Tumbledown Architecture
by David Hamilton (August 2011)
It was a tragic mistake to give local councils the power to compulsory purchase and demolish property and this power must be removed. Most cities are now largely owned by the local councils who have taken properties off private owners.
We are being dissociated from our communities in towns and cities by architecture that jars with and offends our inborn need for the familiar and to to belong. Architecture is physical history and informs our sense of identity: who we are and where we belong. Contemporary architecture dissociates people and makes them feel out of place in their home towns and cities, our Urbiscapes.
They are nihilists and not informed by a feeling for the sacred or a wish to improve communal life. Silly statues in every town and city erected on the advice of consultants.
Architects are part of the ruling elite with politicians, local authorities at a high enough level, developers, business leaders, members of unelected regional quangos, academics, media moguls and personalities, pop stars etc. When they reach this level, they look down on on local people as unsophisticated and scorn their needs. They mix with others of their own kind and are detached from the community. They are in the service of Global capitalism and the prevailing ideology and impose their will on the public but ignore public opinion or the electorate and leave us with a mess.
They build shopping malls or change local buildings into their corporate style and when they move on leave a city reduced in local history and needing more developments.
There have been some foolish demolitions in Stratford upon Avon and amongst the historic gems are some repulsive concrete blocks, although it is not quite as bad as Gloucester. The town is world-famous as the birthplace of William Shakespeare and needs to look like it did when he was alive but often the wrong values obtrude and like Liverpool they start spoiling what they should conserve. A great success in Stratford is the way national retail chains had to conform to the existing building rather than ruin them by sticking on their usual shop fronts. This is exemplary: it is an example of how our towns and cities can be conserved.
My contention is that with a style of architecture that grew out of our traditions it would look even more impressive. The individual buildings often make use of fine geometrical shapes and the Lowry Gallery has semi circles. In themselves these geometric shapes are attractive but they bear no relation to the inspiration for the building nor its function. With modern buildings you get individual buildings out of relation to their neighbours. The main block of the Lowry Gallery on Salford Quays look as if it is falling down. A projection of our collapsing civilisation.
The Chips Building in New Islington or Ancoats, Manchester will take some beating for nihilism and spreading dejection and gloom. It has to be deliberate, to create a mind-dulling, depressing cityscape. (3)
Architects are self-centred and feel no responsibilty to the community as a whole but see themselves as celebs. The previous low point in both was the early 60s when ugly concrete monstrosities disfigured many towns and cities, but as we see with these examples it is even worse now. The 60s efforts were plain unrelieved concrete but the trend now seems to be to add to the ugliness by making them asymetrical, lopsided, tumbling down monstrosities. They often do them in bright colours to look garish and cheap.
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If you compare these with the great British style of Tudor, in which buildings often hung over the street, you see the difference between character and muddle. The Shambles in York, for example, Corve Street in Ludlow and Park Street in Bristol which is from 1761 and was Bristol's first example of uniformly stepped hillside terracing. They all show harmony and balance which gives them not only beauty but character and grandeur, splendour and impressiveness, of appearance and style. At the top of the street there is a dramatic view of the Wills Memorial Building. These show harmony and essential balance in the streets. There are differences between individual buildings but because these differences are within a harmonious whole they create character not disunity and muddle. This balance has been maintained over the centuries.We find harmony and balance until architectural anarchy took over. (4)
York has a long-term future, but the myopic city fathers in Liverpool have gone in for short-term capital gain and thus dispossessed future generations of their birthright. They have followed a tendency to obliterate famous landmarks as with the obscuring of the Three Graces, which was a World Heritage Site, with ordinary, unexceptional skyscrapers. As is usual with British skyscrapers they are insignificant compared to American ones. I took a photograph of this now ordinary waterfront from the Ferry across the Mersey in a raging storm but it shows clearly how it has been ruined by non-descript buildings. A comparison with Chicago from Lake Michigan says it all.
Liverpool Skyline
Chicago Skyline
Inspectors from UNESCO and ICOMOS (International Commission on Monuments and Sites) visited Liverpool in October 2007 to, inter alia:
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Review the state of conservation of the World Heritage site.
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Discuss how the new Museum building project next to the Three Graces and any construction plans affect the site.
- Discuss with relevant authorities, local institutions and organisations the protection of the historic urban landscape and its visual integrity.
In 1796 Shrewsbury entrepreneurs Thomas and Benjamin Benyon and John Marshall of Leeds purchased the rights to the newly invented flax-spinning machine. Ditherington Flax Mill was built in Shrewsbury were skilled workers were looking for work, excellent transport links with the canal and roads and a market for it’s products such as carpet weaving in Kidderminster and Bridgnorth.
The mill was designed by Charles Bage and was the first iron-framed building. When they ceased production of flax because of competition from mills in Leeds the mill was sold to William Jones Maisters (Ltd) who adapted it as a Maltings factory in 1897 whence it takes its usual name. (6)
I have written before about the serrated flats that are being built throughout the country. I wish to make no accusations but I was told by a man who works on these type of apartments in a different town that they are cheaply constructed and if properly examined would not pass health and safety regulations. Their flimsy walls are of Studboard and not substantial. They look hideous from the start and will soon be unwanted slums.
Most of these buildings have shoddy cladding which will likely only have an expected life of ten or so years. One luxury designer apartment development at Piccadilly Basin, Manchester already has problems with leaking rooves.
1) http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/60828/sec_id/60828
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/42007/sec_id/42007
(3) http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/buildings/residential/chips-new-islington-manchester-by-alsop-architects/5202419.article
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/strata-tower-wins-2010-carbuncle-cup/5004110.article
(4) http://www.allinlondon.co.uk/directory/1349/548.php
http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/vmgallery/general/medium.asp?gallery=vm_democracy&img=democracy/thumb/vm_lg_0016.jpg&size=medium
(5) http://www.allertonoak.com/merseySights/CentralLiverpoolWF.html
The World Heritage Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) is a document which provides detailed guidance for new development, regeneration and conservation in the Heritage Site (WHS) and the surrounding area. You can see it in full at
http://liverpool.gov.uk/Images/SPDWorldHeritageSite.pdf
http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/circularworldheritage.pdf
(6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditherington_Flax_Mill
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