Posts Tagged Politics
Leaning tower of Big Ben worries MPs
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on January 23, 2012
House of Commons commission meets to discuss what can be done to shore up crumbling Palace of Westminster
Once again, the splits and misalignments are beginning to show in the mother of all parliaments.
This time, though, it is not a bickering coalition or a cabinet riven with discord that is causing concern but rather the state of the Palace of Westminster itself.
A committee of MPs will meet on Monday to see what can be done to stop the tower that houses Big Ben leaning any further and to shore up Pugin and Barry's neo-gothic edifice.
Subsidence has led to cracks appearing in walls around the Houses of Commons and Lords, with Big Ben's bell tower leaning 46cm (18in) at its peak.
The House of Commons commission – which is responsible for the upkeep of the parliamentary estate – will discuss a surveyor's report that suggests options for dealing with the problems, including repairs which may lead to peers and MPs temporarily moving out.
However, experts have dismissed suggestions that the palace could be reclaimed by the Thames.
According to Prof John Burland of Imperial College London, who designed the five-storey car park underneath the Palace of Westminster, the clock tower's tilt is nothing new.
"[It's] been there for years," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "When I first started work on the car park it was obvious that it was leaning.
"We made measurements on it. It was leaning at one in 250 to the vertical, which is just about visible. That's the break point between looking vertical and looking like a slight lean."
Burland said the lean had probably developed early on as there was no cracking in the cladding.
"We think it probably leant while they were building it and before they put the cladding on," he said. "That was a long time ago and buildings do lean a little bit."
Burland added that the cracking, which he said was not caused by the tube's Jubilee line or the car park, was actually good for the palace.
"They're beneficial because the building moves thermally more than is caused by the Jubilee line and the movements concentrated around the cracks and, if they didn't, there would be cracking elsewhere," he told Today.
He also said the clock tower's lean was visible to the naked eye: "If you stand in Parliament Square and look towards it, you can just see that it moves very slightly to the left – but I wouldn't put any political slant on that."
Olympic companies call for end to ban on promoting work on games
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on January 11, 2012
Architects, engineers and technology companies speak out against protocol enforced by London 2012 organising committee
David Cameron is facing calls to end a ban on companies involved in the London Olympics from publicising their work on the games and has been warned that the gagging order is undermining job creation and economic growth.
Architects, engineers and technology companies have spoken out against a protocol, enforced by the London 2012 organising committee, which has prevented firms from entering projects for awards, publishing photos of completed arenas and even submitting work to exhibitions.
Olympic organisers said the rules were intended to protect the rights of major sponsors, but many suppliers say they clash with ministerial statements that the Olympics will provide British business with an economic boost.
On Monday, Cameron said "all credit" was due "to the people involved in providing these venues, getting them ready on time and on budget".
Ken Shuttleworth, the designer of the handball arena, said his firm has had a tussle with Locog over whether it could feature the venue in his company's own annual report, while Locog shut down attempts by a non-commercial trust to stage an exhibition about the London 2012 venues and suppliers.
Zaha Hadid, the architect of the aquatics centre and Sir Michael Hopkins, the architect of the velodrome, are among those covered by the no marketing rights protocol, but it is the dozens of smaller, less high-profile suppliers who are most concerned.
They have said they are being constrained when pitching for work on events such as the football World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in Brazil 2016.
"There is a contradiction between what different sides of government are saying," Roger Hawkins, whose firm's £110m redesign of Stratford station was prevented by the Olympic Delivery Authority from being entered for a Civic Trust award, said.
"We would love to promote our work on this complex technical project because we have developed skills that we would like to market into other opportunities. We are not allowed to do that, and there is a level of frustration in the design team about that."
Deborah Saunt, whose DSDHA firm designed the tallest tower in the athletes' village, said the rules "run contrary to common sense".
"We feel we have produced a new model of social housing, but we can't go out and promote it," she said. "Normally we would be publishing this globally, but here we have to wait until we are asked to talk about it. This is a missed opportunity."
STL Communications, an Oxfordshire telecoms firm that won the contract to provide hundreds of phones to be used by organisers to co-ordinate the opening and closing ceremonies, has written to Cameron demanding a rethink.
The firm told the prime minister the gag means it may have to forego 20% business growth.
"It is hard to understand how somebody providing tiles or doors is going to ambush Adidas or BMW by marketing their involvement in the games," Jim Heverin, a partner at Zaha Hadid Architects, which designed the aquatics centre, said.
Locog said a large proportion of the funding for the staging of the games comes from sponsorship by companies purchasing exclusive rights to promote their association with the games.
"Without these sponsors the games simply wouldn't happen, so we require suppliers not to advertise their involvement in order to protect our sponsors' associations with the London 2012," a spokesman said.
"Contractors are able to factually refer to the work they have done on the games when pitching for new business or refer to it on their websites alongside other examples of their work."
Peter Murray, a trustee of the Building Centre Trust, which was refused permission to stage a London 2012 exhibition, urged Locog to "ease up".
He said: "It is in the national interest that we make the best of the Olympics over the next nine months. I can see no problem in people using it from a branding point of view. As long as people do it in a responsible way, it can only enhance the economy."
Summits at the summit: the Shard could host talks for world leaders
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on December 30, 2011
Europe's tallest building could include exclusive space on 78th floor for top-level meetings, says building's developer
It would be the summit at the summit. The top floor of the Shard, Europe's tallest skyscraper, could be made available for high powered conferences and political talks, the building's developer has told the Guardian.
Irvine Sellar said he is considering making the 78th floor, which is so elevated it is sometimes above the clouds, an exclusive meeting space which would allow political leaders to hold talks with an unrivalled bird's eye view above London Bridge.
"We could send Europe's top politicians up there and not let them down until they solve the Euro crisis," he said
The highest room anywhere in Europe has space for up to 60 people and would be accessed by a dedicator elevator off the public viewing galleries.
The plan is being debated by Sellar and his architect, Renzo Piano. Already a four-storey public viewing area is being built starting on the 68th floor which is likely to cost around £20 to access.
But the developer, keen to recoup investment of around £2bn in the building, is aware of the revenue-generating potential for the even-higher space.
Piano, who said he believes the building "celebrates life and in some measure, poetry", has mooted an alternative use as a meditation suite and is said to be keen the space should not become a playground only for the super-rich and powerful.
At the Shard's upper levels, helicopters and planes coming into land at City airport fly along at eye level and on a clear day the view stretches 40 miles. Construction workers said it sometimes snows at the top while it is raining at ground level.
The idea has echoes of the Pyramid of Peace in Kazakhstan's capital Astana. That Norman-Foster-designed building has a 200-seat chamber at the apex for meetings of the leaders of the world's religions.
The 310m-tall Shard is due to be fully built next June and looks likely to open in the depths of Britain's economic slump. So far no tenants have signed up for the 27 floors of office space, although the developers said they are in talks with several and are being selective. It is 80% owned by the Gulf emirate of Qatar and has been described by critics as "a sharp piece of global capitalism" and "a latter-day pyramid celebrating the arrival of the Qataris on the world stage". But many Londoners have taken the building to their hearts.
Piano insisted that the building was not an out-of-date monument to "arrogance and power", and pointed out it could help save the countryside from sprawl. "This is not about money," he said. "It is about surprise and joy. This is about the way cities should go. They should stop and we should not go beyond the green belt. If you do this by going vertical that sends a message about conserving land. The building is not about arrogance and power but about increasing the intensity of city life."
Works have begun on fitting out an 18-storey five-star Shangri-La hotel within the Shard and ten huge apartments at its top, which are likely to sell for tens of millions of pounds each.
Sellar, whose company owns 20% of the tower, insisted the building was not out of sync with the era of austerity.
"If we want to get out of this malaise then this is the sort of project that should be done," he said. "We think it is a great image. It says, 'This is London, this is the Shard and we can kick sand in the face of the Eiffel Tower.'"
Unesco will next year consider whether to downgrade or even remove the World Heritage status of the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey in part because of the Shard's looming silhouette.
This month inspectors from the United Nations world heritage committee paid a four day visit to London to consider the effectiveness of measures to protect the World Heritage status of the sites.
"We are concerned that the sites might lose their outstanding universal value by being dwarfed by inappropriate development," said Patricia Alberth, programme specialist for the Europe area at Unesco in Paris. "They could decide to remove their status or decide whether they should be placed on a list of danger which means they could be delisted."
Constructive criticism: the week in architecture
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on December 2, 2011
It's all about train stations this week, with the Tube bringing beauty to Battersea and Canada Water unveiling its flashy new library. Meanwhile, LA's Union Station is ripe for a revamp
Last year the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, approved the idea of building two new Tube stations on London Underground's Northern line, at Vauxhall and Nine Elms, as part of the long-awaited £5.5bn redevelopment of Battersea Power Station and the surrounding area. This is one of central London's last great wastelands. Long ripe for regeneration, developers have been wary of making a move in this surprisingly cut-off quarter of the capital despite the opportunity to build shops, offices, hotels, places of entertainment and up to 16,000 homes here – until the arrival, or solid promise, of a Tube line.
In his Autumn statement this week, Chancellor George Osborne said the government would support the scheme. Suddenly, it was easy to imagine two handsome new Underground stations, such as Arnos Grove and Southgate by Charles Holden from the 1930s, or the pick of the fine stations along the Jubilee line extension from Westminster to Stratford.
This week, however, the curiously named Battersea Power Station Shareholder Vehicle, the holding company for the forlorn former temple of power designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, was told that its lenders intend to take the 15-hectare (38 acres) site into receivership, as no progress has been made on development. This will scupper the ambitious scheme by Rafael Viñoly to revamp the listed building. Will the chancellor and mayor remain keen on building a costly Tube line to Battersea Wasteland?
In Los Angeles, the site up for redevelopment around Union Station, an exquisite late-30s design by, among others, John Parkinson and Donald B Parkinson that oozes Hollywood (the waiting area was used as a police department in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner), is even bigger than Battersea. This week, the LA Transportation Authority revealed a shortlist of architects, one of whom will masterplan the redevelopment of 17 hectares (42 acres) of downtown railway land. The shortlist includes Britain's Foster and Partners teamed with the IBI Group, and Grimshaw Architects with Gruen Associates, as well as Renzo Piano Building Workshop with Parsons Transportation Group. Architects who failed to make the list include Rem Koolhaas, Morphosis and Zaha Hadid. The plan is for mixed-use development. Will it happen? Maybe not in the current economic climate, but it would be sad if the scheme were rushed. Union Station might seem remote, even from downtown LA, but its warm, welcoming and beautifully crafted architecture could yet set a tone for LA's equivalent of Battersea.
A more modest development at a railway station opened this week in London's Docklands. This is Southwark Council's £14m Canada Water Library. Designed by Piers Gough of CZWG in the guise of a half-buried upside-down pyramid clad in a gold anodised aluminium mesh, the library is connected directly to Canada Water station on London's Jubilee line.
The shape of the building is not wilful; the plot of land – part of a new public square – was small, so Gough came up with the idea of splaying the library upwards and outwards. Unveiling the new building, Veronica Ward (Southwark's cabinet member for culture, leisure and sport) said: "What we've managed to do is listen to people. Over 6,000 people said they would rather we did things like reduce hours or use volunteers than close libraries. That was enough people saying libraries were important."
If libraries remain essential for our mental health, Maggie's Cancer Care Centres are proving to be a godsend to those seeking inspiration, support and companionship. Following the opening of the Nottingham Maggie's Centre, designed by Piers Gough and Paul Smith, the Swansea Maggie's Centre at Singelton Hospital is now complete. Set by woods and overlooking Swansea Bay, it opens officially on 9 December 2011. Designed by the late Kisho Kurokawa, one of the founders of the Metabolist movement in Japan, the building is based on Kurokawa's concept of a "cosmic whirlpool" representing "everlasting forces swirling around a still centre".
"The new Maggie's Centre will come out of the earth and swing around with two arms like a rotating galaxy," said Kurokowa. "One side will welcome the visitor and lead to the other side, which embraces nature – the trees, rocks and water. A place set apart, as Maggie [Jencks] said of a garden. The connection to the cosmos and contacts between east and west – two motives that Maggie and I shared – are in the design. I hope she would have liked it."
Meanwhile, Quentin Blake, the children's illustrator best known for his drawings for Roald Dahl stories, won this year's Prince Philip Designers prize, the last to be judged by the Duke of Edinburgh himself. Other nominees included architects David Chipperfield, Chris Wilkinson and Jim Eyre, and the engineer Cecil Balmond, co-designer of the ArcelorMittal Orbit in the grounds of the 2012 London Olympics. The structure is connected by a pedestrian bridge to Stratford station, where Jubilee line trains will take you to Canada Water, if not to Battersea.
Urbanized: a documentary about city design that comes in the nick of time
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 25, 2011
As the global population teeters on 7 billion, Gary Hustwit's film portrays the world's exploding number of city dwellers as the solution rather than the problem
A series of familiar images unfolds on the screen: a wall of glass towers, a Brazilian favela, the Shibuya pedestrian crossing in Tokyo. Visual shorthand for a crowded planet, they are accompanied by an equally familiar sequence of statistics: half of humanity – or 3.5 billion people – now live in cities, and urbanisation is so rampant that by 2050 this figure is projected to be 75%. So begins Urbanized, a new film about the challenge that cities pose in the 21st century, which had its London debut this weekend, playing to a packed house at the London School of Economics. It is directed by Gary Hustwit, who made the cult hit Helvetica in 2007 (an unlikely film about a Swiss typeface) before taking on the much broader topic of industrial design in 2009's Objectified. With Urbanized, he zooms out even further to complete his trilogy, a cinematic story about design moving from the micro to the macro.
With each leap in scale, Hustwit risks pointing his camera at a topic so big he ends up saying nothing at all. Yet Urbanized is a brave and timely movie that manages to strike almost exactly the right tone. For a sense of the scale of the urban problem, simply look at Mumbai, a city of 12 million people that is set to be the world's biggest by 2050. Already, 60% of its population lives in slums with such poor sanitation that there is only one toilet seat for every 600 people. The municipality is reluctant to build toilets for fear that it will encourage more migrants to come. "As if people come to shit," retorts the activist Sheela Patel in the movie. Quite. Most people come to work. Cities are basins of opportunity, and their citizens drive national economies. It is peculiar, then, how poorly cities reward their citizens for that contribution.
The film takes a clear line on what makes a city habitable. Why is Brasilia, for all its drama, inhospitable? Because it was designed with a bird's-eye view that left the poor mugs on the ground hiking across town beside a highway. The movie illustrates the catastrophe of designing cities for cars rather than people with the battle between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses – the saintly advocate of Greenwich Village's street life and the panto-villain masterplanner who scarred New York with his highways. These days the Big Apple is starting to atone for Moses's sins with public spaces such as the High Line. This new elevated promenade doesn't make up for the growing inequality that is turning Manhattan into an island for the rich, but it is a noble case of the city giving something back to its citizens.
Even more impressive is the way the former mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa, changed the dynamic of the Colombian capital by creating a network of cycle lanes and a public bus service. In a city known for its crippling traffic, it is now the poorest – those without cars – who move the fastest. As Peñalosa points out, showboating on a mountain bike as he overtakes a car squishing through the mud: this is democracy in action. Only by prioritising pedestrians have cities rediscovered their vibrant centres. In the 1980s, by contrast, cities were hollowing out as the middle classes fled to the suburbs. Here the camera pans the suburban sprawl of Phoenix, all identical houses and driveways, as land use attorney Grady Gammage epitomises the selfishness of the American dream with the words "I like the way I live". Nowhere has that dream gone more wrong than in Detroit. The most powerful scene in the movie is an eerie train ride through the deserted city, now depopulated thanks to its dying car industry.
There we have the full spectrum of the problem: some cities are bursting at the seams while others are becoming ghost towns. Who has the answer? Is it Norman Foster with his Masdar eco-city in Abu Dhabi? Is it Rem Koolhaas with his behemoth of a headquarters for Chinese state television in Beijing? To its credit, the film is unequivocal that architects – especially starchitects – are not the solution. What happened when Brad Pitt rallied a group of well-meaning architect friends to help rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina? The city got an odd assortment of houses that look like they were parachuted in from Malibu sitting amid a sea of devastation. Not all that effective.
If there is a new orthodoxy in urban design, it is citizen participation. And Urbanized revels in this so-called "bottom up" approach. It depicts several cases of community engagement, from an energy measurement scheme in Brighton to a new pedestrian area in the South African township of Khayelitsha. It devotes a good chunk of time to the Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, whose system of half-houses that residents complete themselves is often cited as a paragon of "participatory design". The idea is that citizens, not god-like architects and planners, are the solution to the urban question. And Hustwit knows just how effective people power can be: his movie was partly paid for through the crowd-funding site Kickstarter.
This aspect of the movie is very much in tune with the zeitgeist. 2011 is the year of people power after all, the year when across the world, from Tahrir Square to the streets of Santiago to Wall Street, citizens have been making themselves heard. Indeed, there are several protests featured in the film. The message is undoubtedly a positive one, and the focus on small-scale, tangible solutions is at pains to be uplifting. The only caveat is that at times this borders on the naive. Watching people plant community gardens in the abandoned lots of Detroit, or plaster New Orleans with stickers that let citizens have their say, creates a cosy feel-good factor, but the problem is scale. On one hand, favelas and shanty towns are emblematic of the tremendous capacity of people to look after themselves. But no amount of self-organisation is going to introduce running water and sewage to the favelas. That kind of infrastructure requires politicians, not just residents.
Perhaps that's where a film such as Urbanized can be useful. Undoubtedly there are limits to what can be said about cities in a one-and-a-half-hour documentary – for instance, maybe this notion that 75% of us will live in cities by 2050 is bogus, and that as the global economy falters so will urbanisation. But this is not the purview of films like Urbanized. Whatever the drawbacks of a mass medium when it comes to nuance, it is redeemed by its ability to reach a mass audience. The more people who see this movie the better. And the more politicians who see it – and are persuaded to look beyond the vested interests in front of them – the more powerful a tool Urbanized will be.
New homes must be fit for purpose, says leading architect
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 4, 2011
The new president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Angela Brady, wants to start a conversation on building better new homes
For Angela Brady, good design is a watchword. That means communicating its benefits on television, radio, at workshops for children, on public platforms and, in her new role, to the country at large.
The new president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) has a Channel 4 series featuring architecture in six European cities behind her. Right now, her passion is the lamentable design of much of the new housing in England. She does not mince words, labelling buildings passing for detached homes as "Noddy boxes". It is a criticism she heard time and again during this year's party conference fringe meetings which outlined Riba's Case for Space campaign, a drive to persuade house-builders to raise their game as new homes become significantly smaller.
Those Riba events, titled Leaving Legoland, attracted several hundred at the three party conferences. "The strong criticism that came from the audience was: 'We're sick of these volume housebuilders, the Noddy box houses in cul-de-sacs all around the country. We have to drive to improve them. They're not built sustainably. They're tiny, cramped.' And they've got a fair point," says Brady.
"People will say housebuilders have got a monopoly because they've got the land. We're saying there hasn't really been an analysis of how we live, what spaces we need, since 1961. So we're starting the conversation. Let's ask what people want."
That is what Riba is proposing with a Future Homes Commission, comprising experts from a variety of fields. With the average new home in England 8% below the recommended minimum size (which can equate to a bedroom) the institute wants to find out what consumers want and need, then make recommendations to house builders and developers.
When I mention that architecture seems to be an afterthought in many new houses, Brady interjects: "If at all." It's a serious point because, she says, many homes are simply constructed off-the-shelf from manuals; even the once ubiquitous term "architect designed" has been ditched. She thinks it is symptomatic of a "let's get something cheap, cheerful and quick".
But Brady's criticisms go further than house design; she thinks the layout and planning of new estates leaves much to be desired. She spent a year on a working group organised by the former Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment – an organisation, she laments, needlessly scrapped by the government – looking at the country's post-war new towns. "There was some fantastic planning then," she enthuses. "Just compare that with suburban sprawl, ribbon development, these sort of executive cul-de-sacs you've got to drive to and you can't even buy a bottle of milk on the corner."
Better models
Brady adds: "We need to really re-examine the way we live and play, and we need to seek better models for the next 20 years. We've got huge constraints, if you look at the pressure on the environment, and I believe we are the custodians of [that]. People are relying on architects, planners, to come up with the right answers – how to make the green deal, make homes more zero carbon. As architects, we've got so much to offer. Governments ignore that at their peril."
Brady studied architecture in her native Dublin and sought early inspiration in her career with work spells in Denmark, and Toronto, before landing in London. In 1987, she set up an architecture practice with her husband Robin Mallalleu.
Brady is the second female president of Riba and has a record of activism in the organisation. She was a leading light in Architects for Change, promoting the progression of women alongside black and minority ethnic groups. "You can inspire children who would never think of going into architecture that it's a worthwhile career," she says.
In the contest for president, Brady believes that her activism proved the trump card. "One of the reasons I got voted in was because I was the only person pushing diversity in our profession. We're only 18% women and I'd love it if we could push it to 40%." Therein lies a dilemma because women, she says, constitute 37% of students in the country's 44 schools of architecture . Brady says it's not hard to discover why so many women subsequently leave. "They are the main child carers; take a year out, and it's quite hard to get in again."
Another passion is de-mystifying architecture – "taking it to the people" and involving them in the process. She believes the profession needs to broaden its appeal, and evangelise. "This is what's missing, how are we architects going to help deliver the 'localist' agenda of the government?" she enthuses. "That means helping people make local plans, when there isn't the revenue there in the support structure. Communicating with neighbourhood groups, helping them draw up local plans, it's a long-term strategy that we want."
Proper consideration
Why, she asks, plonk houses miles from anywhere without the services to support families? "We want to make sure there is some infrastructure in place before people come and put housing down, to know that housing has been given proper consideration, is going to fit in, and it's not going to be yet more ribbon development."
And why, she wonders, build exclusive estates and properties for one privileged sector of society while housing others in separate enclaves? "If we look to Denmark and Holland, for example, they live as a community coming together without an 'us and them', the rich and the poor. It's much more social," she explains.
Brady is enthralled by the "rich mix" of the capital's culture even after over two decades in London. She is appalled that plans for a cap of £26,000 on the amount of benefits one family can claim a year from 2013 will undermine that mix, driving the lower paid out of the capital. "People have a right to live in the communities where they were born," she says.
That aside, she insists that the compelling case for many more houses should not mean poor design. "We've got a huge housing crisis, a shortage of 250,000 units a year. And there should be more opportunity for better housing. We need to build more sustainably, to cut carbon, it's a matter of convincing the contractors to build for the long-term."
No easy task. She has two years as president to make her mark.
Curriculum vitae
Age 54.
Status Married, two teenage children.
Lives Finsbury Park, north London.
Education Holy Child school, Killiney, County Dublin; Dublin School of Architecture.
Career 1987–present: director, Brady Mallalieu Architects; 1983-86: architecture graduate in London; 1982-83: trainee architect, architectural practice in Toronto; 1981-82: scholarship to study co-housing in Denmark.
Public life 2011: elected Riba president for two-year term; 2010: joins Riba trust board; 2000: founder, Architects for Change group within Riba, campaigning for greater representation for women and ethnic minorities.
Interests Painting, designing glassware.
RIBA condemns ‘shameful shoe box homes’ now built in Britain
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on September 14, 2011
Architects' report claims new three-bedroom houses are being constructed 8% smaller than guidelines advise
The Royal Institute of British Architects has criticised the "shoe box" sized homes now being built in Britain. Ahead of its inquiry into housing needs, RIBA claims that many of the new homes being constructed are too small for the number of people expected to live in them.
The institute says the average new three-bedroom house is 8% smaller than the recently adopted standard for homes in London, with floor space of 88 sq metres (947 sq ft). That is 8 sq metres short of the recommended space, the equivalent of a single bedroom.
One-bedroom properties, at an average of 46 sq metres, are 4 sq metres short of the recommended size, it adds in its recent report The Case for Space.
RIBA suggests that potential buyers are being short-changed and fobbed off with "shameful shoe box homes".
The London Housing Design Guide, adopted in the past year or so, lays down, among other features, minimum space standards for new properties, based on factors such as the average quantity of furnishings as well as number of occupants.
The RIBA inquiry, to be conducted by Sir John Banham, a former director-general of the CBI and former chair of the Tarmac group, is expected to report by next summer and will feed into the government's proposals to alter planning rules. The inquiry will seek the views of architects, builders, planners and purchasers.
Banham said: ""There are some fundamental issues that need to be addressed to ensure we have more of the right kind of affordable homes in villages, towns and cities … new thinking and financing approaches will be needed."
Anna Scott-Marshall, RIBA's head of policy, said that the organisation's Future Homes Commission would address issues such as housing costs, building quality, design and layout, including factors such as the amount of light in a property.
"We need to look into affordability and the mechanisms that need to be in place to enable people to buy," she said.
London riots: lessons for urban policy
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on August 15, 2011
At architecture journal bdonline, Wouter Vanstiphout's piece about the planning and related political implications of the riots begins in urban France:
In November 2005 French President Jacques Chirac welcomed back normality, after weeks of riots in the French banlieues. Instead of 1,000 to 1,500 vehicles being burnt every night, it went back to 163, and then kept to the normal 50 to 150. Every night of the year dozens of cars are being set on fire in the French banlieues and this had been going on for years on end.
What is normality to a French banlieue? It can mean that in the morning the elderly, women and children – and sometimes architects and historians looking for modernist housing projects from the sixties – can freely roam between the slabs and blocks, shop, play and look around.
After that the unemployed young men appear from their bedrooms and take up their positions near the entrances of the apartment blocks and on street corners. The elderly, women and children scuttle back home and the tourists leave altogether. The young men whistle and sign to each other, taunt and threaten the belated visitors and the semi-militarised police that buzz by in vans.
In many French banlieues, day turns into night around noon. Once, in one of these places, we approached a group of heavily armed policemen to ask for directions on the central square of a French housing estate.
They looked around nervously and said we shouldn't stand still for too long, because one of the gangs could start throwing rocks. They then said that we should really really be back in the historic city centre within the hour; it was 3pm. They themselves would be out of there at dusk, at the latest. This was between riots, this was normality.
I know of nowhere in London that matches that description, but can we rule such scenarios out of the capital's future? The comparison is inexact: "banlieue" means the urban outskirts, not the inner city areas where our riots began and mostly occurred. However, some fear that the effect of the government's housing and other benefit reforms will be to foster banlieue-type concentrations of social marginalisation in London's poorer suburbs, making the capital's current situation even worse.
Vanstiphout continues:
In many ways, the [French] riots were "just" spectacular worsenings of a chronic condition, extrapolations on a permanent crisis lived by millions, but neglected by tens of millions. Something became visible for a moment, and then disappeared again, as a bad dream. Behind the scenes however a mechanism is in place that contains the badness, that keeps it from spilling over again, while making it inevitable that it will...the banlieues and their inhabitants have been effectively abandoned...
One person did well out of it, though: Nicolas Sarkozy, who as a minister of the interior fanned the flames by going on television, standing shoulder to shoulder with the riot police and calling the rioters scum (racaille) who would be wiped away; then rode the wave of popular fear all the way to the presidency, from where he invited a battalion of international architects to give back France its glory, by designing futures of the French capital, "Le Grand Paris"....
Right now it has become very difficult to think of an urban politics, let alone an urban planning or design approach that would be able to take on the underlying problems of riots like the ones in the UK in a serious way.
I do not think that the reason is that politics and planning have realised their limitations to shape society. I think that the reason is that urban politics and hence planning and urban design are too often treating the city with ulterior motives, instead of actually working for the city itself. The city has become a tool to achieve goals, political, cultural, economic or even environmental [my emphasis].
Treating the city in this way means that we are constantly passing judgment on what the city should be, and who should be there, and what they should be doing, instead of trying to understand what the city actually is, who really lives there and what they are doing. This produces a dangerous process of idealisation, denying whole areas, whole groups, their place in the urban community, because they do not fit the picture.
Something there for politicians of all persuasions to reflect on. And there's more:
It is much too soon to say anything about the relationship between the gentrification of Brixton or the coming of the Olympics to London, and the current explosion of violent alienation. But if we imagine another kind of urban politics, one that does not take into account a marketable image of the city, but the reality of the entire community, it would probably have entirely different priorities.
The first would be to work against the ever sharpening inequality of London, making it one of the unfairest cities in Europe, in poverty levels, education, crime and other indicators.
But then the reality of urban riots is that they have always turned out to be the opposite of a learning experience for a city. Riots have nearly always resulted in politicians simplifying the problem even more, and citizens looking away even further.
After a riot, your average city will become more afraid, more authoritarian, more segregated, more exclusive and less tolerant. That is the real tragedy of the post-war western urban riot, first it shocks and terrifies us, then for a moment it makes us see flashes of the kind of city we should be working towards, which then fades away into the darkness. Back to normal.
A "normal" that is unacceptable.
Wouter Vanstiphout is a partner at Crimson Architectural Historians in Rotterdam and professor of Design & Politics at the Technical University Delft. He is currently researching the relationship between urban riots and urban planning. I'm very grateful to @amarkodio for bringing Vanstiphout's article to my attention.
London 2012: Olympic flame will be lit in one year’s time, but still much to do
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on July 26, 2011
IOC hail progress as Tom Daley dives into Aquatics Centre pool, completed on time and budget
With 366 days to go, 2012 being a leap year, until the Olympic flame is lit in east London, organisers, the government and the International Olympic Committee are queuing up to hail progress to date.
Wednesday's events to mark the milestone, which will see the £269m Zaha Hadid designed Aquatics Centre formally handed over to organisers by the Olympic Delivery Authority and Tom Daley diving into the pool, will have an air of celebration.
"Marking one year to go, by diving in the Aquatics Centre is an incredible honour. Only a few years ago, this was a distant dream," said Daley, who finished fifth at the world championships in Shanghai on Sunday. "I can't wait for next year and the honour of representing Team GB." But although world class athletes are beginning to test the venues, there remains much to do.
Venues
The Aquatics Centre is the sixth and final permanent venue to be handed over to organisers by the ODA, which has spent £7.25bn of public money building them. Chairman John Armitt said the successful completion of the venues had helped boost the image of British contractors around the world.
"It's very satisfying to be handing it over on time and keeping within the budget. It's a great tribute to everybody that has played a part in this," he told the Guardian. "It is something that as a country and an industry we should be proud of and we should try to maximise opportunities in other parts of the world while memories are still fresh about what the industry can do."
Some venues, especially the velodrome that has already been nominated for the Stirling Prize, have garnered more plaudits than others. The clean lines and simplicity of the stadium have also been praised but there has been criticism of the ugly temporary "water wings" that have been attached to the aquatics centre to boost the capacity to 17,500 for the Games. When it was designed, the high cost was justified by the signature design, which will be obscured by the temporary stands. "When you're inside it, it's fabulous," says Armitt, diplomatically.
Despite outward appearances, the London organising committee still has a huge task. Each venue must be "fitted out", a task that includes the laying of the track in the main stadium, and several major temporary venues must be built from scratch. They include a 15,000 capacity hockey stadium, a 23,000 capacity arena for the equestrian events at Greenwich Park and a 15,000 seat bowl on Horseguard's Parade for the beach volleyball.
Tickets
London organising committee chief executive Paul Deighton has confirmed the last batch of 1.2m tickets that will go on sale from December will first be made available exclusively to those who took part in the initial ballot in April and have yet to get a ticket. Around 6m tickets have already been sold, considered unprecedented with a year to go, with only around 1.5m for football matches around the country and those final 1.2m across all sports – to be made available when the final seating configurations are decided – remaining. Next year, Locog also plans to sell "non-event tickets" which will allow entry to the park but not the venues.
Later this year, millions of free tickets for the live sites, with big screens and concerts in Hyde Park, Victoria Park and Potter's Fields will also be made available on a first come, first served basis. The mantra from Locog chairman Lord Coe and other organisers has been that while they understand the "disappointment" created by the huge demand, which saw 22m applications in the initial rush for tickets, they stand by the controversial process.
Transport
Ever since London was awarded the Games in 2005, transport has been considered a potential achilles heel. The ODA passed responsibility for operational matters to Transport for London last year, but retains an overall co-ordination role. The first stirrings of a backlash have already been felt about the so-called "Olympic lanes" that will whisk 18,000 athletes and officials around the capital during the Games.
They make up roughly a third of the 109-mile Olympic Route Network and have already sparked loud protests from London's black cab drivers. Meanwhile, much will rest on the ability of organisers to persuade businesses and individuals to modify their behaviour during the Games.
"The message must be business as unusual," said Armitt. They take some comfort from the variety of routes into Stratford, including the Jubilee Line and the new Javelin train from St Pancras, but will be desperate to avoid a millennium eve style meltdown.
On the nine busiest days of the Games there will be more than 1m Olympics-related journeys, with a report earlier this year warning of "extreme" conditions on a system already "creaking at the seams".
Security
Olympics minister Hugh Robertson said that security plans needed rethinking when the coalition came to power. Before she quit, Lady Neville-Jones led a government review that resulted in the government predicting security at Games time could be delivered for £475m, though the overall £600m envelope will be retained.
Ministers and organisers have sought to play down the significance of the resignation of Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, but he said in his own statement that a key reason for it was to allow time to get someone new in place for the Olympics. Locog will spend £282m on security within the venues, chiefly through contractor G4S, but there will also need to call on several thousand non-uniformed military personnel.
'Look and feel'
For all the operational challenges Coe's organising committee will face, in many ways the bigger challenge is building public enthusiasm for the Games to reach a crescendo around 27 July next year when the flame is lit. Coe has talked of Britain being a "slow burn" nation. He hopes the torch relay, which will begin at Land's End on 19 May and visit 74 locations in 70 days via 8,000 runners, will be the point at which cynicism is cast aside and enthusiasm ignites.
Part of the task will be to keep those without tickets engaged, through the big screens planned for cities throughout the country and cultural events that will culminate in Festival 2012. London mayor Boris Johnson has a budget to "dress" key areas of the city, including placing Olympic rings on the capital's landmarks. The BBC, which has promised to broadcast every event from every venue live, will also have a big role to play.
Legacy
Given the relatively smooth progress of organisers to date, much of the controversy has centred on the legacy claims that helped secure the Games in the first place. The Olympic Park Legacy Company has taken on responsibility for the park after the Games and must prove it can make a commercial success of it while meeting the needs of local residents.
The fate of the stadium, the object of a furious row between Spurs and West Ham, is mired in high court litigation and it will face searching scrutiny over the affordability of thousands of homes that will be left behind, partly the athletes village.
One of the biggest challenges for the OPLC will be finding a tenant for the cavernous media centre, although there are renewed hopes that a major broadcaster may take an interest.
But even more of a challenge is the "soft legacy", with figures showing that the number of people playing sport is resolutely refusing to budge and ongoing debate about whether the predicted opportunity to get more young people engaged in sport, build links between clubs and schools and raise the profile and quality of coaching, is really being seized. They were famously planting the trees in Athens the day before the opening ceremony, but the landscaping on the Olympic Park is starting to take shape.
More than 4,000 new trees are planned, with 1,500 already planted. Over 300,000 wetland plants have been planted and there are bold claims for the Park that will be left behind. Eventually, there will be up to 11,000 new homes on the site, in the heart of an area that the Olympic Park Legacy Company hopes will be resurgent. Westfield, the giant shopping mall at the entrance to the Park and on which politicians are relying for many of their legacy claims about jobs and regeneration, opens for business in September.
Response: Labelling new properties ‘Noddy boxes’ is simply unfair
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 19, 2011
We have to build the homes the country needs, at prices our customers can afford
The recent interview with Angela Brady, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, (Sense of space, Society, 5 October) made me wonder whether Riba has lost touch with the realities of housing delivery in a desperate attempt to chase headlines.
Brady labels "buildings passing for detached homes as 'Noddy boxes'". The article states: "It is a criticism she heard time and again during this year's party conference fringe meetings which outlined Riba's Case for Space campaign, a drive to persuade house-builders to raise their game as new homes become significantly smaller."
Representatives of the Home Builders Federation didn't hear this phrase used at the conferences, but we did hear how Riba's Future Homes Commission will "find out what consumers want and make recommendations to house builders"– it seems that Riba didn't ask customers these questions before they criticised the way new homes are currently built.
That contrasts with house builders who, in difficult economic circumstances, actually have to build and sell the homes the country needs. Our members are constantly talking to their customers and building the homes that they want at prices they can afford – if they didn't they would soon go out of business.
Our latest survey showed that 84% of new home buyers are satisfied or very satisfied with their new home, with 86% saying they would recommend their builder to a friend. The people who matter, those who buy and live in the homes – rather than those commenting on the industry – are happy. And if house builders, who are in stiff competition with each other, could easily build bigger houses that customers would prefer, why don't they?
Land supply is the key. For decades the planning system has not delivered enough land for the number of homes our population needs.
As Brady says, there is a compelling argument for new homes: "We've got a huge housing crisis, a shortage of 250,000 units a year. And there should be more opportunity for better housing." If indeed she does recognise this, she would be well advised to focus Riba's efforts on supporting us as we push for a robust planning system that will deliver the land for that to happen.
Land supply, viability, the burden of regulation, local authority design and sustainability demands – these are the issues that matter.
In private, Riba staff have constantly assured us that they want to work constructively with our industry. Unfortunately their continued insistence on using provocative statements about "Noddy boxes" is deeply discouraging.
Home builders, who all work with architects on the frontline, are struggling to cope with the economic malaise and credit drought, a battle over the new planning system and hefty environmental regulation. Riba must engage in the real issues – then we'll be happy to work with the Future Homes Commission.
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