Poundbury - does it work?

[Nigel Watts]

I have just had a weekend break in Dorset. Yesterday I took a stroll around Poundbury, Prince Charles's model village. I was impressed by the single mindedness with which the project has been undertaken, and the one local couple I chatted to seemed very happy with it.

The place is still quite small and building continues, so maybe it is too early to judge, but I wonder if it is living up to its own objectives? Are the local businesses viable? Is the social mix working out? The liberal press and certain Labour ministers like belittling it, but whatever one thinks of the architectural style it strikes me as a courageous effort.

 

[Craig]

It cant be worse than other recent (post Eb.H?) efforts at new towns, can it? I think people rather like the scale at which its done.

 

[Penners]

If the row of houses pictured below had been built in the 18th and/or 19th century, we would all regard them as attractive, and built on a human scale, wouldn't we?

So I wonder why the fact that they were built only a decade or so ago prompts so many people to sneer and mutter words like "pastiche" and "toytown"?

I can only say that, given the choice between living in Poundbury or a modern "executive development" home, I'd choose the former every time.

 

[caliwag]

Agree entirely...despite academics, modernists and the rest of the white bunker brigade trying to tell us what's good for us, the vast majority want to live in a place with individuality and character...and if that can be manufactured, all the better for later maturity. Everybody wants a slice of "Country Life" quality...you don't see people queueing up to replicate Milton Keynes houses...the great architectural experiment of it's day!!
Indeed, people really aspire to scaled down (in the correct proportions, of course) Voysey, Baillie Scott, Lutyens et al...and especially the Red House, mentioned again in The Times' "careers in building" supplement (from our archive) "the fountainhead from which the revival of a sound, honest, and comfortable domestic architecture sprang" (Times May 1950)
Even Wayne Hemmingway has talked of Arts and Crafts architecture as being an inspiration.
Apart from the fact that schools of architecture don't really "do" houses, where has the understanding of history and the English house gone wrong?

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Agree entirely...despite academics, modernists and the rest of the white bunker brigade trying to tell us what's good for us,

White bunker:
Now listed and a sought after period type.

the vast majority want to live in a place with individuality and character.

Individuality and character - even thatch:View attachment 1
Popular, successful.

Everybody wants a slice of "Country Life" quality...you don't see people queueing up to replicate Milton Keynes houses...the great architectural experiment of it's day!!

Hmmm, houses in Milton Keynes:
View attachment 2
Ugh. But, precisely what is replicated across the UK.

knee-jerk "modern is bad" reaction now finds little favour outside an ivory tower occupied by HRH. (And I write as one who worked at Poundbury).

And far from being criticised by Labour, Poundbury has been praised by Prescott.

The thing that bothers me about it is the complete absence, among those who laud it, of any willingness to do more than think that putting on a fancy dress solves all the development problems we face - it's a better made fancy dress than most, but it's still a masquerade ball for the middle classes in the middle of a green field.

 

[Craig]

it's still a masquerade ball for the middle classes in the middle of a green field

Is it? I don’t know as I haven’t seen any info on make up, but it wasn’t intended to be, I think - its (perhaps inevitable) bucolic but that doesn’t have to make it middle class. Those poor people get everywhere, you know... :shock:

PS - MK is a great place to live though. very handy to get about, good housing, seperation of traffic, stuff to do. Looks a bit dull though.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

it's still a masquerade ball for the middle classes in the middle of a green field

Is it? I don’t know as I haven’t seen any info on make up, but it wasn’t intended to be, I think - its (perhaps inevitable) bucolic but that doesn’t have to make it middle class. Those poor people get everywhere, you know... :shock:

PS - MK is a great place to live though. very handy to get about, good housing, seperation of traffic, stuff to do. Looks a bit dull though.

Cheapest house currently for sale in Poundbury, 3 bed terrace, £275 000.
Cheapest 3 bed terrace currently for sale in neighbouring Dorchester, £169 000
More than eighty houses (house, not flats) for sale in Dorchester at a lower price than the cheapest in Poundbury

 

[Craig]

Hmm - Seems persuasive

 

[Gareth Hughes]

The serious problem with Poundbury is the same as the serious problem with every other (apparently) successful development of the last 150 years - having been praised as a success, and become known as a "model" development, it is imitated for a thousand debased successors, or rather, its most profitable, most noticeably "new" or "different", and most easily-reproducible elements (in Poundbury's case rather oddly-proportioned sub-Georgian facades) are reproduced by people who have no idea what they're looking at. (Fortunately, the Great British house-buying public are just as visually illiterate so the cycle continues)

The standard major developer's house types today are very different to those of twenty years ago and it's largely praise of Poundbury that's done it. The problem with this is that simply reproducing elements of the outward appearance is that it fails to grasp the principles behind the development (ideas of mixed use, of being within walking distance of facilities or workplaces - though these are frankly naive even at Poundbury because the workers and the dwellers are not - usually -the same), which actually have nothing to do with whatever "style" is veneered over the exteriors.

View attachment 1
As here - where a few details from the terrace form familiar from the earlier parts of Poundbury are plastered over a lump of new houses.


Or here, where a street that used to have continuous facades down each side is pointlessly disturbed by some oddly-detailed Quality Street stuff jumping back and forth along the pavement for the sake of "variety" and "interest".

The same thing happened with the Essex Design Guide in the seventies, where a document prepared to try to help new developments in one county respect and build on local traditions was indiscriminately used to plaster the whole country with tile hanging and weatherboarding.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

And some of Poundbury is quite staggeringly nasty, with far to much novelty for its own sake, some really shoddy supermarket standard detailing which gets through because it's Georgian rather than because it's good, and the great bucolic idyll exposed as a lie as soon as you pop into the traditional corner shop:View attachment 2View attachment 1

 

[Craig]

Anybody familiar with the army's recent building work at Middle Wallop?

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Anybody familiar with the army's recent building work at Middle Wallop?

Does it look like this?:

 

[Nigel Watts]

The development at Poundbury isn't just about giving the buildings old fashioned facades. There is much more to the planning than that. An attempt has been made to create a community with a mix of different types of housing and businesses mixed in together, not separately zoned, together with a number of public spaces with shops, a pub and a kind of Moot Hall. The streets are narrow and winding not just for picturesque effect but also to calm traffic and there is network of small lanes and mews off the main roads for car parking etc. It is the success or otherwise of this planning aspect that I was particularly wondering about.

The cheapest properties on the open market appear to be flats at around £170k, but I did see a housing association sign so there is probably also some subsidised housing.

 

[Nigel Watts]

Prezza may have liked Poundbury but Blears doesn't seem to:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=555889&in_page_id=1770

Jonathan Glancey in the Grauniad, another one of the snipers, falls into the same trap as HRH in not being able to see beyond the style (pastiche = bad for Glanners in exactly the same way that moderist = bad for Charley) to the more serious intent of creating a model community.

The aspiration, as embodied in the planning principles, seems admirable to me. I wanted to like the architecture but was a little underwhelmed. One or two of the buildings now going up seem a little more interesting.

 

[Craig]

Blears comment:

She likened the village to 19th century projects in which industrialists built new communities to house factory workers, citing Bournville in Birmingham and Saltaire, West Yorkshire.

Seems a bit daft - what was wrong with these places? The people who lived there were, I suspect, a lot better than those left in Brum and Bradford. Is it that she resents the lack of state sponsorship?

In the attempt to create a suitable community, Poundbury is no different in its aim to Welwyn, Cumbernauld (!) or Milton Keynes though - but you would appear to be correct that no-body looks past the facades. Surely though their success is judged by whether people want to live there or not and not by whether they are interesting to architects?

The resident in my house in 1850 eventaully wrote a memoir desribing the Georgian street as dull. So its all fashion...

 

[caliwag]

I go back to my hobbyhorse of Ralph Erskine's Byker...one of the best mass housing projects in the UK, if not the best in the twentieth century. It was democratically developed, with the architect's offices on site. Future residents, if interested, could play around with models to modify internal layouts and were given advice on garden planting etc.
The layout is very pedestrian friendly using the concept of self policing (pedestrians watching ne'er do wells, occupants watching the pedestrians!...sort of neighbourhood watch.
The architects retained the local pub and included shops.
The Scandinavian stained boarding is to taste of course, but was chosen in a time, in that part of the world, where housing was entirely terra cotta or grey.
In many parts of the country we now have yellow, green, blue ceramic facades, so Ralph was rather ahead of his time.
OK anti-social behaviour has taken it's toll on communal rooms, play and picnic areas and the lush planting, but that really is a different issue...one of giving kids encouragement and naturing, rather beyond the scope of any architect.
Anyone any info on recent refurb proposals? I understand that several teams of architects were asked to explore ways of improvement. One I heard on the radio was suggesting to local kids (at a loose end of course) that there might be provision of on site training in car mechanics and trades. This was met with great enthusiasm from the assembled "radio" kids. Anyone know if any of this happened?
Charles might not have got on with Ralph as there was not a bit of classicism nor Englishness come to that...but that's all mere facadism isn't it?

 

[Nemesis]

Mind, in order to build 'they' had to demolish quite a lot and wasn't universally popular when built... but it's now listed of course.

Disaffected yoof - not new. Not then, not now, not exclusive to Newcastle...

 

[Craig]

Re the Middle Wallop suggestion - no, nothing like that - they built a very attractive series of streets. A bit Poundbury-ish maybe but less chocolate box. Of course, its the army so it has a certain neat-ness!

Byker. I found the scale a bit over-bearing. Nice colour though. Pity they had to knock so much down. Newcastle's terraces were unloved for a long time.

 

[Penners]

The serious problem with Poundbury is the same as the serious problem with every other (apparently) successful development of the last 150 years - having been praised as a success, and become known as a "model" development, it is imitated for a thousand debased successors

But surely that's not the fault of the Poundbury project. It's the fault of the "debased successors" - those who designed them and those who permitted them to be built.

Any successful design in whatever field (no pun intended) will always spawn poor quality copies from quick-buck merchants. That doesn't devalue the original, does it?

 

[vicky whitworth]

Strikes me that Poundbury started out easy on the eye but has now degenerated. The development is vast, bleak, desolate and stikes me as about as far away from a community spirit as you can get. It's intruding onto the rural areas and is a blot close to the gorgeous Maiden Castle. It reminds me of a prison. When we were trying to move down here the estate agents used to apologise that all they could show us were properties in Poundbury. Of course there are lot worse developments but this is supposed to be a showcase. Sorry it doesn't do it for me.