Design
Stout Parties and High Living
By KENNETH J. ROBINSON LAST week Sir Kenneth Clark very nearly defined good taste as the taste of a bottle of stout. In his one-man ITV show Sir Kenneth used the minimum of props (two furnished rooms, some pottery and a few fabrics) and the maximum of tact in explaining Just what good 'taste was not. 'It is not this,' he said, as he stepped into a white and elegant room, with spindly furniture, simple shapes and the hallmark of the glossy magazine; 'I couldn't open a bottle of stout in such a place.' This was good, esoteric stuff. You had to know quite a lot about design to know why a bit of Restrained Contemporary was being attacked; and you had to know even more about Sir Ken- neth t'o know that he didn't really mean that a bottle-opener was the key to good design. After he had confused the argument a little by relaxing in a poor man's version of Lily Langtry's drawing- room, and claiming that this was both bad taste and suitable for stout parties, he defined taste as a highly personal thing—something that had noth- ing to do with being well born or liking good paintings; something that could even be improved, as the Government had realised when they set up the Council of Industrial Design. And then, with a slickneSs that deceived the mind, he disappeared from view—without giving us his own interpreta- tion of a room furnished in good taste.
This was a clever way of dealing with a tricky subject. But it was entertainment for the con- verted. You can never really tell a mass audience what good taste is. The best you can hope for is that it won't turn round, when you've finished talk- ing about design, and ask you who you think you are anyway. And that, I'm sure, is a question no viewer wanted to ask the amiably dogmatic Sir Kenneth.
It is, however, a question that has been asked recently by the inhabitants of a Middlesex suburb of characterless respectability. 'Who,' the cry has gone up in Boston Manor, 'do They think They are?' In this case They are assumed to be a set of dictators who intend to knock down all the rows of pretty little semi-dets and put -up high buildings instead. The fear of Them has been so great that the price of house property in the area has trembled and the Middlesex County Council has consulted its planning committee to find out what They are up to.
In fact They are a group of architects who have produced a purely academic exercise showing how a 'living suburb' could be built in place of a life- less one. These architects (Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, Graeme Shankland and Gregory Jones) wanted to demonstrate the futility of living in a place like Boston Manor—a place where nothing is done to bring to life the waste land which could be a pleasant canal-side walk; a place from which residents plunge daily into the eastward-tunnelling trains and into the dangerous streets of the nearest shopping centres. They wanted to show that many more people could be accommodated in the same suburb, and yet be provided with employment, a covered shopping precinct, roof gardens, lakes— in fact everything that would make for civilised living. They chose Boston Manor largely because this is an area with a lot of wasted space. The vast sidings and sheds used by London Transport for tube trains could be covered in and built on. This scheme for a high suburb was published in Architecture and Building, but it first hit the pub- lic in a film and an interview on the BBC's televi- sion feature Monitor. Television producers are always saying that architecture cannot conic across on the small screen. Nancy Thomas's film, .prepared with Graeme Shankland and Peter Chamberlin, proved them wrong. It was a cleverly edited series of shots of the hazards and dreariness of suburban life, the sketch proposals for the living suburb' and—most important of all —examples of planning (both in this country and abroad) of the kind that are incorporated in the Boston Manor scheme. Even mothers-in-law— and Monitor's chief, Huw Wheldon, tells me he likes to please them—would have been convinced that planning is something that really happens, if they had seen the delightful shots of Vallingby (Stockholm's suburb) and the fabulous Roehamp- ton estate, designed by the LCC architects' department.
Incidentally, anyone who scoffs at the idea of 'urban renewal,' as proposed in the Boston Manor scheme, should be whisked off on a car tour of Roehampton. This estate, with its high 'point' • blocks, its tall, thin slabs of flats and its liberal sprinkling of more conventional housing, should be approached across Richmond Park. This is what our city's surroundings ought to look like. If we rebuilt upwards in this way (and this is happening in east London) then we could afford more space for landscaped parkland. But what, you, will cry, about the Englishman's traditional garden? Before you bemoan its passing, take a main-line train in any direction from central Lon- don and have a look at the urban-dwellers' gar- dens.. If you find many that are not slag heaps you probably have quite a good argument against building high. But don't forget that in a scheme like the Boston Manor project 50 per cent, of the dwellings would have gardens. And don't forget that there is always a fight for the top flats in any new scheme.
Of course, if you are a cOnfirmed roses-round- the-door type you don't have to panic about these excellent urban plans. There will always be room, unfortunately, for your spec-built horror. Or, if you like an architect-designed house but want it oil the peg, you will soon be able to choose it from !deal Home magazine's pattern book. The pub- lishers of the magazine have joined with the Royal Institute of British Architects in organising a com- petition for small house designs. The winning plans will get a lot of publicity, and the architec- tural profession seems quite pleased about the whole thing. I suppose anything that encourages the use of architects in the design and construction of mass architecture is commendable, and even revolutionary. But if the assessors arc practical men they will -surely choose the least imaginative schemes, in the hope that these will be acceptable to building societies, who regard any innovation, however technically sound, as 'eccentric.'
If the thirty published designs are really selected for their boldness and imagination, then Odham's will have done for housing what the Sunday Times is to do for Trafalgar Square. This newspaper's competition for an extension to the National Gal- lery may well put a half-Nelson on the Govern- ment when an architect is to be chosen for the site it has reserved. The assessors are to be Sir William Holford and Peter (Boston Manor) Chamberlin (as well as Sir Philip Hendy), so it is unlikely that the mock-classical boys, who would love to put a dreary view-stopper in the north-west corner of the Square, will get a look in. It has been said that no really eminent architect could afford to go in for this competition. Although the first award, of £2,500, sounds generous, a detailed job would take several months to do. But I hear that the Competition will be for ideas rather than for detailed work. So the prize should be an incentive to top architects. Let us hope they give a broad hint to the Government that Trafalgar Square should not be completed by a stuffed shirt in a classical strait- jacket. Before long broad hints will also be needed down the road, in Westminster, where a view of the Abbey from Central Hall has been reprieved by the Government's decision not to go ahead with its municipal-classic Colonial Office. Presumably something must be built here. Could it be, as the Architect's Journal has suggested, a two-storey garage with a roof garden?
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