tom lever blog

05 January 2018

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.

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