Alright, finally got around to replying to recent comments and discussion. Those less architecturally inclined than I may wish to turn away before the glut of built-environment-related links arrives…
You seem to have shot yourself in the foot @DensleyBlair Now I'm watching Jonathan Meades documentaries on youtube instead of reading your AAR...
If one has to be distracted from the task of reading Echoes, then Meades is a very worthy distraction indeed
I like his films a lot. They are the sort of art-minded polemic that doesn't really get commissioned by the BBC anymore. As for Meades himself, I agree with him maybe half of the time – but even when he's being insufferable I more or less have to admit that I enjoy his craft.
Next try Ian Nairn, if you don't know him. He died young and so allowed Meades to adopt his entire schtick as his own – something Meades is admirably open about.
I didn't know about Cedric Price, and I must say, based on some superficial research, he does look like a very interesting character within the modernist period.
'Interesting character' is absolutely the right description… I first came across Price as a depressed first-year pretty certain that they had made a terrible mistake by taking Architecture instead of, say, Art or English. His example very much appealed to me – a strident socialist who proposed fantastical, original public projects that never got built, and so could never be proven to have failed. Plus I massively preferred him to the Archigram lot, who always seemed a bit too convinced that capitalistic progress and technological innovation were going to save us all.
A few stories about Price sum up his appeal for me: the first being when he tried to exploit a quirk of the British planning system to apply for a change of use on Buckingham Palace, turning it into a youth hostel; the second being when he successfully lobbied the RIBA to allow architects to propose that the best solution to a client's problem might
not be to build. (The anecdote at the bottom of
this page, suggesting that a couple get a divorce rather than an extension, is illustrative of this battle…)
His never-built
Fun Palace was probably the most high-profile of his projects. It will be featuring here quite soon, so long as I get around to writing again. For my money, though, I really love his "
Potteries Thinkbelt" scheme. What a way to put the old railways and collieries to use, eh?
As for garden cities. The ones in Brussels that seem to work best are small ones, which are integrated into the (sub)urban fabric. They provide an in-between that's not a park, nor a grey urban streetscape. They are a nice change of pace, and even people from around them will come to it's greener public spaces. The larger ones, and the more isolated ones don't seem to work that well, becoming sleeper towns, or ruined by the monotony of strict urbanistic guidelines. (In one much-revered garden city/neighbourhood, everyone has to paint their house the same colour. It's not even a nice colour, and the houses are all pretty much identical. But they are 'cute' and a bit like a cottage in shape, so it's supposedly great.)
I would echo all of this. The best projects, in my view, are those that don't overextend themselves, which keep to the village scale (or smaller) and allow for bottom-up development as much as overreaching schemes from above. The LCC architecture department in London produced quite a few of these sorts of estates in the middle of the last century, keeping things relatively low-rise (not above tree-height, as the Smithsons would dictate) and only taking up a couple of blocks or so – infill development, in other words. But these required a state (or local government, anyway) that had the means and the backing to think creatively about architecture, which went out of the window as an idea around the 1970s.
At the same time, of course, there were plenty of estates going up on the slum-clearance-and-systems-construction model, particularly in the devastated East End. These have not survived so well – but in Echoes, where London was never subject to an aerial bombing campaign, we can probably avoid this sort of planning. The world we have here will probably see a lot more time given to things like Rosemary Stjernstedt's exemplary work at Central Hill:
Ludicrously, this place has been denied listing (ie formal recognition of architectural significance) on multiple occasions – a reflection of the sorry way Britain treats the legacy of its 20th century women architects. (There's a decent AR article on the subject, incidentally, available to read
here.)
I'm very much convinced that car-centric infrastructure has ruined many decent interwar garden cities.
Once again, I am in total agreement with you. And I can only thank you for giving me an excuse to once again inflict André Gorz upon the good readers of this thread
by André Gorz The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle...
unevenearth.org
Then again, many of them already suffered from not having many job opportunities or shops, forcing the residents to commute.
Yes, this is also a vital aspect to consider. It's no use moralising about car use if an area has no amenities or job opportunities within walking distance – or at the very least a decent public transport network.
I think the problems are interlinked, to the extent that post war, there's going to be a massive empire summit on transport infrastructure and new housing. If every new build is going to have a public transport link, then garden cities will be the go to approach. If not, it'll be a mix of post war suburbia and modernist stuff anyway.
The problems are very much interlinked, particularly because, as you say…
But in this Britain, which does not have a practically unlimited budget, resources and blank canvas to work with, the issues are going to be hard to deal with. Especially because millions of workers are inevitably going to be displaced in the 70s and 80s.
…so we're very quickly going to be dealing with a pressing public debate on questions like full employment, regional economies, sustainable consumption and all the rest. Britain is in for a rough time no doubt, but two things it does have going for it are, one, a comparably low dependence on the car, and, two, a growing movement in favour of worker self-management and other things – in other words, a willingness to rethink the Keynesian consensus in a way that doesn't mean horrific unemployment and designed-in precarity.
There is hope however. These are the decades where many European cities did throw caution to the wind, widen the streets, ban cars and install trams and such. And hey, trams are very Labour intensive (as are lots of bus and inner city train routes). Maybe there's jobs and votes in this?
Trams are always good to have around the place.
...what... what happens....?
The complete collapse of mining and most factory systems.
The OTL was not a good time. 3 day weeks, no fuel, constant strikes etc. etc. And then in the 80s we have some wars and the AIDS crisis. And the Troubles as well, come to think. Not sure the last one will happen TTL but all the others could...
Yes… stormy times ahead. Which is of course why Volume 2 is (provisionally) subtitled "Crisis and Renewal in the Commonwealth of Britain". The Commonwealth is going to have to deal with most of what TBC brings up in some form or another.
I was about to say something about it but no one gave me the opening until here...
Fuck the devs who conspire to make all of my headers and graphics look bad.
I am so very glad that I decided against faking all of my transparencies…
That said, thank you for that link! I appreciate having something for a reference for other projects!
Always happy to help!
I was today reading about Italian colonial policy in Eritrea. They actually modernised that place more than, for example, Rome, before the Ethiopian War in '36.
I guess this gives a miniscule amount of precedence for my new roman empire to actually bother to rebuild its empire, not just the Italian bits. In fact, from the looks of things, Italy might be the bit that doesn't get changed much!
Since Russia has gone through pretty much all the five year plans before we got there, their industry and agriculture is probably pretty good by now. What they need is millions upon millions of homes for the new industrial workers. Hello concrete, my old friend...
Not Eritrea, and no doubt you're aware of this, but it may be generally interesting
In 1936, the pioneer of modernism offered Mussolini his design expertise for the capital of Ethiopia.
failedarchitecture.com
