British Post War Mass Housing Cultural Studies Essay

British Post War Mass lodgement Cultural Studies EssayIn this essay, I will focus primarily on lodging constructed during the decennium or so after the end of the Second World War as part of the progressive, observational establishment of the Welfare State in Britain. Although lodgement was constructed speculatively by personal offenders on a fairly wide scale with varying degrees of success (Span schemes like New Ash Green in Kent, by Eric Lyons being an obvious and commonly cited success story), it is companionable housing which is linked around fascinatingly to the evolving socio-economic landscape in Britain, as I shall demonstrate.Housing provision by the end of the war, particularly in urban centres, was considered inadequate, not only in quantity, but in role as sanitary. War impose on _or_ oppress had impacted the quantity of housing stock, but additionally, much obsolete housing had been earmarked for demolition since before the war. Nicholas Taylor, composition in the AR in 1967, in a discussion of what he called the failure of housing in the postwar period, cites the negative postwar reaction to the boom towns of the industrial revolution as the reason for this. In particular, he says, we have aimed to prevent epidemic diseases cholera, dysentery, rickets, scurvy, typhoid, all diseases which were propagated by all overcrowding, by bad sanitation, by inadequate facilities for the readiness of food and by the pollution of homes from adjoining factories.Clearly, a trueness to addressing these public health issues must be commended what I will be discussing is whether the attempt to do so through the medium of housing, and specialally genial housing, can be considered successful.It is important to understand at the divulgeset the politically progressive nature of housing policy in the period, embedded as it is in the establishment of the Welfare State, which is based on the principles of, comparability of opportunity, equitable distri bution of wealth, and public responsibility for those unable to avail themselves of the minimal provisions for a beneficial life history.1 architecturally, the modernist confide expressed by Le Corbusier to provide an environment that was spiritually fulfilling, creating harmony between mass and their surroundings and freeing communities from the misery of poor housing2 was perfectly in sync with the prevailing political commitment to decisively break away from unsanitary, overcrowded slums.I propose to discuss a handful of iconic/ notorious case studies of 50s and 60s mass housing, as they excite passionately polarized opinion and act as symbols for the wider debate.The first is place Hill in Sheffield, built in 1960, which according to the Architectural Review (in 2011) marked the peak exploit of Sheffields city architects office as run by J.K. Lewis Womersley, regarded by Nikolaus Pevsner as an outfit of national importance.3This twist proved popular with its residents, who loved their flats and soon formed an effective association. It was also much lauded in architectural circles Its size and hillside location made it the prime example of streets in the air nationally, and for a decade or so it thronged with international visitors.4However, decline set in as the ideal of equality was eat at and social housing became the ghetto of a suppressed underclass, and the more(prenominal) active, capable and employed were encouraged to buy themselves out, going the disadvantaged in possession. This is the key trend not only in this case, but across the country, and my desire is to understand whether this was a reflection on poor architecture, changes in society, or both.In the case of common land Hill, a recent initiative, privately funded by the developer Urban Splash, to redevelop the building, has provoked fresh debate over its merits. A blog on the Guardian website5 on the subject exemplifies this. One card expressed classifiable views (my italics )As a foreigner from Leeds who has lived in Sheffield for 30 courses I can support those who score that the quite a little of Sheffield did not want third country Hill kept, and were mystified by the listing and bemused by the amounts of m unityy, some of it public money, being spent on this eyesore. The bright coloured panels are not an improvement. Anyone in Sheffield with the money to buy one of the penthouses would be much better advised to spend it in one of Sheffields leafy and affluent suburbs, of which we have umpteen, which also lots enjoy superb views, as Sheffield is very hilly.This poster neatly expresses a popular verdict on dense, large scale urban social housing projects of the period, in which as long ago as 1967, It was easier to count the few unbroken panes of armoured crank on the staircases than the multitude which are cracked and splintered, and where economy on materials and inadequacy of detailing can be assessed as objective weaknesses, but what is pe rhaps more important is the subjective hatred of the tenants for the rough close concrete that is thrust upon them.6Descriptions of inhumane proportions, undefined wastes, and, above all, women returning from the shops to be b let outn about amid the appalling dinginess of rough shuttered concrete7 (my italics) crop up again and again in discussing schemes like Park Hill, redbreast Hood Gardens, Red Road etc. The posters views on the preferability of leafy and affluent suburbs to dense urban flat typology for those who can afford it also reflect a lingering psychological scar in the popular psyche left by the memory of the descent of estates like Park Hill from sources of intense municipal socialist pride to dilapidated sink estates8, as though by their very nature they prohibit the presence of a functional, prosperous lodge. Is this the case? If it is, how could surveys at Park Hill show that through the seventies residents remained consistently loyal and commandly happy.9 Wh at caused the slide of schemes like Park Hill into dysfunctionality?The homebuilding drive, riged on the vision of spiritually uplifting accommodation for all, continued but the vision was damaged by lack of reform in the 1960s. Rather than col up the low cost-balanced rented sector to supply the needs of a more squiffy and mobile population, it narrowed to serve the restricted needs of well-being housing.10 This was a key error, and precipitated a uncivilised circle of decline.The 60s was a period of economic optimism, in which comparative affluence was accessible to many more families than previously. An aspirational desire among those in social housing developed to graduate to home ownership. Very large council estates, rear blocks in the cities and restrictive letting policies contrasted with the variety of choices available for home ownership. From the 1960s, the welfare characteristic (residualisation) of council housing began to develop as a stigma from which home owne rship was the natural escape.11The original dream of social housing as a living tapestry of a mixed community12 was replaced instead by welfare housing, which constituted a low cost rented stock but created deep social problems and lost the affections of the electorate. A incompatible political vision could have avoided this. Pre-war restrictions, limiting public housing to the works classes had been repealed in the 1949 Housing Act, opening up a universally accessible rented council house sector. If public housing had remained just that, instead than seguing into welfare housing, the vicious circle of decline would have lacked the conditions to come into being. The living tapestry of a mixed community could have remained.With Park Hill and its cousins populated as a matter of new policy progressively by those on welfare, however, financial structures of dependency were deliberately imposed on social housing13. An alienated quality grew as residents of the schemes became increas ingly cast adrift from mainstream society.A further strand to this narrative was playing out in the form of a shift in the structure of the economy in Britain. Sheffield grew up producing steel, in the 18th century knives and tools, in the 19th century heavy industry, with a high population of low paid but skilled manual workers. As the 1970s drew to an end and Thatcher came to power, the shift in policy away from provision of affordable social housing accelerated against a backdrop of an increasingly deindustrialized economy. The original inhabitants of the Park Hill and schemes like it, who had once been a proud working class, increasingly found themselves unemployed and without prospects of employment. It is certainly arguable that problems in residualized estates in decline, like Park Hill would have been exacerbated by the scale of social problems developing independently of housing policy.In the public imagination, then, the built fabric of the postwar years has not only pay back synonymous with social failure and breakdown, it is perceived as a cause of it. Failed buildings are pulled down, and it is easy to speculate that they are being made scapegoats for wider problems. Can an architectural falsifying be mounted for schemes like Park Hill, or Robin Hood Gardens?The latter is similar to the agent a serpentine, high density block, this sequence inserted into an area of bomb damaged terraces (the standard grain of working class England) in London. What the Smithsons architects wanted to achieve was intended to maintain community dynamics of the bombed out terraces rather than to replace them with something entirely different. However, what they had not expected, as Kenneth Frampton pointed out in his book Modern Architecture, a fine History, was that three principal features of the by-law street would be absent in their proposed blocks first, the dynamics associated with dwellings on both sides of a street, secondly, the community life associated with the street at ground level, and thirdly, the backyard, which played a crucial role in by-law housing and the life of its communities. 14Robin Hood Gardens, then, contained inherently flawed logic. But the flaws were shared by Park Hill, which prospered during a period when it wasnt handicapped by other factors. Park Hill is commonly described as the largest listed building in Europe and the largest listed brutalist or 60s building. In fact, says Owen Hatherley, its none of those things, with all those titles being taken by Londons Barbican estate a place that, like Park Hill, is full of bare concrete, open space, urban density, walkways, social and the musical interval of pedestrian and car. One is a problem that apparently had to be solved the other one of Londons most prestigious addresses. Why? The obvious reason is that one is council housing and the other, from the very start, was built as private housing. Accordingly, the Barbican has always been cleaned and cared for Pa rk Hill has been left to rot.15Physically, the Barbican is a close relative of a Park Hill, or a Robin Hood Gardens. Socially, though it bears more resemblance to Park Lane. This constitutes bear witness against the argument that the decline into dysfunction of large, dense postwar urban social housing developments was an inevitable moment of poor design.Further support from this position comes from a comparison between Park Hill and many of todays luxury apartment developments. Park Hill was accused of being disconnected from the surrounding fabric, isolating its inhabitants from the life of the city at large but what of the urban regeneration of the last few years in the light of the financial crisis? What do the speculative redevelopments of inner cities look like now? They have become the new ruins of Great Britain. These places have ruination in abundance partly because of the way they were invariably environ by the derelict and un-regenerated, whether rotting industrial re mnants or the giant retail and entertainment sheds of the 80s and 90s partly because they were often so badly built, with pieces of render and wood frequently flaking off at bottom less than a year of completion but partly because they were so often drop, in every sense. Empty of architectural inspiration, empty of social hope or idealism, and often empty of people, Clarence Dock and Glasgow Harbour had a hard time filling their minimalist microflats with either buyers or buy-to-let investors.16We can begin to see that although marketed and branded differently, contemporary developer led, aspirational urban regeneration, may in fact suffer from similar or worse problems relating to its context as the maligned social schemes of the postwar period. Think of Glasgow Harbour, stranded by the Clyde and cut off from the city by the Clydeside Expressway. Worse, analysis of the flats themselves reveals a shocking inferiority in terms of space standards in contemporary developments compare d to the 60s schemes.The logic was straightforward says the Architectural Review in its analysis of Park Hills original planning principles a slab block up to 13 stories high and about 10m wide would permit a habitable room each side and centrally serviced bathrooms, while gallery access was preferred to a double loaded corridor. By making maisonettes with midland staircases it was possible for one gallery to serve 3 floors. Greatest design ingenuity went into planning interlock flats of different sizes, making best use of the limited space. space standards now seem generous, in coincidence to the products of mass house builders17. This, they note, is still valid logic if you accept the inevitability of flats for high densities in urban situations, as exist in cities humannesswide.Even much admired contemporary schemes, like the Panter Hudspith development at Bear Lane in London, feature double loaded internal deck access, permitting only maven aspect flats, with cramped accomm odation yet their skin is considered attractive, and they are praised, despite inferior circulation and planning principles. in the first place concluding, I wish to note that whilst I have tried to demonstrate that it is impossible to blame the general failure of British postwar social housing on its architecture, there is still a world of difference in quality between the Red Road scheme, for example, and a Lasdun or Lubetkin scheme. Lasdun, even within tight budgetary constraints and a density target set by the local council of 200 people per square acre, managed to apply intelligence and subtlety to his designs for Keeling House, Bethnal Green in 1958 for example the scale of the 14 floors was designedly designed to reflect the two storey brick terraces around it, essentially like a row of houses tipped up on its end.18 This is architecture as we are taught it thoughtful, embedded in context. We should remember as well that Park Hill is no simple monolith inserted carelessl y into Sheffield. Its very form is a response to specific topography, with its well known horizontal roof datum capping a 13 storey structure at the bottom of the hill and nuzzling into a street of Victorian villas at four storeys at the top.In conclusion, there is never an excuse for bad design although the fact that mass social housing in Britain in conclusion failed is, in the end, not due to design at all, but to policy.