Feared by the Bad, Loved by the Good
Quite the best post on the subject thus far. See you at the 'baffle walls' when the bulldozers go in, comrades?
(On a similar matter - a very pertinent question on Ads without Products)
posted by owen hatherley at 3:38 pm
7 Comments:
Thanks for the kind words.
The Battle for Brutalism now moves on, to Birmingham Central Library.
Here English Heritage seem to be in favour of listing.
I'm surprised by the lack of comment so far on the curious hatchet-job on the Smithsons' reputation that EH included within an "open letter" on their website. (see page 5)
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/upload/pdf/Robin_Hood_Gardens_-_EH_web.pdf
The author, John Allan of Avanti architects, noted for Modernist conservation jobs like the De La Warr Pavilion is also a member of EH's London Advisory Committee.
Interesting, cheers for that. John Allan's Lubetkin and the Tradition of Progress biography is tremendous, by far the best book on any British(ish) Modern architect, but I'm not especially surprised that he wouldn't approve of RHG. As he points out, they were on one side, and the Lubetkin-inflected Festival style was on the other. There's a lot I disagree with in there, and a much ad hominem, but he clearly knows what he's on about. The problem is that the real question here is that it is, whether he likes it or not, a question of either list or demolish, and it's intellectually dishonest of him to conclude in favour of 'saving' the building when he knows full well what will happen to it.
Mind you, the bit at the end, about bright facades and stuck on bits of 'bling' - presumably referring to the staggeringly vacuous designs in BD's competition - is spot on...
PhilK said:
What I'm most puzzled with here, and what I can't quite get my head around regarding RHG is that ultimately the campaign to preserve this building is surely predicated around sentimentality (italics presumed)? Even if it is technically excellent, and even if one applies the canard that if it were to be occupied by bien pensant (italics presumed) professionals (no argument as they could no doubt put together a reasonable living space with an old tent and three pieces of hardboard), the fact that it failed on purely utilitarian terms (the people who it was designed for ultimately rejected it i.e. were not sufficiently inspired to chip into the general upkeep themselves) surely requires that, by the harsh criteria of brutalism, it needs to be annulled.
Within the campaign to preserve this building I actually sense a betrayal of both modernism and (italics presumed) brutalism in the sense that the act of preservation posits both these dynamisms as mere historical quirks, temporal fashions, that, like Georgian terraces or Victorian workhouses will be kept erect merely as "instructive" paradigms to future generations. There but for the grace of English Heritage go thou....
Far better to erase RHG and leave it as a mere impression, an indeterminate zone of memory, blurred photography, architectural and social ambition. To preserve it as an admonition to the future ensures that there will be no attempts to repeat it. I can't believe that any true modernist would support such ridiculous practice.
Well, aside from a few fallacies there ('chip in to the upkeep themselves'? Not really in the budget of your average council flat dweller in Poplar) that position has occured to me, funnily enough, and to a few other folk. But the way I see it is this - there is a class war in London over space. This war has entailed the gradual enclosure of huge tranches of public land and public housing, and it now involves the erasure of a politically important project every bit as much as an aesthetic one.
If the erasure of RHG involved the rehousing of its residents, on the site, in better flats, then I would be much more chary about opposing it. As it is, the chances of that happening are precisely nil. But if the choice was between that and the transformation of it into another shiny gated community like Keeling House, then I would have no problem with demolition.
(btw, you might have less of a problem with my next post...)
just the other day I was in a museum that had a small section devoted to the folk history of an area of Glasgow that had been completely demolished and the inhabitants moved out, all in the 1960's. It is worth noting that the responses of the residents being moved were all positive, as they were moving into buildings with sanitation and better facilities etc, but also because they were the primary subjects of the redevelopment - all this new construction was for them. Contrast this with the current period when again the unsatisfactory housing of the poor is demolished, not because it is unsatisfactory, but rather because there is the potential for money to be made. There is a huge difference between being forced out because the state has built you a new house and being forced out because someone with the necessary capital spotted a 'regeneration opportunity'.
Post a Comment
<< Home