The Sesquipedalist

Ethics versus aesthetics: AD 1965-74

2009-11-16T11:02:00.027Z

A 20 minute paper/talk I gave at the student-led theory forum on the subject of "ecology" at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture this weekend:

I want to start with a bit of a long quote from Warren Chalk of Archigram*. This quote was published in AD in April 1971 and also as the last piece in the 1972 Archigram book which essentially became their monograph. In other words, it represents their last word:

Ecology - there, I've said that word - is a social problem. We have been told so by Time, Life, Newsweek, Look and the Nixon administration. Pollution is insidiously growing. Either the environment goes or we go. And you all know what will happen if the environment goes. We have produced a society with production for the sake of production. The city has become a market place, every human being a commodity. Nature is a resource. Human beings are a resource. Well. Our very survival depends on an ecological utopia, otherwise we will be destroyed.
The technological backlash we are experiencing must be fought with a more sophisticated technology, a more sophisticated science … But if we are to prevent eco-catastrophe it can only be done by more sophisticated environmental systems, not by dropping out. Nor the hippy type philosophy. Did you see Drop City in Easy Rider?...Let's face it, total dispersal won't work economically any more than total centralisation. Apart from being a head-in-the-sand attitude, we need to fight technology with technology, to produce David Greene's cybernetic forest … What we look for is technological play, so that individuals can create an even greater environmental stimulation. A person switched on to the electric tomato, or the proud possessor of the personalised robot like Manzak, can extend an existing situation, and a new man/machine [relationship] be established getting people, through their extension with a machine, into action.
Experiments such as these could achieve a people-oriented technology of human liberation, directed towards pleasure, enjoyment, experimentation: a try-it-and-see attitude …
Hopefully some environmental magic will then prevail and we will again think up the impossible in order to be realistic.

What I'm going to do in this paper is look at the ongoing, changing relationship between the non-mutually exclusive, twin themes of 'ethics' and 'aesthetics' as they appeared on the pages of Architectural Design between 1965 and 1974. You will see that many of the issues we are talking about today were being discussed 40 years ago – even before the oil crisis of 1973 – and that therefore the architects' political capacity to affect change has proved extremely limited despite continuous calls to architectural arms.

The magazine Architectural Design was already successful and widely read by the time Robin Middleton took over as Technical Editor in 1965 but for the next ten years, under the direction of Middleton and his successor, Peter Murray, it was to become the architectural magazine that defined the period.

Earlier, from 1953 to '62, Technical Editor Theo Crosby had used the magazine to promote architecture-as-building, and especially the New Brutalist movement and Team X of the Smithsons et al. In 1966, Reyner Banham published the canonical The New Brutalism, with the subtitle “Ethic or aesthetic?”. Its content was heavily based on articles from each of the Architectural Review and Architectural Design, and in it, Banham documented his search for “une architecture autre”. He oscillated between the two defining characteristics of ethics and aesthetics for this now unfashionable movement, finally deciding that the movement was all about aesthetics after all: “For all its brave talk of 'an ethic, not an aesthetic', Brutalism never quite broke out of the aesthetic frame of reference.” he wrote in his summation.

It could be argued that Brutalism as an avant-garde (or neo-avant-garde) movement died with that last sentence, but in fact as the vanguard, it had barely moved into the sixties: the Smithsons' Economist building had already by that time betrayed Banham's belief in une architecture autre and once more demonstrated the avant-garde's propensity to be absorbed into the larger movement of modernism. But by that time anyway, Banham had transferred his allegiances to The Brutalists' natural heirs to the neo-avant-garde title who were already well established and continuing to push architecture in the direction of pop culture, Americana and beyond. I speak, of course, of Archigram.

Half of the Archigram group (Dennis Crompton, Warren Chalk and Ron Herron) had already been working on the Brutalist structure of the South Bank Centre for the London County Council and they joined the other half (Peter Cook, Michael Webb and David Greene) at Taylor Woodrow Construction working on the Euston redevelopment under the supervision of former AD Technical Editor Theo Crosby and alongside future AD Technical Editor, Robin Middleton. Although Archigram as a “fanzine” had been going since 1961, the group behind the fanzine wasn't published in the mainstream British architectural press – the “trade rags” – until 1965. As mentioned above, earlier that year, Robin Middleton had become Technical Editor of AD and by this time, Archigram were on to number six with a circulation of 2,500 themselves. In November of that year, Architectural Design was among the very first to publish Archigram's work with Reyner Banham's two page article called “A Clip-on architecture” and a 15 page chronological survey later in the same issue. From that point onwards, and for the next ten years, Archigram as a group and as individuals were to dominate the pages of AD.

While the “ethic versus aesthetic” split remained a subtitle throughout the New Brutalist years, it was to become a more obvious dichotomy in the late sixties and early seventies. This was clearly seen on the pages of AD and readers spelled it out in their letters, such as the following:

There is no doubting that Archigram was all about the aesthetic. Whereas the New Brutalists sought to drag art down to the level of life, Archigram wanted to raise life to the level of art. Rather than addressing existing society's problems, they chose to envision exciting new worlds and solve completely non-existent problems, viewing the user as consumer and turning architecture into another product of consumption. As Banham wrote, in that “Clip-on” article, “Archigram can't tell you for certain whether Plug-in City can be made to work, but it can tell you what it might look like.” The emergence of Archigram demonstrated the shift from architecture-as-building to architecture-as-concept and to seemingly keep abreast of the architectural profession's shift in attitude, Architectural Design changed its name to AD in May 1968. There is a distinct shift from the main features being concerned with building studies, products and technologies in the April issue to more sociological concerns in May. For example, April's issue features the Nuffield transplant surgery unit in Edinburgh; student accommodation at Oxford University; a service station and several features comprising experimental designs for large scale cable supported roof spans, all of which were entirely in-keeping with the magazine's content up until that point.

The title for May's issue, however, guest edited by Cedric Price, is “What about Learning?” Its cover sports a hand with a mock-up of a futuristic video watch. The articles inside enforce the idea that learning isn't just for schools, that technology can enable long-distance learning, learning by closed circuit TV (for children in Niger), and other different models of learning focussed on the individual. Peter Cook's Ideas Circus appears: “A proposal for a system of trucked units containing a power plant, printing press, library, teaching machines, various audio-visual assemblies and minimal transformable enclosures.” It's a kind of educational precursor to Archigram's later Instant City. The month May 1968, of course, chimes with political unrest in Paris and beyond, a topic taken up by historian Eric Hobsbawm later that year in AD when he wrote about “Cities and Insurrection” in an issue called “Metaphoropolis” dedicated to a socio-political study of the city. Anti-establishment reaction had been rising in young people throughout the sixties and while the shift in editorial direction of an architectural publication and riots on the streets of Europe's capital cities and sit-ins in the universities are poles apart in terms of scale, they can both be seen as symptomatic of a tectonic shift in underlying thinking, especially amongst students.

Archigram came face to face with the student unrest at the Milan Triennale in 19685 where they were exhibiting the “Milanogram” (Archigram number 8). No sooner had the exhibition opened than it was occupied and trashed by students for 10 days. While Archigram talked of “direct action” they were uninterested in politics and left Milan non-plussed.

If Archigram represented the aesthetics of AD during this period, the ethics appeared through the pervading preoccupation of ecological issues that were wafting from the US, such as Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog. The Whole Earth Catalog first appeared in the Autumn of 1968 and was published regularly for only three years. In contrast to the European model of insurrection of the time, the Whole Earth Catalog encouraged an American counterculture of grass-roots radicalism. As the write-up in AD's Cosmorama put it, “the Whole Earth Catalog is a unique compendium of the hip and the home-spun, of far-out technology and down-home atavism, dedicated to the proposition that “we are as Gods – and might as well get [good] at it,” and to the assumption that anything practical, cheap, of high quality and easy availability can serve as a tool towards that end.”

The Whole Earth Catalog was basically a compendium of tools aimed at those who wanted to challenge conventional lifestyles. The word “tools” included books, of course, and many of the entries were book reviews. Architectural Design itself made it into the first number, featuring the “Architecture of Democracy” issue with the comments “This is the only architectural magazine we've seen that consistently carries substantial new information, as distinct from the stylistic eye-wash characteristic of most architecture journals. It galls my jingoistic soul to see the British publishing so much of the best technological information … Dave Evans, a local Australian whiz, says it's because English bright guys don't have much to grip them commercially, so they spread their brightness around. (Also they flock to America in search of commercial ferocity.)"

Peculiarly, even Archigram made it into the last Whole Earth Catalog (right above the feature called “You'll Build Your Next House of Molasses”). Of it, they say, “Archigram is the “Captain Billy's Whiz Bang” of architecture, with lots of imitators by now and still no equals. Dream architecture, joke architecture, blasphemy architecture, science fiction architecture, adolescent wet dream architecture, leather architecture. Sin. Fun. For a while.”

The Whole Earth Catalog supported hippie, artistic communities like Drop City and inspired future alternative thinkers such as Steve Jobs, Kevin Kelly and Howard Rheingold. The folk who were into that culture at that time seem to have migrated into internet culture at the end of the century.
The Whole Earth Catalog also inspired other catalogs such as the Domebooks, number one of which was featured on the first page of September 1970's AD and sold through the magazine from then on: “a practical account of the construction of ten different domes built at an experimental high school in the California hills within a period of four months.” Domes were everywhere on the pages of the leading magazines of the time and some were even being built. While it couldn't claim to save the world in itself, it at least could represent an aesthetic of a new way of thinking – that of Buckminster Fuller's ethos of doing more with less.

Richard Buckminster-Fuller can, in fact, be considered the spiritual father of both sides of AD's dichotomy of aesthetic and ethic. He was Archigram's hero, largely due to his technological aesthetic and techno-babble way of talking. Simon Sadler points out that whereas Fuller espoused the economics of lightweight component architecture, Archigram pursued its pleasures (note the scantilly clad female occupants of Warren Chalk's Capsule and Fuller's Dymaxion house). Fuller is, of course, most famous for his geodesic dome – a structure that envelopes maximum volume with minimum material. This found its way into the Taylor Woodrow Design Group's (which, as mentioned above, employed the Archigram members) Fulham Study of 1963 and Montreal Expo '67 Tower of 1964. Subsequently, the geodesic dome's triangular steel struts were the substructure for Peter Cook's megastructural Plug-In City of 1964 and many other projects beyond. Fuller epitomised the “technology is the answer, what's the question?” stance of twentieth century modernism and Archigram adopted and adapted this for their hedonistic zoom-wave designs. Whereas Fuller's world assumed plentiful provision for a limited population, Archigram's assumed infinite resources for infinite pleasure for infinite people – as long as they were good looking.

If Archigram were apolitical, then Fuller was simply politically naïve. On winning the RIBA Gold Medal in 1968, AD published an abbreviated version of his 16,500 word (!) acceptance speech containing a paragraph on politics: “I am transcendental to all political thinking. I am utterly convinced that the world can be made to work and I'm convinced that all the politicians of both sides have really an extraordinary sense of responsibility to their people. I don't question their integrity as human beings; I'm sorry for them, however, because nothing in their particular art can ever help man to be a success.” Fuller was so blinded by technology that he was ignorant of the fact that nothing is ever done but by political will. As an aside and contemporary analogy, if he were alive today, he would no doubt subscribe to the benefits of genetically modified crops due to the argument that it would make yields more plenty and we would be able to feed the world, completely ignoring the fact that we already have the technology to feed the world now,but not the political will.

Monica Pidgeon, who was the editor of Architectural Design from 1946 to 1975, was quite taken with Buckminster-Fuller, who she met while helping organise the VIIth congress of the UIA held in London in July 1961. Although not architecturally trained himself, Bucky believed that the world could be saved by designers – and architects in particular. During the UIA Congress, Pidgeon invited him to contribute his views on the role of the architect in the present world situation and published his call to arms the following month as “The Architect as World Planner” declaration of intent. It starts, “I propose that the architectural departments of all the universities around the world be encouraged by the UIA to invest the next ten years in a continuing problem of how to make the total world's resources serve 100 per cent of humanity through competent design.” (In 1965, it served 40%). He goes on to claim, “It is clearly manifest … that the architects are able to think regarding such world planning in a manner transcendental to any political bias.” Fuller's vision was implemented as the “World Design Science Decade” starting in 1965, intent on spanning exactly the same years as is being looked at here. AD continued to publish Fuller's ideas throughout the 1960s as it suited AD's international perspective and target student audience. The outcome of the World Design Science Decade was six verbose documents of ideas, research and tools on resource planning for use by architectural schools worldwide in the pursuit of his initial declaration. The last document, The Ecological Context, Energy and Materials, was published by Fuller and his associate, Independent Group artist John McHale in 1967.

While Archigram took Bucky's faith in technology to an aesthetic conclusion, AD was looking all over for inspiration for architects. The New Scientist magazine was a favourite and features from this often became topics for publication in the Cosmorama section, fuelled by the excitement of the moon landings and questions of where man would inhabit – and therefore architects build – next. In contrast to this “high-tech” editorial approach, they were simultaneously publishing “low-tech” features similar to those espoused by the Whole Earth Catalog. During this period, features appeared on shanty towns, squatting, ecology, with columns called “Eco-tech” and “Recycling” by Colin Moorcraft. They looked at wind and solar power. July 1972's issue – a year before the oil crisis – was concerned with “designing for survival” and a year earlier, they published Martin Pawley's Garbage Housing. That year, AD also published extracts from Victor Papanek's “Design for the Real World” which was anti-good taste and pro-social responsibilities for designers. It was almost universally derided by design professionals at the time of the first edition in 1971, but it demonstrated a radical alternative to design practice that Pidgeon was looking to promote, especially to the students and young architects who were her main target audience at this time. AD had slipped into “little magazine” mode by this time, using the “book economy” whereby subscriptions were the magazine's main income rather than advertising, and this allowed them considerable editorial freedom as opposed to, for example, the Architectural Review, which at this time was quietly self-destructing with the Manplan and Civilia issues. AD was therefore free to explore the very fringes of acceptability to architects and enter into whatever agenda they chose to be important.

Eventually, at least some members of Archigram conceded to the ecological wave. Archigram Nine included a packet of seeds and its cover of an allotment was inspired by David Greene's Bottery (“a fully serviced natural landscape”) and the disappearance of architecture completely into the landscape. Greene published his LAWUN (Locally Available World Unseen Networks) project number one in AD in 1970, where he explained, “Lawun means the striving after basic objectives – doing your own thing without disturbing the events of the existing scene and in a way which is invisible because it involves no formal statement, and because it is related to time, may or may not be there at any given point in time.” Lawun project two, published in AD the following year utilises Greene's earlier Rokplug and Logplug designs ostensibly to promote mobile architecture. However, this is a loss of confidence Archigram, one that's less discussed and less famous, representing the opposite pole of their thinking, striving for the complete dissolution of building and, as the quote at the beginning showed, reluctantly coming to terms with the ground swell of ecological thinking that was happening at the time.

In summary, I've looked at the decade of 1965-74 in Architectural Design, covering the Technical Editorships of Robin Middleton and Peter Murray. This period exactly spans Buckminster Fuller's World Design Science Decade and sees the arrival and decline of Archigram within the mainstream architectural press, at least in AD (the Architectural Review were to leave Archigram well alone until it had passed as a phenomenon). Archigram promoted a consumerist, throw-away architecture and were about as ecological as they were feminist: which is to say, not at all. Nevertheless, in its shift from promoting architecture-as-building to architecture-as-concept (essentially reflecting the shift from an industrial to post-industrial society) AD was keen to engage students and young architects and become a radical mouthpiece for alternative architectural culture. This didn't stop at a de-politicised aesthetic, but followed through with Fuller's more ethical ideas, looking at how to save a doomed spaceship earth.
While ethics and aesthetics were kept apart as concepts on the pages of AD, they were at least united on the page.

* Thanks to Owen for introducing me to this quote.

2 questions

2009-11-07T19:28:00.003Z

Q1: While recently reading Simon Sadler's excellent "Archigram: Architecture Without Architecture" I came across the term "crush of architects" (p.23). Whether he meant it as a possible collective noun for architects is not clear, but it got me thinking what a suitable collective noun would be. A cult of architects perhaps?

Q2: Another long held question of mine is when did the term "built environment" become common terminology? It seems so commonplace and natural nowadays that it's hard to imagine a time before it was coined, but I'm fairly sure it wasn't common parlance when I did my degree in the early nineties. So when was it first used and by whom?

Jencks, Goldschmied, Rogers and 2 pineapple heads

2009-10-27T12:47:00.008Z

Last week's Stirling Prize demonstrates what a strange, small, autonomously incestuous world architecture really is.

Richard Rogers (rightmost male above) won the prize for a building designed for the architecture critic, Charles Jencks (leftmost male above). And how galling for the new sponsor, former RIBA president Marco Goldschmied (middlemost male above), to have to give his former partner and current tenant the prize money after only 3 years ago suing him. The picture above was taken at the moment he handed over the cheque. Lord Rogers never shook his hand or even looked him in the face.

But who cares? Nobody but architects stayed in to watch the programme buffeted by a pair of pineapple heads (each trying to out-pineapple the other for Ms Saunt's attention below). A 450,000 viewing figure will surely threaten its televisation next year.

St. Peter's Seminary at Cardross

2009-09-30T12:26:00.005+01:00

There's no sorrier site than a great building less than 40 years old lying in ruins. Here are some recent photos of St. Peter's Seminary design by Isi Metzstein and Andy MacMillan of Gillespie Kidd and Coia (finished in 1966). They were taken a few weeks ago after the lovely, patient locals helped us find it amidst the undergrowth, next to the golf course. The concrete is amazingly still in fine condition, but precious little else is. It's hard to imagine this building can be usefully salvaged - it would be so incredulously expensive - and for what use? A 19th hole? Urban Splash were linked to it but in today's credit-crunched market, it's hard to see it being used as housing, especially in this fairly remote - and stunningly beautiful - site.

"The machine has rejected ornament and the machine has everywhere established itself. We are irrevocably committed to a machine age" Herbert Read

The high altar.

Other photos and features here:
20th Century Society's casework report
20th Century Society's Risky Buildings Register
Photos of the Seminary in its original state.
Wikipedia entry
Brian Dillon's Guardian piece
Concrete Quarterly's feature from Spring 1967 (p. 16 of this pdf)

The Apollo Pavilion

2009-09-16T11:08:00.025+01:00

Peterlee was founded in 1948, one of the first and few New Towns to be built outside of what is now commuting distance from London. Lubetkin designed a first high rise version but this was considered unsuitable for the mining-compromised land where Peterlee was to be built. Lubetkin resigned and BDP founder George Grenfell-Baines stepped in his place. Artist Victor Pasmore was teaching at Newcastle at the time and was brought on board as "consulting director of urban design" for the Sunny Blunts estate of Peterlee. Pasmore's contribution was, of course, aesthetic, dealing with the landscape layout and appearance of the houses - a cold fusion of art and architecture. This aesthetic culminated in the Apollo pavilion, which has just been refurbished for its 40th birthday. The pavilion, optimistically named after the moon landings, is a focal point for the picturesque Arcadia-in-the-abstract layout of the estate.

Art like this isn't supposed to exist in places like Peterlee. The pavilion is a great hulk of concrete: a strictly Cartesian, constructivist sculpture at the scale of architecture in the context of an urban masterplan. It's a monument to concrete relying on the sun to give the monochromatic material depth and character primarily through its cantilevers and perpendiculars but more subtly through its smooth and rough textures. You can't help but be reminded of war-time bunkers by the horizontal slit in the central block. As you move around and through it, new compositions of the planes are revealed: a Cubist's dream. Any shadows provide the diagonals and a typical amoeba-like Pasmore mural is painted at either end. The pavilion originally boasted a stair at either end too, allowing passage over a feature pond.

The pavilion itself could therefore be cynically deemed a solution to an artificially created problem - it was essentially a bridge across an man-made pond, around which two-storey houses cluster. This wasn't its real function, of course. As Pasmore wrote in a letter of 30.05.76 to Gary Philipson, General Manager of Peterlee Development Corporation,

the object of all the sculpture, including the Pavilion, was to give dignity, focus and “impact” at various central points in the environmental complex of what is virtually a Council housing estate. But, to my mind, Peterlee is not a housing estate, but an important town. If for nothing else, therefore, the function of the sculptures is justified to underline and demonstrate this.

The subsequent story of the pavilion is one of high art meeting working class life. Peterlee was a town for miners, a fact ingrained in its very name: Peter Lee was an early twentieth century miner and trade unionist. Victor Pasmore, in contrast, was educated at Harrow.

During the pavilion's early years, over the channel in France, Pierre Bourdieu was doing some sociological research into taste and art and class. This was published as Distinction in 1979 where he demonstrated that working class taste doesn’t see any beauty in anything that isn’t functional, whereas the learned and well-bred appreciate form over function. The most modernist of tenets, “form follows function” (which incidentally, first appeared as “form ever follows function” in Louis Sullivan's "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered", Lippincott's Magazine of March 1896) should therefore imply a unison of aesthetics and use, leading to a style acceptable by both high and mass culture. This turned out to be far from the case in reality, demonstrating how taste is artificially constructed rather than innate. As Bourdieu wrote, “The ‘eye’ is a product of history reproduced by education.”
According to Bourdieu, working class taste considers that art should be of something – and something beautiful no less. Failing that, an artefact should be useful in order, the theory goes, that it reduce the labour required to get through working life. Having financial means implies that things of no use can be purchased and kept – follies, trinkets, art. Additionally, having an educated taste implies that art can be appreciated beyond the object and the beautiful – art that imitates art rather than art imitating nature.
That the ethic or aesthetic dilemma appeared as a sub-title to Banham's The New Brutalism is no coincidence. In the end, Banham decided that it was all about the aesthetic after all, despite the Brutalists' case to the contrary.

Despite best intentions, then, on behalf of the Peterlee Development Corporation and Pasmore, a useless behemoth of abstract sculpture in that modern, grey, stubborn material was always going to have a difficult time in a working class neighbourhood, regardless of its quality and the reputation of its creator. Perhaps this was the reason that a second stair was added to Pasmore's original design, effectively turning the sculpture into a bridge. The correspondence between Pasmore and Philipson as well as the press cuttings and corporation meeting minutes, constantly return to the subject of a suitable use for the sculpture. Throughout the seventies, it was being used "as a meeting place for the idle and the ill-disposed" (letter from Philipson to Pasmore, 12.02.82) which was apparently a bad thing. The Corporation's minutes from the meeting held on 08.04.82 talks about a “functional use” being found for the sculpture, as “Residents living nearby … claim it is used as a brothel and urinal and say it must be knocked down immediately.”

By 1978, when ownership of Peterlee was passed from the Peterlee Development Corporation to the District of Easington Council, the pavilion became the subject of what would now be labelled serious anti-social behaviour:

Rather than an aesthetic focal point, the pavilion had become a focal point of a rather different quality with youths congregating to do youthful things at youthful times in youthful volumes. Remember that this was the era of the ghetto blaster rather than the iPod. Residents who lived nearby the pavilion (and some of them are VERY nearby) complained. The Council clearly felt they had inherited a costly liability and a campaign was started for its demolition. A letter of 12.02.82 Gary Philipson to Pasmore confirms the sad situation:

In fairness to the local authorities, they have no real animus against the Pavilion itself: they are simply pestered by complaints about vandalism, noise, litter, courting couples (with the emphasis on the coupling) and demolition seems a simple if drastic solution to their problems.

In other words, it's not a question of either aesthetics or ethics, but of costs. The pavilion had become the symbolic and innocent target in a battle of art against life. It was pointed out that if the pavilion were demolished, youths would still congregate and be youthful either there or elsewhere. Pasmore's reaction to the residents calling for the pavilion to be removed was that the families who caused the trouble should be removed instead. To be fair to him, when he visited the tortured pavilion in 1982 he was sympathetic to the residents who he had placed too close to the pavilion. He also actually delighted at the impromptu use of the upper deck as artist's studio for children:

I fear that I upset some members of the deputation by my jocular response to this ‘mess’. But I had expected something really sordid and objectionable over the whole building: but when I was confronted upstairs with a gay and colourful exhibition of free child art I was so relieved that I could not help laughing and joking about it. It never occurred to me or my colleagues that the Pavilion would become a children’s painting studio:

(letter from Pasmore to Philipson of 23.04.82)

Fortunately, Apollo was too expensive to demolish. Instead, in 1985 stair access was removed to the upper deck which was turned into a “garden of Babylon” with planting which is how it remained until 2002 when, as Apollo moved into middle age respectability, albeit in a state of sorry disrepair, a ground swell of either pride or pity moved some members of the local community to try and restore it to its former original and optimistic glory. Thus in July of this year, at a cost of over £400,000 (more than 14 times its original cost to build), Apollo's refurbishment was complete.

It was decided to reinstate only the southern stair, as per Pasmore's original intention. Unfortunately, and contrary to Pasmore's original intention, it was also decided to keep a gate locked to the upper deck . There are signs at the top of the stairs warning of “risk of falls” from the roof to deter the local asbos and architectural historians alike from youthful exuberance. Today's suing culture means that there are also signs warning of the risk of banging one's head on the low concrete soffit of the upper deck. It goes without saying that there are also CCTV cameras overlooking the area.

The houses of the Sunny Blunts estate were vandalised themselves by the council in the 1980s with the addition of pitched roofs. Where tenants had exercised their right to buy, the roof remains flat (and one would speculate, leaking and under-insulated). Elsewhere, Pasmore's strict rectilinear lines and layered rectangles of timber, render, glass and brick on the façades are largely gone, never to return. Previously, it was compositionally consistent if materially distinct. Now, the pavilion stands out even more as a separate object rather than part of a whole, attracting the occasional passer-by, the odd architectural tourist and a multitude of local youths for whom the swings in the playground round the corner aren't cool or hard enough.

More photos from I like's Flickr stream.
A gallery of photos from the Apollo Pavilion's official web site.

Writing Design

2009-09-01T10:48:00.004+01:00

I'll be presenting a paper at the Writing Design conference at the University of Hertfordshire which goes from Thursday to Saturday this week. The title of the paper is: From Sublation to Sublimation: Brutalism and Archigram in Architectural Design. The abstract, originally written at the end of 2008, is below and I'm glad to say that the final paper isn't too far removed from those distant ideas.

In Theory of the Avant-Garde, Peter Bürger maintains that all avant-garde art intends in some manner to bring together art and life. Richard Murphy builds on this in Theorizing the Avant-Garde by suggesting that art can serve as an ideal model, or utopia, for life to aspire to (sublimation) or alternatively, art and life can be brought together by a shift in the opposite direction by bringing art down to the banal level of mundane reality (what he calls “sublation”).

This paper applies Murphy's theory to post-war architecture by looking at the beginning and end of Monica Pidgeon's editorship of Architectural Design (1946-1975). In this period, Pidgeon employed a series of talented technical editors that made Architectural Design the most influential architectural magazine in the UK, taking over from the Architectural Review's pre-war dominance. Through Theo Crosby (from 1953), Kenneth Frampton (from 1962), Robin Middleton (from 1965) and Peter Murray (from 1972), Architectural Design became the reflector and director of architectural discourse of its time and where the architectural neo-avant-garde launched their ideas. The beginning of this period saw the arrival of New Brutalism as a reaction to high modernism and the end of the period – Architectural Design's “little magazine” era – witnessed the architecture of Archigram. New Brutalism grew out of the Smithsons' involvement with the Independent Group and was very much about the every-day and using materials as-found. The Smithsons' ideas were heavily published in AD in the 1950s and 60s and these formed a core part of Banham's book, New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? A decade later, Architectural Design turned to the sublime and endlessly published the paper architecture of the Archigram group, itself an evolution of the influence of popular culture on architecture.

The paper, which forms part of a PhD in the architectural journal's role in the social construction of architecture, examines texts by these two movements as published in Architectural Design between 1953 and 1975. It seeks to understand how each neo-avant-garde movement, while on opposite sides of Murphy's theory, could naturalise their ideology into the mainstream architectural profession using the same journal and editor.

2,454 boring, unillustrated words about my PhD

2009-08-11T10:39:00.008+01:00

The great thing about having a blog that nobody reads is that I can write pretty much for myself. And as I need to start splurging and archiving and generally find out what I think for my PhD, I may as well attempt to do it publicly here. To start, then, with why I'm doing it in the first place – a question I don't ever stop asking myself, but rarely try to answer.

1: Architecture is more about the book than the building
So why do a PhD at all? Firstly, I'm academically minded and as such, was terribly disappointed with my architectural education. Although I enjoyed it and all the design it involved, I felt short-changed at the lack of rigour and study of architecture beyond a token dab of history here and theory there. Secondly, when doing my Part 3, I became (somewhat surprisingly) increasingly interested in the profession itself rather than its products. Combined with a growing disillusion while in practice, this led to some informal “research” into why the profession is the way it is (and no other). I came to understand it as a social construct rather than something that was natural. This seems obvious now, but after so many years of architectural indoctrination, was a small step for me and a giant leap for me-kind – I stepped outside of the profession and started to examine it critically. It's a rather difficult step to take for anyone in the “tribal long-house” and many choose not to make it. For example, it's rather annoying but amusing that whenever any of my AJ pieces contain the phrase “the social construct of architecture” or such-like, it gets edited out or changed. My last Back Issues column originally started with “The architectural magazine holds an unparalleled place in the construction of the profession and its values.” which got changed to “The architectural magazine holds an unparalleled position in the way the profession recreates itself and its values.” Annoying that it's not what I wrote or intended, and amusing because the people who are doing the constructing either don't understand their place in it, or do understand it and desire to cover their tracks. There goes my chance to ever contribute to the AJ again!

Anyway, I digress. The obvious questions to ask on this discovery (of the social construct of the profession, which isn't unique to architecture of course) are “how has it been constructed?” and “why?” The “why?” is more difficult, so I started with the “how?” I hypothesised several devices that were used in the construction of the profession – the professional bodies, the press, education, the awards system and exhibitions – and chose one to look into in more detail. The press seemed most interesting, mystifying, collusive, naturalising and misunderstood, so I chose that as my general area for deeper study. Besides, I've always enjoyed “reading” archiporn. As a general rule, I always try to take the opposite viewpoint to see how things look from there, and my starting point was that architecture today is more about the book than the building. That's why this blog started as a review of architectural books. I will still stand by this argument if need be, but it's more interesting here to follow the evolution of thinking.

2: Architecture is whatever architects say it is
From understanding the architectural project generically as anything to do with architectural culture (a term and concept I will explore later hopefully) including publishing, the question arises who decides what is architecture? In other words, how is architectural taste formed? This thinking was aided greatly by Garry Stevens' The Favored Circle which led me directly to Pierre Bourdieu. My second hypothesis, therefore, was that “architecture is whatever architects say it is” and that it is possible to identify what architects say it is by reading the magazines over a long period of time. Viewed this way, the journals become the trace of architectural thinking, an archive of architectural 'knowledge', and a gradual writing of history-in-the-making. Whatever is important to the powerful few in the world of architecture at the time gets published, and the rest gets forgotten. This editing process frames a version of history and defines the dicta of good taste. This is why it is so important to be published in architecture.
It was gratifying to discover that the modern project, professionalisation and the publishing industry all grew up together (again, not unique to architecture) and this is no accident. Modern architecture can only be understood in relation to the media and professionalisation is a modern concept. Stylisation aside, and for better or worse, we cannot escape the fact that we are still all the result of modernity.
Maybe I was onto something here. Andrew Higgott's Mediating Modernism came out just as I started my PhD and was a general survey of 20th century archiporn, but nobody else seemed to have looked at the magazines as a version of historical writing. Beatriz Colomina had looked at little magazines with her students and this resulted in the Clip/Stamp/Fold exhibition, but little magazines are different to the trade rag. The architectural trade rag is a commercial venture aimed directly at the architectural practitioner and student and almost nobody else. It delivers this audience to advertisers and therefore must appeal to their (the audience's) interests (in both senses of the word). It therefore can be argued to represent the state of architectural culture at the point of publication. Little magazines, on the other hand, represent the avant-garde boundaries and are not representative of the masses (such as they are in architecture). Panayotis Tournikiotis' The Historiography of Modern Architecture was hugely influential at this point. He writes about how the history of modern architecture was written differently by various architects, art historians and architectural historians, depending on how they wanted to project the future. Each magazine could well be another chapter in this book.

I clearly couldn't survey the whole of modern architectural history through all the magazines, so I had to chose a period and a magazine to focus on. Erdem Erten had previously written about the Architectural Review for his MIT PhD in 2004 (Shaping “The Second Half Century”: The Architectural Review 1947-1971). However, the AR was more influential in British (and perhaps Western) architectural culture before The War and AD took over after. I also interviewed Sunand Prasad a couple of years ago, in which he mentioned Architectural Design as being hugely influential at the time: “Architectural Design as a magazine in the 70s and 80s – that was fantastically influential. Very influential and I used to read that fairly avidly.” (Sunand Prasad, interview with the author discussing architectural publication, 22.08.07). I jumped on this and arbitrarily chose a vague post-war period and these have been stuck to ever since (although I've honed the period to between November 1953 and September 1972, which covers the Theo Crosby, Kenneth Frampton and Robin Middleton technical editor years, all under the editorship of Monica Pidgeon). I've found that AD has been cited as influential by many others since, both famous and not-so-famous:

“For me, the exhibition was Architectural Design magazine.” (Will Alsop, interview with Florian Kossak discussing architectural exhibitions, 15.08.05)

“Architectural Design got everywhere to young architects. One of Alison's lines: you can walk down the High Street in Venezuela or Bombay and there's some kid coming towards you carrying Architectural Design.” (Peter Smithson, interview with Louise Brodie – an oral autobiography, fourth tape, side B (8th recording of 19) 16'08'', 04.09.97 (second session))

“As Mark Hartland Thomas wrote in 'Architectural Design' (at that time the preferred magazine of the younger generation)” Reyner Banham, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? (London: The Architectural Press, 1966), (p. 18))

The period goes from modernism's high point (the Festival of Britain in '51, the completion of Corb's Unité d'Habitation in '52, the Independent Group's Parallel of Life and Art exhibitions at the ICA in '53) to its disillusionment and the beginnings of post-modernism (Pruitt-Igoe's demolition in '72, change of long time editors at both the AR ('72) and AD ('75)). It also spans the neo-avant-garde movements of the New Brutalism and Archigram, which were both heavily published in AD at the time. The end of the 1960s and beginning of the '70s also witnessed the introduction of critical theory into architecture from literary theory, starting in the US (for example, the introduction of Oppositions and the establishment of the MIT HTC PhD programme both in '73). This is something that has baffled me for a long time – how architectural “theory” could be so rubbish and have such a large impact on architectural production rather than criticism. It became apparent that the whole relationship of history, theory and criticism (HTC as they say in the US) were three sides of the same thing, what I've come to call the holy trinity of the god of architectural knowledge.

Reading the old journals as architectural history made me think more about how architectural history was written – in other words, its historiography. Modern architectural history has largely been written by two groups of people – the art historians and practising architects. Not until Manfred Tafuri was this lineage broken. Tafuri trained as an architect but famously chose history and was instrumental in defining it (architectural history) as a profession in its own right. I have come to love and loathe Tafuri and only just beginning to understand his difficult writings. Tafuri considers the writing of history (and therefore theory and criticism) as an architectural project in its own right. It is quite a simple, but non-obvious step to reverse this and consider architecture as an historical project. Historians create architecture – it is they who decide what does and does not get canonised and written into history. It has everything to do with the editing of taste and nothing to do with what bike sheds and cathedrals look like. There is much more to write on this at some point and I will probably explore the writing of architectural history by these two groups at some later date and make the argument for an independent profession of architectural historian-critics. Interestingly, the two main monthly architectural trade rags, Architectural Review and Architectural Design in the UK after The War were edited by members of each group – although one of AR's editors, J.M. Richards had trained as an architect, it was also hugely influenced by Pevsner and his rebellious doctoral student, Reyner Banham. Banham is an interesting character because although he did his PhD in art history (under Pevsner at the Courtauld – this became Theory and Design in the First Machine Age of course), he started in engineering and became something of a polyglot, contributing to both AD and AR as well as many, many other magazines. He never trained as an architect, however. Compare this with AD, which was overseen by Monica Pidgeon who did the first 3 years of an architectural education. Her technical editors, who were the main influence on the magazine, were also architecturally trained and had practised. Crosby and Frampton even continued to practise while working at AD. Crosby returned to practice after AD (for Taylor Woodrow, where he was in charge of a nascent Archigram) whereas Frampton and Middleton went into academic posts. AD's contributors were also mainly practising architects.

3: Architecture is an institution
I thought I was being original when I came up with “architecture is whatever architects say it is”, but of course I wasn't. It was Banham again who pricked my bubble with his fabulous essay A Black Box – the Secret Profession of Architecture. This was the last essay Banham wrote and is profound on so many levels. In it, he wrote, “What is it that architects uniquely do? The answer, alas, is that they 'do' architecture.” it is equally possible to obversely define architecture as the product of architects, so whether they write, draw or build, it's classified as architecture. This definition has been described by David Dunster “as convincing as defining eggs as what chickens do.” (AD November 2001) However, this only goes to show that just because something is written by a well-known professor from a top school of architecture and published in a leading journal, it does not necessarily make it correct. The sentence demonstrates even here that the institution of architecture is not fully understood to be something invented rather than discovered. While poultry and their progeny are part of the natural world, we can define architects and their products however we choose and this definition does not have to be consistent across time. Jeremy Till has also adopted this view in his recent Architecture Depends: “in a circular logic, the knowledge as to what constitutes architecture is defined by architects, who in turn are therefore deemed to be the only people capable of delivering that self-defined architecture […] The implications are clear: architecture is defined by architects.” (p.153)

The facts that architectural history has been largely written by art historians and that architecture is unquestionably called an art (in fact, the mistress of the arts) mean that architecture is largely considered only in terms of aesthetics, styles, evolution, oeuvres, periods, the individual genius author and so on. This actually interests me very little – I'm far more interested in architecture as a process than a product … in the underlying social, cultural, technological, economic and political forces that underwrite architecture (even though I know nothing about them!) And this is I think where Banham ended up in his Black Box essay, calling for an anthropological and sociological investigation into architectural culture. Although I read Banham's Black Box two years ago, I re-read it recently and got so much more out of it due to the two years of thinking which has led me practically full circle to thinking of architecture as an institution rather than a product, or an aesthetic, or a profession. So this is where I am now. Architecture is first and foremost an institution. It is a framework, a mode of thinking, an indoctrination, a thought process. It's all the magazines and exhibitions and books and awards and competitions and un-built projects and blogs and lectures and occasionally a building. The questions to ask therefore, are when, how and why did it become more about the institution than the building? My suspicion is that something happened between 1953 and 1972, between the New Brutalism and Archgiram, between Crosby and Middleton, and that there are clues to be mined in them there pages of AD.

There again, of course, I could be completely wrong.

Why I Tweet

2009-07-29T14:25:00.003+01:00

I hate Twitter. Here's why I Tweet.

I'm a bit of a binge Tweeter. I can't afford to do it from any mobile devices and therefore only do it when logged on. So I'll go to Twitter a couple of times a day and splurge out a bunch of tweets in a row, sometimes related to each other and sometimes just random. Those following me probably get sick of it, but they can always stop following. I have no idea why anyone would follow the turgid rants and moans of this grumpy old man, but a few do.

So why do I do it? I don't know. I hate it. Maybe it's one of those habits I rent and therefore can't afford to break. Perhaps it's the interminable loneliness of the long-distance PhD-er who cries out into the wilderness "is anybody out there?" only to receive the reply of "Eating a battenburg slice, listening to Fat Freddie's Drop".
And yet I can't stop. I tried, once, only reading and not writing but then felt the tweet force in my fingers and before I knew it I had tapped and updated and there I was again, placing more meaningless pixels into the ether, forcing servers all over the world to feed this vacuous 140 character pulp to followers, most of whom I've never met, only a couple of whom I know in real life and none who I go for a drink with on a regular basis. Strange world we have built.

Twitter has attracted an architectural contingent of which, I think, I am on the margins. I tend to follow this architectural Twitterati (neither of my real friends who I really meet have a Twitter account) as it weaves its eclectic narrative, casting judgment and consensualising taste. The people I follow are mainly linked to this group, forming a new high-tech version of a closed circle. I don't see the point of following anybody famous like @alaindebotton or @stephenfry.

But most of all, it's interesting to see how it's used. Twitter takes Facebook's one simple question, "what are you doing?" and gives 140 characters to compose an piece of aphoristic haiku poetry. Some people do simply answer this question, but most use it as a kind of very abbreviated speaker's corner. Conversations emerge that would perform better in a chat room or even a message board. These platforms are considered geeky, however, and Twitter's advantage is its simplicity and slick interface. There are very few hoops to jump through or rules to observe and the etiquette is pretty much up for grabs. I doubt many, if any, of the architectural Twitterati would subscribe to a chat room and do there what they do on Twitter. The amazing thing is how often people update. Don't they have real things to do? Don't I? Yes. But I don't smoke, so can consider this my fag break without having to go outside. Maybe every loo will soon be fitted with a Twitter interface to guarantee being regular.

I try not to share links of things I've found on the internet. That's what delicious is for. Although I don't really use delicious, so I do sometimes break this self-imposed rule. I never, ever tweet a blog post I've just written. Mainly because I rarely blog at the moment, but also because a blog's a blog and a tweet's a tweet and feeds are available for a reason. I'll occasionally share a photo. But generally I try to keep it random. Sometimes heavy, sometimes light, sometimes personal, sometimes architectural. I often have my tongue in my cheek, but that attitude has got me into trouble many times in the past. I'll share the odd thought with Twitter if I'm online because most of the time, I don't have anyone else to share it with. I'll have forgotten it by the time I get home to my wife. Twitter doesn't laugh. But it doesn't groan either. I've started tweeting the books I'm reading as an archive for myself. I don't really consider an "audience". It's just mouthing off and occasionally archiving. There's definitely a propensity to justify my existence and be completely self-obsessed. This twitter character I've constructed is stranger than the blog one and not very like the real me. If people met me in vivo, I'm sure they'd wonder where the in silico version went because in reality I'm quite a shy, quiet person lacking in confidence, whereas in twitter format, it's only possible for me to be a man of words whose 140 characters are the same height as everyone else's.

Then there's the image. Big dilemma - should I put something abstract? If so, should it be related to who you are or be completely arbitrary? Will people judge me if it's not something interesting/clever/pretty? Or should I put a head shot? If so, should it be a full-frontal nude, or half a three-quarter obscured? Or a cartoon version? Or just a picture of something I like. How often should I change it? I've opted for the thing that means most to me in life, my son.

Sometimes it's an exercise in self-censure when you have to fit your words into the 140 character allowance. I hate myself when I see the counter go negative and red. Even more than when my bank balance goes the same way. But my bank balance is always like that whereas with Twitter, there is always the chance that I'll stay in the black. Then there are the ellipses which is the cheater's device to run one update to the next. Unfortunately, you can't read Twitter up-side-down and so to catch up with a "conversation" or to read several of these cheating devices together, you have to go bottom-up, which I still can't get used to.

Watching a Twitter "conversation" reminds me of some crits. Somebody mentions something trivial to which others will attach and the mentioner can wish (s)he'd never said it. Didn't even really mean anything. Then it's a downward spiral and impossible to recover from. Similarly with opinions - the person who gets there first usually sets the tone of the opinion. People tend to chime in if they agree and keep quiet if not. Unless it's a hot topic, in which case the debate can turn into a flame war just as in a chat room. There's never any real debate, however, as the 140 character censor turns everything into "good" and "bad" with little opportunity to generate a sensitive, considered argument.

I doubt if Twitter will still be popular in a year's time, which is good because I freakin' hate it. I agree with @WillSelf that "one day we will look back at this and weep".
You can follow me on @steveparnell. But don't. Seriously.

Sheffield 5: Castle Markets

2009-07-27T16:47:00.012+01:00

Until Owen's recent accurately insightful post on Castle Markets in Sheffield, I'd forgotten that a whole 4 months ago (time is just dripping away) I went round them to try and re-create the photos from September 1961's AD. This edition of AD was remarkable for 2 reasons: Firstly, it was the only edition ever to be devoted solely to an English city and secondly, it had the most number of adverts ever in an edition of AD, both of which indicate how important Sheffield was considered architecturally in the late 1950s/early 60s. Of course, it wouldn't even pretend to lay down such an outlandish claim 50 years on.
I am no photographer, so apologies in advance. I hope it gives a flavour at least. Unfortunately, it seems as though the original photographer just walked in, moved around about 50m and walked out again. I would have tried to capture more interesting internal aspects if I hadn't been thrown out due to photographing without permission! At least I managed to get all those from the magazine:

The markets are still well used although clearly not nearly as much as when AD's photographer arrived in 1961. I'm not going to write anything more (Owen's piece pretty much sums it up) other than to say that I love Castle Markets. It's a real warren of fantastic fonts and greasy spoons and people who go there for a cup of tea and a rest from shopping for cheap stuff. I love the over-stylised chimney on top too, which you can see the back of in the penultimate colour photo above and which I always look for from the Parkway when arriving home from the M1. I'll miss it when it's gone.

Hydrological production

2009-07-09T16:55:00.008+01:00

My thinking and production cycle is like the hydrological cycle.

I do rivers of reading, leading to oceans of notes, all jumbled up with other rivers of reading.
Then sunny thinking evaporate this knowledge into clouds of confusion, floating around my head until the cold fronts of deadlines condense it all into written production. Which will possibly lead into further rivers of reading for myself and others. Sometimes it drizzles, sometimes there are short, sharp showers and sometimes heavy downpours accompanied by thunder and lightning. All entirely unpredictable.
And sometimes there's a drought.

I could take the analogy further (transpiration, depression, saturation, brain-storm, mind-shower etc) but I'll leave it with the comment on how many English words there are for precipitation as opposed to the paucity of terms for thinking.

Sheffield 4: Concrete exoskeletons

2009-07-06T11:00:00.000+01:00

The following isn't very good. I wrote it a couple of months ago, but there's been a lot about Park Hill recently, so I didn't post it because it has nothing new to say. But if only to prove I'm still alive, and in orderfor me to be able to move onto another post, here is yet another post on Park Hill with a few photos and scans from AD September 1961, when it was being reviewed, and from June 1955 when Theo Crosby previewed it.

Sheffield currently has two concrete skeletons staring each other out across the railway tracks: Park Hill and St. Paul's Place. Anyone who has alighted from Sheffield train station cannot have failed to notice the huge inhabited wall of a building on the hill to the east, protecting the city centre from the marauding suburbs of ill repute beyond. It's reminiscent of Stanage Edge, a few miles west in the Peak District where all the climbers who congregate in Sheffield cut their teeth along with other body parts. Reminiscent in that it meanders along the hill offering a permanence and definition to a city that is desperately searching for such qualities. Being from quite literally the wrong side of the tracks is still a problem for Park Hill. Between it and the city centre are two tram lines, nine train platforms, four lanes of traffic and a steep valley. The station operator (East Midlands Trains) is also wanting to build gates that only people with a train ticket will be allowed through – big business's privatisation of a previously public route. If this preposterous proposition goes ahead, Park Hill will be all but cut off – terrible news not only for the city, but also for Urban Splash who are currently developing the building almost beyond recognition.

Now the cooling towers have gone, Park Hill is really Sheffield's last remaining icon of any credibility and certainly its only building of international standing. Designed in the 1950s by Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith under the supervision of city architect Lewis Womersley, and finished in 1961, it is Europe's largest listed building. And as Reyner Banham noted somewhat incredulously, it is a single building. One that starts at a human four storeys and follows the hill as it falls away, maintaining a level roof height, so that at the other end, it is an impressive 14 storeys tall. The streets in the sky, influenced by the Smithsons' Golden Lane competition entry and of course, Corb's Unité d'habitation at Marseille, both of 1952, are not internal corridors, but quite wide decks every three storeys that forms bridges between the main blocks of flats. These decks continue until they meet the ground so that most flats are reachable without having to take the stairs or lift – as long as they don't mind a long walk round. The flats are ingeniously arranged around a huge concrete H column which encloses the stairs and forms bracing for the concrete frame. Four doors from the decks are arranged two doors either side of this huge concrete column and access four flats – one of one bedroom, two of two bedrooms and one of three bedrooms. In pre-Parker Morris days, these are all of Parker Morris space standards. Unfortunately, all flats require stair access of some sort. The one bedroom and two bedroom flats below deck access are all on a level, but are accessed from stairs down from the deck. The other flats are duplex. There were 992 flats in total in Park Hill, each connected to the communal district heating and each having a Garchey system refuse chute. For people used to outside toilets, this was the lap of luxury.

If it had not controversially been listed in 1998, Park Hill would almost certainly have been demolished. The streets in the sky would now be, quite simply, sky and we would almost certainly be left with bland boxes of dubious cul-de-sac quality. There were many in Sheffield who campaigned for it to be demolished, including the current head of our new Liberal Democrat council, Paul Scriven. The recent BBC programme on English Heritage, “Romancing the Stone”, shows him ranting against the building and then, as head of the council, appearing as martyr, trying to make the best of a bad job. Such commitment and vision is commensurate with Sheffield's loss of confidence and new tight grip on blandness. English Heritage are providing £500k of funding to help with the concrete repairs as the only thing they consider worth saving is the concrete frame. On a trip to Corb's Unité, they learn that ?7m was spent on refurbishing the concrete, whereas Urban Splash plan to spend just ?3m on the whole of Park Hill, a building over four times the size.

Urban Splash, starting from the 14 storey end, have completely gutted the building, including the gradated bricks of the façade. These are to be replaced with anodised aluminium panels. I'm amazed that English Heritage are not concerned to replace the façade faithfully as the rough texture of the bricks are very much a part of the Brutalist aesthetic and there is no architectural reasons why they could not be just cleaned up or replaced. The spandrel panels below the windows will not be missed in favour of floor to ceiling windows, but the aluminium panels reek of trendy shininess and are completely inappropriate. English Heritage is clearly out of its depth with twentieth century buildings, as demonstrated in the BBC programme where almost every comment or answer by posh Giles Proctor was accompanied by joshing and mocking. He's happier on 19th century church roofs.

Park Hill cost a considerable sum when it was built. In 1956 prices, it worked out at £1,950 per dwelling as opposed to £1,600 for an average 2-storey house of the time. Fast forward 50 years and Sheffield is desperate for inward investment and jealous of its Yorkshire rival Leeds where the terra cotta clad lawyers and accountants live.

St. Paul's Place, designed by Conran stands opposite the Hill and will accommodate 331 such “luxury” apartments. The penthouse will sell (or perhaps has already sold) for over £1m. The flats are approximately 12% larger than the equivalent were in Park Hill 50 years ago. St. Paul's is on the right side of the tracks, just a few paces from the city centre and on the site of the old “wedding cake” registry office. It is a 21st century echo of housing policy, conceived in an age when our houses earned more than we did and when housing is still conceived of as capital, pensions, and investment. It will be Sheffield's tallest tower at 32 storeys and ignores the topography in favour of standing tall, proud and arrogantly being seen from all of Sheffield's seven hills. It is a vertical rendition of Park Hill's horizontal empty hive of concrete cells. I was hoping that the recent controversy over the cladding would bring the whole thing to a halt and the concrete monolith would remain a monument to greed. But the council conceded and the developers have got away with cheap cladding which will blight the cityscape for generations, setting the low standard for future developments in the city.

In a country run by big business and banks, councils no longer see fit to provide housing, but rather to pass the responsibility to Registered Social Landlords and Housing Associations. An Englishman's home is no longer his castle, but his pension. Today's New Labour strategy is to make the rich richer and hope the crumbs from their table will feed the poor. Not surprisingly, the gap between poor and rich is widening and we are left in the ridiculous situation where councils pay private landlords to house the less fortunate (a similar situation to the government underwriting the banks to finance PFI contracts for schools and hospitals). Nobody wins but the private landlord, who is, of course, disinterested in improving the lives of his/her tenants. Hence the donation of Park Hill to Urban Splash to develop into a mix of 900 luxury flats and social housing – 200 to be rented by Manchester Methodist Housing Association, 40 for shared ownership and the remaining 660 privately owned. Interestingly, the newly formed Homes and Communities Agency, headed by Sir Bob Kerslake, will be “front-loading” £14m of grants to the credit-crunched project. Kerslake was the former, unelected, head of Sheffield's Labour council and oversaw the demolition of hundreds of council houses without replacement. Or replaced with hundreds of cheaply built “luxury” flats that now adorn Sheffield, half empty and now refusing to fart their fantasy fortunes for their owners. Kerslake was be-knighted for his contribution while, as Owen reported, Sheffield's waiting list for housing has risen from 15,000 in 2001 to as much as 90,000 today. The 21st century's definition of progress.

Sheffield shows

2009-06-30T19:52:00.001+01:00

My reviews of both Sheffield schools of architecture shows should appear in the AJ this week.

However, what I really wanted to write was this...

If an employer comes to me to ask which of Sheffield's schools he should employ from, I would reply:

"If you know the answer to your problem is a building, then go to Sheffield Hallam.
However, if you do not already know that the answer to your problem is a building,
or whether or not you have a problem at all,
or even the nature of problemhood in society and whether they exist,
or anything of Louis Althusser's problematic from his Reading Capital,
then try Sheffield University."

Student hardship

2009-06-25T12:03:00.003+01:00

From: Steve Parnell
Sent: Thursday June 25, 2009 12:01PM
To: John-Paul Nunes; David Gloster; Sunand Prasad
Subject: hardship scheme for students

Dear John, David, Sunand

I read with interest the article on BD's website about the RIBA's student hardship scheme.

Could I ask why it is that the RIBA don't consider PhD students worthy of support?

After all, the Institute's official line is that:

"The RIBA recognizes the capacity of research to unite the study and practice of architecture and to strengthen links between students and the profession; knowledge is any profession’s most precious asset and research is what underpins it, helping our anticipation of the future.

The Institute is committed to supporting and promoting research in architecture carried out by PhD students, academics and practitioners through schemes including the annual RIBA President's Awards for Research and the RIBA LKE Ozolins Studentship."

Vapid oratory. Offering an award is no good if nobody can afford to finish a PhD in the first place and the Ozolins - the sole studentship formerly offered by the RIBA for the whole country - is now no more. So can you tell me in what way the RIBA supports PhD students in order to enhance the profession's "most precious asset" and link the academy, the profession and practice "in anticipation of the future"?

Architecture as a discipline is already laughable. I beseech you sirs to look up from validation and unto real research as something worthy of financial support before this beloved profession of ours designs itself into an irrelevant corner.

Regards,
Steve Parnell
(hard-up PhD student at Sheffield, the country's 2nd placed architectural research centre according to the most recent RAE, but which offers no funding for PhD students outside of building science (so Corb help the rest))

Blogs vs Blueprint

2009-05-20T11:50:00.011+01:00

Fashionably late, I can't help but comment on Tim Abrahams' "Nostalgia is No Substitute for Criticism" bizarre rant against bloggers. As a blogger myself (albeit reluctantly part time), I'm predictably going to be on their side, especially seeing as the four blogs that Abraham's picked out to name are four of my must-reads: Jonathan Bell's Things, Sam Jacob's Strange Harvest, Charles Holland's Fantastic Journal and Owen Hatherley's Sit down man....
Now these writers are all quite capable of competent ripostes themselves and it's interesting to note their typical responses. Sam Jacob simply changed his title to "Not A Valid Research Process for Architecture" - an elegantly cool and minimal nose-snub. Charles Holland and Owen Hatherley responded with posts dedicated to the rant - Holland more defending writing about the past, and Hatherley characteristically more aggressively in possibly the finest post I've read of his, attacking the point of why the future is so much better to write about anyway. Both Holland and Hatherley seem to object to the word "nostalgia" as a pejorative term, as does Bell in the introduction to a couple of posts where he accurately rebuffs contemporary architecture magazines for their role in "contemporary architecture exist[ing] to be seen, consumed via a through choice images, rather than actually experienced."

It's strange that Abrahams chose these four bloggers, as though they represented the biggest threat to a barely-read magazine like Blueprint (last audited circulation I could get was 6,453). Jonathan Bell is a successful writer in his own right, currently writing for The Morning News. Owen Hatherley has only recently become the must-have read for dead-tree format media, writing for the New Statesman, the Guardian, Building Design and probably more - I can't keep up with him. Meanwhile, Jacob's and Holland's full time jobs are architects for quite probably the UK's only current avant-garde (taking Bürger's popular definition of avant-garde theory) architectural practice, FAT. While I am guarded about architects also writing criticism (for quite Tafurian reasons), it is this aspect of them engaging in new media that interests me about them and their practice of architecture. They also write for dead-tree format journals too - Icon, the AJ and probably more.

Abraham's accusation comes in the first paragraph,

"Hitherto print journalists have had a tendency to either dismiss or overly praise their online competitors. Both of those approaches is born of fear. With this industry in tumult, the worst has already happened and we can take a long hard look at what is going on online. Here, one might think that there would at least be some optimism and some vision of the future. This is unfortunately not the case."

Blogs continue the long tradition of samizdat publishing. Free to write and free to read, there's a lot of trash out there. But there's a lot of really good, thoughtful stuff too and it requires curators like Bell with Things to help navigate it. I scan Things' links whenever it comes out, maybe click through on a handful and maybe end up reading only one or two. But I trust it. In the past, it provided me with my first accepted conference paper. And in the recent link to Naomi Stead's "The Rocket-Baroque Phase of the Icecream Vernacular" will surely form a part of a future workshop or lecture. In the archaeological discipline, there exists a snobbishness from those who re-construct the past from artefacts to those who do the same using documents, which is considered a much simpler process. With the wired world, we're moving into a third state of mediation of the real world and future archaeologists - those at the very bottom of the future status hierarchy no doubt - will be glad of the curatorship of things like Things. At worst this could be seen as a meta-mediation of the real-world - a mediation of mediation - but in reality, the online world is mediating it at the same distance as the old media, just using a different platform. So no, the digital world is not the real world, but then again neither is the old media.

It is not the job of architectural critics to project the future. That is the designers' responsibility. Critics explain, interpret, contextualise, judge, evaluate. In fact, history, theory and criticism are the holy trinity that form the godhead of architectural knowledge: "There is no criticism, only history" famously wrote Tafuri. "History is, of course, my academic discipline. Criticism is what I do for money" said Banham in the speech where he called for rigorous theory to underpin architecture in 1964. This explicit architectural knowledge is the other side of that tacit architectural knowledge of the design process - two sides of the same coin. When critics or historians project the future, they create their own architectural project and lose the distance to provide independent judgment and appraisal. Abrahams doesn't include a successful (in terms of hits) blog like Dezeen in his list of criminal blogs precisely because Dezeen offers nothing more than a PR feed. No comment, criticism or thought. It can be no more accused of nostalgia as of being interesting. It's something to keep the proles in their place, prevent them from actively thinking too much - nothing that might upset the status quo or existing hierarchy. Let us not forget that publishing is an instrument of capitalism, ultimately in the hands of the wealthy and powerful entrepreneur. It is not in their interests for this system to break. Pesky thinkers who can join a couple of words together like Hatherley are dangerous - more so when they have a not-so-hidden agenda that fails to promote the widening gap between the richest and poorest in society.

In a self-serving society where the politicians have been caught with their hands in the till and where bankers continue to cheat everyone else out of incredulously vast sums of money, demonstrating the entire political and financial systems to be corrupt, it's good to know that there are still independently minded and able critics to call our attention to the bits that the mainstream press can't or won't write about. That's the great thing about the web and about blogs. So what if they link to each other? So what if they're nostalgic (although I'll leave that to the others to argue)? They provide much-needed original content that otherwise wouldn't see the light of day. Or they can provide eye-candy if that's all you want too. And for that, may they long prosper and even multiply - in which case we'll need more curators.

Or maybe it was simply all a ruse to get some links and traffic and debate to a flagging Blueprint web site? In which case it was a quite brilliant move.

Sheffield 3: Gleadless Valley

2009-04-27T05:15:00.008+01:00

I had the good fortune to spend a day last week with Owen Hatherley flanning about Sheffield. We spent a good while in the hidden secret of Gleadless Valley which, in some wonderful and rare English Spring time sunshine, could have almost been mistaken for a Mediterranean idyl had it not been for the shirtless tattooed louts and scenic rubbish strewn about.

But its reputation preceded it because it is a quite magnificent place. As a "sink estate", it also has one of the worst reputations in Sheffield. Taking the tram south from the centre of town, we climbed up past Park Hill to witness some surprising views back to the centre which is still in an eternal indecision between demolition and reconstruction. The tram stops at Manor Top where cheap TV shows like "Police, Camera, Action" are regularly filmed due to the propensity of its youths for joy riding. Then we alight at Gleadless where we take a 10 minute walk down the hill to the valley.

These pictures are of one of Sheffield's worst estates. If you can't believe me, read These links from the local Sheffield Star.

Gleadless Valley was designed and built coincidentally with Park Hill between 1955 and 1962 under the supervision of city architect J.L. Womersley, but what a contrast to its more famous urban brother down the hill. There are quite a mixture of housing types all picturesquely scattered across the landscape and taking advantage of Sheffield's greatest asset - its topography.
It is reminiscent of the Sharawaggi Picturesque that the Architectural Review was trying to promote in the immediate post-war period, where modern architecture was aestehtically composed in the landscape. It is commonly thought that the 1951 Fetival of Britain was the culmination of this aesthetic ideal, but a trip around Gleadless Valley would put paid to that. It does lack the variety of building types, with only a row of shops, a pub or two and a church intermingled between the housing, but otherwise, the composition is always surprising, always related to its natural setting and consists of close-up to long-distance views so you can quite clearly understand your position in the environment.

A number of Segal-esque decked timber terraces back into the hills.

And a little further on, the brick terraces slide down the hill with a complementary monopitch

Like Park Hill, decks project along the buildings until they hit the ground so that there is always level access at some point:

Aware of the danger of hyperbole, there is even an whiff of Southern California about the grouping and lines of some of the blocks when viewed from below:

The buildings look tired but generally kempt and besides the obvious uPVC window invasion, still very much in the original design. The flat roofs are still flat, for example, which surprised me. Clearly, as these properties are council owned, it's a different story to Pessac where the owners decided to completely disfigure Corb's vision (see Philippe Boudon's "Lived In Architecture" of 1972). Nevertheless, I didn't witness great swathes of graffiti or vandalism other than some dubiously retrofitted doors and windows.

The streets are not clogged with cars as the city's more central terraced roads are and there is such an abundance of untouched green space (other than the mower that had recently left summer's first smell of freshly cut grass) that you are left wondering whether the so-called "luxury" flats being built in the centre are missing the real definition of "luxury". You can easily imagine what this area would be like today, were it developed speculatively. Cul-de-sacked detached houses stacked cheek by jowel with garages as the houses main selling feature. No room to swing a cat, never mind a three point turn and gardens that are smaller than the 6 yard area of a football pitch.

One woman was bewildered by our presence and asked us why were taking photos of Gleadless Valley. She's clearly lost any confidence in her value and therefore in that of her surroundings. She's been told she's worthless so many times, she has come to believe it. And therefore where she lives is crap too. The problems of Gleadless are entirely sociological and nothing to do with the architecture, a situation much the same as any sink estate. We will see what change the redevelopment of Park Hill has once its redevelopment is complete in another 8 years. For me, this valley makes me question the potential for architecture to be able to design away problems and make everyone's life better by design because it's not simply beautiful, it's stunningly beautiful. And although the building is only to 1950s standards, it is well designed. Yet the statistics on unemployment, crime, teenage pregnancy and exam results are some of - if not the - worst in Sheffield. The roots of this valley's problems are education and unemployment and the dissolution of a society's values where everything is evaluated by a bottom line, be it on a spreadsheet or a celebrity.

The new Architectural Review

2009-04-23T16:26:00.009+01:00

In a piece called “Retrospect” in the Architectural Review of February 1971, the leaving editor of over 30 years, J.M. Richards wrote about the role of the architectural magazine in architectural production and the qualities he looked for and responsibilities he tried to imbue in the AR during that period. In short, he believed that “helping to sharpen the perception of architects and their clients is one of the aims of an architectural magazine.” He also believed, however, that the magazine should positively criticise bad architecture:

“another essential role of the architectural magazine: criticism – of architects and all their works, of the opportunities they are given and of the conditions that allow, or don't allow, them to make their proper contribution to the world.
There is still not enough informed and constructive criticism of architecture, and it is sometimes asked why architectural magazines do not pillory the bad buildings, instead – as they mostly do at present – of criticising them only by implication; by ignoring them and paying attention instead to the buildings they think worth serious discussion. Perhaps they should attack the bad more positively, though this would make it all the more necessary to reach beyond subjective and appearance criticism; to look critically not only at the result but at the programme.
Criticism in my experience had not been made easier by the touchiness of many members of the architectural profession, who claim to approve of it but resent its being applied to themselves.”

Monica Pidgeon, the nonagenarian editor of Architectural Design between 1946 and 1975 for example, admitted when I interviewed her recently that the policy for AD was to do just that – ignore the bad and promote what they considered the good. Richards goes on to astutely observe that “the difficulty becomes clear when it is remembered that the significant dramatic criticism is not written in periodicals circulating chiefly among actors and stage producers, nor significant art criticism written in periodicals for practising artists. Architectural criticism, of which much more is needed, should not be so dependent on the architectural magazines, it should find a place alongside the dramatic and art and music and book criticism in the layman's press – daily, Sunday and weekly.”

It is easily forgotten by architects that the architectural press form the trade magazines of the architectural profession and the public in general simply does not concern itself with it. The flavour of architectural criticism in the national press is quite different. It necessarily needs to be dumbed down, while maintaining relevance to the philistines that form society. Richards disapproved of the architectural autonomy that architects strive for in their work which inevitably becomes reflected in their magazines:

“Architects' tendency to concern themselves with a limited private world – to work, in effect, for the approbation of other architects, or become satisfied by in-language and plug-in gimmicks – is what makes an editor despair. Such private worlds are really an escape from the realities that remain architects' only claim to be taken seriously by society.”

That was 1971. Fast forward 38 years and Kieran Long has been editor of AR's sister, the Architects' Journal, for about 18 months and has recently become editor-in-chief of that and the AR, hence this month's redesign. Although almost everybody I ask considers Architecture Today to be the best UK architectural periodical, the AR is arguably still the most revered.

It was established in 1896 and made its name in the 1920s and 1930s when it was largely responsible for introducing the modern style to these shores from the continent. Since then it has become the respectable daddy of architectural monthlies that sets the benchmark for what constitutes architecture. To be published in the AR still really validates the work as architecture. But recently it had lost its way and I for one hadn't picked up a copy for years because it had become so staid and predictable. Other than tweaks, it hadn't had a redesign in format since January 1985 and so was feeling very weary. Rumours had been abounding that it had gone the same way as l'architecture d'aujourd'hui. Monica Pidgeon was saying that she had heard that the AR was no more and I had to reassure her that although changes were taking place, it was still alive and trying to kick. So what of the first kick of the new regime?

There is a brief history of its design here at Things to look at and here at Eye magazine, concentrating more on the typography. The first thing to notice is the logo, which harks back to the masthead of pre-1985 but with a 21st century zoom which is strong and nicely retro and works well as a symbol of both tradition and progress. Inside, the overall design is clean and won't offend the older AR readers, but is not going to set any designer's hearts racing. It's clearly from the same stable as the AJ and looks very much like I remember Icon a couple of years ago, which isn't surprising seeing as both Kieran and designer Violetta Boxill previously worked there. One thing that this does bring is the highlighted yellow marker style words within the pieces, which for me is preferable to corny summaries at the end of an article in order to get a quick gist. The layout is based on a flexible grid with some photos framed in white space and others bleeding right to the edge of the page. The drawings have that bland quality that all computer drawings have today and it would have been nice to see the AR set a higher standard for quality of architectural drawings seeing as drawings are essentially one third of the content of architectural magazines. There are no line weights for a start. The long sections on pages 78-79 don't line up for no apparent reason and the cross section on page 66 has no labelling whatsoever. I would be disappointed if my students handed in drawings like these. The logos for the sections "SKILL", "ID" and "MARGINALIA" I think are a missed opportunity and for me neither echo the past nor beckon a future and the cyan colour always reminds me of formica for some reason. Judge for yourself in the "ID" picture (4 below) whether the "ID" logo works or is lost. And "MARGINALIA" (5 below) requires its own column rather than being integrated into the rest of the page. So I have to say I'm a little disappointed in the design. I think most architecture part 2 students with InDesign could quite easily match it today. While I don't expect Archigram, I think it's unambitious and lacks any edge when compared to other architecture magazines, such as Mark which is a beautiful piece of design in its own right.

Enough of the design, what of the content? This issue of the new AR is divided into three sections: "VIEW", "BUILDINGS" and the back pages of "SKILL", "ID" and "MARGINALIA". All apart from "BUILDINGS", I believe, are taken from section names in previous generations of ARs. I understand that themes will be introduced occasionally to issues when a collection of buildings requires it which is a sensible move. All the buildings are now numbered and mapped onto the world, which is also a nice idea. It will be interesting to see how this is collated and used in the future - whether it'll be searchable online at the much improved AR web site, for example. The buildings in this issue noticeably come from the Western world - USA, Europe, Japan. Hopefully there will be more variety in the future and a greater mix of what constitutes architecture considered. The critique of the buildings doesn't offer much more than description, though, and there's never any reference to the drawings or pictures. This is normal in today's architectural press, and I doubt if the more critical edge that Kieran brought to the AJ with excellent writers such as Kester Rattenbury will transfer to the AR. Being published in the AR validates architecture and that has become its function, rather than to criticise poor design. The outrage column that Ian Nairn started with great vitriol in 1955 had become its own self-parody a long time ago. However, previous ARs had sections called “criticism” and I long for the return of the campaigns from yesteryear. Whether this can be expected in a magazine run for profit rather than a hobby (as it practically was for Hubert de Cronin Hastings) remains to be seen. The AR is now mainly sold overseas and its "Rule Britannia" days are over so a campaign such as "Manplan", which makes great reading today but was suicide for the magazine back in 1970, will be even more impossible. Yet J.M. Richards' words from 1971 ring in my ears.

The other new-old sections are a welcome step forward. "VIEW" discusses current affairs that affect architecture in the wider context. It's readable and informative and hopefully will maintain relevance and interest. The rear sections of "SKILL", "ID" and "MARGINALIA" are shorter reviews of the wider context of art and architecture - again more varied than the previous regime and demonstrating a wider cultural mix. Hopefully this won't lose the more serious long book review, for example.

The great period of AR – up to about 1970 under the editorship of J.M. Richards – saw great articles on the holy trinity of history, theory and criticism that later became canonised into architectural folklore, such as Colin Rowe's “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa” from March 1947's AR. It would be great if the AR could re-invoke more serious investigation on more imaginative historical and theoretical issues by the world's best architectural writers and thinkers, as well as maintain its cultural ambitions. That doesn't mean it should become like today's AD, which seems to exist in its own bubble and whose relevance to today's architects is dubitable.

Inevitably I compare any architectural magazine with my fictional perfect ideal version. This would have a contemporary design that made the whole look like one, like Arts & Architecture achieved under Entenza and Travers where even the adverts became part of the whole design. The typography would be a major part of the design of the page and merge with drawings and stunning photographs like the original Plus. The drawings would have character and transmit information in their style as well as content. This perfect magazine would have a variety of pieces relevant to architects from the arts and social sciences, as well as science and technology, much like some of WIRED's best features over the past decade. The criticism of buildings would include drawings and diagrams integrated into the text and photographs in order to tell a unified story and explain, enlighten and educate in the manner of Edward Tufte. It would include the occasional off-the-wall historical or theoretical piece by an interesting writer to bring new angles on current debates, or introduce new thinking. It would have pretentiously lagubrious reviews of books and exhibitions. It would capture research, either from the universities or from practice, and even instigate its own in order to pour cold water on stale thinking and paint a real picture of what's going on in the architectural world. It would publish this in funky diagrammatic form as a collectable series. It would take a stand on important architectural issues such as sustainability and education and promote high ethical values. It would provoke critical thinking rather than simply print nice pictures. It would integrate its dead-tree format with the online world and provide a platform for feedback and real-time debate. This online world would be a much wider receptacle of more fluid publication, the best of which could be compiled in with specially commissioned pieces for the paper magazine, to be published as and when it was ready. It would, of course, be international, and actively seek out new talent from the existing Western tradition as well as the more forgotten places. It would not participate in awards.

With the AJ and now the AR, Kieran seems to be creating a pair of cultural magazines for architects which add more to the discipline of architecture and its culture than the profession per se. They are both, without doubt, better than they were under the previous regimes and I sincerely hope they continue their improvement and approach something like my ideal. The architectural press is, after all, where 21st century architecture occurs.

Pedal powered parkour

2009-04-22T20:01:00.001+01:00

From the YouTube info: "Filmed over the period of a few months in and around Edinburgh by Dave Sowerby, this video of Inspired Bicycles team rider Danny MacAskill features probably the best collection of street/street trials riding ever seen."

Move over skateboarders and parkour.

Letter from Valencia

2009-04-22T10:43:00.004+01:00

"Architecture needs activity like a sentence needs a verb."

Mark 20 (due out next month) will see me writing the "Letter from Valencia" which is, in my very humble opinion, the least worst piece I have ever written on architecture. Yes, there's some St. Calatrava of course (you can't avoid it in Valencia) but there's plenty of other stuff too.

It also includes photos some of my millions of photos, unfortunately in black and white. So here are some colour ones as a taster.

Above is design student Adrián Pinilla and his dog who renew bikes in a small converted butcher's. Think "Pimp my ride", but on two wheels and pedal powered.

More to come on Sheffield here when I get time to write it up, including Castle Markets, Gleadless Valley and Park Hill. I'm also due a review of the new AR and Wired magazines.

Protectionism

2009-04-20T08:58:00.009+01:00

BD this week are running a story on architects' desire to protect their function which has been an ongoing theme in the debate on the profession ever since the title was protected by the Architects (Registration) Act of 1938.

I find this idea very strange, not only because protectionism is being frowned upon by everyone at this moment of global financial woe, but because it is far from clear what function it is that architects want to protect.

Whenever I talk to architects about this, their reasonings are vague and unclear. Some diligently and blindly follow the ARB line that "the consumer should be protected". However, they are unclear of who that consumer is. If it's the client, then we're talking about the wealthy and powerful who of course have rights, but are not the unsuspecting and downtrodden of society. If it's the end user, then fair enough. Some architects even build upon this argument that it's their responsibility to make the building stand up, which seems dumb. That's the engineers' and manufacturers' responsibility and what their respective training, PII and collateral warrenties are for. The ARB line is, in fact, backwards and registration is there to protect the architect from the rest of society - in other words, to maintain the monopoly.

Another argument is that architects have 7 years training and so are the best people to design and build buildings. Let's look at this in more detail:

5 years of the 7 is in school. Roughly 90% of a student's time is spent on design problems and around 65% (depending on the school of course) of their final grade goes on assessment of this design work. One of the 7 years is simply a "year out" in industry, which equates to anybody starting a career and learning the ropes in anything. The final year is another career starter year while enrolled on a part-time professional practice course. The course I did lasted 8 days. So the architect's education is heavily weighted towards design. But is this the function that the architects want to protect? As Andrew Saint argued in The Image of the Architect (Yale University Press, 1983, p.61),

"It did not take long to discover that the only broad line of defence within the Soanean formulation, the only element in architecture to which some other professional group did not have a prior or better claim, was 'art'. Yet ironically, those most concerned with professional dignity and exclusiveness were in practice those least taken up with matters of art, and vice versa."

The design of the built environment matters greatly (especially to architects). The "design-led" architects can probably be entrusted to design buildings, but there are many others working in the "commercial" sector who probably cannot. Yes, they are qualified, but no, they don't particularly care or are not particularly good at it. And if we are to say that the architect's function to be protected is the design of buildings, then surely we should protect the other design industries similarly, like jewellery design, automotive design, and furniture design. After all, the designers in those areas have studied equally hard in order to master their trades and crafts. So no more furniture for Zaha, jewellery for Gehry or cars and buses for Foster. At least, without them becoming suitably qualified. There is also urban design, of course, which architects often claim to be able to do, but largely have no idea about, having only ever really considered individual buildings rather than the space between them. Architectural courses barely touch upon urban design and an architect will probably not be able to quote any theory beyond Kevin Lynch's half century old "The Image of the City". This is another related but quite separate profession, and as important as - if not more important than - architecture itself and it deserves its own qualifications and accreditation.

Design as the function of architects is a bit of a red herring. It's what architectural culture is all about - what gets published and discussed, but it does not form the majority of the architect's role. Looking at the official RIBA plan of work (pdf file) and we see that design - at a push - constitutes the first 5 of the 11 stages. "Appraisal" and "Design Brief" are important stages, but are often considered "winning the job" and are not design per se. "Concept" and "Design Development" are the meat and bones of design. "Technical Design" can be done by architects, but it is not something they are trained to do particularly well and besides, there is a whole architectural technician profession that really has first grabs on this stage. They are trained to do it and on the whole do it much better than architects.

RIBA scrapped the indicative fee scale for architects in 2003 (the recommended fee scale was scrapped in 1992 and the obligatory fee scale scrapped in 1982), but previously it was recommended that 55% of the final fee covered these first 5 stages. So this all indicates that design (if we are being generous) comprises about half of an architect's role. However, the reality is of course very different. In a recent lecture at London Met University, Alex Ely of Mae Architects (a well regarded "design led" practice) admitted that less than 15% of his time was spent on design. In my personal experience, that is an over estimate. So is design really what architects do and the function that should be protected? It is certainly the controlled and controllable aspect of an autonomous art.

This is the "art" side of the eternal "art versus profession" debate. Let's consider the "profession" side (it won't take long). The remainder of the architect's responsibilities is to get the building built. The "Soanean formulation" that Saint cited above is this:

"The business of the architect is to make the designs and estimates, to direct the works, and to measure and value the different parts; he is the intermediate agent between the employer, whose honour and interest he is to study, and the mechanic, whose rights he is to defend. His situation implies great trust; he is responsible for the mistakes, negligences, and ignorances of those he employs; and above all, he is to take care that the workmen's bills do not exceed his own estimates."
(John Soane, Plans, Elevations and Sections of Buildings, 1788, p.7)

And this was what the founders of the RIBA took as the original ideal functions of an architect, dividing architecture as a service from speculative contracting and building and later, from surveying.

So the other half (in theory, much more in practice) of an architect's role is supervision of the building on site, and dealing with all the contractual stuff. The architect has a great deal of the client's money at stake here, and so it is impossible to underestimate the scale of this responsibility. It is what the Professional Indemnity Insurance is for and what the architect is likely to get sued over. However, it's a role that is learned on the job and something that other professions are equally able to do (if not more so) and probably more interested in doing. I'm talking about the professional Project Manager, a role that has appeared since the last recession and the rise of the Quantity Surveyor. It's largely a messy, administrative "contingent" job. Is this the function that architects want protecting? I doubt it.

There is an argument that only architects should be able to apply for planning permission on buildings over a certain size, as they do, I believe, in France and Italy. However, the architect then simply becomes a stamp and you will without doubt be left with people simply paying for the architect to stamp their own drawings.

So the protection of function, beyond Sunand Prasad's claims that it is unworkable and probably illegal, is quite simply the desperate cries of a dying profession, deluded and confused as to what its role in society really is.

What about protection of "title" that the 1938 act brought in? Similarly deluded, I would argue. It simply legally assigns an English word to a select group of people, which is as irksome as it is unworkable. Nobody outside the architectural profession understands this protection. Nobody - even architectural students - understands the difference between the ARB and the RIBA. It's not an education thing because you can't simply take an English word and ascribe it a new meaning and expect everyone to fall in line - life doesn't work like that.

What should happen is that the ARB should be abolished, along with protection of title and the RIBA should be the standard to which all architects aspire. You wouldn't be able to join the RIBA without the accredited qualifications and this would divide the "real" architects from the also-rans. It would also give the RIBA a real meaning and reason for existing, which it scarcely has at the moment. If architects are so precious about the size of their education and how valuable it is to society, then let this speak for itself in a self-regulated profession. Let this education compete in the real world and demonstrate its worth.

It is not surprising that architects want their monopoly protected. This is what professions are for. As I've mentioned before, George Bernard Shaw is quoted as saying that "All professions are conspiracies against the laity". Professions are a product of both sixteenth-century history and twentieth-century sociology and essentially about defining a knowledge base, abstracting it, claiming ownership of it and then servicing access to it (for a fee). The RIBA itself was founded in 1834 "for facilitating the acquirement of architectural knowledge, for the promotion of the different branches of science connected with it, and for establishing an uniformity and respectability of practice in the profession".

So architects need to get it straight between themselves what this knowledge is that they are claiming.
The big problem is that the great contribution architects can make to the design of the built environment is value based. The best ones fight for quality against the profit-mongers and for the more ethical aspects of building, such as sustainability and community. This affects both the bottom line and the quality of life and is a laudible ambition that I cannot praise the best architects highly enough for. If there were some way this could be bottled up, marketed and sold to society, then I would be the first to grant it a state-controlled monopoly. Until then, I say let the architectural profession compete and live or die on what it holds dear as its knowledge.

BD subscription

2009-04-03T15:55:00.004+01:00

It had to happen eventually: Building Design has gone subscription only.
Up until now, the weekly news rag BD has been free to all registered architects (see this post). However the ravages of the recession have taken their toll and the classified ads have all but dried up, meaning that BD has no option than to go subscription only if it wants to stay in business.

This means, of course, that there's one less reason to register with the ARB, which I was just considering doing and I doubt they'll take £29 off their £86 annual registration subscription. It does mean, however, that anyone can subscribe now - I tried subscribing once before with no luck, so it means the paper will be less exclusive to the closed circle of the architects only club. I hope they keep the web site open and free too, though.

It's a good paper with some good content, if you ignore the yawnsome Bill Mitchell. I usually like Jonathan Glancey in the Guardian, but he seems uncomfortable at BD. Ellis Woodman and Owen "Bloody Tragedy" Hatherley are always good value, though.

With the RIBA Journal just enjoying a tweak and the AR a much-needed major refit, it's all-change in the archiporn world. I'll be looking at these latter two in more detail after my holiday next week.

Wired UK

2009-03-28T04:14:00.003Z

Wired UK 1.01 cover borrowed from Phil Gyford's full set on flickr here.

At a time when many, many magazines are dying, including the well established Architecture d'aujourd'hui, it seems a strange decision to launch a new one. And yet that is what Conde Nast are doing with WIRED UK. 12 years after the last attempt crashed and burned after only 23 issues, Wired UK will rise again, apart from its US parent once more.

Although it wasn't great, as someone who collected most of the above 23 issues at the time, I'm glad to see it back. While I'm sceptical, I wish the new venture well and hope it stays around longer this time and can deliver some better quality too.

AD cover quilt 1956-1975

2009-03-27T10:40:00.002Z

Just one short of all AD covers from between 1956 and 1975 (doesn't mean I have all the magazines, of course!)

1955 is almost completely empty of covers at the moment.

Los correos

2009-03-23T20:59:00.002Z

The post boxes at the main post office in Valencia.

La Mezquita

2009-03-23T20:46:00.003Z

Cordoba, September 2008

Sheffield 2

2009-03-23T11:17:00.009Z

Continuing my love/hate relationship with Sheffield...
A version of the following rant appeared in the AJ almost a year ago. I was sad to see these genuinely iconic structures go, as the city's authorities talked up building more "icons" without any idea of what that meant for a city that is more about "ironic" than "iconic".
I've kept my original text below. The editors at the AJ didn't like "oozing iconicity from their concrete pours" for some reason and returned it to "concrete pores". Oh well.

When the Rockefellers dreamed up the idea of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, I’m sure they didn’t request an icon. But iconic is what the twin towers became, even before the attacks made 9/11 a pair of numbers as iconic as 24/7.
Sheffield is no Manhattan. She thinks 24/7 means 24th July and considers cappuccini pretentious. These are just two of the many things I love about her. But she also has a pair of iconic twin towers that her council is determined to rid her of in their cultural ignorance and historical myopia. Simultaneously, they order “icons” left and centre for the post-industrial image it thinks it needs, thinking it’s Leeds.
Even though they’re the oldest standing example of hyperboloidal cooling towers in the UK and even though they were probably the largest of their kind when built in 1939, the cooling towers at Tinsley would be of considerably less interest if they were in a Lincolnshire field, or on the Northumberland coast. But they’re not. They’re a few metres from the M1, symbolising the transition from “The South” to “The North” (and back) to millions of motorists. I remember going to visit my grandparents in Sheffield in the ‘70s. Peering out of a brown Ford Cortina’s rear window, I knew we were “nearly there” when I saw at close quarters these Brobdingnangian salt and pepper pots. A matching pair no less, oozing iconicity from their concrete pours. The kind of imbued iconicity that’s been invested in by a shared memory over decades of proud “Made in Sheffield” tradition rather than blinging stainless steel meaninglessness, designed in Apathy and built in Elsewhere. The kind of iconicity that’s appreciated by artists and creative types, rather than those who look at the world in pounds and votes.

Creative types like the Go boys – graduates from its university who have campaigned tirelessly for Sheffield to recognise the towers as the icons that they are and to reuse them as a backdrop for “big art”. They won a national vote to appear on Channel 4’s “Big Art” project. Anish Kapoor agreed to design something for them. Nearly 4,500 people have signed an online petition to keep them and when the Go boys held a stall of cooling tower memorabilia last week under the headline “once they’re gone, they’re gone”, the queue snaked out of the Millennium Gallery doors. Contrast this with the disastrous Nigel Coates-designed ordered “icon” of the National Centre for Popular Music that recently cost £15m and closed within a year due to lack of interest.
The Go boys have given up on Sheffield and are leaving their beloved city. This must be a relief to the council, which appears to want to leave the towers to their fate to demonstrate that such “subversive” initiative by the kind of creative types that they say they desperately want to attract in their desperation to post-industrially redefine the city, actually holds no sway with them.
The “cultural image objective” of Dr. Anne Goss, Sheffield’s Director of Culture, is “to increase the profile of Sheffield as a European Centre of Excellence”. Yet the commissioned public art and cultural vision demonstrate a level of ambition that only the famous Yorkshire self-deprecation can appreciate, showing those charged with leading the way are completely visionless and don’t know their art from their elbow.

The Steel City is streets – nay motorways – behind little Gateshead and barely keeping pace with its smaller South Yorkshire neighbours Rotherham (Stirling prize for the Magna Centre, 2001) and Barnsley (Allsop’s “Tuscan Hill Village” master plan). So much for an excellent European cultural image. This council wants to maintain Sheffield – England’s fourth largest city – as the country’s largest village with a 1,300,000m² shopping centre on its outskirts – a shopping centre literally across the M1 from the cooling towers, symbolising Sheffield’s shift from production to consumption, from active to passive.

UCL’s Professor Jim Croll is a world expert on cooling tower structures. He has estimated that it would cost £0.5m to make the towers safe. Then there’s purchasing the land off its owners, the energy company e.on. Even at twice that, it really doesn’t add up to much per Sheffield head compared to the amounts spent on stainless steel recently. But the people who could make it happen have a literal-mindedness that thinks a spade is a spade, a cigar is just a cigar and a cooling tower no more than an opportunity for its private partners in artistic crime to make a few quid. If such vision and leadership had been applied to another disused power station site in recent years, London would have been denied the fantastic success of what is now the Tate Modern and instead left with a Big Yellow Self Storage shed.

© The Sesquipedalist, MMIIX
A version of this appeared in the Architects' Journal 08.05.08
(All photos used without permission.)

The towers went down when I was in Valencia last summer, so I couldn't witness it, but the Go boys sent me a nice email from Go HQ (presumably) saying that the above account was "easily [...] the best that anyone's ever written about the towers, and spelt the whole sorry situation out perfectly." So that was nice.
(I changed "one of the best" in the above quote to "[...] the best" to make you look better - ed.) Fat lot of good it did though!