Kosmograd

From Hodge to Hooverville

Could Margaret Hodge be our very own Sub-prime Minister?

There are more insane ramblings from UK architecture minister Margaret Hodge in this weeks Building Design (20,03.2008). Cleverly giving herself enough rope to hang herself, BD invites Margaret Hodge to show them around her consistuency of Barking, East London, and see what kind of architecture she likes - "Now that’s what Margaret Hodge calls architecture".

She starts off well enough, criticising a spec housing development by Bellway homes, (albeit for reasons that should be within the council and planning departments ability to enforce):

"It's horrible, cheap housing with no facilities: no schools, no transport infrastructure, no buses, no shops. This is just want you don't want."

Then she starts to show a little of her own design 'vision', for the Barking Riverside masterplan:

"I don't think it works," she says. "There are enormous pedestrianised areas. They haven't integrated the housing properly. New communities only work if people have their own gardens, fenced off."

Now it's possible that Margeret Hodge has been feverishly reading nutters like Oscar Newman and Alice Coleman et al, or channeling the spirit of Jane Jacobs through a kind of New Urbanist distortion field, since landing in the poisoned chair at the DCMS in June 200. However, it's more likely that she has made this gross, sweeping statement off the top of her head. Margaret Hodge has nailed her colours to the mast of environmental determinism.

But the killer comes when Hodges takes BD to Barking Learning Centre:

Among her high points is Barking Learning Centre, formerly the central library, designed by Alford Hall Monaghan Morris. This mixed-use building, which is the centrepiece of Barking Town Square’s redevelopment, is an example of the government’s vision for integrated public spaces, with council services, a lending library, educational facilities and residential apartments all on the same site. Hodge is very proud of it.

"Look, a buggy park!" she exclaims, as we view the children's library, a book club meeting in progress. Hodge points out the "welcoming entrance", which she sees as friendly and inclusive, and insists there ought to be a coffee shop here too. Her only disappointment is that the flats have been sold to a buy-to-let investor. "There’s nothing you can do about that." [My italics].

There's the money quote. With one throwaway comment the UK's architecture minister washes her hands of the parlous state of the UK's housing.

Buy-to-let, where investors buy properties as a business venture and enjoy tax breaks, has completely altered the UK housing landscape over the last 10 years. Fed a diet of 'you can do it' property investment programmes such as Relocation, Relocation, Property Ladder and How to be a Property Developer, the middle-classes of England have been steadily sinking themselves in debt taking out multiple mortages and riding the milktrain.

But now the chickens are coming home to roost.

Writing in the Guardian, Sympathy for the buy-to-let devil?, (22.03.2008), Patrick Collinson states:

Lenders keep telling us Britain doesn't have a "sub-prime" problem like the US. Yes we do - in the shape of a million buy-to-let mortgages.

Collinson then details some of the scams and sharp practices that have dominated the buy-to-let feeding frenzy:

"On paper, you couldn't obtain a 100% mortgage for a buy-to-let. But developers offered fake 15% "discounts"; credulous surveyors gave fanciful valuations; lenders skimmed over loan applications. Hey presto, wannabe landlords were able to obtain an "85%" loan which was really 100% of the purchase price, and start building a "portfolio" without spending a penny upfront. And they didn't even have to pay tax on the income.

It wasn't much of a worry to the lenders that the whole thing might later go wrong. They could "package" or "securitise" the buy-to-let loan, mark it down as a profit and take it off their books. Only in the coming few months will we see where in the financial system the losses turn up.

Compare this with first-time buyers. They have to stump up a deposit. They have to prove their income. They have to make monthly mortgage payments from a taxed salary. There could only be one winner in such a one-sided game. With access to easy finance, the buy-to-letter could outbid the first-timer and push prices up to ever more ludicrous levels."

Now the bubble has inevitably burst, not only are tens of thousands of get rich quick investors stuggling to make interest payments on mortgages, but overstretched owner-occupiers are faced with large mortgage hikes, while the banks and financial institutions who have been ridden by this loa of greed and exploitation get bailed out by the Bank of England. As a nation we are overextended on credit per capita to a much greater extent than the US.

Barking Learning Centre, held up by Hodge as the shining example of urban regeneration in Britain, is actually just the mirror to the failed state of housing in the UK. Who will maintain the properties at Barking Learning Centre? What can motivate investors, who are losing millions of pounds on the empty promise of buy-to-let, to look after their properties and ensure that they are good places to live?

To bring it back round to Robin Hood Gardens, and it's recent threat of demolition, Amanda Bailieu states in her recent BD editorial:

As one would expect from this government, Margaret Hodge believes the newly built Barking town centre in her constituency offers a more hopeful model for the future of British housing than the rugged, generous and light-filled flats at Robin Hood Gardens.

And yet Hodge cannot find any housing in Barking that actually works.

In the US, the credit crunch and the fallout from the subprime mortgage farrago is refiguring communities and the suburban landscape, creating new housing archetypes - subprime shanty towns and exurban slums. The death of the buy-to-let market in the UK could do the same in this country. Margaret Hodge could find herself with a Hooverville in the midst of her constituency.

What is needed, now more than ever, is a richer mix of housing types and typologies. This needs to encompass social housing, letted accommodation, housing associations and cooperative living, as well as owner occupied dwellings.

Instead of hanging round Barking, Hodge should try visiting Rotterdam.

Virtual Brutality

Another Brutalist landmark is under threat of demolition. This time it's Robin Hood Gardens in Poplar, East London. Designed by Alison and Peter Smithson, and completed in 1972, it looks likely that the local council, Tower Hamlets, will demolish the building and look to redevelop the site.

The only hope is that it receives listed building status, and becomes the protectorate of English Heritage. But conferring listed building status ultimately lies in the hands of the architecture minister, Margaret Hodge, who has weighed in with the following astonishing comment, in the recent issue of Grand Designs, and requoted in Building Design:

"When some concrete monstrosity - sorry, I mean modernist masterpiece - fails to make the cut despite having expert opinion behind it, let's find a third way. This is the 21st Century - a perfect digital image of the building, inside and out, could be retained forever."

This is either visionary prescience or the inane ramblings of a deranged lunatic. There is the germ of an amazing concept here - that we should create a National Digital Archive of high quality 3D models of our countries best buildings, which can be visited and explored in a virtual environment.

That this then presumably clears the way to demolish all that doesn't fit Hodge's aesthetic sensibilities is where she lurches from visionary to tyranny.

While the words 'conservation' and 'heritage' generally cause shivers to run down my spine, the revitalisation of the Brunswick Centre and to a lesser extent the redevelopment of Park Hill in Sheffield by Urban Splash, show that there is plenty of demand for some BoHo Brutalism. Superficially, it took little more than a Starbucks and a Waitrose to transform the concourse of the Brunswick Centre from a forlorn, windswept precinct to a popular urban hangout.

Goldfinger's masterful Trellick Tower was once also held with similar contempt as the Smithsons RHG, and now its flats are in high demand, often selling at above market rates. Likewise the Unite d'Habitation in Marseille, which was a powerful precedent for Robin Hood Gardens. Could Robin Hood Gardens also be turned into a desirable residence for owner occupiers? Unless and until more compelling alternatives are put forward, it should be saved.

(images from Flickr user Joseph Beuys Hat)

Re-presenting Hadid

Here are a few recent paintings by Zaha Hadid, from a show at the Galerie Buchmann. (see Flickr set here). There were also some of these silver prints on display at the recent Zaha retrospective at the Design Museum.

While visually stunning, they are little more than a striking way of re-presenting computer renderings, rather than design explorations. Does the act of producing these images change the design approach?

The place of design is now within the computer, not the drawing.

These paintings are pure surface.

"The Silver Paintings are executed on a polyester skin treated with chrome and gelatine then mounted on to an aluminium DI-BOND to resemble polished metal.

Different media are used depending on the desired effect. Stained glass paint offers transparency while acrylic and Chinese lacquer generate opaqueness. UV-resistant ink combined with vinyl gives the highest degrees of reflectivity. These techniques combine to suggest a gradual intersection between reflectivity and opacity, from one architectural feature to the next."

Introducing Superspatial

Just a quick note to mention the launch of a new collaborative weblog, called Superspatial, that I am involved in.

Superspatial will focus on architecture, urbanism and architectural speculation, while Kosmograd will hopefully become more refined in tackling issues of disurbanism, urban representation and virtual space.

Currently the only other author on Superspatial is Lewis Martin, from the excellent Helsinki-focussed archi-blog lewism. If you are interested in joining in, get in touch.

Some recent posts on Superspatial:

004. The urban futures of rising tides

003. A bridge too far?

002. Parametric Urbanism on the Thames Estuary

001. Seattle Art Museum Sculpture Park

CJ Lim homage to Heath Robinson

CJ Lim, experimental architect and Director of International Development at the Bartlett School of Architectre, has created ‘Sky Transport for London’, commissioned by BBC Radio 4, in homage to the work of Heath Robinson, and to coincide with an exhibition about Robinson at the Cartoon Museum in London.

“ ‘Sky Transport for London’ seeks to reconfigure London Underground’s Circle Line, by lifting the footprint of its tracks eighty metres above ground as a continuous ‘sky-river’ flowing through the great metropolis,” he explains. “In this scenario, long, narrow boats, usually with a crew of twenty-two, would traverse the urban sky-river. It would alleviate some of the ground-level traffic congestion, while offering a low-carbon, environmentally efficient way for employees to get to and from work as well as catch up on some much needed exercise. Apart from the daily commute, this system would play host to an annual race in the tradition of the dragon boat festival, pitting teams taken from London’s boroughs in races across the city on the fifth day of the fifth month.”

Lim compare the experimental nature of the Bartlett to Heath Robinson's work:

"Heath Robinson’s wildly inventive propositions – that do not always quite go to plan – also summarise for CJ the spirit of the Bartlett: “We are architectural inventors at the Bartlett. Sometimes our bold avant-garde proposals share a similar fate to Robinson’s but they are always powerful enough to spark off other ideas and creative conversations.” "

The exhibition Heath Robinson's Helpful Solutions is on until 7th October at the Cartoon Museum, 35 Little Russell Street, London.

More on the CJ Lim and Heath Robinson to follow, inevitably.

Sunnydale trailer park

Awesome wallpaper design from David Monsen, called Sunnydale, and inspired by watching too much Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This would make a brilliant font. I'm compiling a list of urban/architectural fonts so any suggestions would be gratefully received.

[Via Wallpaper magazine, which seems to be returning to form, and the website is well worth a visit too.]

The London Array

Just been given the go-ahead is the world's largest off-shore windfarm, to be constructed in the Thames Estuary.

The London Array, when completed, is expected to generate enough electricity for a quarter of all the homes in Greater London. Postioned 20 km off the Kent coastline, it will consist of up to 271 turbines.

The only issue now is to stop the Nimby's who don't want the onshore substation anywhere near them.

Zaha Hadid is Seamless

[via Design WS via dezain] comes an exhibition of furniture at Phillips de Pury, designed by Zaha Hadid for Established and Sons. I love the fluid sinuous forms of these objects,. Without prescriptive names to describe how they should be used, they become forms to be inhabitated, their function yet to be determined.

This is not architecture.

Inspired by the rant at BldgBlog about architectureal criticism, here are some more things that may or not be architecture:

Projections and illuminated signage, translucent materials, desert land art, graffiti and stencil art, The Incredibles, Lego, SketchUp, Google Earth, Google Maps, Iain Sinclair books, psychogeography, Neuromancer, billboards, mega-projects, the works of Paul Virilio, disurbanism, Judge Dredd - the boardgame, Sim City, Mikhail Okhitovich, Established & sSons, Mir space station, post-urbanism, The Fountainhead, Apple computer, giant squid and other cephalopods, Baikonur/Kosmograd, 'elephant cage' listening posts, exurbia, Maunsell towers, Chek Lap Kok Airport, Blade Runner, Times Square at night, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, the work of Italo Calvino, garden centers, garden cities, Sealand, Kathryn Gustafson's Diana, Princess of Wales memorial fountain, the work of Martha Schwartz, situationism, the work of Adriaan Geuze and West8, The Swimmer, Prada, the M25, Starbucks' "the third place", Tesco's, Poundbury, origami, topology, suburban sprawl, big-box reuse, moons of Saturn, green-belt, pop surrealism, brownfield sites, Thames Gateway, Wipeout 2097, airport car-parks, Broadacre City, shipping container architecture, Wembley Stadium, the Olympic Games, the Millau Viaduct bridge.

You could also take this to be a pretty good depth of field for Kosmograd over the coming months.

[Image is cover of Envane by Autechre, just because, really.]
[first posted May 22, 2006]

Six reasons why London rocks in 2006

Need reasons why London is the best city in the world right now? Here are six of them.

Pixar: 20 Years of Animation
Science Museum
until 10th June

Olivo Barbieri, Site Specific
Blloomberg Space, Finsbury Square, London
until 20th May
More info and review at: Metro, Metropolis, Guardian.

The Tragic Genius of Joseph Michael Gandy
John Soane House, Lincoln's Inn Fields
until 12th August
More info and review at: Guardian, Observer

Jacob van Ruisdael: Master of Landscape
Royal Academy
until 4th June
Reviews from: Observer

Modernism: Designing a new world 1914-1939
V&A
until 23rd July 2006
Raging debate across the pages of the Guardian: Robert Hughes serves, Simon Jenkins volleys, and Deyan Sudjic returns

Michaelangelo Drawings: Closer to the Master
British Museum
until 25th June
Guardian review

Field reports from the frontlines of culture to follow.
[First posted April 21, 2006]