Colonel Seifert's village
Rowan Moore
T°glance through Richard Seifert's publicity brochure is a curious ex- perience. Nestling among the granite and mirror glass, colossal banks in Alexandria and Cairo, Centre Point, the 'Singapore Theme Park', is a section called 'Villages'. A watercolour perspective shows steeply pitched and hipped roofs, contented residents, bricks, tiles, mature trees, and yachts rocking gently at their moorings. The accompanying text explains: 'the tran- quil harmony of traditional village life will be recreated in the various dockland hamlets which the practice has recently designed . . Throughout there will be a feeling of natural growth, a freedom of movement and a sense of complete com- munity', One of these 'hamlets', designed for Limehouse in the East End, is currently the subject of a public inquiry.
Those who associate Seifert and his prac- tice with much of the devastation of the City and other parts of London may ask whether the firm has undergone a sudden enlightenment. The answer, regrettably but unsurprisingly, is no.
In their statement to the inquiry the prac- tice emphasise the extent of the public spaces in the scheme (largely imposed on them after months of discussion with the London Docklands Development Corpora- tion), Under the heading 'scheme concept' they talk of a 'sequence of townscapes from water into feature areas and courtyards' and elsewhere in the statement, of 'feature courts and focal areas'. The architecture described by this meaningless jargon is ac- cordingly pointless and empty. Moreover, in arrangement at least, it differs very little from the developments of the Sixties we have come to hate so much: clusters of blocks (containing luxury homes and of- fices) are set more or less randomly in a shapeless landscape of car parks, limp plan- ting and trashy lamp standards. For all the appeal to tradition, there is no attempt to understand the qualities of traditional town planning: in particular, through the use of streets, squares, terraces and gardens, the ordering of public and private places, and of the diverse life of a city, into a rich and intelligible hierarchy. Villages have been no better understood by the architects, nor even suburbia, which would seem to be the main inspiration. How many villages can boast 107,000 square feet of offices?
It should also be obvious that nothing could be more inappropriate to London's docks than a slice of East Anglian fishing village inhabited by City workers. Limehouse basin is a noble expanse of water overlooked by one of the most remarkable buildings in England, Hawksmoor's church of St Anne, as well as some impressive 18th- and 19th-century in- dustrial buildings. The architects are very proud that they are not demolishing these although, as listed, there is no real alter- native. They have also failed to establish any sort of relationship between the new building and the old (much of which is obscured from view), other than through 'views and vistas' of St Anne's. It would, in fact, be a work of rare genius to obscure the church's enormous tower. Much of the basin is actually built over; what remains is trivialised by the banal and pretentious architecture, 'The materials', to quote the architects again, 'will be of an indigenous nature, hand-made bricks, clay roof tiles, timber verandahs . . .' Indigenous to where? One would be hard put to find either clay tiles or timber verandahs among Limehouse's sur- Viving Georgian and Victorian buildings.
All this would matter less if Limehouse was not an area with its own traditions and historical associations. (The more pictures- que of these include graphic descriptions in Dickens, a stint as London's red light district and the inauguration of the Social Democratic Party.) Limehouse suffered badly during and after the war and is now one of the deprived inner city areas about which everyone is so concerned. Until its closure as a commercial dock in 1969, the 'It's a Syrian Cruise missile.' basin and the nearby churchyard con- stituted the centre of Limehouse, and its redevelopment offers the best, probably the only chance of reversing the area's pro- gressive loss of identity and character.
Although luxury homes and offices may not be intrinsically bad things, they can never constitute the centre of a district. The architects say that the proposed sports club, 'Marina facilities', restaurants, pubs, supermarket and 'community youth water activity' will give new life to the area, and that the development as a whole will generate local employment. However, the scheme is too large to be handled by any local contractor, while the offices are plac- ed obsessively close to a railway station, to facilitate instant escape. The various 'recreational facilities' would have been a generous gesture, had they not largely been imposed by outside agencies. In any case they bear little relation to local needs or wishes — the emphasis is rather on holiday use by outsiders — and are situated as far as possible from the existing centre of Limehouse (by the church), thus establishing a rival rather than a com- plementary zone. The pubs and restaurants seem to be primarily oriented towards tourists arriving in Greenwich-bound boats.
Not all the weaknesses of the scheme are entirely the fault of the architects. Presumably its content was primarily deter- mined by Seifert's clients, the developers Hunting Gate. The fascination with car parking and the belief that listed buildings alone constitute the character of an area is shared by many architects and planners. Perhaps, however, the greatest portion of blame attaches to the British Waterways Board, who own the land, and to their pro- foundly unimaginative handling of the site. For ten 'years following the closure of the site the BWB made no attempt to develop it. All local initiatives and suggestions were ignored, sound buildings were allowed to decay and the dereliction spread to surroun- ding areas. Eventually, after a competition pockmarked with irregularities, Hunting Gate and Seifert were announced the win- ners. Their scheme was said to be `sucessful visually, architecturally and from a com- munity .point of view', though, as both local opinion and professional advice, in- cluding that of the BWB's own architect, were spurned, one wonders how this was known. Oddly enough, Richard Seifert was once a member of the BWB board; this has led to some unpleasant remarks.
There is yet another organisation involved, the London Docklands Development Cor- poration. This is a quango created under Michael Heseltine to ensure, inter alia, 'a lasting regeneration of the docklands' and 'high architectural and design standards'. It has often been argued that the Corpora- tion's aims are excessively limited in view of the size of its responsibility. At Limehouse it has failed even to stand by these aims: there is no reason to suppose that the development (which the LDDC is suppor- ting before the inquiry) will lead to 'lasting regeneration'. 'High architectural and
design standards' have clearly not been at- tained.
The LDDC also has a commitment to rapid development and is responsible for an area eight miles in length, the boundaries of which are arbitrarily drawn, take no ac- counit of the immediate hinterland, and cut through the territory of some of the most left-wing boroughs in London. (It is, of course, quite fantastic that such a vast area of the capital should be at the mercy of civil servants.) The boroughs justifiably resent the intrusion. The leader of Tower Hamlets Council (which has, in the past, happily continued the work of the Luftwaffe in Limehouse) once described the LDDC as 'the closest to total dictatorship any British government has ever come'. Given all this the likely losers would appear to be Limehouse, the docklands and their in- habitants.
There is a way out of this nightmare. It involves some understanding of the peculiarities of each area, attention to public opinion, and the commissioning of architects capable of decent and sensitive work. (Such architects do exist.) It would also help if an area as important and as large as Limehouse basin (nearly a quarter of a mile long) was not entrusted to a single developer. These points were made three years ago by the Limehouse Development Group, an intelligent and articulate local body. Had they been listened to at the time, there would have been no need for a long and expensive inquiry.
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