In a precis on his book 'A Guide to the new Ruins of Great Britain' by Owen Hatherley, the lecture flitted around 12 cities of the UK, describing and critiquing its architecture with a notion of 5 phases England has encountered:
England 1: The quintessential, ceasing to earn its own living ie Oxford.
England 2: The industrial - steel works, mills, rail, mean lower class housing ie Sheffield.
England 3: Suburbia. Leisured industrial capitalism
England 4: Socialist England in between 1945 and 1979 - council estates, new town campus units.
Engalnd 5: Bright colourful developer lead housing blocks.
In one of his final answers, when propositioned about how we can better the Local Authority housing blocks in Hoxton, Owen Hatherley pointed out that the first course of action would be to better educate the public on the attributes of architecture, and how to appreciate it so that more of a demand would be created for better buildings, as stated by Nigel Taylor:
I am curious about the way that what I think of has as good architecture has changed the more I've studied. It's now more similar to what I thought was bad architecture! How would we go about this education? Don't worry that's not just a question for you, just general musing.
ReplyDeleteBut it's the answer I seem to land upon when discussing architecture with those that don't study or work in the profession. When one begins to question why big shiny shopping centres are thrown into city centres, and realise that they are actually used, then is the answer to educate the public on the values of the cities they already have and the unique character they are destroying with the development of generic office and appartment blocks? Visitor and history centres are naff (memories of the escalator entered stuffy space in Belfast spring to mind), is it about introducing an architectural education to schools?
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