Ornament and Crime? - GD07

Note: As written, Certain elements of this post take loos' racism too lightly, my views have shifted since this publication and therefore i have made a few edits, especially in the introduction. There are certainly racist veins in architecture and design, a lot of that connected to modernism as a whole and it's rejection of 'uncivillised' perspectives. The following article is a starting point to see alternative perspectives, but more can be done to acknowledge how certain modernist polemics have ignored different races, ingored humanity, and worked with established power structures to the detriment of minority communities. https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/14738-three-architects-discuss-whiteness-and-racism-in-the-built-environment

I recently went back and acquainted myself with Adolf Loos' Ornament and Crime, specifically a collection of his essays compiled by Ariadane Press and translated by Michael Mitchell.

Having subsequently read much drier but more complex books, such as Art as Experience, I have rediscovered that the book is a rollercoaster, if polemical. It is full of exaggerated stereotypes and angry reflection on the world, giving an interesting picture of 1900's Vienna in the meantime. A lot of the book is naiive, outdated, and contains undeniably racist thoughts. It is important to acknowledge this when coming into this book, especailly because of the strong influence it has had on architecture.

Focusing on the architectural implications of this work, his central argument, specifically in the main Ornament essay, has two components, one, the most famous, is that:

"cultural evolution is equivalent to the removal of Ornament from articles in daily use"

Ornament and Crime, 1908 (1932)

Backed up by analogies to the 'papuan' who tattoos his face, by comparison, in Loos' generation,

"Don't you see that the greatness of our age lies in its inability to produce a new form of decoration? We have conquered ornament, we have won through to lack of ornamentation."

Ornament and Crime

The context for his arguments is twofold, they are both as a reaction against the aristocratic eclectic revival style, which reached a peak before the turn of the century;

"the School of Applied Art sets the tone... over the last twenty years the doorknobs have given us first renaissance, then baroque, then rococo calluses on our hands"

The New Style, 1878

He also argues against the 'new style', that being art nouveau, or in the form it found itself in vienna, as the secession:

"Bing's L'art nouveau in the rue de Provence in Paris, last year's exhibition in Dresden, and this year's in Munich will have to agree: the old styles are dead, long live the new style!"

A Review of Applied Arts I (1898)

He continues, turning away from sarcasm,

"And yet we cannot rejoice in it. It is not our style. It has not been born of our time. There are objects that clearly bear the stamp of our age, objects we like: our clothes, our gold- and silverware, our jewels, our leather goods, things made of tortoise shell and mother of pearl, our carriages and railway cars, our bicycles and locomotives. It is just that we do not make much fuss over them.

These things are modern, that is, in the style of 1898"

A Review of Applied Arts

In product design terms:

"Take the thonet chair. Is it not the fruit of the same spirit as the Greek chair with its curved legs and its backrest, without ornamentation, the embodiment of a whole age's attitude toward sitting? Take the bicycle ...  If the Greeks had made a bicycle, would it not have resembled ours, right down to the very last rivet?"

A Review of Applied Arts

His problem with art nouveau then, and the secession, and the Werkbund that followed, was that they were intending to pursue a 'new style' that was no longer needed. The advance of culture and of the machine age was to eradicate the very need for style.

In his mind, it comes from an attempt by applied artists to barge in on the new manufacturing culture:

"do we need applied artists? my answer is no ... Our carriages, our optical instruments, our umbrellas, our silver cigarette cases and ornaments, our jewelery, and our clothes are modern. They are modern because so far no artist has tried to barge in and take them under his - unqualified - tutelage ... Those barbaric times, where works of art were combined with practical utensils, are over once and for all."

Surplus to requirements (The German Werkbund) 1908

 His main arguments come to the conclusion that most of our objects, our beloved posessions, in the turn-of-the-century middle class at least, were of an indeterminate, accidental, unadorned, but most of all a progressive style: that of no conscious style at all.

So we have got over the secession style, and in fact, the free market did that for us, replacing it with Art Deco, or the International Style, or Streamline Moderne, or whatever else; so what use is all this to us now? Loos' argument comes from the rejection of style all together;

"What is style anyway? It is hard to define ... If you have a lion's head on the nightstand, and the same lion's head on the sofa, on the wardrobe, on the beds, on the chairs , on the washstand, in a word, on every object in the room, then that is style.. Woe betide those unfortunates who dared buy some additional item! Their furniture refused to accept anything else near them."

The Interiors in the Rotunda (1898)

especially that of 'top down' style:

"I am against the trend [Otto] Wagner represents, which sees a positive advantage in having everything in a building, right down to the coal shovel, come from the hand of one architect"

"Who should do it then? The answer is quite simple: Every man his own interior designer"

The Interiors in the Rotunda 

This is an example of how Loos' writing can cut through time and space and give us such relevant insights for our attitudes of today: the above article sees forward directly to the present: to IKEA specifically, and even if it isn't directly inspired, through Corbusier, the CIAM, and Modernism, it has found it's way into becoming a cornerstone of today's attitudes.

But what are the problems of today? Sure, we do not sit at the feet of an all encompassing, applied-artist-led 'style-of-the-day' but as the economy, through the last 100 years, has developed into a giant, consumerist whole, our personal choices have come under scrutiny.

I must note, I do not blame our generation, as a whole, the millennial culture, generally, directly and personally takes action upon global issues. These issues, such as mass-consumption, waste and global warming have been drilled into us and are a central part of our spirit-of-the times, but as designers, we are not sure how to address them. Minimalism, eco-design, and up-cycling are all relevant pursuits. Loos provides an appartent solution for us, in his very famous essay, Ornament and Crime:

"The form of an object should last, that is, we should find it tolerable, as long as the object itself lasts"

Ornament and Crime

He continues:

"A suit will change its style more often than a valuable fur. A women's ball outfit, intended for one night alone, will change it's style more quickly than a desk. Woe betide us, however if we have to change a desk as quickly as a ball outfit because we can no longer stand the old style. Then we will have wasted the money we paid for the desk"
Ornament and Crime

I can illustrate this as such:

So a desk should last longer than a gown, but how do we really 'say' how long things should last? Well ideally, given the climate, forever. We are trying to avoid oppressive, top down braggadocio though, so if we are to be calm suggesters and not polemical, egotistical designers, we should be accommodating to ideas of style and culture. In order to be environmentally courteous though, an idea not really explored by Loos, but more relevant than ever, it appears we are putting things on a scale according to their cultural and material weight.

So we can afford to give the odd evening dress a miss, in terms of our modernist, plain black ambition. But as we climb up the scale, in terms of both the 1900's argument for economy, and our new ideas of conservation, we, stylistically, should be more careful. This gives two important insights.

Given the completely new paradigm of digital technology, music, visual art, and the majority of media comes in a form that barely lasts a day, never mind months. Thus, it can afford to be 'less timeless', which is a phenomenon we see, as the online revolution in entertainment has become more immediate, more in quantity, and arguably less in long-term quality. This is not a bad thing, an instagram post scrolled past in a second might cost the world one milli Amp Hour, wheras before we got a whole newspaper furnished with but four illustrations.

It may ask serious questions about how we define 'timeless' in our generation though. Loos' architecture sought a semi-modernist, semi-classical reduction of ornament in architecture, which went into conflict with the secession architecture of the time, but was arguably already an existing concept in personal objects.

We can see now that, besides a few colours and patterns, objects have pretty much arrived at the non-ornament destination that Loos prescribed and celebrated. None of our phones, from Chinese basics to top-of the range iPhones show any obvious decorative appendage, besides the odd 'interesting' curve. Add to this list our TV's, our computers, our radiators, ovens, printers, toasters and microwaves - essentially everything invented since Loos' time.

Architecture poses a different question. How eager were the modernists in adopting the machine style for their new Villas? But architecture carries an established form. While a bicycle and a train carriage benefit from their birth at a time of new industrial awakening, a piece of building needs to grow as part of the city as a whole. Imagining that timelessness is the most pertinent issue;

Are we better pre-empting the next wave of architectural reductionism, by introducing risky, unadorned forms? Perhaps not. Is an idea that attempts to predict the next two hundred years of architectural progression, to jump to conclusions, the most likely to be timeless?

A conservative answer would be no. Thanks to the Lindy effect, ideas (and that includes architectural theories) last longer the longer they have been about. We are in a place to suggest that architecture, and by extension, more serious pieces of product design, would actually gain in timelessness if they took as much from the past as they did the future. If we invent a totally new thing, we can't look into the past to decide how it should look, but for something so essential, permanent and culturally ingrained as a house, or even more so a library or parliament building, it would be ludicrous to suggest that a tried-and-tested neo-classical form would end up looking more 'dated' than an avant-garde piece.

A vision of the future we could derive from this would be that of neo-classical sandstone brick buildings, furnished with mid-century furniture, and littered with flat, black, technology panels. Sounds like a dystopia? Someone should do a Black Mirror episode on it.

But hang on, isn't that exactly what exists?

Cottam Meadow - DT0A

My chosen subject will be an assessment of the situation of housing going into the future. My blog has often found itself ending up on the subject of housing and urban design, from Urbanism, a post which explored the contrasting urban theories of Le Corbusier and Leon Krier; to my investigations of Paris, which asked questions about developments by Ricardo Biofill; to recent investigations of the state of housing today.

I will begin by investigating a few examples of housing which attempts to straddle the divide which i perceive to be between Architecture and contemporary housing, and then I may investigate wider political and social problems which concern the housing market as a whole.

Case Study 01 - Cottam Meadow

One omittance from my investigation of Preston's housing scheme was the new Cottam Meadow housing scheme, which didn't fit into the narrative of neo-traditionalism which I was trying to portray. This must now be addressed.

Cottam Meadow is a new development on the fringes of Preston's new suburbia which approaches the matter of housing design in a different way to the more traditionally designed housing schemes. It is designed by DK Architects for Barrat Homes, and is certified as a 'Built for Life' development.

Aesthetically, the difference is clear: these homes have a more brash, bold and geometric style, which I believe more reflects purer 'architectural' values than that which merely attempts to re-create acceptable homes, such as the adjacent developments:

The main fundamental difference is that this is a housing scheme, primarily due to it's association with the 'Buildings for life scheme', is that it attempts to addresses the issue of the urban space itself, rather that just being a selection of houses on individual plots.

The Building for Life scheme is a set up by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), which provides 12 points designed to acredit building which provides a high standard of quality.

The most dramatic change to the urban fabric is the way in which the houses and the roads are placed and combined. Pavements are rejected in order to create "homezone" shared space roads. These 'roads' are less like traditional roads, and the effect is that of a traditional streetscape, in that the whole of the space between buildings is regarded as a public space. This may perhaps encourage community integration, by giving less to the car (and maybe reducing speeds) meaning that the spaces can be used flexibly for recreation and other community activities. What they lack is the 'defensible space' of the traditional picket fence garden, and a dramatic lack of greenery from wall-to-wall.

This shift in paradigm from houses and roads to masses and spaces has an influence on the overall nature of the development. The emphasis has moved to, as in point 7, "creating well defined streets and spaces" - so instead of cul-de-sacs, Cottam Meadows aims to design in public spaces and an overall idea of townscape permeates the whole plan.

The plan also aims to seamlessly integrate low-income housing: part of the theory which assumes that closely integrated high and low value housing situated together will prevent both expensive gated communities and low-value ghettos.

The above general approach seems based heavily on the new-urbanism theories of Leon Kirer, who argues, among other things, against the divisive subdivision of the urban fabric into 'zones' in favour of a denser, more mixed-use cityscape.

Contemporary suburban model vs sustainable urbanism, from DK Architects presentation.

The most extreme example of this approach is in Leon Krier's and the Prince of Wales' Poundbury, which combines a phased, streetscape based housing model and neo-traditional housing styles.

The main difference between these schemes, besides the scale, is in the architectural detail. Poundbury looks like a full simulation of a traditional town, minus the circulating ring-road, whereas Cottam Meadow attempts to adopt a more pseudo-modern style, with it's bold black graphics and square, blank features. Poundbury I think is a more clear architectural statement, despite the fact that the aesthetic chosen is one that is backwards-looking.

Assessing the success or failure of these schemes is a very difficult task. Homes today are built into a market which is in a constant state of under-supply. The result of such a market is that homes would find it very difficult to be un-sold, regardless of style or innovation. If the market was in over-supply, then perhaps people would have the freedom to choose between modern and tradtional style, but such a proposal is obviously not an economic suggestion.

Another problem is that communities in general tend to oppose all building in their immediate surroundings- so called NIMBYism. If they had to submit to development , would they rather their neighbours lived in dense, traditional neo-villages or in expansive cul-de-sacs? 

A paper on the architecture of Office buildings suggests that estate agents and end-users have significantly different opinions, with architects generally preferring flat roofed non-traditional forms, and users preferring pitched roofed traditional buildings. This would imply that the developers of poundbury have made an optimal choice with regards to optimum acceptability. The question remains, do we need to educate the public on the benefits of modern architecture, or do we need to un-educate ourselves?

Charles and Ray Eames - DT02

My reflection this week comes in the form of a video, reflecting the style and playing with the output of Charles and Ray Eames. I already was familiar with their strictly product design output, but from the film Eames: The Architect and the Painter I found another side to them, as strong visual communicators.

A video about Charles and Ray Eames, a mashup of their contributions to design and communication. Music from 'Tops' (1969), composed and conducted by Elmer Bernstein. Imagery Collected without permission from Eames Office, Herman Miller, Vitra and Edemco, for educational and critical purposes.

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The design of impact - DT01

This is the beginning of a series of posts which will explore various aspects of Design and Technology. The main format is that in art school we are to be delivered a series of 'provocations' in the form of videos or visits from guests, and our reactions form a body of work which is a parallel series of blog posts to our already ongoing exploration of 'Great Design'.

The first of many provocations was a film which goes by the name of Underkastelsen (submission), which took the form of an investigation into the scale, scope and effects of chemical pollution in our bodies and in the environment.

The film explored the presence of a wide amount of chemicals including PCB, DDT, Lead, PFOS, oestrogen and flame retardants, which were variously linked to conditions such as Autism, Cancer, Diabetes, ADD and Obesity, as well as observing the emergence of hermaphroditic fish in lakes. Some of the more concrete evidence was levelled at things that have already been banned, (the aforementioned PCB and DDT), which proved an interestingly scary introduction to the film, while the film continued, with the support of various experts to clarify the impact of many of todays problems with statements such as "worrying", "we just don't know" or alluding to a potentially multiplicative "cocktail effect", where these chemicals, in their nanogram/litre concentrations may adversely effect us in a big, big way (perhaps even more than climate change).

The most clear experience I got from the film though, was not of a learning of the subject matter, but a surprise and an interest into the dramatic nature of the film's delivery. It begun by illustrating how the filmmaker's father had convinced him to pretend to be run over by a car, invited in a pregnant actress (Eva Röse) as a parallel subject and narrative, took us very personally through the tests, took us fishing to take our minds off things, went onto a story about his father taking him to the dentist to get his head chopped off, and finished on an image of the aforementioned Eva holding her baby alluding to an image of Mary and Christ. I'm not saying all of this is silly, there is clear artistic vision and commentary in tying up the general idea with themes and images, it adds interest and visual fodder to the documentary. But I can't avoid thinking that if the problem was so great, pressing or interesting, it wouldn't need such melodramatics.

This brings us onto what I want to focus on: not the content of the film per se, but how we can effectively design communication to deliver an impact.

Underkastelsen, in it's delivery, reminded me of a video from a few years ago, KONY 2012, a film which was designed to inspire a new generation of social media activists to pressure their respective governments into doing something about Joseph Kony. Kony is a war-lord of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA), for a time based in Uganda, who has been involved in many atrocities, most prominently the capture and use of young children as child-soldiers. No one can argue against this as a worthy cause, and as something that requires our attention: this is why the central theme was around making an impact and spreading the word.

Spread it did: It became the most viral video ever, with over 100 million views in 6 days, but perhaps it's long-term goals were not met. It was accused of encouraging 'slacktivism' and the planned worldwide movement planned for the night of 20th April, attracted few attendees.

There are many similarities beween KONY 2012 and Underkastelsen: both films are primarily aimed at 'raising awareness' rather than delivering the truest information; both are authored by people who are primarily filmakers (they know their medium well); they begin with grand, symbolic imagery and where possible 'authorities' are used to give weight to the seriousness of the central concept.

More strangely, both prominently feature childbirth, which jerks the emotions, makes us consider the wider long-term impacts, and makes us consider our own children. Further to this, in both, the author literally explains the concept to a 'naiive' subject. In Underkastelsen this is the female actor, in KONY this is the child of the author. Such undertakings allow the author to simplify the concept and deliver it directly. By proxy, we are the naiive.

The main central thematic similarity however is how both are delivered as highly personal stories. In Underkastelsen we are taken through the journey via both the filmmaker, Stefan Jarl, and his 'friend' the mother-to-be, Eva Röse. In KONY we explore the relationship between the filmmaker, his own son, and his Ugandan friend, Jason. This is because, as humans, we are more likely to listen to, respond to, and remember information when it is presented to us as a story. This is a key design principle we can use and manipulate however we see fit.

This concept is brought to a level of intellectual appreciation in the book Made to Stick, by brothers Chip and Dan Heath. In it are outlined the steps to make an Idea 'Stick' - exemplified by Urban Legends and politician's speeches - and summarised with the SUCCESs model:

A successful idea, if it is to stick must be Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and a Story. We can see these tenets in the Underkastelsen film, which we can now see as a shining and successful media manipulation, if not true credibility.

Simple: There are dangerous chemicals in our bodies.

Unexpected: There are dangerous chemicals everywhere, in large amounts, in food, carpets and chairs

Concrete: The fish are becoming hermaphrodites, also, graphs, lots of graphs.

Credible: We have interviewed about 40 scientists (no mention on how many scientists disagree)

Emotional: Eva is going to pass this onto her children.

Story: My father got me run over by a car... I showed submission... etc.


As I said, I do not aim really to disturb the credibility of the film itself, although more balanced sources on a number of issues tend to emphasise the do not know side of the argument, but I do think we should be impressed and suspicious in equal measure when we sense we are at the receiving end of such well-designed messages.

In design, especially at the forefront of egotistical 'rockstar' design, we see how SUCCESs is used, consciously or otherwise, to really greatly deliver concise, understandable and succint design solutions, and is therefore something that we, in presentation and in process, should be acutely aware of.

We see SUCCESs in the work of Philipe Stark, especially his early work.

He was described by Deyan Sujic in B is for Bauhaus as someone who could 'come up with a philosophy of nursery-rhyme simplicity for every new product'. We see this in his products, they have names for one, and upon seeing them we see a conceptual simplicity which is easy to 'get'. We also can read a functional simplicity, which is not always reflected in the final use of the product.

In architecture, Bjarke Ingels of BIG is a master of media, explanations and stories, his 'ideas' are succinctly 'explained' to us in various forms. In comic strips; Images;

And videos;

which are delivered with a wordless, sequential and irrefutable kind of logic. This attaches itself instantly to the mind of the viewer, and is hard to shake, but I am almost certain that the actual design process, or the result, isn't as smooth or logical as he professes.

***

What we can learn from the above provocations is the power of well-constructed messages. These messages can be images, films, products or buildings; but to have a powerful grasp of the subject-matter and manipulate it into a form that is Simple, Shocking and Emotional is a very powerful ability. In design we can learn to create forms that have instant, understandable impact. We can also use these techniques to over-simplify our process-stories to create a device for the continued successful impression of our results.

What we must be wary of however, is how easily this can be done. A lot of the time, in the case of urban myths, it is something that happens organically. In the case of manifestos, new ideas and news stories however, it can often be used in a manipulative sense (or with the aim of self-promotion) we must be careful to not be swayed by simple and engaging polemics, the problem is always more complicated than we give it credit for.

What actually exists - Housing - GD06

As illustrated in previous blog posts, the history of design is highly interesting and nuanced, but in it's most academic heights, it lacks a connection to the common experience of most people. I think this is especially clear in architecture, as 'iconic' historical buildings are rarely repeated and mass produced, despite the intentions of the Modern movement. This is the opposite to product design, where mass production is almost always the inevitable result of the process, and products can be valued in their success by their market acceptance.

A low-key assessment of architecture is required then, to picture and criticise that design which rarely crosses the radar of the aloof design critics. Where better to construct this study than in housing, which is the most actively used and required piece of design that anyone uses. I find myself in my home city of Preston over the winter break, which is lucky, as despite perhaps it's famous bus station, it is a typical provincial post-industrial city of the industrialised west, which has remained relatively untouched by the curse of 'Big-A' Architecture.

A short afternoon bike ride was in order to assess the situation as it exists, from which most of the following pictures were taken.

Pre 1900's building

Before the 1900's preston was a relatively untouched city. In the 1800's it became a hotbed of the Industrial Revolution, specifically the cotton spinning industry which gave birth to a sleuth of practical, cheap building activity.

Awkright House, 1728

It was in this building, of Georgian origin, where it perhaps all began, with Thomas Awkright worked to develop the Spinning. The building itself seems practical and unassuming, a simple classic-esque portal the only sign of architectural intention on the entire building.

5 Winkley Square, 1805

Similar buildings of the early 1800's litter the city centre, made from local red brick (such as accrington brick) with simple fenestration and tellingly classical symmetrical arrangement.

The Guild Pub, 1818

In what was once the gardens of the city, but now very close to the centre, were built houses for the  Nouveau riche, this one, now a city centre pub, shows telling 19th century ambitions, reflecting the complex layouts of real country homes, and with an almost-gothic intention from the sharply detailed gables.

Stephenson Terrace, 1847

As housing became more city-like, there became a few sensible semi-neo-classical townhouse developments, although not to the extent showed by bigger cities such as Glasgow and the like.

Fishergate Hill, 1830/40's

Lauderdale Street, pre-1900's

The biggest change to the townscape came in the mass-developent of terraced housing to house workers at the various mills and dockyards that popped up to support the growing force of the industrial revolution.

Havelock Street, c1870s?

This almost always came in the form of the same traditional building with accrington brick and with simple stone portals and lintels sometimes offering a little more architectural ceremony to what would otherwise be a highly practical building.

Emmanuel Street, c1880s

Plungington, c.1880s

Hartington road, mostly pre-1900's

Post 1900s building

Once we reach the 1900's, we reach a time where, since Mackintosh and Loos have already made their statements, the academic canon regards modernism, or at least proto-modernism having started. However, as we see, in the real world, it has made nary a difference. The roads leading into what were once farmlands have begun to sprout what were out of town houses, and they are built in such a way that reflects the practicality of the Victorian style with a little of the excitement of the fake country manor buildings seen before.

Blackpool Road, Pre-1940's

It is interesting to see how in 100 years, what I assume were very mass-produced houses have each developed individual 'identities' due to diverging styles of update and redevelopment over the years. This happened naturally and is in direct contradiction to both the consistency enforced by International Style and it's fake introduction in the made up townscapes of New-Urbanism.

Queens Road, pre-1940's

Longridge road, my own painting

Post-war social housing 

'Tin Houses', Franklands Street, Preston c.1950?

I assume that the period following the second world war was by all measures a desperate attempt to build and re-build as much as possible to house displaced populations. This required a maximum of short-term functionality and efficiency, which many pre-designed and pre-fabricated housing models rapidly distributed throughout the country. Preston still interestingly still has a collection of post-war 'tin houses'.

It is clear however, despite technocracy, efficiency and practicality were all desperately in need, it was not the time for the International Style (now 20 years into maturity) to step forward and deliver the goods.

Pitched roofs and traditional shapes were still in order, and it's interesting to see how these have been again variously re-decorated over the years, with some even opting to, obviously, cover up the 'honest-to-materials' metal sheathing with more traditional brick-like finishes. How backwards...

Once the rush was off, more 'sensible' developments were authored, affordable housing coming into contact not with the terraces of before, but in away more akin to the 'garden cities' model, with tightly packed buildings surrounding what was to become known as 'indefensible spaces', public lawns and squares.

Savick estate, c.1960?

Notably, these are less modernist than the terraces of before in some ways, as they allude to the village in their staggered positioning, in an attempt to convey individual building ownership where non exists.

Larches, Preston, c.1960?

This nervous self-conciousness of low-income housing was also shown in other ways, each of these housing units contains 4 dwellings, but as much as possible has been done with a classical symmetrical form to 'tie together' the building in a way that resembles a large traditional home.

60's Suburbanisation

Conway Drive, c.1961

The 60's in preston saw a streak of building in the more rural areas of Fulwood. Relatively low cost (to build at least) housing was built at a desirable size in a desirable location, spreading the city boundaries as part of a general Central Lancashire suburbanisation plan.

If one looks in detail, these houses are perhaps the closest that normal housing has been to the International Style: The 'open ended' walls represent more than ever a concept of 'intersecting planes' in 3D, as opposed to a heavy corner mass in the traditional styles. Flat roofs prevail where they can (although it would be ludicrous to avoid gables on the real roof), there is a clear general rejection of applied detail, and the window openings are bigger than ever. 

Interestingly, these large windows are enabled by steel beams in the non-apparent lintels, which have now, 45 years later began to fail, so many of these have had to be re-worked. In their place, the brickwork has been replaced to more traditionally express the lintel.

Again these have been sporadically rennovated to produce a mixed, individualistic street scene. Notice how many of the ambitious flat roofs have been replaced by more long-lasting and traditional pitched roofs.

The Turnpike, 1961

Janice Drive, c.1960

The 60's began a process of, in addition to sub-urbanism and new housing, a system of 'regeneration' where many of the inner city terraces gave way to more modern flats, spaced out and placed in gardens, such as the following.

Hawkins Street, late 60's

This ambition really can't be seen as much of a success, aesthetically or socially, although it is closer to modernism that we have really seen before.

Brook Street, late 60's

Post complexity and contradiction

The world was perhaps shocked following the release of Complexity and Contradiction in 1967, so now we must observe the growth of a post modern trend in housing, and a gradual loss of forward-thinking ambition.

Lime Chase, Late 1970's

The 70's houses of Lime Chase, although it is visually apparent they share the same construction methods of those of the 60's, have reverted away from the rejection of mass and ornament seen then. What we have now is a return to the full-brick style, with some fancy stone-look applied ornament. As we have seen, this rustic stone has nothing to do with the Preston vernacular, but anything is surely better than material honesty.

Redcar Avenue, Ingol, late 1970s, early 1980s

Social housing was less on the pulse, but Redcar Avenue again makes an effort to represent individual homes where none exist.

Daisyfields, early 1980's

These rather more expensive houses, early 80's I assume, represent the same cluttered layouts that the fake-country homes of the 1800's enjoyed, and again a return to the more traditional all-brick style.

Abbott's Croft, mid 1980's

By about 1985, we have reached a zenith of almost-laughable postmodernism in housing, with hollow plastic columns of various orders.

These do though, more deeply than just fake columns, return fully to neo-classical ambitions. Contrast the mass, symmetry and bay-order of these houses to those asymmetrical buildings of the 60's.

Preston's most complete expression of pure postmodernism in housing is the architect-sponsored Riversway docklands development of the early Nineties. By this time nearly all traces of heavy industry in many northern industrial towns had disappeared, but the landscapes they left behind were an opportunity for re-development.

Victoria Mansions, 1990-95

The complex and variegated forms of these housing developments, particularty reflect the work of Ricardo Bofill in Paris, developing, instead of accurate or half-assed classicalism, a complex order of vaguely traditional elements into something new.

Phase IV Student Residences, Harrington Street, early 1990s

Around this time, more 'sensible' developments can be seen in the university housing, although we are clearly a long distance from any kind of esprit nouveau.

Cottam, early 90's

Suburbanisation came further out to the once-village of Cottam. Instead of the ordered, interconnected streets of the 60's, we now have the rather modern idea of distributor roads and endless cul-de-sacs, which are home to even more variegated housing layouts than we have ever seen before.

Coleridge Close, Cottam, 1990's

While an attempt is clearly being made to reject functionalism and 'monotony' the results are at best generic and ironically unrelated to local vernacular, and at worst have a rather despicable 'candy-land' kind of theme going on. This is explored with reference to the american market in the 'McMansion Hell' blog.

Hoyles Lane, late 1990's

Armaside Road, Cottam, early 2000's

2000's-2010's student accomodation

Moor Lane Student Accommodation, c.2004-c.2010

An interesting aside from all this suburban housing is this collection of 'different' student accommodation schemes. All are built on Moor Lane, a lane that once housed some non-demolished postwar housing blocks.

While not quite as bulky, these flats are no less offensive, and each has been developed in a different, 'exciting' market-led style, creating clutter and lack of cohesion in the streetscape.

The further discussion is this: what do we even call this style? It seems the above would have been included in The International Style had it been around in the 1920's, as it combines rectilinear and monochrome details. 

The cluttered, broken exterior and random colors of these buildings is perhaps a relic of deconstrutivist thought, but it serves a more obvious cause - to break up the surface modenature in order to distract the viewer from what is beneath the skin. What is beneath the skin is likely 5 storeys of a boring standard steel frame which has seen little change since it's implementation in buildings very much like the one it replaced.

Now

Since the crash of 2008, building, especially in these outward provinces, had seen a noticeable slump, but as the NIMBYS have been back out in force over the last couple of years, we must be developing again. 

The Tramshed, compl. 2017

Student housing has changed a little from when we last saw it. Perhaps reflecting millenial tastes for industrial honesty, the 'Tramshed' is given a brutal name, and is in style a mixture of minimalism and traditional red-brick Victorianism.

Wesley Chase, 2018- , Barrat Homes

The provision of suburban middle class housing seems not to have changed much at all, if it has, it is more generic and traditional than ever before.

off Lightfoot Lane, 2017- , Redrow Homes

St Edwards Chase, 2016-17, Charles Church

The housing of today by Charles Church, a premium sub-brand of Persimmon homes, are the most interesting, as these have reverted with full commitment to the housing we were seeing in 1805, here we see an old country house almost unnoticeably sewn into a development in the north of Preston.

Silver Hill Gardens, 2017-18 Charles Church

A subtle change in some of these housing schemes is an effort to make them more of mixed-income access. The theory being that if higher and lower income households are they are subtly mixed together, it is better in general for both parties, and avoids 'slummy' districts full of low-earners. The results will be in in 20 years. Will buildings still then be made in red brick in a victorian functionalist style? Probably. They will at least be the least intrusive and most market-acceptable.

All in all then, the International Style, and any subsequent exaggerations or cerebral rejections thereof, have resolutely failed to make any impact on housing whatsoever. I found one international style house on my afternoon bike ride, the surprising Mayfield on Cottam Green:

Mayfield, Cottam Green, c.2000.

This was built around the year 2000, by 'proper' architects David Cox Architects, some 70 years after the establishment of the International Style. if white-box architecture was to make its impact felt in the real world, it would have done by now. However, we still have a nagging feeling that these white, glassy, flat roofed buildings are somehow 'futuristic'. This is propagated the mainstream and architectural media which allow such buildings to still be described as 'future' or 'modern'.

So what we find is that there is barely a connection between the academic descriptions and movements in architecture and design, and how we live, in this case it has been housing, which was actually a new and specific focus of the modernist effort. If there was an impact from the International style, it has now been rejected, both formally and in the mainstream. Recent explosions in architecture such as deconstructivism look extremely unlikely to deliver their futuristic vision to 95% of people, no matter how far forward in time we look. What gives?

Critics like Nikolaus Pevsner have consistently held that "The term architecture applies only to buildings designed with a view to aesthetic appeal". Churches and Museums then, which are still today the major playground of retinal architectural movements like parametricism and blobitechture. A rejection of this idea came with modernism, as much of the 20th century architectural discourse was focused on matters of housing, from Looshaus to Fallingwater to Farnsworth to Unité to Venturi to Abraxas to the Mountain. Despite constant effort from architects to suprise, delight, and convince developers and the public that they have the answers, the 99% remain unconvinced.

This may not be a bad thing however, housing aesthetics, guided by the whims of the free market, remains in a constant state of cautious balance, it represents a 'natural' equilibrium between the style of the times and what has come before, with an emphasis on the before. We can also assume that, as these are free market endeavours, that they strike an actual balance of cost effectiveness, which takes into account the skills of local workers and the availability of common materials and techniques, dare I say it, by some measure they are also the most timeless. This is exactly what modernism wanted to express, but in it's rejection of the past it ignored the obvious answer: that nothing needed to change.