When visiting the Lloyd’s Building as part of the Open House event I had the opportunity of enjoying an amazing view over London. However, while looking through the glass lifts I couldn’t help thinking of my own research where I try to understand the role of the senses in the perception of public space. As most of us know there has been a dominance of the visual in urban studies, but can we fully experience the city from inside a glass box?
A stilt house in Laos. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AttapeuStiltHouse.jpg
Buildings at their most primal provide a means of sheltering people from the extremities of climate; historically building fabric offered mediation between the external environment and inhabitants with minimal energy use.
Responding to the climate developed broad vernaculars that offer legible interpretations of local environmental conditions: Light weight stilted dwellings in the tropics respond to the hot, humid and still air by maximising circulation through large apertures, they block solar gain with overhanging roofs and provide thermal responsiveness through the use of lightweight bamboo, being positioned over water provides cooling. Mud brick courtyard houses of North Africa use a heavyweight structure to regulate large diurnal temperature fluctuations, small windows to avoid ingress of hot desert air and use water in central courts to trap a reservoir of evaporatively cooled air. Massively thick stone walls of Crofters’ cottages in the highlands of Scotland also use thermal mass to regulate temperature changes and small, deep-set openings prevent wind driven rain getting into the dwelling. Roofs of thatch are built with low eaves, weighed down with stone to avoid being torn off by strong winds.
The evolution of these buildings perhaps happened over generations, modifications would be made to achieve greater comfort, make better use of scarce materials and energy sources or to repair climate related ‘design’ failures. The group who did not get uncomfortably hot may have inspired others to rebuild their house on stilts. The clustering of rooms around a local water hole may have inadvertently led to the realisation that cool air could be trapped and used and through iterations of roof configuration the crofter may have realised that thicker thatch meant a warmer house with less collection of timber to burn. Buildings were built, maintained and modified by the people who used them, with a continual flow of quantitative and qualitative information being gathered, interpreted and acted upon in new technological developments.
Prosperity, social stability, trade and technological advance allowed an increased disconnection of building fabric from a role in the mediation between the external environment and interior conditions. The abundant cheap energy and building service technology of the 20th century enabled a complete decoupling of building fabric from an environmental role, completely freeing architects to discuss and express ideas of society, place, economy, industry and technology through their designs. An ideas based evolutionary process has happened rapidly, information streams that once were built around environmental performance expanded to include the myriad of complex indicators that help to inform, and are informed by, architecture.
Whilst architecture must continue to debate, articulate and define the culture and places that it helps form, the era of cheap energy is over and reducing consumption is increasingly important throughout society. There is a need to re-establish environmental response and interpretation as a key component of architectural expression. Discourse must move beyond the abstract and qualitative and open up to include discussion of the quantitative and measurable. Re-establishment of feedback loops between buildings, designers, occupants and climate will help to refine every aspect of our buildings; the abstract, the social, issues of usability and energy consumption amongst them. The future evolutionary narrative of the built environment can and should embrace artistic and scientific ideas and information exchange – it will only benefit us all in the long term.
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Art historian Elisabetta Longari on Domus decries the damage that the Italian colonial architecture in Libya suffered through the Allied bombings in the Second World War and the erratic post-colonialist fury of the dictator. I had once the chance of viewing the videos Lorenzo Pezzani shot during the first stages of his research in the after-lives of colonial buildings in Libya. It is surprising how much has been left behind, most interestingly the colonial settlements, which in their structure are surprisingly similar to the West Bank settlements of today. It is true, as Longari says, that what is still standing survived “simply because there was no will to destroy it”. She adds that true conservation of the built heritage also means “renovate, reinterpretate, rehabilitate” and calls on the Italian government and other Italian institutions to intervene to save this wealth of heritage. This is a delicate task, not only because of the risk to reiterate colonial attitudes to space, but especially because to this day an atlas of the afterlives of this as other colonial architecture is still lacking.
Alessandro Petti of Decolonizing Architecture proposed that three general approaches can be discerned in dealing with evacuated colonial architecture: destruction, re-occupation, and subversion. Destruction is often based on the desire to turn time backwards, reverse development into virgin nature, or into a tabula rasa on which all potential forms of development and land use would be possible. This is a very appealing approach, particularly given the abhorrence aroused by colonial development, although demolitions or even the forced ruralization of built-up areas may sometimes create further planning problems or environmental damage. Another strong temptation present throughout the histories of decolonization was re-occupation of colonial buildings and infrastructure and reuse them in the very same way they were used under colonial regimes. Such repossessions tended to reproduce some of the colonial power relations in space: colonial villas were inhabited by new financial elites and palaces by political ones, while the evacuated military and police installations of colonial armies, as well as their prisons, were often used by the governments that replaced them, recreating similar spatial hierarchies. Subversion, finally, aims at profanation of structures that are both symbol and instruments of spacial control, in order to restore the common use of spaces. The first stage when looking at colonial architecture in Libya should be investigating how and whether these strategies have been used and – in perspective – how they could be used on buildings and urban centres on which intervention is still possible.
The word I like in Longari’s article is “reinterpretation”. In fact, we also have to reckon with the fact that no building should be allowed the privilege to last forever. In a way, sometimes the energy spent in harnessing the space must be released to be vital again – and this is a form of reinterpretation. Sometimes monuments that crumble down are not “lost”, but “regained”.
The right the local population indeed has to be granted now is exactly the right to reinterpretate. These attacks launched today with the Odissey Dawn operation will surely claim more lives, may they be Libyans or mercenaries. The Europeans could not afford losing access to Libya’s oil, the Arab League is happy to do away with the Libyan dictator’s antics and the international public opinion could not take the news of the brave rebels being crushed any longer. A tricky alliance of intentions, most certainly. We cannot anticipate where this will lead, but in the short term anything seemed better than just seeing mercenaries slaughtering freedom fighters. In the medium term all depends on the right leadership emerging from the rebels, a leadership that is able to twist this mismatched alliance of intentions and reinterpretate it toward the best outcome for the Libyan people.
Yesterday the 2011 Bartlett PhD Research Projects conference took place. In the comments period following presentations one question was repeated several times and particularly caught my attention. How did your interest in this topic start? What is the starting point?
It came back to mind after the event concluded because to me it illustrates we might be dealing with two co-existing models of authorship and interpretation. I guess the thought may have been triggered by the question of authorship raised in the comments that followed the last session. Well, that may be how it originated… Or was it from a discussion at the bar or on the inhabitation of Casa Malaparte? Anyway. So on the one hand, we have the post-structural notion of ‘the death of the Author’, i.e.: as we were repeatedly told in architecture school: the work must speak for itself. I think that was actually brought up yesterday as well. And on the other the belief that the truth about a work of art (or research project in this case) must somewhat reside with the author.
The latter point is the one directly addressed by the question. It seems to me that this one seeks a personal foundation and justification for what is being presented in order to understand the work as a succession of logical steps. In other words, it wants to put the work into a narrative framework. I am wondering how a personal starting point, whatever that may be, might forgive the possible inaccuracies or the relative impact of our research when it is told as a story. After all, should not the argument stand on its own? Or is this just an indication that although we believe the work should stand on its own we still enjoy the comfort of knowing there is a person behind it all? Perhaps there is no contradiction there. But I am also wondering about the relationship between personal narrative frameworks and accounts of subjectivity in our research work. When are they equivalent?
Oh yes, just to clarify, I started writing this post after reading the line ‘In 2001 Jeremy Paxman interviewed Slavoj Zizek on BBC radio.’
Cross posted from michaeledwards.org.uk
Have just greatly enjoyed Owen Hatherley (2010) A guide to the new ruins of Great Britain, London: Verso. It’s a rollicking tour of the cities of England + Cardiff + Glasgow, evaluating and describing what’s been done to them in modern times. Sometimes gleeful, more often rueful or rude. The underlying analysis is a solid leftist and modernist one, but it’s very tacit which I quite enjoy.We don’t get theoretical or synthetic chapters and this remains a collection of magazine articles commissioned by BD; it doesn’t really work as a book. The editors at Verso were either lazy or defeated. Still it’s great to have. On Milton Keynes (p91)
The 1982 station square designed by the architects of Milton Keynes Development Corporation (Stuart Mosscrop, Derek Walker and Chris Woodward) is one of the most remarkable Modernist set pieces in Britain, a bracing landscaped plaza flanked by three perfectly detailed Miesian blocks…
Then on Nottingham University’s Jubilee Campus designed by Make (p71)
In its combination of jollity, bathos, vacancy and authoritarianism, it sums up the Blairite era in three dimensions.
I’ll add some more gems as I come to them.
But I should post a warning: this book is ruined by the apallingly poor presswork (by Scandbook AB in Sweden) in which the many photographs all appear in a narrow range of greys. It’s the kind of production which got offset litho a bad reputation when I was 20. It doesn’t have to be like that as most architectural/design publishers know (and the Hyphen Press is specially good). But if this is the best Verso can manage then I should take your illustrated book elsewhere when you write it.
LATER (28 Feb) I just went to talk he gave at UCL. It was a great shock because I had expected another jaded old leftist like myself (60-70) but he turned out to be young, maybe 30. (Allan Cochrane said to me afterwards, when I told him, that I should have guessed his age from the way he wrote about Manchester music in the book. I just don’t know about Manchester music… )
Apart from that, all was well. He did quite a good talk, and it was great to see the pictures in legible quality (and in colour). His analysis is a bit flaky (not very carefully theorised) just like in the book, but basically sound and strong and refreshing. We could do with a lot more such writers.
In one respect I thought the talk less good than the book: he couldn’t resist a lot of references (mostly negative) to stars while a virtue of the book is its appreciation of good non-star architects where he finds their work. He’s a bit obsessed with architects, actually. But at least he does examine their work in the context of the funding streams, development companies, political regimes and so on which generated them.
It’s better than most of the John Punter collection on the Urban Renaissance where there is precious little good stuff, despite all John’s efforts.
One year ago, I wrote some notes on the urban public spaces of China (see post Reading the Urban Spaces of China). In it, I made a small reflection on the accelerating urbanization in China on the one hand and the differences in use of the public space between Western and non-Western countries on the other hand. Today I want to elaborate on the uses of public space a bit more. I want to introduce some insights brought by a short film ‘Outside’ of the Portuguese filmmaker Sergio Cruz I came across in TINAG a few weeks ago. In this film, Sergio brought a compelling portrait of Beijing public life during the preparation for hosting the Olympics in 2008, which he described as ‘a 24-hour live show full of music, dance and sports.’ This documentary film really made me think about three particular ongoing debates on public space. The first is the tolerance towards social behaviors in the public spaces of Beijing such as sleeping in public, selling in the street, and other considered deviant behaviors often not allowed in western countries. The second is the freedom Sergio had to film everywhere without ever having to ask permission and the acceptance of people to be filmed. The third is the actual intensity and diversity of Chinese public life. All these aspects show that despite China lack of freedom of speech and expression, Chinese public spaces are still very meaningful and democratic.
Sleeping in public, scene from film 'Outside' of Sergio Cruz.
To know more information about the artist and the Tinag screening see websites below:
Sergio Cruz: http://www.rhiz.eu/person-37213-en.html
TINAG events: http://thisisnotagateway.squarespace.com/salons-upcoming/
As part of the coalition government’s education reforms, approximately 735 school projects were stopped as part of the cancellation of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. (1)
Mossbourne Academy by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners. Source: www.richardrogers.co.uk
There is certainly need to improve the delivery of school buildings; BSF often resulted in buildings costing over the odds. However, the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DSCF) has chosen to associate these overspends with an apparently frivolous and greedy architectural profession rather than looking at the root causes within the BSF procurement process. Whilst the DSCF has apologised for Gove’s original assertion that architects have been “creaming off cash” from the BSF programme, they still hold the role that architecture plays in delivering education in low regard. A DCSF spokesperson said:
“Rather than spending large amounts of money on consultants and unnecessarily expensive building projects, we believe more funding needs to go directly into schools, on the front line.”(2)
It is difficult to argue against funding going directly into schools and the ‘front line’ but the dismissal of new schools as an ‘unnecessarily expensive’ component of this reveals the contempt that Mr Gove holds for architects. He recently told a free school conference that:
“we won’t be getting Richard Rogers to design your school, we won’t be getting any ’award-winning’ architects to design it because no-one in this room is here to make architects richer” (3)
The idea that school buildings have little effect on children’s academic performance has been very publicly championed by the coalition’s celebrity free school cheerleader Toby Young. He recently remarked on the claim that buildings can make a difference to educational attainment:
“How do you know buildings have this impact? It is extraordinarily arrogant. Architects are clever people. Why not design a building that is a bit more flexible?”(4)
In attempting to achieve more flexible buildings in more cost effective design and construction processes the DSCF is developing a school development programme that will include a suite of standardised designs that:
“Would cut out the need for architects, planning advisers and other consultants to design each school from scratch.”(5)
So whether you live in Cornwall or Kirkwall there will be one of a small range of designs ready, waiting and appropriate for your education, urban, environmental, aesthetic, social and all round architectural needs. This will apparently reinvigorate school building, according to Mr Gove:
“The truth about free schools is that they will introduce the sort of innovation and dynamism that we’ve already seen in schools like Mossbourne” (3)
Mossbourne Academy (6) being a Hackney school that has been transformed into an ‘innovative’ and ‘dynamic’ institution with high academic attainment levels through the hard work and dedication of the staff and teachers in a new building designed by an architect, in fact the ‘award winning’ Richard Rogers that Mr Gove singled out.
According to CABE “it has been designed for a rather specific and distinctive educational approach”(7). It was not built through the BSF programme but clearly demonstrates the impact that buildings, designed to work to compliment the educational aspirations of a dedicated staff, can have on a school community. Mr Gove has praised the results that this school has produced but has chosen not to acknowledge the architecture that helped deliver them. Indeed he has embarked on the removal of architecture from the future development of schools. This policy is a chillingly naïve misunderstanding of the role that architecture can play in education and represents a reminder to the architectural profession of just how hard we must work to prove the value of our work.
(1) http://www.guardian.co.uk
(2) http://www.educationinvestor.co.uk
(3) http://www.bdonline.co.uk
(4) http://www.bdonline.co.uk
(5) http://www.bdonline.co.uk
(6) http://www.mossbourne.hackney.sch.uk
(7) http://www.cabe.org.uk
At the end of 2010, the Commonwealth Association of Planners produced a scoping study of ‘the state of the cities across its member states’ entitled Urban Challenges: Scoping the State of the Commonwealth’s Cities. The new report, with which I was involved in the early stages, draws together existing data for the Commonwealth to demonstrate what the impact of global trends of growth and climate change mean in real terms. It is an interesting report not only in its findings, but because of the international partnership that produced it. One of the ambitions of the collaboration is ultimately to encourage further networking and international policy exchange.
Download the report here.
Last night Owen Hatherley gave a talk at the UCL occupation in the Jeremy Bentham Room as part of a seminar on ‘Architecture and social change’. I will attempt to summarise the main points in this post and leave the criticism for the comments section.
The broad topic of his talk was campus architecture and the ‘poverty of student architecture.’ He argued that the current trends of urban segregation and exploitation are most appalling in the student context. Segregation because new campuses and residence projects show a general lack of any architectural sensibility and sensitivity to the city. Exploitation because the student body is sold a prepackaged lifestyle for profit. These trends, he further suggest, exist because they have been encouraged by public policy and quickly draws a line from the previous Conservative government to New Labour and ‘Blairite architecture.’
Jubilee Campus extension, Nottingham, by Make Architects
The first part of his talk focused on the disjunction between campus and town. It started way back with the ‘exclusive’ All Souls at Cambridge and jumped forward to new campuses like the Jubilee Campus at Nottingham by Make Architects. These new campuses, again completely disconnected, are prime examples of what he described as the ‘vacuous optimism’ of Blairite architecture that are turning universities into ‘jolly versions of business parks.’
The proposed Quill student residence at Waterloo was given planning approval last week.
The second part of the talk focused solely on housing. In many English cities, the newest, tallest and possibly worst buildings welcoming you as you arrive are student residences that have little or nothing to do with the place -witness Nido Spittafields or the recently approved ‘Quill’ at Waterloo. They are the result of speculative property development tapping into the new ‘knowledge economy’ (partly inflated by the recent dependency of universities on overseas fees). Hatherley argued that the new residence projects by developers such as Unite or Nido are versions of gated communities completely disconnected from their surroundings, offering minuscule accommodation at high cost -but each with its own plasma screen. Although it might keep the parents who are paying rents from the thought of their children being unsafe, cold, whatever, these projects stand for a general impoverishment of the public realm (its own and the city’s).
Hatherley was followed by Douglas Murphy who gave a brief overview of Modern architecture, the radical responses of the 1960s and 70s, and the theoretical trends of the last 30 years (developed solely within the field of architecture). If one is to look to affect social change through architecture, as I understood his conclusion, you have to forget the last 30 years and focus on historical precedents, practices from outside the field and to the critical practices of the 60s and 70s because ‘these projects of Modern architecture are still unfinished.’ Will Wiles, senior editor at ICON, closed the session before opening a lengthy discussion and question period.
The discussion that followed was quite animated and raised crucial questions on occupation, education, participation, engagement and alternative means of making architecture. Instead of jumping into a description of the salient points or into my own thoughts right here I will leave these for the comments section below. Please comment, correct and/or criticise generously!
The editors of the Bartlett Think-Tank would like to express their support for the current UCL occupation opposing the cuts in education and rise in tuition fees. We agree that the present crisis in education calls for critical and open dialogue and that it is more than appropriate that it should manifest itself in the occupation of university space.
Please visit the occupation’s website and blog for more information and real-time updates:
http://ucloccupation.com/
http://ucloccupation.wordpress.com/
Or show your support by visiting the Jeremy Bentham Room at UCL:
http://ucloccupation.wordpress.com/find-us/
The Bartlett Think-Tank encourages comments and posts on the use of space as a form of constructive critique and the alternative ideas this can generate and promote.