Desi gn
Angry Young Architects
J. ROBINSON. By KENNETH IT was bound to happen. At last we have a body of angry young men who know what they are angry about. They are not all very • • young, but they are all very angry • •• indeed. Theirs is not a vague dis- • —a war against the planning controls that s• prevent them from putting up imaginative build- ', ings in this country. They are architects, and they are tired of being treated like dirt by Ls ignorant laymen on planning committees. For a year or so a group of these rebels has 1- been holding unofficial meetings in London— IC sometimes foam-deep in a high-fashion flat, some- !. times floor-bound in a chairless garret. Each of 's these meetings has been a despairing free-for-all it discussion on the theme: 'How can we give good r- architecture to an unwilling country?' At each o meeting architects have reported fantastic stories of opposition from local authority deadheads. ts After years of training, and many more years of is experience, they are frequently told by local grocers (who may, of course, be very good grocers and kind family men) that their designs do not ic keep in keeping with the Amenities.' They are advised to go away and to pitch and thatch their di designs, or to do anything they can to make them conform to the `mediteval character' of their 1930- . rudorbethan neighbours. Why? Because the c.; moronic grocers, smugly surrounded by their • olde-worlde furniture and double-purpose, gal- Ieon-shaped cocktail cabinets, insist on protect- - . - the public from the elegant, well-proportioned Cr buildings that might be let loose by sensitive, 3, trained minds. id As long as our architecture is controlled not by Professional designers, but by democratic com- ,fi nuttees with less than half an eye between them, our towns will continue to sprout disgusting appendages like pseudo-classical office buildings or builder-designed 'spec' houses. One of the main complaints of the angry architects is the ease with which an estate of hideous 'spec' houses, designed without adequate professional help, slides past a lay planning committee and adds to the 'ribbon development' outside our towns. As 'ribbon development' is now a dirty phrase, the new horror is called 'filling in.' No doubt with luck and a little time we shall fill in all those dull green bits that still separate one place from another.
While this is going on—while the builder is shoving up his do-it-himself boxes—a few people are interested enough in modern architecture to want to build themselves a house, an office or a factory to the designs of a good architect. Very often they are made to wish they had never heard the word 'architect.' What happens? Here is a recent example. A young London architect designed a house in the country and submitted elaborate and well-prepared sketches and plans to the local authority concerned. The planning committee rejected the scheme as 'eccentric'—a favourite word among those who resist good design. At that stage the client envisaged the expensive delays caused by planning appeals and wished he had gone straight to a bodge-you-up builder for a slab of ungracious living. But he was lucky. His architect was enough of a rebel to have all her drawings copied by a local 'Estate Agent and Architect.' The result was the nasty crayoned mess that is usually found in the windows of such places. To make it worse, she asked for a crude dwarf wall, topped with ever-so-pretty flowers, to be added to one of the sketches. The scheme was then submitted again, with the real architect's name in barely-legible type. ft was accepted with- out a murmur.
Dozens of similar stories could be told by architects all over the country. The guardians of our towns seem to resent the professional touch. Why can't they see that the architect, as a profes- sional man, is as responsible as a doctor or a lawyer? You may say the analogy is not quite fair. After all, if a man is trying to be separated from his appendix or his wife, he is less of a nuisance to the democratic set-up than a man who is trying to put up a building. But the professional should at least be judged by a ,professional. And that is what Henry Brooke, the Minister of Housing,• proposed the .other day. He told the County Councils Association that there were three ways of mollifying angry architects. Planning authori- ties could employ architectural advisers, they,. could interview architects whose work they didn't like and they could turn down the really bad designs. This is good news; or rather, part of it is good news. It is good that the architects' resistance movement has made itself heard, and it is good that the Housing Minister has started to think about its problems. But suffering architects will smile cynically at the thought that, planning authorities could even recognise a bad design when they saw one, let alone turn it down. Nor will they take happily to the idea of being sum- moned, cap in hand, to the 'I know what I like' department of the local town hall. And every architect knows the sort of semi-retired reaction- ary who has the time to sit in judgment on his colleagues.
There may be a way of adapting planning con- trol so that architects can one day be treated like human beings. But a lot can be said for the anarchic view held by the angriest----aid most effectively angry—architect of them all, Eric Lyons. This energetic slasher of red tape believes that the (esthetic (not zoning) control of an architect's work should be removed altogether, on the grounds that it not only thwarts good design but also lets the bad stuff through. Certainly the country could hardly look more of a mess if we had never known controls.
Anyone who doubts the quality of the work that would be done by architects if they were given full reign should see the drawings and models in the fifth-year classes of architectural schools. It is disastrous that most of this imagina- tion and understanding of modern techniques is suppressed when the trained man starts to earn a living. How much longer must the architect be crushed by the suburbia-blinded leaders of local opinion?
Previous page
