A Warm West End

Well today brings warm sunshine to the West End and yet again my thoughts are drawn to back-courts and back lanes, forgotten green spaces and corners in which to dwell. This area of the city has more than its fair share of parks and private gardens but it still strikes me, when walking through the leafy back lanes, how much beautiful space is wasted and left to fester. Quiet lanes of rough and broken cobbles, full of bins and bulk uplift collections that could be so much more; quiet cycle and pedestrian thoroughfares, essentially linear parks. It really wouldn’t take much funding – just a bit of balls from the council and bit of co operation from the residents…neither currently forthcoming.

Perceptions of the profession

I was recently discussing a large public sector project with an acquaintance who works for the large public body that commissioned the project. I’ll not dwell on specifics of the scheme other than the composition of the professional team. An architect was not chosen for the lead role because the client body thought that they would be too inflexible regarding development of their designs and would become too wedded to producing something expensive and difficult to build so the architects have been essentially sidelined and reduced to contributors to be instructed. Upon further questioning, this notion of the difficult designer was not based on actual experience, just a generally held perception of Architects as difficult prima donnas who bring nothing but trouble. This would seem to be a pretty widely held view in major public and private sector bodies outside our nation’s capital and is a very serious problem for Architects. Looking at the project in question it is obvious that it would be greatly enhanced by a lead designer taking full ownership and control of all aspects of the process. Due to long experience I can see this fact and I can fully understand why my acquaintance cannot. We as a profession cannot expect either a) clients to be fully informed of the advantages of an architect in the entire process or b) architects to fully explain this in a PQQ, tender or verbal pitch. This seems to be a serious shortcoming of the RIBA in not pulling out all the stops to educate, lobby and even pressurise the government to promote the use of architects across all sectors and to also widely promote our profession across all possible accessible spheres of influence.
 

As a profession we have to endure a very strange disjoint of being strictly regulated by protection of title without any protection of function or even governmental promotion of the fact that we are in fact regulated by an act of parliament – something almost nobody who is not involved in our profession seems to realise.
 

Many of us who pay the annual ARB retention fee are rightly wondering what the point of this entire regulatory framework is if it is not joined to some statutory protection of or at least official promotion of function rather than just the current strict statutory protection of title. This appears to be the structural conflict between the RIBA and the ARB. The RIBA supposedly promotes Architects (while also offering regulation through chartership) while the ARB just seem to offer regulation and a seemingly convenient avenue for difficult but savvy clients who don’t like paying full fees to make your life even more difficult with spurious claims and other threats of ARB related mischief.

It is fairly obvious that most other professions, even the reviled bankers, can get their act together to aggressively lobby to promote their sectors and get laws put on statute to promote their interests.  Whereas the RIBA seem to be rather passive and merely contribute to reports by others, participate in general reviews and indulge in other associated wind-baggery. Unfortunately this approach seems to be leading to our entire professional platform being nibbled away week by week by week.

So I am now, after 10 years of refusing, finally joining the RIBA so I can complain loudly from the inside! I appreciate that the RIBA does indeed participate in plenty of worthwhile policy-influencing initiatives – however it does not appear out here at the coalface – to be yielding many results. It is unfortunately true that George Clarke and Kevin McCloud appear to have done far more to promote our profession than the august institution in Portland Place.

Perhaps the RIBA should consider a reality TV show – I’m An Architect, Get me A Strictly Not Dancing Commission or perhaps The Only Way Is Eames. Just something other than the painful to watch Stirling Prize...or any of the depictions of architects in popular culture; Tom Sellick in Three Men and a Baby!?

Reminders of the passing of time

I finally sat down and watched Senna, the recent feature documentary about one of my early heroes – I was avoiding it as his death upset me greatly at the time. However I’m very glad I watched it – It is an uplifting and inspiring film even though, if you know the story (as half the world does) the inevitable tragedy finally arrives. 

The film had some very sobering final words – Senna was two years younger than I am now when he died. I remember watching the grand prix on Sundays as a young boy gripped by his exploits...

As Bob Dylan wrote: May your song always be sung, May you stay forever young...

Gardens and drinking on sunny days

There will never be enough gardens in the world and there is certainly a massive shortage of them in the West End of Glasgow where I live. I am one of the lucky ones – I have a little south facing terrace garden between my front door and the street big enough for some plants and some friends to come and admire the view. Before I acquired this invaluable bit of outdoor space I can remember what happened on those rare hot sunny days that we used to have; frantic phone calls to arrange somewhere to go and sit and soak up the sun with a drink in your hand. I have a very detailed mental map of all of the bars with beer gardens within a 2 mile radius of Hillhead underground station. A tip to the uninitiated; don’t even bother with Ashton Lane or Cottiers. Head straight for the hidden beer gardens – The Finneston or The Drake spring to mind…and avoid Booley Marleys at all costs lest people think you actually like it and its clientele!

Now on sunny days I just pull a bottle from the fridge – set up the folding table and chairs and sit in my garden and survey the progress of my plants. It is in one of these moments that I am writing this and I am pondering the reasons why there are not many more garden areas in my immediate vicinity. The settlement model of the quadrant tenements is perfect for a private communal rear garden and there are a few examples in the west end of really successful versions of this model. It is a model very common in Berlin and Paris. In fact I remember a very pleasant Sunday spent wandering through the communal courtyard gardens of Herman Hertzbereger’s IBA housing in Berlin marvelling at how these spaces were private yet at the same time communal with plenty of spaces to sit down and quietly read the paper in the sun. It has been successfully resolved in the New Gorbals as well – but as they are newly built is very difficult to actually mess this aspect up. Creating communal gardens in existing back courts is the challenge. Creating communal gardens on left over space is another subject - however the Woodlands Community Garden is worth a look to see what is achievable. 

I have spent a very large amount of time closely studying the lanes in Glasgow’s west end whilst researching the planning appeal for my mews cottage in Westbourne Gardens and I think have come to a solution regarding the backcourt garden issue.  The key to it is the bins; a subject that greatly vexes the owner occupiers in my building and seems to irritate everyone else as well.

I’ll propose a solution in a later post – right now back to my glass of wine and the crossword; the sun is still shining.

Boosting the Economy (for dummies!)

Well it has been quite a while since my last post – social media, blogging and updating websites constantly is something that you need a separate staff member to do. I still have to earn a living, which is becoming increasingly difficult…

So forgive me while I wander of the reservation of Architecture and Urbanism and blunder into the world of economics and government policy. The construction industry and all of its related fields has always been a canary in the deep mine of the economy; once we start to choke - the rest of the economy is not far behind. Not that you’d think this was the case due to the way construction industry data is always ignored by successive governments. I have rather unsurprisingly found that my fortunes are directly related to the wider construction industry data  and that our collective travails are about 2-3 months ahead of the rest of the economy. The summer is traditionally a very slow period for our industry and Olympics/Jubilee excuses not withstanding, it has been the hardest summer since I started up. Before you just think I should just try a bit harder, I am not just basing this on my declining fee income but on the amount of negative information I am receiving from other professionals, suppliers and contractors. The  canaries are dropping off their perches and the economy is in for a very rough ride in the last quarter of 2013.

So it is now abundantly obvious to most rational people that the Coalition’s strategy of cut, cut, cut is having the exactly predicted effect on the economy; it’s tanking. No one wants to invest, no one wants to spend and no one wants to hire. Every single business I know is slashing spending, reviewing employment and keeping as much money in the business as possible. This simply means that government income (i.e. taxes) are dropping at an alarming rate. No one spending means much less purchase taxes, no one hiring means much less income taxes and no one investing means much less corporation and capital gains taxes. In the meantime the welfare bill climbs as those locked out of the job market by this spiral have no option but claim benefit and wait for the economy to pick up. Perversely the Tories seem to think that the solution is to crack down on benefit rather than stimulate demand. Massively reducing government investment equals plummeting private sector investment is now such an obvious equation I feel like kicking the TV every time Gideon Osborne comes on to explain how being a wallpaper salesman qualifies him to slash and burn the nations finances.

Government borrowing rates are the lowest in living memory, investors are hungry for long term safe havens, the debt is less than many other developed nations and we really, really need a push start. It is startlingly obvious that if the the private sector is going to invest its historical cash horde in large construction projects  the government will have to lead the way with an open wallet. For example if the Thames estuary airport was given the green light with a government spending boost (and followed by the inevitable Qatari petro-dollars) then obviously Fosters will have to hire en-masse to get it out to tender, ditto Arups, ditto Balfour Beatty who will have to hire battalions of staff to get such a project on site. Across the entire south east region businesses from hotels to plant hire, from sandwich shops to taxis will see a rocket in trade as tens of thousands of people descend on the region to build such a large project. The chancellor will then see a huge upswing in tax revenue from the region and London gets a “fit for purpose” airport. Meanwhile Heathrow and Gatwick are sold off and made into new towns to address the south east’s housing crisis, more construction, more investment and on and on and on. Add in other large beneficial (i.e revenue earning) capital projects such as the Severn Barrier, Forth Bridge (with a re introduced toll) and a renewal of much of our power generation infrastructure and we will see a nationwide boost for not just the construction industry but the entire nation’s economic output. If the projects are all large commercial projects such as airports, power generation, toll bridges and the like then the vast cash reserves of the private sector and bondholders will come out of hiding and we will have our push start. The resultant increase in tax revenues and reductions in the welfare bill will allow the government to stop gutting the public sector.

Its how we got out of the great depression and basically how every other country in history has got out of depressions – by starting spending and starting building. Osbourne is now just looking like a younger version of Norman Lamont; dithering and directionless. We need a new chancellor – who cares what party; just one who has some ideas and the conviction to implement them. 

Sustainability means building things to last

Sustainability – that multi faceted, meaningful yet meaningless word that is at the forefront of architecture. I have problems with very many aspects of it but mostly due to prevalent “green-washing” by designers to give a green sheen to very non-green projects. I also have a deep problem with the construction methods being touted by the passivehaus institutes and BRE amongst others. Architecture has had a fairly torrid century when it comes to pioneering new methods of construction. Almost all of these problems have arisen from designers forgetting the immutable constants of designing buildings for normal people to inhabit that are capable of withstanding our climate .

Every time I see a beautifully photographed, untreated timber clad house in the south of England I have to remind myself what a ten year old timber clad house looks like in the west of Scotland – it ain’t pretty. In fact there is no easy way of putting this – the current construction methods of the residential housing sector are not built to last beyond the standard 10 year warranty period. Surely the very first guiding principle of sustainability is to build something that will still be used for human habitation in 200 years time. Modern timber frame houses are constructed from very low grade timbers and particle boards, unproven over time. They are wholly unsuitable to future layout changes and even extensions are difficult. Dealing with internal moisture is nigh on impossible over the long term and the rate of decline of a modern timber frame building once the weathering skin is breached is remarkable. But they are cheap, easily meet the building regulations regarding the conservation of heat and power and keep the NHBC warranty verifiers happy.

Look around the west of Scotland, northern England and Northern Ireland – what are the old buildings made of? The reason they have lasted so long is their extremely robust materiality ; brick, stone, slate, concrete. My own apartment is a basement of an 1886 built sandstone tenement. It has been refurbished a few times in its 126 years and I have just added to that. I think it’s safe to assume that it will still be occupied and modified to other’s needs in another 126 years whereas the 7 year old Glasgow Harbour development on the Clyde is looking very tatty already. Its acres of North facing Powerwall/Sto render on Metsec metal stud walling is lauded as being "sustainable" but its looking baggy, saggy, mouldy and very very shoddy. Any bets on it being here in 26 years never mind 126. This applies to most of the "BlairBoxes" built in the recent housing boom.

We live in a disposable society; we’ve known that for a long time. Most things have obsolescence built into their design – otherwise how can a company such as Apple survive unless we buy a new device every 18 months. An original I Pod would be 11 years old now and if the battery had been easily replaceable there’s no reason to assume it wouldn’t be doing exactly what it was designed to do for another 11 years.

Buildings aren’t ipods – they are much more complicated; they have to fulfil technical, societal and spiritual needs. They need to last and current “sustainable” construction methods won’t last. I have just finished a brick and concrete house; it is constructed to full current building regulations for conservation of heat and power – however it has a hewn-from-solid feel that makes me suspect it will still be housing a family and serving their needs long after my grandchildren are grandparents. Not something I can confidently say of a modern timber frame house – no matter how well you build it.

The car is dead! Long live the car.

I have a thing about cars – old cars mostly but a nerdy obsession nonetheless. I can tell you the cylinder capacity of most 1980s BMWs, I can tell you who has designed every engine in any Ferrari road car, I can set up and tune a weber carburettor and I can identify almost every British car of the last 50 years just by looking at their rear quarter panel. Like I said nerdy in the extreme…but I am no longer the owner of an everyday car.

So for the first time since I was 17 years old I no longer have access to a car that I can use anytime. I sold the last one and I have just joined the CityCarClub. I have had a bit of an epiphany. Cars are becoming obsolete in their current form for anyone who lives in a city or even a suburb and technology is currently available that could see cars disappear off our streets but be available to all at a minutes notice and it starts with schemes such as the citycarclub.

I have always had a serious dislike of anti-car ideology. Groups such as Reclaim The Streets, cycling zealots and many others who want to banish cars from cities and eradicate cars altogether for purely ideological reasons. The automobile was one of the greatest and most socially liberating inventions of the 20^th century and the one invention that had the most profound effect on society, architecture and town planning. Not all of the effects were good as any of Corbusier’s sketched examples of town planning will testify. However cars are mass public transport – i.e. transport that moves the population en-masse. Crucially cars are public transport that suits our needs as individuals and it is when we ignore the extremely potent effects of individuality we risk disaster. Again look back at Corbusier and the Modern Movement and their insistence that we all live in things that look exactly the same – an utter failure of an idea that has decimated the respect that architects were once held in. Individualism means that we don’t all work in one single building and live in another single building therefore getting a bus from building A to building B is never going to be a viable form of public transport. Cities are and always will be gloriously chaotic yet interlinked and strangely efficient. They cannot and should not be solely designed around transportation of any one kind. We all participate in multi-destination journeys on a very regular basis – some short range journeys, some long range journeys and mostly a combination of the two. 

The solution to these complex journeys for the past 50 or so years has been lots and lots of little painted metal and glass boxes cluttering up our streets being driven from point a to point b parking for a few hours at point b, driving to point c and parking there for a few hours etc etc. So we naturally have congestion and parking problems blighting every city. However what if all cars were available to all? By that I mean you just took the nearest one and left it where you stopped using it and it became immediately available for someone else to jump in and use. Then streets would not need to be lined with miles of parked cars doing nothing. Cars could easily drive themselves to centralise locations for fuelling and servicing or merely to ensure that they were distributed more evenly and not all clustered around the pub on a Saturday morning! Self driving cars have been around for a few years now and it is only the consumer’s wariness of the concept that is stopping manufacturers rolling them out. You can buy a Ford Focus now that parks itself. Also CityCarClub (other services are also available) uses a simple online booking and monthly subscription service that means you can locate one with your phone, book it on a whim and it will always start, always have fuel in it and always be insured, taxed and have decent tyres on it.

What this means in terms of urbanism and architecture is the almost utopian idea of urban design; not having to consider car parking with every proposal. If cars took themselves off to a central location after use to be used only on demand then we could reclaim the streets without any militant shouting or enforced tofu eating. Think of an on-demand, personalised, driver-less taxi for a monthly fee.

So then imagine a world where you step out your door to see no parked cars, no congestion (because computers don’t park in daft places, have road rage fits or drive in bus lanes!) and transport on demand. Its one of those utopian ideals that has advantages at every angle. Much less fuels needed, much less raw materials required, much less (or possibly) no road deaths. Its everything banning cars from city centres would achieve with none of the serious consequences of such a luddite retrograde move.

As I book my citycarclub Prius for next week it is becoming apparent that this is not some delusional vision of the future but will become a reality sooner than most people think. We’ll all pay a monthly subscription to use cars and large centralised organisations will concern themselves with the operational needs of the vehicles – we’ll just use them. This concept is probably terrifying most motor manufacturers and fuel companies but as ever it is the market that will win over on this. Conspiracy theories of BigOil controlling technology to keep us hooked on petrochemicals is just fantasy – remember at one point Microsoft were the biggest, richest, most powerful company on earth; where did that get them? Apple came along with more desirable products and Google popped up with cloud computing and now Microsoft is heading the same way that IBM did – bound for the history books of obsolete companies. Exxon Mobil will go the same way. Where does that leave people’s attachment to their cars?

Most people don’t have an emotional attachment to their cars, plenty do but most don’t. I have noticed a growing trend amongst friends to being totally indifferent to most forms of car. However the UK’s £3.5 Billion classic car industry shows that it is still very popular and can also be a lucrative hobby that drive large parts of the economy but doesn’t clog up our city streets. Trust me I never thought of driving my 1967 Fiat Dino Spider to B&Q – I only did about 1500 miles per year just doing scenic drives and I see no reason why that cant continue – it is recreation not transport.

Everyone reading this who is thinking I am turning my back on noisy old bangers fear not! I’m just about to begin my daily trawl of carandclassic to see if there is a decent Alfa Montreal available in the UK…or maybe its time for a proper yank V8, but not an uncouth yank car so maybe a Jensen CV8 hmm decisions decisions.

The CityCarClub Prius is for transport – the bellowing V8 for the occasional Sunday afternoon. The car is dead! Long live the car.