Posts Tagged Letters
Letters: Architects and new-build constraints
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on March 14, 2011
It is encouraging to see government ministers berating the banality of many new homes (Fed up of 'Legoland' estates? Then reject plans, says minister, 9 March). Although there is a growing number of innovative, exemplar housing schemes, the bulk of the new-build housing is of an unacceptably poor quality and shows little regard for its surrounding area.
However, it is wrong to imply that architects are complacent about improving the delivery of good housing. There's nothing that depresses architects more than seeing the soulless, drab, identikit estates being built in our towns and cities. The reality is that those architects who work for major housebuilders face severe constraints. The traditional housebuilder-business model relies on pattern-book designs, which can be quickly and easily rolled out across the country, often with little consideration to the local context or the needs of the people who will live in them. The lack of empowerment that local communities have had on planning decisions to date, and consumers have had on the types of houses available to them, has let to the cheaply replicated housing models Grant Shapps has rightly criticised. Let's hope that localism really does bring communities, developers and architects closer together to deliver better housing.
Ruth Reed
President, Royal Institute of British Architects
Letters: Diverse mix makes for real communities
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on March 8, 2011
I was disappointed to read the scepticism towards the potential for "pepperpotting" in plans for the redevelopment of the Heygate estate (Homes under the hammer, G2, 4 March). Having lived on a Southwark council estate for three years as a private tenant, and served as an active member of the Tenants and Residents Association, I experienced the richness that a diverse estate community can bring. With tenants both private and council as well as homeowners working together to improve their communities, a wide range of interests and expertise can be drawn on to tackle local issues, support neighbours and lobby the council for change. Without a mix of residents, an estate may risk perceived "ghettoism" and development of social stigmas towards council housing. I hope that once the regeneration project is complete, relocated people will return to Heygate and take a role in building a new community in the area.
Elle Perry
London
• The reason Utopia on Trial is, as Stephen Moss says, influential – it continues to sell 26 years after we first published it – is because its evidence-based recommendations for changes in the design of housing estates, when put into practice, have improved residents' living conditions. Demolition is avoidable. The polemical extract quoted in the article is from Professor Alice Coleman's summing up, but her conclusions are based on a survey of over 100,000 dwellings, mainly in Southwark and Tower Hamlets, and not on a political view.
Hilary Macaskill and Michael Shipman
Hilary Shipman Limited
Letter: Architects can inspire – look at Mossbourne
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on February 8, 2011
I am confused by recent statements from Michael Gove. Last week he told a free schools 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". Yet the previous day he had told BBC Radio 4's The World at One that "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."
He neglected to add that this former failing school in a deprived area of London – which is now achieving spectacular academic success – was designed by my practice, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP). Given how many times Mr Gove and David Cameron have held up Mossbourne as the model for what they wish to achieve in their education policy, it seems odd that he now ignores the positive impact the building has had on the achievements of the school.
The design was recognised with a Riba award in 2005 and a Civic Trust award in 2006. As its architects, we are extremely proud of the considerable positive impact which the academy has had on the lives of the local community. Mossbourne (the only school RSHP has designed in the UK) was delivered outside the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. Surely it would be more appropriate to interrogate the BSF programme to see if it has been able to deliver the quality and value which it was supposed to do?
Ultimately, school design is about creating a vibrant, stimulating and motivating environment for staff as well as students. If we want schools which really reflect the commitment which this and future governments should be making to young people and their teachers, those schools should be designed by architects who really understand and care about the communities who will use them.
Good design quality, improved educational performance and value for money go hand in hand; Mossbourne community academy clearly demonstrates how all of these can be achieved.
Richard Rogers
Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners
Letters: Prefabs, Fabs and mass demolition
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on January 6, 2011
The Twentieth Century Society and English Heritage are barking up the wrong tree in trying to "save" the prefab Excalibur estate in Lewisham (Anger over plans to demolish historic prefab estate, 3 January). The Excalibur residents' long struggle is a lesson about how people want to live together. It is not about preserving the fabric of damp, decaying homes well past their habitable lifetimes.
It is not a miracle that these homes have survived for so long. It is almost wholly due to hard work by the tenants and their management organisation. Stability and a supportive community at Excalibur grew from a feeling of "being in control", living in homes which are compact and easy to run, providing dignity and independence at an affordable rent.
Sadly, the pressures on housing in inner London don't encourage building detached bungalows. This has been taken on board by Excalibur residents, who for years have been developing plans to translate their ideals into achievable new homes, fit and decent, as they deserve.
Yes, let's study and respect the prefab history. A few examples to demonstrate one short-term solution, fitted to its time in the immediate devastation of war, would be better placed in a museum.
Caroline Mayow
London
• The campaign to save 9 Madryn Street is as much about stopping the council erasing an entire neighbourhood as about preserving Ringo Starr's birthplace (Comment, 4 January). The Ringo connection is important, and useful – as it grabs headlines – but the real story is the battle to stop a deluded council pursuing a regressive policy of mass demolition.
William Palin
Secretary, Save Britain's Heritage
Letters: Prince’s plans
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 29, 2010
Your focus on allegations of a style bias (Prince offers to take on key planning role, 29 November) prompts me to disclose the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment' underlying principles. Unlike the critical elite, with its allegiance to often vain statement buildings by famous architects, our bias is toward design in service of walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods, linked by streets and squares and landscape. A design review panel would be slanted in favour of buildings and communities for people, rather than designers, and for modernity and innovation as a means to building natural and social capital, delight and local distinctiveness. Surely there is room for this kind of vision, alongside the "shock and awe" approach of the past few decades?
Hank Dittmar
Chief executive, The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment
Letter: Cabe-ism isn’t meant as a compliment
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 18, 2010
When I coined the term Cabe-ism to describe the mode of expression most British architects used to shape the "luxury" housing and mixed-use developments that sprang up in our towns and cities over the past decade, it was not meant as a compliment as Owen Hatherley states in his otherwise thoroughly agreeable article (A load of blocks, Review, 16 October).
Rather, like Hatherley, I was making an attempt to understand the forces guiding the look and feel of contemporary townscapes, in particular those emanating from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, which reviews significant projects ahead of planning.
Here's my full definition of Cabe-ism as detailed in The Architects' Journal article, A new English architecture, written to mark the quango's 10th birthday, last autumn:
"England has a new mode of architectural expression. It's called Cabe-ism (by me, at least) and has taken ten years to perfect. It draws upon many sources: Gordon Cullen's Townscape philosophies, Ian Sinclair's psycho-geographic musings, public-private (usually develop-led) ideas about brownfield regeneration and transparent decision-making inspired by New Labour.
"Throw in a bit of old-fashioned modernism, concern around climate change and some mixed-messages about 'iconic' design. Finally, sprinkle liberally with branding concepts culled from 80s-style advertising culture, and what you have is Cabe-ism."
I suppose a winking smiley at the end would amplify the tone, but I really don't think it's necessary, LOL!
Rory Olcayto
Deputy editor, The Architects' Journal
Letter: Janet Gnosspelius obituary
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 12, 2010
Lionel Burman writes: To be guided round Woolton Hall, Liverpool, by Janet Gnosspelius (Other lives, 11 October) was an enthralling experience. Her massive report on it is a model of architectural and historical analysis, and her dramatic appearances at the Liverpool Planning Department's heritage bureau were met with admiration and delight by all present.
Letters: Yesterday’s Maxxis
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 4, 2010
Thank you, Owen Hatherley, for pointing out the paradox that British architecture seems to have more success as an export, despite some amazing opportunities in the UK (Our cheap old blocks, 4 October).
However, many countries where British architects build (including Italy) have some pretty dreadful modern buildings and their fair share of "cheap detailing". Perhaps your correspondent misses a more obvious reason for the brilliance of buildings such as Maxxi – that in civic architecture we British have lost the ability to be good clients.
Great civic architecture needs confident, visionary clients, not committees encumbered by procedures. In the UK we eschew the raw intensity of the relationship between client and architect with layers of advisers and project managers.
Think back to the heyday of great civic architecture in the UK – not just the Victorians but between the world wars and the early 1950s – and one will find examples of individuals in public office with a breadth of vision. This, together with creative architects, made enduring public buildings of the quality of today's Maxxi.
Malcolm Reading
London
Letters: Historic schools
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on August 27, 2010
While impressive GCSE scores at the Barclay school in Stevenage were rightly the main story (Leaking roofs and crumbling classrooms can't halt George and Co's learning surge, 25 August), it's a pity that the piece repeated the pervasive myth that listing always stands in the way of work on a building, whether necessary repairs or alteration to suit changing needs. Many listed schools from every period have been adapted and modernised as educational needs have changed. Recent schemes for listed 20th-century schools, such as Richmond school in Yorkshire and Haggerston school in London, have delivered sensitive and effective refurbishment at a fraction of the cost of a new building, and this would be possible at the Barclay school too. Listing is there to flag up buildings of national special interest, not stand in the way of progress.
Jon Wright
Letters: Get Carter car park
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on July 28, 2010
Owen Hatherley (In praise of Brutalism, 27 July) criticises the demolition of the car park in Gateshead featured in the film Get Carter. As the local MP, I can tell him that people in Gateshead are very keen that it is replaced by a long overdue £150m redevelopment of the town centre, which had been blighted by this unused and unsafe car park. The film will keep it alive forever, but the vast majority of the Big Society in Gateshead are glad to see the back of this monstrosity – and in these days of localism, their views should come first.
Labour, Gateshead