Modern, but not Contemporary

#Irony

The owners of the RIBA Stirling prize nominated ‘Outhouse‘ describe it: “We didn’t want it to be built like it was a house from a hundred years ago,” in a BBC interview.

It’s a bizarre statement because stylistically it’s clearly the descendant of nearly a century of Modernist design, that can be traced back to the famed 1928 ‘Barcelona Pavilion‘ by Mies Van Der Rohe. Compare the two side by side:

Above: ‘The Outhouse’, nominated for the 2016 RIBA Stirling Prize

Below: The ‘Barcelona Pavilion’ circa 1928.

It’s time we stop conflating Modernist design with contemporary design. The Outhouse is stylistically a Modernist house, but represents little of the present day period in which it is built. I don’t mind people building Modernist design if that’s what they like, but it’s clearly wrong to call it contemporary.

Advocates of Modernism frequently use that kind of language to describe buildings like the above as being ‘of their time’, and criticize non-Modernist architecture as anachronistic. But this is plainly nonsense. Modernism is not based in the present day. It was a vision of the present and future formed in the early 20th century.

When first created Modernism in architecture had counterparts in all other art forms such as paintings by Mondrian, or music by Schoenberg. Looking at them comparatively you can see they were of the same cultural moment. Yet if you look around contemporary culture today – at painting, fashion, film-making or furniture design you will see little that resembles Modernism or ‘The Outhouse’.

Modernism was of its time, but it’s not of our time.

It’s time we stopped talking about it so.

#Modernbutnotcontemporary

Planning Policy’s Bias for Materiality over Form and Language

In the Scottish burgh town of Dunblane, known for its medieval cathedral and victorian spa; the railway station (circa. 1848) has just received a new footbridge (pictured).

The prominent lift towers of the new bridge are designed as plain volumes in stone. Great effort has been put in by the designer to make them read as ‘perfect’ cuboids, with no detail or coping to interrupt their minimal singularity. Given that they are built in a Conservation Area of an historic town, how is this approach remotely appropriate for its context? Everything around the locality is fractal in layered detail: from the butressed Victoria Hall, to the vernacular cottages, to the contemporary church across the road, every other building in the street displays many levels of detail on traditional form pitched-roof blocks.

As the location is a Conservation Area it’s clear that the Planning Department would place on any design a requirement to fit the context. Station owners Network Rail described: “In keeping with the wider conservation area, a sympathetic design was approved by the council which includes finishes in keeping with the surrounding buildings… The bridge will also be constructed with materials sympathetic to the existing station structure.” “These enhancements will protect the historic appearance of the station”

The designer, presumably at the behest of Planners, has used ashlar blonde sandstone at some expense to match the surroundings, but no attempt has been made to match in language or grammar or form. This is strange since the surrounding buildings show a range of materials including brick, render, rubble stonework, dressed red sandstone and timber. Several buildings are notable for using two or more contrasting materials for visual liveliness.

This approach of matching local materials but ignoring local form is symptomatic of Planning Policy’s bias in handling of context. The design in its materiality conforms to a status quo that doesn’t even exist, but in its language and detail ignores a consistent contextual precedent. Why? Because Planning Policy does not permit officers to prescribe a style for new development (and hence also language and detail). So in cases where conservation of local character is desired the principal tool to be used becomes prescribing or limiting materials.

In addition to this, prevailing conservation policy often requires that when an historic building is altered or extended the new construction must be expressed as distinct so that new and old cannot be confused. A classic case of this can be seen below: Old house. Modern box. Clear distinction.

Whilst the aim of this policy is to ensure that our historic record does not get muddied by later modifications, as per St Albans Abbey, which had a Victorian makeover so comprehensive that it is now virtually impossible to see what’s medieval and what’s not (below before and after).

The unfortunate by-product of these two policies: distinction of periods and prescription of materials for the purpose of congruence, is that Planning policy instead of being style-neutral actually has an intrinsic bias towards the kind of Modernist and reductionist design that we see in Dunblane’s footbridge.

These restrictions result is a token tick-box response to conserving local character rather than a nuanced approach of true understanding of context and creative response. Whilst I’m not advocating the pastiche replication of style or form, I believe that in order to create good quality design that preserves and enhances our historic places there needs to be a conscious and intelligent handling of language and aesthetic detail; as those things often mean as much to local character and identity (and arguably to beauty) as do materials.

In Search of a Hipster Architecture

This is the Neverwas Haul, a mobile building built for the Burning Man festival for the purpose of desert exploration. It’s a kind of Steampunk architecture.

Steampunk is a visual subculture based around fantasy references to the historic style of machines of the Victorian age. It is expressed most often in the medium of clothes and accessories, but in this case in architecture.

Steampunk is closely allied to, or arguably a subsection of, the Hipster subculture. Visually, Hipster uses references to a variety historic styles and precedents to sample their original authenticity. It has been described as “fetishizing the authentic”. (Wikipedia article here)

The common thread between these two C21st visual movements is that they both include a layering of time periods – the historic and the current. And this is why they should be so question-provoking to the architect.

When we look from the context of an architectural profession where there is a long-standing tension between on the one hand a Modernist doctrine of architecture that denies the past and seeks to be only contemporary, and on the other hand a pastiche architecture that seeks to recreate a straight facsimile of the past, the Hipster is so interesting because it treads a line that embraces both old and new, and has a nuanced, complex relationship between the past and the present instead of the one-dimensional binary of rejection or replication with which we are all too familiar.

This nuance is surely consistent with how we as individuals relate to the past, and indeed to other sources of identity such as the ethnic or regional. We see our ‘roots’ as being a part of who we are today, but take them selectively. For example, while I’ve met many a person who says that they’re ‘proud of their working class roots’, few of those would choose to live in a 2-up-2-down with only a coal fire for heating. In the same way, many of us celebrate our ancestors’ heirlooms and derive a sense of identity from them, but few of us would want to directly assimilate our values to the Victorian age’s inherent sexism and racism. When we engage with these sources of reference, we connect with them selectively and don’t copy them wholesale. We choose the parts of our past that we take on.

So if this kind of nuanced reference is such a part of our prevailing culture, and can be seen expressed in the creative arts, the question I have to ask is: Where is the Hipster architecture? And what might a true Hipster architecture look like?

The Neverwas Haul is the closest thing I have found to it: an architectural expression with a complex relationship with the past; but it is one small, isolated instance. This movement must exist somewhere, and have been expressed in building design in some way.

In this quest to find it I have collated a pinterest board collecting examples of design that might be called Hipster. It’s an attempt at grasping after the movement; an incomplete picture. I’d love to see more. If you know of any other examples of Hipster architecture please let me know: comment below, tweet or send pins.

Q Commons Edinburgh

I’m really excited to present to you the talk I gave in February at Q Commons Edinburgh. It was such a privilege to meet and talk with so many people who are passionate about making their part of the world a better place.

Q is a gathering of people exploring how the common good can be advanced. I spoke on the subject of Common Good in the Built Environment and Social Justice in Business. The full text of the talk, and slides can be found here.

Grayson Perry’s departure from Place and Time

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-32751434

Grayson Perry has revealed his momentous ‘A House for Essex’, designed with FAT Architecture. It hardly needs stating that the house is quite unlike anything that’s been built in the UK for many a year. – Not only because of the inclusion of Perry’s distinctive art, but also because the entire critical approach to architecture is a departure.

The design’s central orienting theme is a story: it’s all about the character Julie. When staying in the house it must be impossible for the resident to get away from her. As houses go, it is the most story-heavy that I know of.

In the above video the house is critiqued for not being directly connected to its place. In the UK today, Planning Policy constantly asks buildings to fit their locality – to the point of myopia, and often with a very short sighted and shallow concept of what that place is or means.

At the same time, within the architectural profession there is a prevailing belief that buildings must be consistent with their time. Anything remotely historic is labelled an anachronism (from the Greek ἀνά ana, “against” and χρόνος khronos, “time”). This is a belief relic from Modernism that sits in the background among designers’ thinking but pervades enough to form an unchallengeable fundamentalistic dogma. (Although the time in question seems not to be a real representation of current culture as seen in other arts but instead often of the twentieth century zeitgeist of machines and futuristic progress.)

These two driving themes shape current British architecture in practice: fitting place and time.

This pairing of approaches to design has become a status quo that is so ubiquitous that it is unquestioned in current architectural criticism. Whilst nuanced and intelligent responses to place and time can give great quality to architectural experience the focus on these two to the exclusion of all other orienting themes (such as story) is to the detriment of our art.

In the wider arc of history this exclusivity is far from normal. For example, Victorian architecture’s use of historically and geographically referencing styles gave fantasy-like narratives to its buildings. Designers in these styles reinvented as much as they borrowed and could be described as being like the hipster and steampunk of their day, – but instead of reference being layered with the cynicism of irony, Victorian designers and Victorian people at large placed significant amounts of serious meaning in each reference (more on this here).

In looking at my own design work: I aim to make my houses about the people that live in them, the things that are important to them, and the details of their chosen lifestyles. (This could be called individuality or expression in architecture). I hope that whilst doing so I do not exclude other themes: of place, time, or story, and more.

How to Make Your House Have a Soul

These points are my reflection on what it takes to create a house with character, – a place that has a soul of its own. If you are a designer or a self-builder, or just someone who wants to make their house a home, applying this guide will help create a special place.

Invest Yourself

The most important soul your house can have is yours. Whether that’s yours as an individual, a couple, or a family, for your home to have a personality you need to put your energy and your heart into it, and into the process of designing and building it. If you do that a house with a soul will be the inevitable result.

Share the Vision

Having design team members – especially your architect and builder, with whom you are on the same page and who share your vision is central to the creating process. In order to realise the vision you’ll need to be able to communicate well with them – not just in terms of practical information, but to ‘get’ each other and have common values.

Keep Talking

Conversation helps flesh out your vision into specifics, so take every opportunity to talk to your partner, your designer, and others in order that you’ll understand it in detail from different angles and viewpoints.

Identify What’s Important to You

What Motivates Your Build? This may be the atmosphere or ‘feel’ that you want the house to have, or the values of ethics or environment with which it is built, or it may be some design details or features. Ask the question ‘Why are you building your own home?’ Your answer to that question will show you where your priorities lie.

Have a Fractal Understanding of it

Take time to design your house and know it deeply, in three dimensions and in four seasons as it responds to light and weather; but most importantly know it in detail: Fractal means ‘on multiple scales’. It means to know it in fine detail as well as the big picture vision. The deeper and more multi-faceted your understanding of the house is, the more of you will be put into the house, and the more it will match up to what you want to achieve.

Texture

Don’t overlook the feel of materials – inside and out. It can be easy to pick finishes from catalogues that only give you a photographic representation of what your flooring or cladding will be like. Nothing beats getting a real sample of the wood that you’ll use or the brick: touch it, look closely at it in different lights.

Plan Your Decisions

When your house is on site and the build process gets busy decisions need to be made. Try to avoid making quick decisions on things just to get them out of the way. Plan ahead so that you can take time over your choices of finish or design. Know yourself and how you work best: if you’re the kind of person who likes to ‘sleep on it’ or compare lots of options when making a decision then plan in time so that you can do that rather than being forced to rush it with last-minute decisions that may compromise your vision for the house.

Enjoy Yourself

Self-building can be a very fulfilling experience. Make the most of all it can bring and enjoy your new home – in the making of it as much as once it’s complete.

This post was originally posted on Vellow Wood’s Guides to Building Your Own Home.

Thoughts from places: Two strips of metal

Two strips of metal running through the landscape. That’s all.

They must have seemed quite alien to the people of the pastoral land before the railways came; having never seen roads as we know them, nor so much as a bicycle.

But those two strips were to revolutionise their lives. The rails brought tourists and trade, heavy minerals and fresh produce, new ideas and technologies. And inevitably they brought money: what we call ‘development’.

Prior to that point this part of the Highlands would have been several days travel away from Edinburgh and Glasgow, by horse over rough tracks; but with the coming of the railways the industrialising cities became only a few hours distant. The rest of the country similarly became within close communication.

What are our two strips of metal? Big data; the internet of things; or AI? The slightly obscure inventions that don’t seem huge, but will go on to have a huge impact on our lives and our livelihoods.

Platonic Solid and Platonic Void in Architecture

Sometimes people ask me what I mean by the terms ‘platonic solid’ or ‘platonic void’, so I thought I’d write a quick explanatory post. This piece will go slightly more into the territory of architectural geek-dom than most my posts so if you’re not into that subject please feel free to skip this one by.

To give credit where credit is due: I did not invent this pairing but first heard it from Professor Johnny Rodger at the Mackintosh School of Architecture. He may have coined the terms himself or got them from someone else.

Platonic solid and platonic void describe two contrasting approaches to shaping the form of buildings. Platonic in this case refers to the philosopher Plato’s love of idealised forms. In this meaning it is something of a corruption of Plato’s actual ideas, but for the purposes of explanation it could be summed up as meaning ‘something having a defined shape’. – In the purest sense a ‘perfect’ shape such as a cube or cylinder, but in practice any intentionally designed form.

Platonic Solid:

Our earliest conception of buildings is usually of them being objects; – objects placed into the field of landscape. As such the buildings (solid objects) have a defined form, like little boxes. They are platonic solids. But when such buildings are placed close enough to each other an inevitable result happens – the spaces between the buildings begin to develop a character; a shape of their own. These spaces are the left over gaps and so turn out as random shapes. The solids are platonic but the spaces are not.

Take a look at this image. The buildings are all rectangular, but what shape are the spaces? There are odd triangles of space or irregular gaps almost as though the buildings were like dice that landed where they fell. Though the roads are defined curves and straights the buildings don’t follow the street lines any more than approximately. This is the what it looks like to design with platonic solids (and non-platonic voids).

Platonic Void:

The opposite approach happens most usually in cities. Instead of conceiving the buildings as having a shape of their own the designer plans the spaces first, and the buildings second. the shapes are defined as streets, squares or plazas, each one a cuboid or cylinder of space, and this time it is the building, (the solid) that fills up the left over gaps.

In this image of Finsbury Circus, London, the street is a clearly defined shape, but what shape are the buildings? they are oddly-shapen forms bent around clearly articulated spaces. This is the architecture of platonic void (and hence the non-platonic solid).

In many ways platonic void typifies urban design and platonic solid typifies suburban design. The terms Urbanity and Sub-urbanity can be used in place of PV and PS.

It is also worth noting that because the two result of different design processes – one that designs the space first (the public realm), and one that designs the solid first (the private realm), they often correspond to well-designed public realm or poorly/un-designed public realm. (Though this is far from always the case). Because of that correlation PV and PS are sometimes correlated with architecture that does or does not care about the civic realm and the life that happens in it.

Aesthetic Social Responsibility – a talk for Q Commons

This is a transcript of the talk I gave at Q Commons Edinburgh (above) on 27/02/15. Q is a gathering of people exploring how the common good can be advanced. I spoke on the subject of Common Good in the Built Environment and Social Justice in Business.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that my opening question is the same as that in my post on Expression and Individuality in Design. That post is a more in-depth view on how some of the common good aims that I mention here can be achieved in design.

“This is an image you’ll probably all be familiar with: the contemporary British housing estate. It’s quite a bland place, uniform, and the same wherever you go across the country.

But what would it look like if each of the houses were as individual as the people that lived in them?

Individuality is something that twentieth century architecture lost much of its idea of. The individual became subsumed into the whole and anonymised. So how can we progress from the current built consensus of blandness, to places where there’s personality and expression for everyone?

Each of these developments has an impact beyond the provision of a given amount of accommodation for a given price. The look and feel of each creates a character of place; the culture that our environment surrounds us in. And that either lifts our spirits or depresses them. If we believe that humans are more than just machines then design needs to be about more than just practicality, and we need to care about the character of place.

I like to frame this impact as ‘Aesthetic Social Responsibility’. You’ve heard of corporate social responsibility; the idea that companies have multiple purposes: They’re not just there to make a profit but also to have a positive impact socially and on the environment. Aesthetic Social Responsibility is the idea that as we build or commission buildings our responsibility goes beyond accommodation and shelter for the person who lives in the building but also to the wider community and culture of place.

Because the places that we make are our beautiful or alternatively awful cities. And that ultimately has a knock on impact on our identity as we see it reflected in the places we live and work, and on our relationships as they’re lived out in this civic realm. This city of Edinburgh is outstanding not because of 1 or 10 brilliant ‘celebrity’ buildings but because of the everyday grain of all buildings: they make this place. You could call that the civic role of private property.

That challenges all of us: Whether you’re putting up a garden fence or replacing windows, are you thinking about the aesthetic impact of that, or just the practicality and the price? If you’re commissioning a building or extension for your church or other organisation are you just thinking about budget and accommodation, or are you considering its place-making cultural role, for it surely has one. What you build plays a contribution aesthetically in your community.

We can tend to think of aesthetics as an unnecessary luxury. And in a materialistic worldview that’s true, because all that matters is practicality and money. But I believe humans are more than machines; and that’s why place, atmosphere, is important.

So looking at my own journey working in the industry I asked: How do we change the process to create better places?

First I’d like to look at how these buildings come about. The Barratt estate in the private sector, the council estate in the public sector; but both issue from a corporate process rather than individuals’ decisions. They are built speculatively for users who are unknown, and that’s why they are on the one hand magnolia-bland and marmite-free or on the other singular and monolithic.

The current available alternative to this corporate-derived housing is the kind of grand designs style individual commission, where the homeowner gets to choose everything. But building your own home is a route practical for very few: it takes too long, and is too much hassle. So I found myself asking how can I improve this: bridge this gap?

I concluded that we could make that happen by shortening the build process so the user gets connected at the beginning. Instead of developers designing for ‘someone’, and hence having to design bland to appeal to all and hence attract none. Instead the design choices could get made by a person – the person who will live there. Instead of buying a new house and just getting to choose the kitchen fittings, you could get more choice in the whole design. This would push developers away from middle of the road design, and creates room for the interesting, the quirky, the individual. By shortening the process design becomes human decisions not corporate decisions.

This aim to shorten the build process led me to seek to connect up designing and making, see the designer and builder as one, so a house could be like buying a car or any other manufactured product. At the time I was on a mission trip to Romania working with a charity with Roma people, building houses for them. I realised we could connect these two; mission with business, and set up a timber frame manufacturing company, in Romania, exporting to the UK, so the people whom the charity had helped build their own homes and taught construction skills in the process, could connect with a commercial enterprise alongside that, to use those skills and create jobs and economic development in Romania.

We’re still at an early stage as a company. We’ve built one building to test the system, and we’re refining that before we take it fully to market. These pictures show part of our team making the first panel, and erecting the first timber frame here in the UK.

 

At this end I started an architecture practice called Vellow Wood, working with those individual self-builders and property developers to learn how to bridge the gap between them on the design side. Our aim is to connect the two business areas together into a more seamless product of design and making. But that’s our work in progress.

Which brings me to a wider point about how business can be a force for good. It’s not that I set out to say “How can I address social justice in Romania?” I set out saying “How can I make better houses?” Because houses is my area, my passion, and you will each have your area that you’re called to. Having a justice impact was simply a part of that, a product of values. It was intrinsic not an ethical bolt-on.

My aim, and our aim as a company, is to have a positive impact on multiple fronts: aesthetically, on poverty, on consumer choice in the product. And I believe it’s that balance between the factors that’s key in creating good, living out good. Just like in corporate social responsibility: it’s not that making a financial profit is bad, it’s focusing on profit solely at the expense of society or the environment. In the same way, when we build, it’s not that providing a given amount of accommodation at a given price is bad, it’s when we focus on that solely and ignore the aesthetics or the wider community aspect.

We need to put our heart into our places, not just our minds. I propose we need to think holistically, to aim for good on a range of fronts, not just one. Because whole is how we are made; and how we work, or build, or do business, or whatever you do, needs to reflect that.”

Separation and the Social Contract.

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana there is a campaign to separate the city into two parts. A group of residents want to divide off a section of the suburbs to form its own administration. The proposed division would keep the tax dollars from the wealthier part within that area and avoid it funding the other, mostly poorer, parts of the city. (See BBC article here).

It’s not hard to point out the right from wrong in this case, but I’d like to drill deeper and look into the issues of social separation that cause this kind of movement, both in Baton Rouge and elsewhere.

In any city, community, or country there is an inter-connected web of relationships, spaces and resources. We each get to share in the things that the community brings, the physical, material, and cultural. We also have a responsibility to contribute towards these. This shared reciprocity of receiving and contributing could be called the social contract between us.

When looking at an example such as Baton Rouge I am forced to ask the question: How has our social contract with our neighbours got to a point where we consider it acceptable to jettison people from it? How are ‘they’ not part of ‘us’ (wherever you draw the lines of them & us)? In debates around the recent referendum on Scottish Independence similar ideas were expressed in claims that one nation’s finances would be better off without the other.

Though this weakening of social contract exists on a city or national level it has its roots at a local level.  How socially diverse are our neighbourhoods, clubs, churches, friendship groups, or workplaces? In looking at these groups it is hard not to come to the conclusion that by and large we surround ourselves with others who are like us.

But this was not always the case. Above is a map of Venice. In its heyday in the 14th century the most prestigious addresses in Venice were located on the Grand Canal, which can be seen snaking its way through the centre of the city. The less well-off lived on the smaller canals behind. This arrangement meant that the rich, poor, and everyone in between lived in close proximity and were never very far from each other.

Whilst Venice may be an unusual city in design this type of social composition was not. For much of history almost all cities have contained this mix of society living and working close to each other. In many parts of the world today this is still the case. In present-day India the rich and poor live side by side; new high-rise next to slums; with the poor forming many of the service professions that enhance the lifestyles of the middle classes.

When looked at in the context of history, it’s clear that separation into areas by type is a distinctly 20th century western phenomenon. The desire to be amongst others like us is not an all-pervading human condition. So what are the causes of this movement? Why is it that we have developed a desire to surround ourselves with others like us, and more critically, to insulate ourselves from those not like us. I believe that the question of the weakened social contract must boil down to this: Relationships.

Today in the built environment professions there is much talk of integrating affordable housing into otherwise more expensive developments in more ‘exclusive’ postcodes, but I can’t help thinking that we are missing the point by trying to force social integration by means of masterplanning instead of addressing the real underlying cause in relationships.

The institutionalisation of civic life has eroded our one-to-one relationsips in the public sphere: When we encounter anti-social behavior in the street we are officially encouraged to call the police and not to intervene ourselves. Maybe this is out of fear of violence, or out of a desire to obey the rules of politically correct interaction, either way it has the effect of separating us from others. Would we speak up if we saw someone dropping litter in the street?

We seem to have lost the ability to relate to strangers, to confront, care, or interact unless contracted to do so. In so doing we often adopt a posture of abandoning the civic urban realm and caring only for our own private realms. If snow falls we leave it to the city council to clear the pavement (or complain that they haven’t) rather than doing it ourselves.

Shopping malls are a corporate expression of this – A pseudo-public space; like a street but privately controlled not just in air-conditioned environment but in who can come in and how they can behave. Gated residential communities are a similar symptom of the perceived loss of control of the public realm, and the desire to reassert order over it by making the public corporately private.

Instead of making the public private, or subdividing our own Baton Rouge, it appears that we need to rediscover and redevelop ways of interacting, both on an individual domestic level and on a corporate/community level: to rebuild the relationships of the civic sphere so that we don’t have to divide the fabric of the civic sphere.