The Estate We're In

These two books, ostensibly vastly different, actually form a kind of weird odd-couple double act in articulating current attitudes to houses and housing. Note that houses are a different proposition than housing here. Aslet's book - The English House - is emphatically about the former while Hanley's is about the latter.

Houses are popularly characterised like people - as individuals with foibles, eccentricities, charm (or otherwise) and character. Housing on the other hand is usually characterised as faceless, bureaucratic and anonymous. While houses are supposed to foreground individual craft in construction housing reputedly employs the techniques of Fordist mass-production. Strangely the success of developers like Wimpey or Barratt over the last twenty to thirty years has been in promoting an image of the former while actually employing the latter. If modernism's dream of mass production has ever come close to fruition in architecture it is certainly not in the guise that we expected it.

Aslet's book positions the house at the heart of (English) social history and organisation. This is important because, for him, the history of the house reinforces a particular conception of Englishness. Not only is the (rightful) social order seen as mirroring the gradation of houses running from the grand country residence to the rural hovel, but this order is seen as strangely impervious to overhaul. Any attempt to change the natural order is viewed as both doomed and - in that great term used by all people trying to bury their ideological agenda below a layer of common sense bullshit - social engineering. So Aslet ignores most of the 20th century out of a mixture of political distaste and architectural disinterest. At the point at which modernism and large scale social housing arrives Aslet departs, only returning for a brief coda on, of all people, Laurie Chetwood. In between he leaves a great big hole.

Lynsey Hanley's book describes the hole. Estates is about housing; collective, large scale, repetitive housing. Good though it is it too seems trapped within a standard (if understandable in her case) aversion to modernist architecture and its supposed inhumanity, and a belief that personal identity can't be cultivated or inscribed within collective housing developments.

In some ways the values and attitudes prevalent in Aslet's book contaminate any conversation or approach to the issues highlighted in Hanley's. We cannot disassociate houses from their symbolic value within an economy. The success of houses is seen to lie almost exclusively in two areas: in their ability to articulate our social and economic aspiration and in their speculative value.

Posted below then is my review of Clive Aslet's book, slightly improbably to be found furtively loitering in last month's issue of Icon.

The House Of The Past

Just what is it that makes yesterday’s homes so different, so appealing? Over 30 million people visit stately homes annually in the UK. The National Trust has grown to 3.5 million members in recent years, making it by far the biggest conservation group in Europe. Countless period dramas further sate our seemingly endless appetite for gazing at the sumptuous interiors of historic homes. Clive Aslet’s book The English House is very much a part of this nostalgia industry.

The English House is a pretty loaded title for a start. It suggests something innately distinctive and valuable in both England and its houses. Immediately it puts us in the realm of a highly mythologised Englishness where country estates and the families that own them are seen as an organic part of our heritage.

Aslet is the former editor of Country Life a magazine so this should be no surprise. Country Life occupies a very particular place in British culture as the in-house journal for the land-owning classes. It’s the place to look if you are planning to purchase a few acres outside Cheltenham, or want to announce the forthcoming marriage of your daughter, accompanied by a picture of her fondling a horse. Only the former editor of Country Life for example could describe Milton Keynes as “occupying 22,000 acres of formerly good hunting country". As a sentence it’s hard to top for sheer beside-the-point snobbism.

From this lofty vantage point the author uses a gently novelistic style to tell the stories of a number of individual houses in the manner of an invigorating country ramble. He begins in the 12th Century with a Norman Manor and strides on, flat cap on and walking stick in hand, past a Tudor mansion, a castle by Vanbrugh, a Georgian townhouse, a worker's terrace in an industrial mill town, Edwin Lutyen's Marshcourt, an early 20th century semi and a post war pre-fab.

It sounds on the face of it a plausibly eclectic selection. But there are just two entries from the 20th Century: the suburban semi is from 1905 and the pre-fab is a curiosity within the wider scheme of things. There is a gaping hole in this book and it is modernism. Its high points are mentioned only in passing, almost as an aberrant phase when England became temporarily influenced by obscure continental notions. Aslet dismisses a vast swathe of the history of houses, as they don't fit into his quaint geneology of "Englishness". It's a shame because I would like to see one of the book's delightful pencil sketches depicting a nice bit of Brutalism.

"Little about the English House was colourful in the 1950's, ‘60's and ‘70's" Aslet declares, sweepingly. It is Thatcherism that, according to him, brings the colour back to England's cheeks. The percentage of home ownership in the UK went from 54% to 65% during the 1980's as a direct result of Margaret Thatcher's Right to Buy policy. Aslet suggests that this policy together with our obsession with home ownership is the logical end point of the English love of houses.

The English House is more an example of this obsession than an analysis of it. The final chapter is entitled Whatever Next?, a phrase epitomising a very English penchant for mocking innovation. Nothing in this book is allowed to be in the least bit disagreeable. Instead, the author remains in thrall to a self-perpetuating myth of loveable English eccentrics and their charming houses. This amiable conservatism hides an ideologically driven fear of change though. In that sense, the books startling lack of interest in the architecture of the last century is entirely consistent. It is a lament for a lost England.

The impossibility of death in the mind of someone living

A friend of mine sent me these. The black and white shots (taken I think from Ellis Woodman's new book on James Gowan) show Gowan's 1978 housing scheme in Chelmsford, Essex. The colour ones below are from an estate agent's advert from a month ago showing the same properties now.

The success of Gowan's work (as opposed to many architect designed housing estates of the time) could be defined by the degree to which it has been transformed by those that live in it. Far from being a failure because it no longer looks much like architecture (or what we understand architecture to look like) it might actually be its ability to develop and change over time that is important. This runs contrary to the accepted idea of successful architecture which is seen as having a definitive image, a moment of perfection from which it can only really be compromised.

Like the Dixon Jones scheme mentioned in the previous post (and, apparently, admitted to as a failure by the architects) the assumption is that if the architect's original aesthetic has been altered significantly, then the design hasn't worked. There is of course another way to look at this which is that successful housing exists in time as well as space, as a process as much as a singular object.

It's interesting to note that Gowan's former partner James Stirling's Runcorn housing - formally more successful in traditional architectural terms than the Chelmsford scheme - ended in demolition, rather than adaptation.

UPDATE: There are more and much better pictures of Gowan's project here, in the wonderfully titled photo set Essex (which also features the Art Deco/Moderne houses at Silver End, previously posted on). They also appear on the excellent flickr site Stirling, Gowan and Wilford.

No Cigar

(Nautilus House, Senosiain Arquitectos)

So, we went to the World Architecture Awards, didn't win anything but spent a lot of time hanging around looking at an awful lot of architecture, or at least an awful lot of drawings of architecture.

This exposure showed up some interesting differences between what's going on in the UK and elsewhere. Amongst other things this includes the pragmatism of much UK architecture, particularly in the (semi) public sector with its PFI procurement methods and endless value engineering. It was also evident in the housing category where a scheme like BIG's winning entry has a kind of no holds barrred typological vivaciousness not seen in the UK. Whilst BIG's architecture could be accused of a slick approximation of avant gardism, not to mention an apolitical collision of radical chic and ruthlessly high density development, it also has a bracing chutzpah a million miles from much of the drab conversations about housing in the UK. Similarly, MVRD's shortlisted Parkrand housing has a surreal audaciousness, even down to the giant plant pots, that mitigates against (inevitable) accusations of hollow formalism.

My personal favourite though was in the private housing category. Nautilus House is an extraordinary piece of biomorphism designed by the Mexican Senosiain Arquitectos. Part Bruce Goff, part Barbarella and with a bit of Terry Gilliam thrown in, it was described with admirably deadpan pragmatism by its architect Javier Senosiain. For more, including a variety of animal shaped houses, check out his website here.

Come Into My Yard (I've Got So Much Love to Show You)

There is an intelligent and informative post on the phenomena of the Eco Town (or more precisely the phenomena of antipathy to the Eco Town) at Kosmograd. I particularly liked the table linking the celebrity protesters associated with each proposed Eco Town site. What hope for Middle Quinton with the combined forces of Bergerac and Jilly Cooper up against it?

Nimbyism is deeply ingrained in UK culture, the default setting for almost anyone faced with proposals for anything from a change in the bin collection routine to the building of new towns and villages. In fact, even if the development is nowhere near your back yard it is usually assumed to be an unwelcome intrusion into the normal order of things. The mantra that links all the Eco Protesters is not that they are not against new houses per se, you understand, just not on this particular site. That this particular site also happens to be where they live is purely coincidental. No doubt Dame Judi Dench is passionately committed to new housing rather than acting out of pure self interest in protecting her beloved Stratford.

Having said all that, it's true that the architecture of most of the proposed towns is fairly banal and genuine issues of transportation and infrastructure may render their sustainability claims dubious at best. What I do question though is the assumption that all new housing can be contained within existing cities on brownfield sites. Less than 10% of the landmass of the UK is currently built on and the tired spectre of developers concreting over the countryside does nothing to aid debates about how to provide new housing.

That housing is provided by developers who, almost uniquely in our Late Capitalist times, are the only people demonised for making money doesn't help either. Alright, that might sound a bit naive but, frankly, if the Government were to disband their Delivery Vehicles and Regeneration Agencies and simply build the Eco Towns themselves I still can't see Dame Judi welcoming them with open arms.

Kosmograd's post is far more sceptical of Eco Towns than I have been here. I do not quite share the adversity to places like Poundbury of my profession, in many ways preferring it to the Esperanto of light modernism churned out by supposedly more contemporary architects. If the Eco Towns do not conform to a professional notion of what constitutes Good Design, then that may ultimately matter less than the current inequalities of the housing market. It could equally be said that the entirely negative culture within which new housing is discussed feeds into the generally low standard of architecture expected.

Also, surely anything objected to by both Tim Henman's Dad and the Top Gear team must have some merits?* Less facetiously, I cannot help thinking that any attempts to build new housing in this country outside of some isolated spots in the east end of London are met with derision and an entirely selfish desire to keep everyone else out. Discuss.

* Check out the website for Weston Otmoor here and the developers for it here, although it won't encourage you much.

The Ideal Stress Free Sustainable Spotless 0 % Balance Transferred Life

Review: The Ideal Home Show 2006, Earls Court.

Since 1908 the Ideal Home show has charted mainstream British taste in houses and interiors. Not much has changed stylistically it seems, but the show has never really embraced architectural notions of progress, either formal or technological. If technology is celebrated here it is in the ability to minutely adjust your armchair or comes hidden in the pre-fabricated panels behind t+g cladding. Here, architecture – to the horror of architects – is no longer about abstract space or challenging geometry but psychological well-being and domestic comfort.

This year’s theme is sustainability and is represented by an enormous fake waterfall. Somewhere nearby lurk Channel 5’s Justin Ryan and Colin McAllister and their spectacular tree house in its “authentic rainforest setting”. Justin and Colin loom large over the show with their brand of metropolitan snobbism and shameless stylistic globe-trotting. Their Asian Influences bedroom (“Hey, even the paint used to decorate the walls is from the Breathe Easy collection by Crown”) typifies the show’s notion of sustainability as mainly to do with celebrating the earthy hues of exotic locales. So, their bedroom also uses “…fabrics woven in the far east by fairly paid workers” as if using fabrics woven in Brentwood by fairly paid workers would be utterly unsustainable.

Away from this billowy rhetoric the exciting action seems to be upstairs at the cheapo end where a furiously competitive market exists for highly toxic cleaning products and futuristic steam irons. Snake oil sellers of a never-to-be-achieved spotless domesticity demonstrate Amazing Pasta Storage Jars, weird robotic hoovers and Magic Saucepans. There’s also some sub Jack Vetriano artworks and vast armies of people selling you Spanish timeshares, botox injections, 0% balance transfers and eye massage glasses. Overall, upstairs as well as down, there is an astonishing number of products related to stress relief and relaxation. Much of the show is taken up by vast and slightly scary looking massage chairs, complete with digital consoles and heat sensors to (supposedly) locate your personal areas of pain and discomfort. Hundreds of jacuzzi’s lined like mother of pearl oysters and festooned with action packed nozzles and rubber water jets, take up much of the other half. What else is there? Well, some fairly anodyne furniture, the occasional bronze leopard or chrome nude, some celebrity chefs and a few bits of interesting new design. It’s not unlike 100% Design, 98% design maybe, but where the innovation is in cleaning products.

Ultimately, the Ideal Home show is about the home as a sanctuary from modern life: a repository for any number of labour saving devices and home spas and ergonomic dining chairs. As Adolf Loos wrote at the beginning of the 20th century, the modern house is a haven from the existentially alienating urban environment. Hence all the massage chairs and fish tanks. Outside, the world is creased, stained and stressful. Inside, all is steam pressed, deep down clean and profoundly relaxing. In its way it’s not that far either from Archigram’s 1960’s dream of the electronic cottage or the well serviced capsule home. It doesn’t look like that for sure – there are no roundy corners or space race styling – but the clapboard covered ideal homes on show are mass-produced, super insulated, custom fitted environments. Relax in your spotless Dyson hoovered Asian Influences front room, set the massage seat to 30 minute Shiatsu, sip some decaffeinated fair trade coffee from your super sized Crazy Frog mug and watch Desperate Housewives on the Plasma screen: the Ideal Life.