Blog_old

In this view from the UK, Paul Hyett reflects on the world, the US Presidential election and the architect’s duties.

European Movements

The light of western democracy may not yet have dimmed but it is certainly flickering, and the closing quarter of 2024 will have profound impact on its political, social and economic direction for decades. 

Social unease in Europe over recent years has prompted drifts, sometimes even lurches, towards the radical right across the continent. In Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and Italy, nationalist right-wing governments have gained power, whilst intense pressure from the right is also manifest in France, Holland, Belgium and Austria.

Germany, since World War II an exemplar of social democracy, is seeing growing support for the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany party) which, until recently, was under police surveillance for its extremist views and occasional expression of neo-Nazi sympathies. 

Similarly, pressures from the right have been growing in Estonia, Latvia and Poland, though 2023 saw the latter country break trend and reject its governing right-wing Law and Justice Party. 

Even the UK, normally a bastion of political stability, has seen a rightwards drift across all its mainstream parties with new neo-liberal and reactionary groups emerging to undermine the “social contract” and challenge the hitherto longstanding political status quo.  

The USA Choice, Its Implications, and Antecedents

But as I write, all eyes move back to the USA and November 2024, to a spectacle “the likes of which we have never seen before”, to quote one of its participants. No presidential election in that still great democracy has ever offered such a stark choice and contrast: a self-identifying black woman against a white man; a professionally educated lawyer against a freewheeling businessman; a one-time public prosecutor against a many-times-convicted felon. You just couldn’t write such a script!

The outcome of these struggles will have profound implications for architecture and its duty, not only to serve the public interest, but also in fulfilling its most basic role: the provision of safe shelter. All of which takes me again to Neville Chamberlain of “peace in our time” consequent upon his efforts to broker an accord with Hitler. 

Prior to becoming UK Prime Minister Chamberlain had, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, recognised the inter-relationship of housing, health and employment in serving social needs. Whilst he advocated national policies to safeguard public interests in each, he recognised the ongoing adoption of mechanised production in agriculture and industry would lessen demands for labour, skilled and unskilled, within developed economies. More social democrat than conservative, he thus called for government to recognise the need for new ways of financially sustaining and meaningfully occupying the growing proportion of the population for which work, and wages, would simply no longer be available.   

Building on President Woodrow Wilson’s efforts in the aftermath of World War I, the Roosevelt/Cordell policy of promoting developing countries as bona fide trading partners served only to intensify the problems Chamberlain had identified so early. Add population growth within developed countries (the UK and US populations have respectively doubled and tripled since 1930) and we see the complex scenario against which our modern socioeconomic and political systems struggle, only to be found wanting. Too many people, too little work, more wealth than ever before, but hopelessly uneven in its spread across countries, rich and poor, and within societies, developed and developing. 

Divisions

It is this division of wealth and opportunity that generates the angst that underpins the unrest and fuels the political turmoil now so prevalent. In short, in the minds of so many, politics, as hitherto known, is simply not working. Its failures are seen in the high levels of unemployment amongst those whose jobs have “migrated”, leaving families in despair, resigned either to accepting robots at home, or cheap unregulated labour abroad. As Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel wrote in The Tyranny of Merit, it’s not just the right to work and earn that has been ‘stolen’…it’s the right to contribute with dignity that has been eroded, especially amongst those who have traditionally offered their services in the form of skilled and unskilled labour.  

The consequences of all this now find expression in new forms of planning and architecture.  Witness the rapid installations of security fences and gates to our suburban gardens; the new elite “private” housing estates with controlled entry and patrolled grounds; and, ultimately, the emerging gated townships (really no more than “forts”) with their own shops, schools and leisure facilities one of which, located in the USA, is described thus:

“…this area is considered one of the most secure neighborhoods … and is behind a second gate only accessible to residents. 

Security is tight, and the surveillance system features facial recognition technology and license plate readers that can detect suspicious activity or unfamiliar cars entering the property…”

Outside and beyond, along the sidewalks of the once great cities of San Francisco and Detroit, and in the no go areas of Dallas and New York, the “undeserving” poor live and sleep, in ever growing numbers, in their tents and makeshift shelters, seemingly evermore helpless and evermore hopeless. 

Ultimately, only democratic political processes, in wholly recalibrated forms, can offer answers to all this, but that is proving difficult as we drift into this post-truth age where basic trust in politics and politicians is at such a low ebb.

And that is precisely why the rigorous process of consequential questioning is so important. As Tara Setmayer, former Republican Party Communications Director has asked: “Is (this) the kind of country we want?”   

The bottom line is this: In a democracy we can only ultimately succeed through an educated, properly and morally informed electorate making the right decisions. That is why TRUTH matters so much: It is essential to informing the answers to our consequential questioning.

The Architect’s Duties

As architects, our duty is to visualise alternative futures and offer them for informed interrogation. Do we really want the antithesis of Jane Jacob’s sophisticated vision for city life? When all the barricades are finally in place protecting walled and policed havens from the anarchy and violence without, will the protected be able to tolerate the suffering that surrounds them? Will consequential questioning reveal the true character of the built reality that would prevail? Or can we forestall this process and find an alternate fairer way forward in terms of tomorrow’s planning?

And here’s the biggest challenge of all: The need to build sustainably, in particular, to service our buildings in ecologically responsible ways; the need to pursue net zero carbon design solutions at this nanosecond to midnight for avoiding ecological disaster.

Evangelism’s Impact

This is where I turn the focus to the American Evangelicals, for in no other developed country does any religious group have so much influence on the outcomes of elections. Some sources suggest as many as 80% of Evangelicals support the Republican cause, a situation decades in the making (https://www.oah.org/tah/november-5/evangelicalism-and-politics/). Others suggest the influence is markedly less but there is universal agreement that it substantially favours the GOP, and this is why it is both fair and necessary to challenge the evangelical position in the context of the eco-agenda and architecture’s duty to deliver that net zero building programme.

The AIA has facilitated major advances in this area, and prominent architects (Ed Mazria and his various initiatives such as the China Accord and the 2030 Districts Movement, and William McDonough author of Cradle to Cradle to name just two) have offered brilliant thought leadership at the international scale, but any such progress is quickly upended by blind belief in such frightening policies as “Drill, baby, drill”. 

The irony of the Evangelical’s support in this respect is extraordinary.  This is the pro-life party simply failing to press home the consequential questioning so evidently required. All scientific evidence points to disaster if carbon emissions are not severely and rapidly reduced. Architecture cannot function at the simplest level of providing shelter if the host environment is too hostile for survival. 

Consequential questioning has never had such a critical role in our safe survival. 

What kind of world do we want?

Profound Hope

To end on a note of profound hope, let us consider corporate giant Toyota’s latest initiative. Their Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Hiroki Nakajima has just announced their prototype water engine which will run on pure water. It achieves this by using a process of advanced electrolysis to convert water into its constituent parts of hydrogen and oxygen to make chemical energy that produces power to drive the engine with only water vapour emissions. 

(Read about it here: https://youtu.be/FIxT6rK02lk?si=fxS5pQPlqleTmCHd). 

No vested corporate, institutional or theological interests should be allowed to obstruct such progress, and every pressure should be mounted upon political parties to facilitate the rapid development of such initiatives. Consequential questioning dictates there is no other way – not even for the Evangelicals. 

The old adage ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is often thought to be an ancient Chinese proverb attributable to that most veritable of philosophers Confucius, but it seems that the phrase is of much more recent origin, and its credit to Confucius not only unfounded but also mischievous. Jack Trout, author of the much-acclaimed book on marketing called ‘In Search of the Obvious’, has suggested that the true translation of the Confucius phrase is ‘A picture is worth a thousand pieces of gold’ which, in English at least, doesn’t quite have the same ring to it!

It is more likely that the phrase ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ originated in the USA in the early part of the 20^th century, when the expression ‘Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words’ appeared in a 1911 newspaper article discussing journalism and publicity.

Other similar phrases popped up regularly in the 1920’s, but it is probable that the modern use of the term stems from an article in that infamous and widely read trade journal Printers’ Ink, wherein Fred R. Barnard (namesake of the English illustrator, caricaturist and genre painter noted for his work on the novels of Charles Dickens) promoted the use of picture images in advertising with the line ‘One Look is Worth a Thousand Words’. Adverts of the day, as any study of early newspapers will reveal, were as long on persuasive text as they were short on images!

Some years later another piece by Barnard appeared in a March 1927 issue of Printers’ Ink under the heading ‘One Picture is Worth Ten Thousand Words’, a phrase that he claimed to have been a Chinese Proverb. But Barnard was later quoted as saying that he had only called it a Chinese proverb ‘so that people would take it seriously’. 

That they certainly did, for it was soon thereafter credited to Confucius who would surely have turned in his grave at the thought. Fake news indeed!

Adopting that mantra, I offer below two pictures, worth together a thousand words, against which I pen an extra thousand or so words of comment. 

The second image above is an enlargement of a part of the first image showing the cheap and nasty rainwater pipes that serve the building they adorn in Bethnal Green. This of course is nothing unusual: similar miserable arrangements can be seen across London, and indeed throughout our entire country, as the processes of modern procurement, be they straight Design and Build or some other sort of Construction Management contracting, deliver upon us the worst in terms of poorly thought through and ill-coordinated detailing. First, they eradicated the craftsman. Next, they came for the designers….!

Design and Build is, as we well know, a misnomer, and the images above betray a complete absence of any design thought or coordination. The stormwater drainpipes, as shown, of course never appeared on any architect’s drawing: such information was no doubt completely absent from the concept information and left for the Trade Contractor responsible for ‘plastic guttering, downpipes, all hoppers, clips, brackets and fixings etc.’ You know the language!

So does any of this matter? After all the building that I illustrate is anyway wholly undistinguished….

The answer is a resounding yes, it does matter because something very precious is steadily being replaced with the banal. Wherever I walk around London, from the districts of Mayfair and Bloomsbury to those of Poplar or Acton, I find that older buildings never fail to delight in terms of the detailing, the craft, the skill, and the care with which they were originally designed and built. Against that, so much of the new disappoints in terms of the construction and the detailing, even when the design concept has merit. And much of that disappointment lies in the increasing absence of attention to design detail, and the absence craft in its execution, that hitherto gave delight. 

As a complete contrast take the Divinity School in Oxford and the drainage details there as evidenced in the pictures below:  

                              Divinity School, Oxford by William Orchard – built during 1480’s.

Commodity. Firmness. Delight?

Lest I be mistaken, I am not calling for a return to traditional forms of building and I fully recognise the need for modern, lightweight, components with ever greater strength to weight ratios; better thermal performance; and thinner envelope construction. But I am calling for greater coordination and care in the selection, arrangement and detailing of the components that we do use. Let us never forget that infamous metaphorical line by Mies van der Rohe: 

‘Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together’.

Louis Kahn of course famously suggested to his students that when stuck for inspiration they should have a conversation with their materials, asking ‘What does a brick want to be?’ In his book featuring Kahn’s wonderful Bangladesh National Parliament, William Hall reports such an imagined conversation wherein Kahn asked, ‘What do you want, brick?’.

‘I like an arch’ was the reply to which Kahn allegedly responded ‘Look, I want one too, but arches are expensive, and I can use a concrete lintel…what do you think of that brick?’ But the brick remained firm: ‘I like an arch’.

Of course, whether lintel or arch it matters not, because in Kahn’s hands arch or lintel were both beautifully incorporated into the whole. That is the point, as is well illustrated in the images shown below:

                       Bangladesh National Parliament completed 1982 – Louis Kahn

            Salk Institute for Biological Studies completed 1965 – Louis Kahn 

But it is more than just the detailing and the beauty that is compromised through the crudeness of contractor led design and construction; it is also function and, critically, safety. Post the awful fire at Grenfell Tower back in June 2017 there has been an enormous rash of litigation claims following the investigations of facades to high-rise residential buildings which the government put in train. 

Thick and fast have come the dismayed reports of the findings: missing cavity barriers (both in design and construction) to compartmentation and around openings; combustible insulation extensively incorporated (both in design and construction) in contravention of ADB2 guidance; service extract ducts and flues discharging into cavities and cladding surfaces that breach spread of flame guidance. The list goes on and on; the affected buildings run into their thousands; the costs of remediation into the billions.

Architects are not free of criticism in all this, but one thing is for sure: the transformation in methods of building procurement that has taken place over the last four decades, with the tendency to split the construction process into trade packages, and to transfer substantial parts of the design and specification responsibility to ill-trained construction surveyors, Design and Build contractors, and so-called specialist sub-contractors, has brought with it a terrible price.

If such a process delivers drainage arrangements of the like shown on the outside of my Bethnal Green example, just think what the inside, hidden, construction looks like!

UK Design and Build of course started during the Thatcher era – the first Design and Build contract was published by the JCT in 1981, just two years after she came to office as Prime Minister. Perhaps it is no coincidence that she famously claimed that Oxford’s ‘monumental buildings impress ….by their size rather than their exquisite architecture*’. 

Maybe she just didn’t see the drainpipes at Divinity College the way I do.

‘I’ve brought a crate of Christmas Cheer’ said the Murphy’s driver as he struggled through the door bringing three bottles of very fine brandy ‘for Mr Price’. I thanked him and thought no more of it until Cedric, upon returning to the office after a good lunch expressed his extreme displeasure.

After reprimanding me for accepting this delivery Cedric, in customary fashion, instructed his P.A. to ‘Take a letter….’

Dear Mr Enright…’ began Cedric, to the clattering rat-a-tat-tat of the machine, ‘It is the policy of this office to refuse gifts of any kind from Clients, Contractors and Suppliers, past, present or future. Kindly arrange collection of the offending delivery at your earliest convenience’.

My goodness, Cedric had a way with words, and my, how things have changed since then both in terms of protocols and the very equipment through which we communicated….back in 1974 our office boasted one of the then state of the art IBM Selectric 1 electric typewriters. 

Distinguished by a sphere covered in the letters of the alphabet, the Selectric’s mechanism replaced the traditional ‘basket’ of individual type bars which, when manually struck, had swung up to strike a ribbon which in turn printed the individual letters upon the page. As well as speed, the ‘golf balls’ could be easily switched allowing multiple changes of font….all state of the art back then.  

….But I digress. I thought nothing more of this occurrence as we broke for Christmas, and indeed the matter had been long forgotten when, late in March, I heard a knock at the door followed by that same melodic Irish voice: ‘I’ve come to collect those bottles of Christmas Cheer’ said the driver with a wry smile. The contents of all three bottles had of course been long ago consumed so I was dispatched with some urgency to the Soho Wine Store in Percy Street to buy replacements, albeit at retail price.

I have many times used this story as an indication of the basic standards and integrity that are indispensable to trust. It goes to the heart of the very notion of professionalism and the importance of recognising its essential characteristics. A much-abused word today ‘profession’ is defined when ‘googled’ as ‘doing something as a paid job rather than as a hobby e.g. professional athletes, a professional golfer’. This is an appalling misrepresentation of the true meaning of this important word. 

What I learned through Cedric is that being a ‘professional’ involves the delivery of skill and knowledge that a client usually doesn’t have which, although for a fee, is provided with the client’s interest at the fore.

It is for precisely this reason that care and caution in relation to any gifts or inducements that might compromise the independence and appropriateness of our service is of such critical importance. Examples of the importance of this principle abound: you rely on the integrity of your dentist at check-up time: when told a filling is needed you trust the advice. This is of course why your doctor should never accept gifts from a drug company, for it is surely unthinkable that your prescription, in quantity or character, should be influenced by favour.

And its why we should all be pleased that, albeit late in the day, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) at long last, after a long period of mounting pressure and criticism, finally agreed back in 2016 to set up a code of practice in which its member companies would be obliged to disclose payments made to doctors and pharmacists. Back then, pharmaceutical companies were paying healthcare professionals a stonking £40 million per year in ‘gifts’.

I have never been offered any form of inducement to specify a product, or to recommend any particular construction company or sub-contractor and, although I occasionally hear of disciplinary action against architects in respect of such matters, my suspicion (and sincere hope) is that such failings are rare within our profession. Indeed, it is perhaps something of a surprise we must trawl way back to the days of Pontefract architect John Poulsen to find any really significant scale of corruption: he was jailed in 1973 at the Leeds County Court in a case that brought down the then Home Secretary Reginald Maudling.

All this I pondered when I received notification in early January that a bottle of wine had been delivered as a Christmas gift to me at the registered address of our company. On the recommended list of the Sunday Times Wine Club as well as the BBC Good Food Wine Club, this circa £18 Cabilié 2022 comes from one of the 100-year-old vineyards that Hervé Sabardeil recently purchased way up on a sparse, steeply terraced slope that forms part of the Agly Valley just north of the Spanish border. Little has changed there since Ceasar, probably sampling wine from the same vines, raced through the region en route to Spain some 2000 years earlier.

The gift had been sent by a company of consultant engineers who I initially had no recollection of having ever heard of. But a little searching on their website, courtesy of technologies somewhat more advanced than Cedric’s IBM Selectric, reveals that they were involved with one of my past projects, completed some ten years ago.

Pondering upon whether I should accept this gift reminded me of President Nixon’s famous half-hour TV presentation back on 23 September 1952 in which he tried to answer charges regarding his alleged abuse of political expense funds.

Perhaps its most memorable part was when he stared into the camera, paused for a lengthy period, and then defiantly stated that he was going to keep one gift ‘no matter what happened’: 

‘……One other thing I probably should tell you because if we don’t they’ll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something—a gift—after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was?

It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he’d sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl—Tricia, the 6-year-old—named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.’ 

The ever-gullible American electorate of course bought his calculated and sentimental drivel, lock stock and barrel, enabling him to run as President Eisenhauer’s deputy and of course gain office as the Vice President. The rest is history…right through to Watergate some twenty years later. 

……Leopards and spots?

Chequers died in 1964 and is buried at Long Island’s Bide-A-Wee Pet Cemetery but the dog’s legacy rolls on: in 1999 the Nixon speech was placed sixth on a list of 100 Twentieth Century US speeches in terms of social and political impact and rhetorical artistry! Most of that kudos came courtesy of Chequers. Indeed, the USA celebrates ‘National Dogs in Politics Day’ on 23 September each year and the resident White House dog under each president holds the title: ‘First Dog of the United States (FDOTUS). You couldn’t make it up!So, I am going to keep my bottle of wine as well, and much look forward to enjoying its richness and the lovely velvety feel that the French call ‘gouleyant’. But Cedric’s story serves as a timeless reminder to us all of the importance, in terms of professional conduct, of restraint in these matters.

I had an Erno Goldfinger experience to round off this summer. Not like the occasion when, telephoning his office, he was answered by a young architect imitating his Hungarian accent: ‘Goldfinger speaking’. The great man allegedly replied ‘This is Goldfinger and you’re fired!’.  Nor the occasion (as reported by John Grindrod in his brilliant book Concretopia) when the short-fused maestro sacked someone sitting in his reception who wasn’t even employed by him. 

Mine was an experience more akin to the two months Erno and his long-suffering wife spent living in east London, on the 24th floor of Balfron Tower, their balcony overlooking the Thames above the north exit to the Blackwall Tunnel. That is just about the point, as the incoming high tide began to ebb, that the big cargo ships and liners were gently manoeuvred by skilled helmsmen and their tugs into the locks that served the West India Docks.

Erno and Ursula on their balcony in Balfron Tower in 1968

Erno and Ursula had moved into the tower from Willow Road in Hampstead. (Their next-door neighbour was Ian Fleming who had adopted Erno’s surname for the lead villain in his 1959 book, Goldfinger. The film of the same name, the third in the 007 series, followed in 1964. By the time the architect moved temporarily into the tower in 1968, the Goldfinger name was already legendary.)

Erno told the Guardian in February 1968: ‘I want to experience at first hand the size of the rooms, the amenities provided, the time it takes to obtain a lift, the amount of wind whistling around the tower, and any problems that might arise from my designs, so I can correct them in the future.’ The following year he declared that ‘All architects should live in a home they designed.’

The reason for living in one of my own projects was far less laudable: my wife and I were asked to house-sit and look after our grandchildren for a week while their parents travelled overseas. I had designed alterations and a substantial extension to their two-storey home in north London, recently completed.

An interesting experience.  Nothing in the way of visits during construction, post-occupancy snagging, a client’s invitation to a house-warming party, or even a thank-you dinner, can match the reality of actually living in a home you designed for someone else. Especially when you do it with a young family still in residence.

Yes, the morning sun does penetrate as deeply into the plan as I had expected; the shadows on the (of course white) walls are indeed as sharp as I had hoped for; visual privacy from neighbours has been adequately secured despite the large expanse of new fenestration and bi-fold doors; the place does remain mercifully cool in this hottest of summers courtesy of cross ventilation; the kitchen works fine and the planning offers plenty of freedom and variety for the kids (five- and three-year-olds and an 18-month baby) in terms of play-areas and quiet corners. And then that important question: is there enough storage space for the plethora of kids’ toys, so that the swift transformation can be achieved post-bedtime? Happily, it all seems to work just fine.

The Type 1 Cornish Unit

My son and daughter-in-law had purchased a Type 1 Cornish Unit, one of 30,000 prefabricated homes, made largely of pre-cast reinforced concrete planks, between 1946 and 1960. Their property was the end unit within a terrace of four and because their site was unusually large, we were able to create an extension that almost doubled the ground-floor living area. But it was the geometry of the available space that produced the real challenge, and greatest opportunity, as can be seen from the before-and-after plans below.

Ground Floor Plan before alteration

Ground Floor Plan after alteration

Most of us in the western world grow up in orthogonal spaces, but the spaces we have created through this expansion areis intentionally non-orthogonal. in response to the shape of the site. This is also notable within the section of the new living room, which has a mono-pitch roof and sloping ceiling. I am curious to know how this unusual ordering of space will impact on grandchildren as they develop. 

For example, will their creative play – so important in learning – be influenced by the angular geometries? Will their sensory responses to space be heightened? Will they be more demanding – or more tolerant – of the unusual in place-making and design?

How space impacts mood, behaviour and performance was my main reason for choosing Canterbury School of Architecture as my initial place of study: the course included a module on architectural psychology. Under that programme, I was fascinated to learn ways in which people are emotionally and psychologically affected by their environments, not only by the furniture arrangements, but also by room sizes and shapes, inter-relationships, décor and colour. (All this would prove to be especially useful when, years later, I was commissioned to design the Treatment Centre for Victims of Torture.)

As a child, my contextual experience was totally different from that of today’s primary school children. Our Victorian school was a grim, forbidding place: high window-sills offered some daylight yet no views out. Our desks were placed in traditionally regimented rows, one behind the other. The teacher’s desk was set on an intimidating raised platform. By contrast, our grandchildren share large working tables with other pupils in a classroom with low windows, all offering views to the playground. The teacher’s table is located centrally. 

Does my experience make me more receptive to hierarchical management structures? Will theirs accelerate development of teamwork skills?

Traditional classroom set-up (source: Architectural Psychology,                                  RIBA Publications 1970)                                                 

Also notable in living in this house is the generosity of the urban planning and the commitment to landscaped public space across the estate – regular grassed areas, plenty of tree-planting and even beds of roses still maintained by the local council. And of course, in this town planned at the dawn of the modern motor age, comes a local parade of shops, local school and local pub. We can walk everywhere in terms of basic needs. All of which is great for the kids.

Talking of house-warming parties, back in 1978 Liz Goldfinger, a gracious, generous, and kind past-client, invited me to the celebration following completion of my alterations to her four-storey Victorian terraced house, in a quiet side road in Islington. 

In the corner of the main lounge sat an elderly man, hands resting on a walking stick, bow tie slightly crooked. This was Liz’s father, Erno, whose response when introduced to me still rings in my ears: ‘So you are the young man who thinks he is an architect’.

Wonderful!