Architecture and interior design thread

Well.

I broadly agree with critics of Robin Hood Gardens, the Barbican, and many other post-war housing projects. I do think that the vast majority didn't work, although I of course recognise the places that people were coming from in designing them; the desire to give people more light in their flats than had been the case before, the fact that while today Victorian (and other -ian) terraced houses may be considered the ideal of middle-class living, back then such housing was generally in a poor state, difficult to heat, lacking mod cons, etc. London was also shrinking in population, and planners wanted to loosen up the urban grain and reduce population density, decentralising slightly in the process (although in London this was largely limited to Inner London rather than what we now call Central London). I understand that there was a benevolent imperative behind much of this, but I think it failed due to a number of factors.

(1) The status quo. While there may have been idealistic architects around, there was still little appetite in society at large to really change the status quo.

(2) An excessively theoretical burden in experimenting with new forms. Much of what was tried was completely untested and then failed in practice.

My approach to and discontent with post-war architecture is firstly about the planning context in which they occurred. This was, of course, a 'car is king and the future' kind of context. Le Corbusier's 'theories' have already been mentioned, e.g. the idea of completely separating transport and living functions. This flight of fancy is now discredited almost everywhere, although the idea of urban motorways and ring roads has survived this. However, in practice it meant that where massive roads weren't imposed willy-nilly, leading to the destruction of large residential areas or cityscapes (as at the Westway), developments were built far back from the carriageways in order to later widen the roads when all old houses had been knocked down (which generally never happened). Developments were almost never positioned in such a way as to still have a relationship with the surrounding streets, e.g. being placed at odd angles. Vehicular access entrances, basement car parking, or other ugly services located at ground level served further to alienate people both from the streets and these buildings.

Another problem that for me comes first, long before I start to think about the style of architecture, is what I call '(contiguous) secondary networks', which a lot of new housing estates bombed into the existing primary network. I happen to believe that the simpler and the more readable you keep the primary network, ideally without any disruption from secondary networks, the better.

Many estates became self-contained no-go areas not because of screaming tabloid headline exaggerations, but because of the way access to them was offset from the 'old' network, because movement through them was actively discouraged by designers, because many were designed around car traffic only, or because, as in the Barbican, the attempt was made to have all traffic on foot circulate at first floor level (as per the Buchanan Report 'Traffic in Towns'). Many other examples of failed design ideas which led to the creation of secondary networks could be adduced.

The way in which a building, which even if public is largely impermeable, relates to the primary network of streets is an absolutely key consideration in design, long before any details or architectural styles are applied. When I look at RHG, I see a disconnected relic of a bygone age whose assumptions we don't share any more. Some people, I'm sure, would still today love the idea of 'streets in the sky'; most of those, however, who have lived on them, probably wouldn't, as it relied excessively on mere theories.

I like strong streets with lots of entrances so that there is activity, with small(ish) units, with a good mix of uses and buildings on a human scale, as part of a clearly-defined public realm that has a good mix of intimate streets and large(r) public spaces and clear rules for their use, as well as a lot of green.

I dislike intensely excessive concentration of functions, monocultures, confusing and disconnected secondary networks, blocks to permeability, layers and layers of variations of rules on how to use them (e.g. contiguous secondary networks on privately-developed estates like MORE London with their ban against cycling). I don't like tower blocks because I see them as built images of injustice.

So, blaming the architects is undoubtedly appropriate in some cases, but by far the more dominant factor was the spirit of the times, what people thought was good and future-proof and which proved not to be, and that was really motor traffic-centric planning. Many undoubtedly worked with the best of intentions, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

As ever, far more could be said on this topic, etc.