A UK architect berates the state of residential development across The Pond, and asks the question: How can we rock the status quo?
In a couple of thousand years, assuming we still inhabit this earth, I sometimes wonder what archeologists will make of our settlements as they excavate the ruins of Leicester with a hi-tech toothbrush. Perhaps they will marvel at the sweeping metallic bands of Rafael Viñoly’s Curve Theatre. Maybe they will gaze in bemusement at the city’s infamous and dubious award-winning Opal Court, officially crowned the UK's worst building back in 2007. They will no doubt stare in awe at the glimmering surface of Foreign Office Architects’ John Lewis department store, an exhibition of lace-patterned glass and stainless steel mirrors.
But what will they discover about the home lives of everyday citizens? Exploring the periphery of this fair city, they are set to uncover some truly peculiar specimens: architectural riddles, masquerading as Georgian and Victorian homes, but with some vital, disturbing differences.
architectural riddles, masquerading as Georgian and Victorian homesDusty, cracked uPVC frames are wedged into the apertures. They possess mechanisms akin to sash cords, but actually open on metal hinges. Above walls of tangerine brick, moss-covered roofs are present: they appear to be tiled with slate, but on closer inspection, they are composed of concrete. There, perched upon each ridge, is the most bizarre curio of all: a humble chimney.
But hold on – where is the flue? This chimney does not connect to a fireplace. It has no capability of funneling smoke out of the building and into the sky above. It appears to possess a material palette of brick, stone and terracotta, but wait: tapping on the element reveals the startling truth.
It is made of plastic.
an architectural sham, one that makes a mockery of the country’s proud tradition in domestic architecture.This chimney holds no function, but for one: to portray an artificial image of quaint charm that belies the sorry truth. The archeologists will scratch their heads as they compare these houses with those built in previous centuries. They will analyze the remains of an architectural sham, one that makes a mockery of the country’s proud tradition in domestic architecture.
These ruins will be our legacy. They will tell a tale of mass production, of value engineering, and of misguided nostalgia. The developers now dominating the UK’s house building sector have established their formula based on this three-part recipe, perfecting the art of profit generation with a form of architecture that displays a truly terrifying degree of deceit. It is economic pragmatism gone mad.
A little context: for some time now, developers have been purchasing brownfield sites and securing planning permission for a large number of properties, spurred on by a government desperate to address the UK’s longstanding shortage of housing. Even before the recession of 2008, a cocktail of weak consumer buying power, a lack of material resources, and increasingly vicious frugality of developers led to a perceived decline in architectural quality: as the downturn took hold, CABE (The Commission For Housing and the Built Environment) rated over 80% of new homes as 'poor' or 'average'. Has there been an improvement since then? Not much, if Battersea's head of design David Twohig is to be believed.
The harsh truth is that these houses have not been designed. They are the product of a set of calculations that all have one, crucial thing in common – they all lean towards a minimum dimension. They possess the smallest possible footprint, with the shortest possible back gardens, fronting onto the narrowest possible roads, located on the cheapest possible plots of land. Last year, RIBA lamented that the average one bedroom new build was now 'no bigger than an underground train carriage'.
It all makes sound business sense, of course. Developers are entitled to pack them in and stack them high, in order to achieve the best possible margins on their investments. As a consequence, people are served up meager houses in mediocre urban environments, and they are resigned to inhabit these developments due to financial constraints and limited stylistic choices. It is a sorry state of affairs, and appears to be spreading across the country at an astonishing rate. But what of the architects involved?
they are resigned to inhabit these developments due to financial constraints and limited stylistic choices.As part of a firm whose client base was dominated by residential developers such as these, I became increasingly disillusioned by this vicious cycle. I spent my days placing cookie-cutter templates in rows upon industrial gap sites, with just one overriding aim: squeeze as many plots in as possible, no matter what. I was tasked with dropping houses into slots, predetermined by a brief that offered no scope for place-making, urban design, or the integration of residential with commercial, retail, or civic buildings. It was like playing Tetris, without the fun.
I reached a point where I could go no further: I escaped into the realm of humanitarian design, attracted by motives driven by public interest rather than profit. I also got further involved in journalism, with writing offering a welcome respite from the stress of practice – and providing a way to vent the woes of an architect chained to disenchanting residential development. But I know that turning one’s back cannot be the answer, for the plastic chimney epidemic continues unabated. The problem is being exacerbated by a market monopolized by large development companies, which are pricing out independent designers by providing these cheaper, predefined houses in vast quantities - but with limited quality. The question must be asked: How can the system be altered to arrest this architectural decline?
the plastic chimney epidemic continues unabated.I do not profess to know the answer to this question, but I can offer starting points for discussion and debate. Could the government offer greater incentives for self-build schemes? Could planning regulations be relaxed to encourage a greater degree of experimentation? These principles have been employed in other countries, with many firms realizing N. John Habraken’s vision of user participation in Amsterdam: Scheepstimmermanstraat (Shipwright's Street) is known for its 60 unique houses, less hindered by planning constraints and influenced by the personal tastes of their inhabitants.
Of course, the added cost of such bespoke projects would probably give our developers sleepless nights – in order to even consider altering their well-established formula, they need substantial reassurances. Perhaps a greater investment in public housing, with government incentives to innovate and experiment, could act as a catalyst for change? Certain public housing schemes in the UK now require developers to produce extremely energy-efficient homes – up to Passivhaus standards – necessitating a creative approach in order to hit sustainable targets within tight budgets.
We also need to alter perceptions that faux styles – plastic chimneys et al – somehow amount to cultural splendor and wealth.Forcing their hand in this way could provide one solution, but as architects, we must strive to make a better case for good design in housing. One way or another, we must convince developers that innovation within residential development will provide real added value to them, as well as a greater quality of living for those that inhabit their estates. We also need to alter perceptions that faux styles – plastic chimneys et al – somehow amount to cultural splendor and wealth. Once this attitude changes, the demands upon developers may shift, and creative solutions may begin to emerge. What can UK architecture firms do to spark a revival in domestic architecture?
A graduate from University College London, having completed the Certificate in Professional Practice and Management to gain RIBA Part 3 qualification. Achieved Parts 1 and 2 at The University of Edinburgh, gaining an MArch in Architectural Design with a distinction, and was nominated for the RIAS ...
17 Comments
Consumers have to demand better. At the same time, the architecture community needs to champion innovation and promote superior products/models. Unfortunately the architecture community spends a lot of time attacking itself, ridiculing architects and glorifying the outsider perspective. In this climate its almost impossible to even identify what "superior" means.
consumers did not demand the iphone until it was introduced into the market. design and develop a better product for a better price or someone else will. Its really that simple.
This is a pretty off the shelf modernist critique of traditional architecture's resilience as a vehicle for social communication, all be it in its current vulgarized state. Yet this is by design. When you don't allow students to study *and* employ the artistic principles that give traditional architecture it's lasting appeal, why would you expect anything but dross from the illiterate practitioners who are asked to design with-in these idioms? The reason traditional architecture persists in the redidential realm to a much larger degree than the institutional or commercial one is that home buyers, aka, individuals chose it. Even after multiple surveys have shown that traditional styles speak to the larger share of the polulation, irregardless of personal politics, hardcore modernists refuse to acknowledge the empirical evidence. Does he really thing developers wouldn't be cranking out little Bauhaus villages if that's what would sell? Maybe UK developers are a different breed than American ones, but my guess is they mostly worship the same god.
"architectural riddles, masquerading as Georgian and Victorian homes"
Except the only people who think this "masquerade" fools anyone is the ideologue. Does anyone think for a second that the teenager scateboarding into his Neo-georgian home with his i-tunes blasting is thinking about King George? Why, he'd have to be as mad as the king himself! One has to buy into a lot of obsolete historicist dogma to think this kind of analysis has any bearing on the real world. How about all those well educated liberal residents of our older cities such as New York, Boston, or San Francisco...do they imagine themselves living in a long forgoten past or are they merely appreciating their highly articlulated and humane environments for the visual and even emotional appeal they hold?
I can see his contempt for the *lies and deciept* of builder homes if he actually bought into the modernist vision of history as one that can never be revisited but in the most abstract and intellectually tenuous way. But for the rest of us who continue to use all our senses along with our intellect to take in and navigate our modern world, this is not cause for alarm or melodrama, just like hipsters who most likely don't imagine themselves on the Mississippi delta when some crooner starts singing the blues. And how can they percieve what is actually an good or original composition, regardless of style, if they have willfully kept themselves ignorant of the history and compositional techniques that designers of these historical neighborhoods employed?
" I spent my days placing cookie-cutter templates in rows upon industrial gap sites, with just one overriding aim: squeeze as many plots in as possible, no matter what."
This implication that a developer's desire for maximun profit is responsible for their use of traditional styles is risible. Does he imagine that the developers of Bath's Crescents or London's terraces where any more altruistic than modern day developers? Did the Medici's employ the great artists becasue they didn't believe in profit?
"I escaped into the realm of humanitarian design, attracted by motives driven by public interest rather than profit. I also got further involved in journalism, with writing offering a welcome respite from the stress of practice "
It's great that this young man found his true calling. We should all be so lucky. I volunteer my design services for the betterment of my community when a developer wants to deaden another section of our downtown with more blank grids. I don't reach for Viturvious, but I do try to break down the scale and details of the buildings to make them relate better to the street and pedestrian, the way Jan Ghel would fully undertand, and I don't restrict myself to certain modernist styles or whatever I'm supposed to be using.
"The problem is being exacerbated by a market monopolized by large development companies, "
No doubt, large national builders aren't helping, but this is a phenomenon of the market place, not of architecture. Why are so many mass produced Sears house neighborhoods of the 1920's in demand if large development companies where really the problem?
"The question must be asked: How can the system be altered to arrest this architectural decline? I do not profess to know the answer to this question,"
Hint- Architects aren't trained with a knowledge of how the "country's proud tradition in domestic architecture" came about, at least on an artistic level. It's all fine and good to study the economic, political, and social context of this history, but to deny that the original designers where predominantly engaged in an artistic endevor (assuming they understood the science construction) is bewildering. I don't question this young mans sincerity and knowledge of conditions in his native country, but it's all to apparent that he shares some of the arbitrary prejudices that only a first grade modernist indoctrination can provide. Is he fine with Hempstead Gardens, or does he go back to Shaw? Was it Ruskin who started the era of deception or are we going all the way back to Indigo Jones and his "phony" Italianate Pallazzos and exotic folleys? When exactly did the picturesque get mixed up in the rapacious desires of developers?
The Dutch example is indeed interesting, allthough one might note the variation between each townhouse, something more traditional developers are employing even though "the added cost of such bespoke projects would probably give our developers sleepless nights". Not if their profiting from them, if that's ok with you. But again, this isn't a question of style but a level of detail and design that could just have easily been accomplished with traditional forms, assuming they understood them well enough not to make a mockery.
"One way or another, we must convince developers that innovation within residential development will provide real added value to them, as well as a greater quality of living for those that inhabit their estates. We also need to alter perceptions that faux styles – plastic chimneys et al – somehow amount to cultural splendor and wealth. Once this attitude changes, the demands upon developers may shift, and creative solutions may begin to emerge. What can UK architecture firms do to spark a revival in domestic architecture?"
I'n not sure what *innovations* where being proposed in the Dutch example except for the added expense of variation in the designs, something clearly apparent in the many turn of the century developments of any large American City. The more money, the more variation, or detail, or quality materials. How one assembles the parts is a matter of training. And he goes right at the matter by pretending to be the authority on what's a *faux* style vs. what he deems to be acceptible history. Maybe, if he took himself out of his historicist mind set that see's inviolable lines in time from which one must only look and not learn from, he might have swayed his previous employer to delete superfluous gables and exchange redudnant ormanents for good proportions and detailing, assuming he knew programing and construction. But unless he plans on paying for the modernist schooling of every potential home buyer in England, I'm afraid he'll continue to suffer the indignities of being lied to by those fake victorians, to say nothing of those original victorian fakes.
You know, I actually thought the Houses or Parliment where actually medieval. They need to put signs on those buildings so an unsuspecting public can't be fooled.
Cheers!
while you might lament these development patterns and plastic chimneys - keep in mind it's still vastly superior to what has been going on in the states over the past few decades. I'll take faux-historical walkable urbanism over mcmansion auto-centric sprawl any day.
" I'll take faux-historical walkable urbanism over mcmansion auto-centric sprawl any day."
Its a false choice. There are many hybrid options to choose from in the US. There are faux-historical mcmansions, walkable mcmansions, auto-centric geodesic domes, auto-centric urban infill etc etc.
What's with the faux historical meme? Was Wren's St.Paul's Cathedral faux because it was based on St. Peter's? Was Webb's Red House faux in it's neo-medieval garb even though all respectable modernist historians claim it to be proto-modernism? Funny how they needed to come up with a historical lineage for an architectural movement that sought to break from the past. I guess knowing what family you come from was even important to revolutionaries. For another Englishman's perspective on what they should be building in Britain, there's this recent article from the philosopher Roger Scruton below, hardly the Sarah Palin faux populist of the UK. Just to illustrate how those who missed Architectural history 101 look at their built environment.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11293455/What-should-we-be-building-today.html
Paul good stab at this problem, and to your credit you are probably not as old as I or Thayer-D and you had the joy of producing such architecture ;), so it's not off-the-shelf Thayer-D, it's a new generation taking a stab at this long standing problem that of all movements in architecture 'modernism' got the furthest.
In my opinion this dilemma is about the medium of finance dominating all mediums of existence, There is nothing more we Architects can do, frankly, than educate each client one at a time. Even "high" modern/contemporary design serves its purpose in the realm of finance, like an art piece - cutting-edge 'honest' architecture 'sales'.
I want to offer this project up for debate with regard to plastic over 'modern' over 'real'. This is a job that never happened, but I did spend time drawing the existing conditions (current) and did some good research into the building.
Original Building designed by Theophilus P. Chandler, Jr. , founder of the Dept. of Architecture at University of Pennsylvania (1890), a school I attended in 2006-2007, not resembling its founding principles whatsoever (Ecole des Beaux-Arts) I can't find a youtube.com video commentary on this building by a current Philly architect that was available 3 years ago, but this should work.... The building is located in the 'diamond district' on Sansom street in Philadelphia, PA
The 1st floor facade shown above is the 1966+/- Modern installation replacing the original facade, see first image. It's obvious it was a value engineering exercise and 'Modernism' served it's purpose well here. After drawing the facade I really wondered what Moron thought this was a good solution, even if it was a 'true' application of the products of the time, it just seemed like a really bad idea, a bastardization of the building.
The tenant, not the building owner, wanted to return to the original facade and I explained the cost for a 'true' recreation would be astronomical, unless you can get some old stone guy out of retirement.
In this case I would argue 'plastic' to match original would of been more appropriate?
What would the archeologists think of this image above? It's clear there was a good order in the facade going on, and then turqouise tiles and cheap aluminum storefront replaced it?
I'm not arguing one style over another, and I don't think Paul is either when you get down to it, but what is the right solution when?
The right solution depends on how you frame the problem. If your intent is to rebuild the original design, but you can't afford the stone cutters, then I would consider cast stone. If your intent is to replace the discordant elements with something sympathetic, you have many more options. Personally, this would be my preference as I'm more interested in harmony over authenticity, but that might not satisfy the purists. Whatever direction one takes though, I would always pursue beauty over originality. If you accomplish both, within the historical style, so much the better.
FWIW, this isn't necessarily a 'value engineering' solution. Actually, it was a common way property owners "updated" their buildings to compete with the new and technologically up to date modernist office buildings going up after WW2. Thankfully, many of these 'modernizations' are being reversed as hipsters see the atmosphere of these natural material facades with carved ornaments as being more authentically urban. Philadelphia is a treasure house of these gems.
Is cookie cutter ever a solution?
Ah, Jeweler's Row. I picked up my engagement ring about two doors to the left of that photo. I miss Philly :-(
It depends critically on what you are "cutting". If you are trying to build a great city, "cookie-cutter" based upon beautiful and humane prototypes is vastly superior to one-off, hyper-individualistic, hit-or-miss, mostly-ugly. More than half of the fabric of Paris would probably qualify as "cookie-cutter" by some folk's standards: typical Europeann 5-6 story mixed use blocks. More than half of Los Angeles is anything but cookie-cutter, and it's an aesthetic wasteland.
There are plenty of stone masons who do quality stone carving. And more are learning the craft every day. It is a myth that trades like stone carving are dead, one often promulgated by those who would prefer that it were so.
San Francisco is another great example of intelligent cookie cutter architecture. Flattened by the great fire of 1906, it was built in a hurry to house the homless population. Architects didn't have the luxury of sitting a top the hills and watch how the light played across the landscape, so builders reached for the kit of parts available and now it's one of those universally loved cities. Compare that with the cookie cutter environments built in war torn European cities or even our typical suburban landscape. As EKE says, it depends on what you are cutting.
There are plenty of stone masons who do quality stone carving.
A distinction needs to be made between stone masons carving and the CNC machining of stone, as they are most assuredly not one and the same. From there one can move into discussion of whether or not an industrially manufactured items are objects of craft.
I completely agree. I'm talking about human beings.
Today, CNC machining is often used to remove the bulk of the material of a carving, leaving the last bit of stone to be worked by hand by a stone carver. This removes the drudgery of the rough-out, and uses the human hand at the crucial point. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's...
EKE, I would love a list sometime, I will keep you mind for next job requiring such trades. One of my clients is retiring from his 3 generation family owned over 100 year old Marble shop. I may still ask him if i can before he closes up shop to take photos of one of the work rooms that was covered in years worth of settling marble dust with a few skylights overhead, room had this amazing tranquil feel to it..................so cookie cutter if done 'right' is ok? I would guess many of you would suggest the 'modernists' and now the 'paremetricists' have tried and failed? Or are they called Schumachers?
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.