A group of local architects, led by neo-classicist Robert Adam, has taken to the streets in Winchester to protest against the successful planning application for a town centre redevelopment, designed by Allies and Morrison. This is an interesting spectacle.

Robert Adam points out that the historical development of Winchester has been piecemeal, resulting in a rich diversity of building type. So it makes no sense to employ one architect to design a whole new district. He is clearly smarting that he did not get a look in – in fact he has come up with his own design regardless. But he makes a valid point. I am a fan of hotch-potch city planning in general. The problem is not so much that one architect has designed the entire scheme, as one developer owns the entire site. Collage urbanism works best when the ownership of plots is wider and denser. The architect here has tried to replicate the spirit of the historic build up of Winchester through close observation and working variation into the proposals, all-be-it with a contemporary aesthetic and with increased density. They haven’t done such a bad job.

Though in truth natural historic urban development cannot be replicated. In the past, small plots were developed piece by piece by local business interests as the local economy demanded. We now live in a speculative commercial environment where large construction firms dominate the industry. In the same way that multi-nationalism has influenced capitalism and consumerism, the trend towards BIG development and its associated economies of scale is having a profound effect on urbanism. The architectural practices that have embraced this change have been the most successful.

So if we accept the premise of development – we have to accept that things will be different. Or is there an alternative? I am not sure that drawing up parallel proposals or waving placards is going to help although it does flag up the issue. The only real way of tackling the problem is by returning to smaller scale development. I would like to see more crowd-sourced development projects appear. A spread of ownership in new development. This way we might return a bit of diversity and interest to contemporary construction projects, whilst providing uses that people feel inspired by.

Rival schemes for Silver Hill by Allies and Morrison (above), and Robert Adam (below).

McMorran and Whitby’s City of London Police Station (1965) appears like an architectural missing link. The rustication of its lower façade and oversized chimney-like ventilation shafts are strangely non-zeitgeist, and the proportional arrangement of the window openings willfully rhythmic. The 19-story tower has been influenced by the vernacular design of a typical brick warehouse. The building is a nod towards post-modernism – a stylistic memorial to London’s historic architecture and industrial past.

The plans generated controversy, as they required the partial demolition of two Wren churches, St Mary Aldermanbury (refer to previous page), and St Albans on Wood Street. The tower of St Albans remains as an eccentric London office.

Louis Kahn has been known as the architect’s architect. Others have had that title before him and a few have since. Aalto, Asplund, Stirling, Zumthor come to mind. But what makes these architects universally adored amongst their contemporaries while everyone else is unaware of their work? I suppose each demonstrated a puritanical work ethic in their career. And they have all subverted modernism by drawing on the past. We know that all contemporary architects of any caliber respect these traits beyond others so let the futurist de-constructivists stew in their academic unpopularity. Speaking of which, Zaha Hadid has bought the entire museum for displaying her own work after the exhibition closes.

The Design Museum’s retrospective exhibition of Kahn, the first in over twenty years, has a very niche audience: architects who love Kahn. It is an opportunity to pay homage rather than to learn anything new. To look at the concept drawings in Kahn’s hand, and reconstructed models of the masterpieces, and say that we have paid our respects. We shed a small tear at the sight of his traveling suitcase and leave with the extra weight in our own bags from the substantial exhibition book. And we think, if only I could work harder and be more obsessive and single minded. That’s what it is to be an architect.

There is a very small room in the National Gallery that contains a selection of Flemish architectural paintings. There is something surprisingly domestic about Pieter Saenredam’s interior painting of the Grote Kirk at Haarlem. A small dog is looking for attention adjacent to a seated woman with basket and pot.

Fifty meters to the west of this room one arrives at the top of the long processional staircase that leads to the galleries of Venturi Scott Brown’s Sainsbury’s Wing. Here formality is a much more necessary requirement. Today, religious iconography cannot be viewed in a relaxed setting. A request to take a photograph of the post-modern column-arched corridor through the exhibition rooms is denied. I take one anyway – oops, my finger slipped – but the result is blurred.

Richard Hamilton has merged these two scenes in his own painting, The Saensbury Wing. The architecture has been adjusted and straightened ridding us of any unnecessary detail. Tracery and shadow gaps are of no interest to Hamilton, this is a painting about his legacy. Instead we are treated to the naked image of his beautiful wife and his celebrated painting of shit smeared prison walls in the distance. However, the panting dog is nowhere to be seen.

In 1999 the industry rallied to ensure that it was Stirling Prize nominated and for good reason. It was the most energy-efficient supermarket building we have ever seen and its form was representative of its ethos: huddled into to the ground between grass banks and timber facades, close to the earth. It was sustainable architecture and it carried that aesthetic.

It was an OK place to shop, but I no longer shop in supermarkets. Not due to concerns about the environment or corporate-food production — although these are important issues — it simply doesn’t suit my lifestyle anymore.

My local shops are full of customers who buy fresh food close to home and cook it straight away. This practice has strong cultural precedents, minimises waste, makes shopping more pleasurable and contributes to a re-emerging high street that is beginning to thrive again. Good for urbanism, the local economy and for the environment.

There is a view among those who practice sustainable design that we can only make an impact through the rigid application of process-driven architecture. This is a modernist approach: constructing hyper-functional buildings precisely to program.

But programs change and so do users. Hinkin designed a building that looked and behaved just as a sustainable building should. Ironically this is why it could never be so.

Reuse is now the cutting-edge of sustainable architectural practice, in its application to both the adaptation of old buildings and the future planning of new ones. For all the intentional worth of the Greenwich store, it now sends the wrong message. The building cannot restrict the use.

This article was published in Building Design (14/03/14).

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/comment/opinion/would-the-loss-of-sainsbury%E2%80%99s-eco-store-be-a-blow-for-sustainability?/5067074.article

The French have an expression, comme il faut, meaning in accord with convention and existing standards; as it should be. The contemporary design architect is more inclined towards re-invention. New principles are what are required rather than decorum. And when dealing with historic buildings we learn that a heritage approach requires the respectful repair of existing fabric to its original appearance with new interventions clearly distinguishable from the old.

What is startling about the refurbishment of Tate Britain is that it is tricky to tell what is old and what is new. There is certainly a fresh dynamism about the building that cannot be explained by a lick of paint, but just what is it that has changed? I am pretty sure that the spiral stair in the rotunda wasn’t there before and the basement area is a more interesting space than I remember it to be. The rest is a guessing game.

The architect, Caruso St John, has acted with remarkable confidence. Significant changes have been made to the building without highlighting what those changes are. This contradicts current design ethics but with an irony attached; in defying convention, they have adhered to it; comme il faut.

Yet another government commission, this time to decide the future of London’s airport expansion programme. A number of airports are jostling for position with proposals and plans. Architects have been wading into the argument. Norman Foster prefers the Isle of Grain site, as he has designed it. Terry Farrell prefers Gatwick, he designed that. Ken Shuttleworth is rather fond of Stansted, he designed this one.

I am really not sure what is the best option for airport expansion and I am not ready to read through all of the politicised reports to try and extract a non-biased argument.

However, I will say that the journey from Stansted Airport by car or taxi to London is, I think, the most interesting. The moment that the City and Canary Wharf appear on the horizon is wonderful. As a proud Londoner it is how I would like a visitor to see our city for the first time. Is this a relevant factor? Almost certainly not.

The architect, Terry Farrell, has been commissioned to produce a government sponsored report on how architects might be more successful in getting their message across: a manifesto that will become a rallying cry for British architecture. It has been suggested that what the industry needs is a media figurehead – an architectural ‘Jamie Oliver’ who might make planning issues and urbanism palatable for the general public’s consumption.

However, it is not the public’s fault that we do not have enough good design and architecture in our cities, and it is not the public’s non-engagement with the politics of design that results in poor urbanism. The public have been deliberately ostricised from the debate for many years. Nimby is a term invented by planners, developers and architects to denigrate any member of the public that voices an opinion.

And so, when a group of pre-eminent designers, developers and politicians get into a huddle for a bit of soul-searching about what has gone wrong, the best they can come up with is “architecture needs to be more popular”, or reading between the lines, “we as architects should be more popular”. This is nonsense.

Instead of talking about the value of architectural design in subjective terms and how it is understood by others – why not talk about what architecture is for? Is it for developers to make a big profit? Is it for politicians to make a mark? Is it for designers to make themselves feel good about themselves, and have an exciting career – make them feel like artists? Or is it about making our cities better, healthier, successful and interesting places to live?

The public only really care about the latter, though clients and architects seem to focus on the first three, then use all of their acquired skills to convince us otherwise. That is the problem.

“And While London Burns” is an interactive operetta produced by the enviro-political art activists, Platform. http://andwhilelondonburns.com. It is presented as a journey through the City of London to a musical and theatrical accompaniment. The trouble is – the opera was produced in 2007 – and many Landmarks and wayfinders have now disappeared.

I have just been taken by the hand and led through the streets of London. It was a terrifying experience:  thrust into a world of global finance, fund management and oil. It appears the City is not merely the Corporation’s machine for making money, but a rapacious storm of glass and steel conjured up by investment bankers hell-bent on leading the entire godless fellowship to its own destruction by fire, water and ultimately dust. The rest of us will descend too, complicit in our apathy.

If the decadence of our financial age is dragging us to apocalypse then I expect something different from the architecture. Babel did not look this austere or tidy, so let’s build spiralling turrets in black ebony spewing fountains of virgin’s milk from gilded gargoyles. Grand halls lined with the lifeless naked effigies of our business rivals. And labyrinthine passageways, walls coated with fur and garish stone creeping down into underground caverns crammed with intoxication and libidinous debauchery. If we are all going to burn in a pit of self-indulgence and greed, then let’s do it properly. So where the fuck is that ‘pink marble stairway’? I can’t find it anywhere.

My first visit to New York provided an initial insight. We arrived in the afternoon on a very hot day. The taxi that took us from JFK to the Upper Westside was air-conditioned in the old fashioned way. Blasts of warm air flooded through its open windows as we swung around intersections. The worn sound of the engine was the driving force, but the pressure of the horn was our lance and we jousted through the city in a bout of noise, heat and motion. Our drop-off point was a simple fifteen storey 1930s brick apartment block on West End Avenue. A Manhattan block has its own particular sound in the summer. The dry heat has a dampening effect on the constant dirge of traffic. An insect-like hum emits from hundreds of exterior air-conditioning units and drips of condensation from their underbellies pepper the sidewalk. Sirens in the distance, maybe half a mile away, provide a feint harmony to those screaming past. Rushes of amplified music wax and wane as doors open and close. But above all of these sounds is the sound of the human voice. New Yorkers seem to have developed a tonal intonation that can cut through the bass sound of the city. Their voices can always be heard, and they are often exercised. It is a city of confident communication – much more so than any other I have been to.

I found it hard to settle on that first night. Not because the noise was preventing me from sleeping. I didn’t need sleep. Fuelled by the sounds emitting from the street, my adrenalin levels were high, and I wanted to stay connected to the source. I spent most of the night by the tenth storey window listening to the city continue to emanate. Just as I finally began to doze off, a hallucinatory vision appeared outside the glass – a personification of everything I had experienced that day – welcoming me, but warning me to sleep, to get some rest. The city is not going anywhere. There will be more of the same tomorrow.

The above extract is the introduction to a longer essay, “Noise:Silence – The Battle for New York City’s Soundscape”.