Houses of horror
Leslie Geddes-Brown speaks out on behalf of all vertigo sufferers
Ihave visited the Sackler Galleries at the Royal Academy only once. The space, once the old diploma galleries, is designed by Sir Norman Foster and hailed as a masterpiece of modem architecture. It is indeed both calm and beautiful. But, as I walked up the glass staircase to see my first exhibition there, I found I was too terrified to take another step. Luckily, a friend held my hand — literally — and helped me to the top, promising there would be a lift to get me down.
There was — it was made of completely clear glass. This is the first and only time I have been stuck rigid with fear but glass staircases, lifts, stairs with open risers, slat- ted floors and low glass balustrades all cause me problems because I have mild vertigo. Don't lots of us?
Imagine, therefore, the plight of those who will have to live and work in Sir Nor- man Foster's Millennium Tower, a 1,265- foot-high building which appears to be made entirely of glass. Imagine the terror of people who will be hurtled to a public viewing gallery, 1,000 feet up, in glass cap- sules riding the outside of the building. No, I can't imagine it. I go cold with terror. And there are also the proposed City Point (666 ft) and Globorama (650 ft) buildings.
Glass is increasingly used in modern buildings, encouraged both by technological advances in the material and by the fact that architects, developers and clients see it as sexy. Forget that it is a cold, hard materi- al, unfriendly and inflexible — its a terrific way of showing off and that, judging by the complacent voices of architects like Owen Luder, modernist president of the RIBA, is the only point of architecture. Forget com- fort, forget beauty, forget good manners to other buildings — 'good' architecture is that which 'makes statements' and, along the way, gets tenants for rich developers.
Are architects, I wonder, ever taught about how to make buildings a pleasure to be in? Does some teacher explain that buildings should avoid vertiginous drops, dazzling patterns which encourage epilep- sy, dead acoustics which assault the ears, hard floors which exhaust the feet and colours which induce panic?
The RIBA tells me that there are guide- lines about making buildings pleasant to use — but they sound a bit hesitant about their application, even though the girl who answers the phone clearly has a touch of vertigo too because she says she sympathis- es with my point. However, Chris Col- bourne, head of education and practice says, 'No building can meet all variables, though I don't see why that means no one should have a damn good try. And, yes, glass does make for dramatic architecture and glass lifts do attract people to shops and restaurants on upper floors.' Good practices like Sir Norman Foster's will always provide alternative routes, he adds.
But should good architecture rely on alternative boring concrete back stairs cre- ated by unknighted hack architects? Shouldn't it be designed to be adequate in the first place? At the Royal Academy the alternative to the Sackler lift and stairs involves a labyrinthine trudge through pri- vate rooms alongside a security officer. And when I ask the press office if they have lots of frozen vertigo sufferers on the stairs, she says they've never had any trou- ble. When I ask her to check that with the staff on the ground, she doesn't return my call.
The trouble is that there is no one to speak for vertigo sufferers. Obviously, no local authority jobsworth gives a hoot when he passes plans for a building which doesn't just ignore the problem but actually goes out of its way to exacerbate it. He'll be busy checking for wheelchair ramps and low- based telephone boxes, nobbles at entrances for the feet of the blind, the pro- vision of disabled lavatories and ring cir- cuits for the deaf without giving a moment's thought to those so disabled by the terror of heights that access to many modern build- ings is forever forbidden to them.
For all their high profile, wheelchair users make up roughly 1 per cent of the population according to the DHSS. Natu- rally there are no statistics for the number of vertigo sufferers nor is there any pres- sure group (the DHSS put me in contact with the British Tinnitus Association, which is quite another thing). But a very rough estimate among sufferers, doctors and rela- tives suggests to me that vertigo affects a good 5 per cent of the population, from people like me who are mildly upset by heights to those who fear they are on the brink of falling every waking moment.
Although Chris Colbourne assures me that things will get better as buildings designed in the 'clean' Nineties start to emerge from the scaffolding, leaving the baroque flamboyance of the Eighties behind, I don't believe it. Mike Davies, Richard Rogers's technologically minded partner, foresees buildings made entirely of glass — walls, floors, columns, roofs and staircases. Not, of course, all transparent — or, at any rate, not all at once — but, if anything, more alarming. New glass will be `intelligent'. Which means little more than it can be made to change from clear to opaque depending on light levels.
What jolly fun for those few famous men. What terror in store for the million or more of us who have no head for heights.
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