HRH and carbuncles

[Nemesis]

He's been at it again today:


http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=725&storycode=3105363&c=1&encCode=00000000014455bb


And bloody good on him too.

 

[Penners]

Yes, there's a piece on this in the Torygraph this morning, including an artist's impression of what the currently planned new buildings will look like when they're all finished.

Things of beauty and a joy forever? Guess....

 

[Nemesis]

More links to articles here:

http://independentrepublicofthecanongate.blogspot.com/


Only a few days to go before the Caltongate planning meeting, which is going to run and run I think... (I hope...).

 

[Moo]

Odd, isn't it, that a Royal is so often much more in tune with what the mass of ordinary people feel than are the elected politicians.

 

[Nemesis]

Torygraph link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=BLOGDETAIL&grid=F11&blog=yourview&xml=/news/2008/02/01/view01.xml

 

[Penners]

Odd, isn't it, that a Royal is so often much more in tune with what the mass of ordinary people feel than are the elected politicians.

I wonder whether it's anything to do with the fact that yer Royal is in the job for life - no worries about campaigning for re-election, etc. So more able to devote real, undiverted energy to public projects and interests.

 

[Nemesis]

Except that for so much of his life HRH has been derided for so many of his views.

 

[Nemesis]

Text of full speech:

http://www.eh8.org.uk/

Please sign the petition:

http://www.eh8.org.uk/petition

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Nem

I seem to recall your passion for the Gateshead car park and the Tricorn Centre, so I wonder how you square that with HRH's typically ill-informed and sweeping generalisations about the architecture of the post war era, for example:

"the builders of that era [the 1960s] also ripped apart many town and city centres for enclosed shopping malls and parking structures, many of which have also been taken down...we cannot afford to repeat these mistakes"

The problem with the Prince is that he has ridiculously fixed ideas about architectural style and "tradition" (whiatever that means), and I fear the notion that he's "in touch with the public" on this is only true if "the public" consists entirely of 60 year old f@rts who didn't have as much fun as they should have during the Summer of Love.

You'll find that the younger generation is quite happy to see non-traditional buildings (see Grand Designs etc etc), even in sensitive settings. I'm in two minds about it but the idea that HRH has a clue about it is just as much nonsense as it's always been.

If someone is going to remove all the tower blocks from London and restore the Wren skyline, then great - but it ain't gonna happen. That doesn't mean I think Smithfield should be destroyed to build new stuff, but in London at least we're lumbered with tall buildings and what is needed (but doesn't yet exist) is an overall vision of arranging the new ones so that they groups together more successfully than the current crop which tend to look like a diseased asparagus patch from most viewpoints.

 

[Nemesis]

I think there's much in what he says, and I think there's much in what you say. But I can't see why we list buildings, have conservation areas, declare World Heritage Sites, unless we really do our utmost to protect those. And what he was saying was that tall buildings should be built in clusters. In places like Canary Wharf, not in the WHS. So read his speech!!!

The argument has been made that London must build tall buildings in order to protect its place as a
global financial centre. While this argument doesn’t in any way apply to the dozens of
undistinguished blocks of one and two bedroom flats being built all over the city, surely business
seeks glamorous buildings? If this is so, then Canary Wharf already provides, like La Défense, a
place for those statements of corporate aspiration to be made. Why can they not be concentrated
there, rather than overshadowing Wren’s and Hawksmoor’s churches? My concern is that London
will become just like everywhere else with the same homogenized buildings that express nothing
but outdated unsustainability. It may be very surprising to some that the preferred location for many
hedge funds and the new private equity firms is neither the City or Canary Wharf, but Mayfair, St.
James’s and Belgravia, thus demonstrating the enduring appeal of the mixed-use, mid-rise, human
scale city quarter.
So, the key point I want to make is that I am not opposed to all tall buildings. My concern is that
they should be considered in their context; in other words, they should be put where they fit
properly. If new vertical cul-de-sacs are to be built, then it seems self-evident to me that they should
stand together to establish a new skyline, and not compete with or confuse what is currently there –
as has already happened to a depressing and disastrous extent.
If clustered, then the virtue of height becomes something that can, in the hands of creative
architects, be truly celebrated. This solution, so clearly the case in Manhattan or La Défense in
Paris, requires locations where intrusion into historically protected views, either at height or at street
level, can be avoided, and is, therefore, difficult to justify in places such as the City of London
where the pressure to build at height is often greatest.

http://www.eh8.org.uk/files/PrinceCharles.pdf

I don't think he's as out of touch as you think either.

Bath, Edinburgh - the malls are being torn down. Some were really, really bad. The one going up in Bath I think may prove to be pretty bad too. The hearts were torn out of many places in the sixties and seventies to build crap. Newcastle was one of those. Eldon Square!


But at the moment, there's nothing more I can do about Smithfield, and a helluva lot I can do about Caltongate, another which will be a carbuncle.

It's not the buildings per se always, it's the effect they have on others around them, and what will be destroyed in their building.

Car Park - should not have been built really, much of Gateshead detroyed at the time though, (yes I was around at the time...) but now it's there it's better than the crud which will replace it! And so many 'brutalist' buildings of that era are vanishing, we should save something for posterity! I had no passion for the Tricorn Centre. I never saw it in context, the car park I know very, very well.

All great architects have their off days too.

I have no problem either with sensitive modern design in the right place. I was about the first to stick up for the Poultry Market, and point out it isn't a concrete lump which destroys the Jones enfilade (ignore the idiots who are splashed in BD this week - know not of what they speak) but a clever re-working of the 19th c 'classical wrap and dome ' market hall, which no-one seems to have argued with.

I like the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Embra, Neil Simpson. A very sympathetic piece of work. I like a great deal of his work actually.

Click on pic top left:

http://www.neilsimpsonarchitects.co.uk/aboutnsa.htm

I like the Scottish parliament, I think it time it will be considered as great a work as the English one, or the Waterhouse Manchester Town Hall ( a Victorian lump I'm amazed wasn't torn down in the sixties...)

But I think so many 'look at me' buildings are simply carbuncles.

I dislike the gherkin - not as a building, had it been put in Canary Wharf, but where it is is simply wrong, At ground level it doesn't work, and so many views of it don't either.

 

[Penners]

this is only true if "the public" consists entirely of 60 year old f@rts

Spot on - my demographic succinctly summed up.

who didn't have as much fun as they should have during the Summer of Love.

Ah, now there you've missed the target by a considerable margin.

 

[Nemesis]

But I suspect I'm less of a fart than Gareth ... :wink:

Summer of Love? Only one?

 

[Flyfisher]

Car Park - should not have been built really, much of Gateshead detroyed at the time though, (yes I was around at the time...) but now it's there it's better than the crud which will replace it! And so many 'brutalist' buildings of that era are vanishing, we should save something for posterity!

I hesitate to post this question, but I find this all very confusing.

If a building is so bad that it should not have been built, why does it suddenly become worth protecting for posterity? Perhaps it's a fashion thing and what's pig ugly and a blot on the landscape in one decade suddenly becomes highly desirable for protection a few decades on?

Against such a background, how can we ever hope to make sensible planning/design decisions?

I agree with Gareth about HRH's overly-traditionalist views. Surely they risk stifling any progress - and without progress we would not have the wealth of architecture that we enjoy today. Perhaps the odd mistake is the price of progress?

 

[Penners]

If a building is so bad that it should not have been built, why does it suddenly become worth protecting for posterity?

Maybe we should preserve one of everything, no matter how awful, and then erect a large sign that says "let's not ever do this again".

What's the old saying about "those who ignore the mistakes of history are condemned to repeat them"?

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Car Park - should not have been built really, much of Gateshead detroyed at the time though, (yes I was around at the time...) but now it's there it's better than the crud which will replace it! And so many 'brutalist' buildings of that era are vanishing, we should save something for posterity!

I hesitate to post this question, but I find this all very confusing.

If a building is so bad that it should not have been built, why does it suddenly become worth protecting for posterity? Perhaps it's a fashion thing and what's pig ugly and a blot on the landscape in one decade suddenly becomes highly desirable for protection a few decades on?

Against such a background, how can we ever hope to make sensible planning/design decisions?

Good question. Hideous impractical dust-trap St Pancras Station in the 60s is now wonderful St Pancras (with one hideous statue and one great one of St John Betjeman - who wrote a letter in the 70s congratulating Denys Lasdun on the design of now generally thought to be hideous National Theatre). The art of Conservation is trying to stay one step ahead of public "taste" / fashion.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PAL/is_515_161/ai_n13499298

And it really is (almost) a pure fashion thing. The new appraisal for the Norwich City Centre Conservation Area describes Westlegate Tower as a "negative" landmark ripe for demolition and replacement, whereas the 1997 revised Pevsner, in my view, gets it right by drawing attention to the striking composition and colouful details as a better attempt than most to fit a modernist building - and a tower at that - into the city. Thus the 1997 publication is more ahead of the game than the City Council ten years later. (of course, the City's denigration of the tower could be an attempt to provide a nice profitable development site...)

 

[Nemesis]

I find it unbelievable that people are saying HRH has 'over-traditionalist views' when he clearly hasn't.

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/news/wales-news/2007/12/19/the-design-commission-for-wales-highlights-two-developments-as-examples-of-good-practice-91466-20267199/

But what he has articulated in his speech are concerns felt by many informed commentators. Of all ages.

Car Park - it's the old demolition game again. What was demolished should not have been.

And here's the problem. As at Smithfield. And would have been at Paddington if we hadn't made a bit of a song and dance...

PADDINGTON STATION HERITAGE
Westminster council are to debate plans to demolish one of the glass canopies that covers the tracks out of London's Paddington Station. John Wilson discusses the pros & cons with Adam Wilkinson of Save Britain's Heritage and Architecture & Design Journalist Paul Finch .
Listen to the discussion


http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/frontrow/frontrow_20030730.shtml

Now let's think - borin old fart AW - born 1975...

 

[Penners]

Ultimately, throughout all of this kind of discussion, don't we come back to the same old aphorism:

In matters of taste there can be no argument.

One man's masterpiece is another's heap of sh*te.

 

[Nemesis]

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3105430&origin=BDweeklydigest

Malcolm Fraser. He of the proposed carbuncle I'm part of those trying to prevent in Edinburgh.

http://www.eh8.org.uk/

 

[Nemesis]

Can we all agree that apart from the architect and his mum and Norwich Union, this was always a heap of sh*te and we are glad to see the back of it?

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/tm_objectid=16829942&method=full&siteid=50081&headline=eyesore-coming-down-name_page.html

 

[Nemesis]

Can we all agree that apart from the architect and his mum and Norwich Union, this was always a heap of sh*te and we are glad to see the back of it?

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/tm_objectid=16829942&method=full&siteid=50081&headline=eyesore-coming-down-name_page.html

http://tinyurl.com/29f9rd