In the report, the inevitably subjective and slippery concept of beauty is explicitly expanded as evincing more than just buildings, to embrace a wider “spirit of the place”. “
Taylor, 09 Aug 2023
The bit that caught my eye was this:
“In the feedback to the government from phase one, some local authority planners stressed their dependency on external experts in producing codes. [Stephen] Hill describes this lack of specialist skills as “a big problem; lots of councils don’t have urban designers or architects – government understands that”.”
Do ministers understand the reasons why local councils do not have in-house urban designers and in-house architects that can scrutinise proposals before they get to planning committees?
Are there any in-house urban designers and in-house architects working in local councils that have a high public profile *because of their interaction with the people of the towns and cities they serve?* For example what would it be like if a local council’s in-house architect or urban designer was involved in running part time courses and workshops at a local further education or lifelong learning college? i.e. embedded in the communities rather than being embedded in a university, and where they had to manage that dual tension of both responding to the questions and views of the general public while at the same time educating them about the art and science of urban design and architecture?
“Why are there no ‘introduction to architecture’ courses or ‘urban design for beginners’ workshops in and around Cambridge?
A mix of reasons but ultimately it reflects our fragmented and broken city. Reasons could include:
- No one has asked for them – but then when was the last time we had a massive public engagement exercise about what residents would like from adult education and lifelong learning for leisure services?
- Hiring the suitable facilities is not cheap – land prices mean trying to find somewhere suitable and accessible isn’t always easy
- You now need to be qualified in teaching adults to teach such courses if you are to be employed by a teaching institution – CRC runs such courses here – I qualified in late 2011 at Level 3 shortly after leaving the civil service.
- Cost of living crisis – who can afford evening classes? Not as many people as in more affluent times.
- A narrow lifelong learning strategy strongly influenced by ministers – one that is focused on adult basic skills and immediate needs of the local economy rather than a more holistic approach to lifelong learning for the good of our wider city and surrounding towns & villages.
On that last point, if local government and devolved tiers had meaningful independence from central government on both policy and revenue-raising, it might be easier to make the case for such things given how much interest and comment is raised when controversial planning applications are submitted.
Nice things cost money – yet the land market and the ‘attached planning permission market’ extracts the financial value that might otherwise be used for said nice things.
Such as:
- better materials,
- better paid and better quality constructors on better terms and conditions,
- meaningful consultations and honest interactions with the public
- greater contributions towards civic and community facilities far beyond the bare minimum
The Grenfell Inquiry
The evidence sessions from the inquiry were damning on the construction industry.
“ultimately, the profit motive prevails over safety and quality”.
Martin Seward QC, representing the Fire Brigades Union, 14 Sept 2021
Stephanie Barwise QC, representing some of the bereaved, said the fire which claimed 72 lives “demonstrates the existence of a culture of non-compliance within certain sectors of the construction industry”. She added: “Put bluntly, there is a kind of recklessness, as to whether or not compliance is achieved.”
Building. 14 Sept 2021
If the construction industry is so broken that it cannot be trusted to comply with the law (in particular the Building Regulations), what hope is there for going beyond the bare minimum that the law requires?
That does not automatically mean moving to an alternative economic system (one that the climate emergency will ultimately make us move to) will result in wedding-cake buildings.
Not that I’d want to live in one because they are *so high maintenance*
In the grand scheme of things I’m more interested in a sound process that gets more people involved in shaping their communities rather that one that plonks identikit styles and designs showing no reflection of things like local history, local/regional building materials, and the variety & diversity that should be core features of our cities. But in. the current cost-of-living crisis – especially with council and social housing, I understand why we end up with the vernacular/style that we have. It just saddens me because I think collectively we can do better.
And we should expect better from industry too. The problem is the economic incentives are so skewed towards extracting the financial value from the process rather than building something decent that it will need system change & structural change at an international level before we can expect to see major improvements.
Food for thought?
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The Cambridge Town Owl 