London, to see ‘luxury flats’ less than a decade old which are already in a state of advanced disrepair because of their delinquent cladding.
There have been two architectural alternatives since then; both existed during the boom, but there was always a sense that they were just biding their time. The new style, appropriately, has been largely used for social housing, or the little of it that gets built. The charitable Peabody Trust, once major sponsors of metal-balconied Pseudomodernism, have gone in their most recent work in Pimlico, Central London, for a heavy stock-brick style that speaks of solidity, continuity and coherence, courtesy of respected architects Haworth Tompkins. Barking and Dagenham Council have taken a similar approach in their very small new council housing scheme, designed as low-rise brick terraces by architects Maccreanor Lavington, with input from one-time fans of Big Brother House aesthetics, AHMM. It sounds a little pat, this move from cladding to masonry, like a simple reversal of the boom’s architectural values; and yet this new brick severity is notable for its seriousness, robustness, and social programme, all of which were absent from Blair-era architecture. However, with even Housing Associations unlikely to build much over the next decade, this will remain a marginal movement, confined more probably to luxury schemes such as Accordia in Cambridge. A similar movement can be found at the more scrupulous end of ‘signature’ architecture, the stuff that makes it into the magazines. Rather than the instantly consumable, instantly impressive and instantly forgettable logos that were expected, architects such as David Chipperfield and Caruso St John have designed provincial art galleries of sobriety, complexity and intelligence, often with great local specificity (albeit usually to the horror of the local press). Something like the site-specific concrete pavilions of Chipperfield’s Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield exemplifies this intensive, highly thought-out, cliché-avoiding approach.
Then there’s the second, more obviously provocative new architectural movement, christened by its advocates ‘Radical Postmodernism’, to differentiate it from the commercial tat that 1980s ‘pomo’ is best known for. The architects involved in this are London-based firms like muf, Agents of Change (AOC) and most of all, Fashion Architecture Taste (FAT): note the jazzy names, most unlike the usual approach for architectural firms (proper name or corporate name or solicitor-style brace of surnames). All share an interest in the social, and especially in taking seriously the idea of design input from, and very close collaboration with, the future users or residents of their buildings, pointedly refusing to discard their ideas or suggestions for reasons of metropolitan ‘good taste’. They show an interest in researching the patterns of life, collectivity, privacy and interaction in working-class and suburban areas without judgement or condemnation. Their accompanying embrace of spectacle and jokiness, with trompe l’œil effects, nostalgic motifs and an épater les bourgeois approach to decoration and ornament, might seem to put them closer to Blairite styles; in short, unlike Chipperfield or Haworth Tompkins they still produce the sort of architecture that looks great on the cover of a regeneration brochure. That’s deceptive, maybe, as there is a sophistication and intelligence in the new postmodernism which marks it out from the vacuous iconists and solutionists of the ’90s and 2000s. Nonetheless, the most obvious architectural development of the Great Recession has been the ‘pop-up’, the temporary, often developer-sponsored use of a dormant development site, a way of papering over the cracks and pretending everything’s ok, of bellowing ‘Move along now, nothing to see here’. Architects can’t work without clients, after all.
Alternatives in EUtopia
British architects and urbanists, at least the more ‘off-message’ ones, are keen to contrast the difficulties of working in the UK with the very different approach to planning in Old Europe, especially Northern Europe – the Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia – where these things are taken more seriously. Is it possible that we could find there a way of rebuilding cities that is not just aesthetically superior, but also more equitable? One scheme I visited in summer 2010 seemed at first to be absolutely everything that British urban redevelopment is not. I was invited there by one of its local critics, mostly because I had published some harsh criticism of the gentrified new modernism of British cities, but at first all I could see were the differences – the ways in which a different planning system and building industry were obviously far more capable of creating viable, attractive, enjoyable and architecturally convincing pieces of city than the British were. The similarities became more visible only later.
This was in Germany, a useful example, given that during the boom the Federal Republic was regarded as a retrograde Keynesian dinosaur, what with its large welfare state, industrial base and reluctance to reform and deregulate. Accordingly, German commentators have been justifiably smug as they watch their Anglo-Saxon antagonists fall into chaos and collapse. ‘HafenCity Hamburg’ is Germany’s largest regeneration scheme, although mercifully they don’t use that word. It comprises a huge swathe of former wharfs, but the differences with Anglo-Saxon dockland schemes are as interesting as their similarities. Both basically serve the same constituency – an urban middle class. HafenCity is not particularly concerned with being hip or ‘vibrant’, as it houses a disproportionate percentage of Hamburg’s affluent pensioners. This isn’t as odd as it sounds, as it’s the only clean, safe, and perhaps more importantly, quiet space in the centre of Hamburg. In planning terms it’s certainly not a chaotic Thatcherite free-for-all, but something very careful. It is centred around a public landscaping project – here by Benedetta Tagliabue’s firm EMBT – which weaves together a series of small plots each given to a separate architectural firm for houses or flats, along strips of dockside. These form the ‘background’ to some more wilful stand-alone architecture around the edges.
EMBT’s landscaping is far and away the most original part of HafenCity. Especially choice are the lamp-posts, which swing around tracing peculiar metallic waves, perhaps so as not to have any bourgeois strung from them (Hamburg has more millionaires than any other German city, as well as a very active and disputatious anarchist left). The seating in particular, moulded, concrete and Gaudiesque, is very well-used, and any fears that the place might be desolate or depopulated because of its class homogeneity are patently groundless – even unfinished, HafenCity is a massive tourist draw, with open-top buses passing over a steel dock bridge that was formerly closed to the public.
I’ve been told that buyers at the Glasgow Harbour development, a comparable scheme, complained about the view of the Govan Shipyards. HafenCity, however, is practically built around a working harbour, and glories in it – each expensive apartment has a view of the container cranes, refinery and passing ships. It’s as if it wants to encourage you to see as spectacle something usually hidden away from view. Accordingly, the office blocks which are mixed in with the flats are sometimes occupied by the shipping companies – to see a name like China Shipping, usually emblazoned upon a container, emblazoned upon a building, is a jolt. The building itself, designed like much of HafenCity by mild modernists Bothe Richter Tehrani, is a typical part of the complex, a piece of sleek, unromantic modernism, modelled like all of these blocks with sharp overhangs, presumably as a gesture against the North German climate. Each block is self-contained, but all are of a similar height, rectitude and expense, achieving the rare thing of a city that emerged all at once while being both coherent and diverse, at least to the eye. The individual structures are detailed in a variety of styles, with vaguely Hanseatic/expressionist clinker, Miesian steel, bright render and so forth, in order to give the effect of variety within carefully controlled parameters. It’s all very Teutonic.
The foreground buildings are less careful, and make clear how mistaken it would be to think this a purely social democratic piece of urbanism. Each row ends with a tower. One is ‘Coffee Plaza’, by American architect Richard Meier, another is a building for Unilever by Behnisch Architekten, evocative not so much of a robust Hanseatic modernism but more of Brazilian maestro Oscar Niemeyer, with flowing, feminine biomorphic curves. It consists of both offices and penthouses, and is advertised here as ‘Marco Polo Tower – design for Millionaires’. By far the most expensive and controversial project in HafenCity is Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie. It is a large
