ARCHITECTURE
Insane arrogance
Derrick Oxley
The insane arrogance of the Roman emperors (Wodehouse claimed) was due to their ignorance of golf: the arrogant interbellic dictators were even less sporting in their propaganda and elimination of critics. But the old establishment of these islands — in all its echelons — made some show of playing cricket (though not always), but so much so that they were easily bowled out by the balls of progress and democracy of the New Men. How then does the new establishment of ageing New Men in architecture (and the other arts) maintain its hold, despite the mounting protest — particularly from the young — against our surroundings: despite the proposals for a UNESCO study in 1970 (which oddly hasn't materialised) " that every contemporary art-form is unacceptable to the general public"?
If the press have backed one wrong horse (for with the appointment of J. M. Richards as the Times Architectural Correspondent in 1947 all other papers followed to make the scientific-modernism he backed, the consensus architecture of today), what other wrong horses have they backed, or withheld the information that they have been nobbled? The New Architecture was part of the vision of a Brave New World — a crystal symbol of a new faith: the old towns and cities were to be swept away (' in gigantic reconstruction ') and with them all social, economic and moral evils: an architecture — and planning — for the masses, with its roots — though few declared it — as the political dogmas, in the doctrines of the scientific socialists and Marx; but as the social evils have been replaced by ones possibly worse (but less obvious) and they have produced more problems than they set out to solve, so the architecture and planning (and social planning and systembuilding are part and parcel of the new aesthetic) have produced far less tolerable and less human surroundings than the old, which are at least reclaimable. It is clear that slums and depressed areas are moral more than physical ones — and often now they are even planned. And just as the social planners attempt to corner compassion, so the architect-planners and the high technologists corner progress and then attempt to alleviate their awful Environment by calling their palliative ' Environmentalism ' — as if brutal blocks can be humanised by bollards and birches.
It was all supposed to be for the masses, but it has become for the rich (who were its early patrons): the expensive concrete structures with expensive claddings; its large costly windows; its expensive long and short term maintenance are still feasible for the rich. But cheapen the finishes on the expensive structures (to match yardsticks for traditional structures), economise on maintenance — or just be unable to afford it — and the buildings, as some of Corbusier's tenants complained before the war, are Too Cold in Winter, Too Hot in Summer (we could call it TCIWTHIS Architecture), and they rapidly deteriorate, rust, craze, crack and crumble. Build tall blocks for the rich, and the higher the flat the higher the rent — and the most for the penthouse: build them for subsidised tenants, with housing allocated as a right, with a purely scenic mix of low and high rise (and no penthouses) to give a pot-luck privilege: use the land you save by building high (and high buildings are more costly anyway) and the planners allowed no greater density for their 'architectural statements ') for car parks at one and a half places per dwelling, for subsidised tenants: fence the grass and trees against children, so that they play in the street (for fear of spoiling the photogeneity): and you have still more problems. Then impose industrialised building techniques, which demand precision and standardisation, at the same time as the permissive ParkerMorris Standards (" to give architects more freedom," when in a century of freedom we have built no better houses than speculators built from the spurned pattern books); and encourage transient buildings and ' automobilism ' — and you add muddle and extravagance to the mess. "End the orgy," they now say.
For your office developments devise new regulations for point-blocks on podiums (to destroy any known civic scene), disregarding their diseconomy; and the formula-finders didn't adjust the plotratios, so you get no greater floor-area (and less usable percentage); clad them in glass which is more expensive — even in prime cost, which has been known for years, but which no-one told the public — and the point-block becomes pointless. Pretend that all these are beautiful because they are progressive and ' of the times 'when it may be a building's function to be beautiful (whatever you may mean by beautiful). Goethe wrote that the Spirit of the Times was no more than that of those who proposed it. Pretend that buildings are the best of our time (which is a matter of opinion) and that therefore they go with the best of any other time (which is rubbish), when they are of different philosophies, methods and materials — and based on arrogance rather than manners — and you have the Architecture of Sinderism (of remorse and selfpunishment). And they forgot to tell us (though they quote him often) that Plato said, "an argument on harmony is no place for a discord."
"Let's reconstruct everything," was Corbusier's cry, but we no longer want to — nor need to: the old persists and is desperately conserved, since architects and planners have produced nothing better (and the preference for the old is practical as much as scenic). So that architects are compelled to build behind first and second (even third) rate façades; for conservation is as much anti-architects and planners as anti-speculators; and the so-called participatory exercises, with their bogus ballots, are a fraud. To imagine that humanist and sinderist buildings harmonise is the great fallacy, and only now do the critics see the faults of the 'malapropisms ' they have praised so much — which blot Oxford, Cambridge and other fine cities so much (and more in these islands than elsewhere).
Did no one see the fallacies before? There are far more than the Economic and the Contiguous Fallacies (and the fads are myriad). Of course neo-Georgianism is a pity (but the public prefer it because they see nothing better) yet it may be as valid as neo-Corb or neo-Bauhaus styles, which receive awards and medals. The 1971 RIBA Gold Medal was awarded (" for services to architecture ") to the chairman of the Architectural Press, which has controlled architectural taste for many years — and trained two generations of critics of the technical and lay press. The Times will print nothing which the pundits dislike; BBC TV and ITV tolerate no criticism of the Establishment. Ministers are prevented from hearing alternative opinions and being shown a choice: and the RIBA, though seething with discontent in all its spheres, controls all these media, and attempts to manipulate the debacle ' domestically ' — yet allows no internal debate.
Who are these arrogant men? They took over from the old Establishment in the name of democracy: they talk of a team spirit, scarcely believing in captains (but themselves); of a game without rules or disciplines (and the contradiction of permissive planning). An inquiry showed that many lived in Georgian houses they condemn for others: another might show that few play games (but 'gamesmanship '). The intellectual climate before the war 'was 'progressive' — we were all socialists, communists, republicans, pacificists. Now editors, critics and architects call for radical re-appraisal and revolution (but are scared to print it), and look no further back than Corbusier and the Bauhaus. To look further back only presages a classical revival — which they fear, for it was only the critics who wrote that traditional architecture was a 'dead end' — the public never minded it. Indeed, when the 'literary men took over (as Parkinson wrote) "2000 years was dismissed at the blast of a whistle."
Conservation, Pollution and the Environment are the key words today. Every newspaper has such a columnist. Why then, in the art that most affects us, and which, if a science, can be an art too, are the critics so silent: why is there no Constructive Conservation? Is it because the only logical solution to •the dilemma may be a classical revival? If it is the answer, only a few pseudo-progressives and the critics would be distressed. Is it fear of the truth that prompts their arrogance? Some claim (as they did at the RIBA conference in June, 'Will People Prevail? ') that architects should be arrogant: but there is an arrogance of ignorance and prejudice as well as of experience; and they forget that Palladio was "modest and obliging." Pollution and Conservation are not only about fish and Titians. Perhaps all this is below the belt, but as someone once said, Machiavelli only wrote, "It is no use playing cricket when everyone else is using machine guns." Maybe it is game and set to the Sinderists . . . but not yet match — please give us back our ball!
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