Since the publication of our last newsletter in the summer, Street Votes, perhaps Building Beautiful’s signature policy proposal to date, has attracted national attention. Street Votes proposes a system where residents are given the power to control developments in their street and potentially share in their profit by voting for the adoption of a local design code. It is this design code, rather than the local planning authority, that would then effectively set the statutory rules by which subsequent developments must abide. 

The newly-installed Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove, has been effusive in his praise of the proposals telling a parliamentary committee that he “loves” them and informing the House of Commons that he plans to have the measures passed into law. Commending the scheme to this house, he remarked that “it is rare that we have legislation that combines greater democratic control with the potential for the beautification —for want of a better word—of our urban and suburban environment, and also unlocks the potential for the value of individuals’ homes to be enhanced by additional development. It is a triple whammy of good news.” 

The clear opportunity Street Votes presents to help realise the government’s flagship levelling-up policy promises to ensure that this cornerstone Policy Exchange research recommendation could prove vital in helping to transform and improve the UK housing and planning sectors. The levelling-up white paper has now been delayed until early next year but we wait with some anticipation to see what role Street Votes and other Building Beautiful recommendations may play within it.  

And yet, despite these successes, Building Beautiful still has much to do. Polling carried out by Policy Exchange this month shows that 66% of the 1,859 respondents questioned had never heard of the Building Beautiful programme. This represents a massive challenge and opportunity for the government. If the government is serious about levelling-up and addressing the housing crisis then it must grasp more assertively the opportunities Building Beautiful’s core principles of design quality and democratic empowerment present to revitalise our built environment and incentivise communities to realise change.

Calls for that change might also be gathering pace on government backbenches. A policy paper released in the autumn might provide an indication for how Building Beautiful’s democratisation agenda might be embedded within a transformative political framework. Trusting the People has been written by ten backbench Tory MPs and has been co-published by the New Social Covenant Unit whose co-founder is now Gove’s parliamentary aide.  It calls for a dramatic return of power to local communities. Central to these plans are calls for residents to be made the “ultimate arbiters” of developments in their area and for neighbourhood planning to be made “universal”. This builds on findings from a 2018 Policy Exchange poll which found that 85% of respondents across all socioeconomic groups said new homes should either fit in with their more traditional surroundings or be identical to homes already in the area.

Politically the report’s proposals fall within the wider legislative pursuit of making the Planning Bill currently progressing through Parliament more acceptable to communities, some of whom felt it would leave them with less of a say on housing developments rather than more. The electoral consequences of this were brutally demonstrated, from the government’s perspective at least, at June’s Chesham and Amersham by-election. Philosophically the new proposals fall perfectly into the vision of community empowerment fundamental to the Building Beautiful movement and consistently championed by multiple Policy Exchange papers in recent years.

The case for a strategic reaffirmation of the Building Beautiful programme is also made by other conclusions our more recent polling has revealed. The RIBA Stirling Prize is the most prestigious prize in British architecture and confers annual awards for what architectural judges vote to be the best building in Britain. Yet of the ten past Stirling Prize winners, it is the two that embody traditional design principles, Goldsmith Street Housing in Norwich by Michel Riches Architects (2019 winner) and Astley Castle Renovation by Witherford Watson Mann Architects (2013 winner) that the public selected as their first and second favourite entrants respectively. This reveals a clear public appetite for the design principles that underpin the Building Beautiful programme.

One area that conspicuously and consistently fails to embrace these principles is tall buildings. In a number of British cities in recent decades and none more so than London, tall buildings have often wreaked damage on skyline and character. Policy Exchange has undertaken some of the most widespread and significant polling in this area compiled in years and the results are startling. 

41% of respondents believe London’s wave of tall buildings have worsened the city’s skyline as opposed to only 25% who believe it has been improved. 43% believe the view from Waterloo Bridge has been rendered less beautiful over the same period while only 23% believe the opposite. 45% of respondents believe tall buildings have harmed London’s historic character with 21% believing it has been enhanced by them. 65% believe tall buildings should not be built in historic areas at all and a staggering 71% insist they must not be allowed to intrude on historic views. 

And most compelling from a planning policy point of view, only 24% of people believe they have been adequately consulted about whether tall buildings should or shouldn’t be permitted and 56% believe new planning regulations should be introduced to more effectively control the development of tall buildings. 

It is for these reasons that in this newsletter and beyond, Policy Exchange will be arguing for a new tall buildings policy to be introduced for London and a national framework to guide the development of tall buildings in all British cities where they are proposed. Not only do we believe this to be fully in line with Building Beautiful’s principles of design quality and greater democratisation of the planning process, but we believe such a call is vindicated by our poll results which show clear public dissatisfaction with the current situation and a desire for greater public involvement in how tall buildings are allowed to impact their urban characters, cityscapes and communities.

Heritage has featured much in the headlines since the publication of our last newsletter. While not exactly a shock to many, Liverpool’s historic loss of its World Heritage Site status in the summer was acutely disappointing and poses serious questions for the political and cultural priority we as a country give to heritage assets. The Marble Arch Mound fiasco also exposes stark inadequacies in both our approach to appropriate development around historic national monuments and enhancing public space. 

The COP26 Climate Change Conference that took place in Glasgow in the autumn and the surprise planning inquiry decision to reject the proposals for the City of London’s Tulip observation tower proposals have ensured that environmental issues now dominate the headlines and are also explored in further detail in this newsletter. Climate change may also have the potential to influence the Building Beautiful agenda and the Prince of Wales’s latest proposals for a 2,500-unit, sustainable, “landscape-led” new town in Faversham, Kent might show how. The plans make an explicit connection between net-zero development and traditional design and could form a template for how the two principles might overlap in the future. If the new commitment to climate awareness in construction could be harnessed to a rediscovery of traditional and more sustainable design methods and principles in housebuilding then the Building Beautiful programme could become a key component in realising the government’s environmental as well as housebuilding ambitions.

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Despite these welcome developments there is still much to do to solve Britain’s housing crisis. Despite the success of Building Beautiful in proposing measures like Street Votes and in implementing new government policy decisions such as the new Office for Place and the adoption of a National Model Design Code, all too often the public are still resistant to new housing because they essentially fear it will be too ugly. Our polling showed that only 32% believe that the Building Beautiful programme could improve the quality of new UK housing indicating that there are still profound trust issues between the public and the various bodies they look towards for the delivery of housing stock. 

Equally, housebuilders are yet to be fully convinced of the benefits of viewing architectural quality as an integral rather than optional business commodity. And politicians are still fearful of a vicious circle in which both promoting or rejecting new housing has the potential to irritate vast swathes of the electorate. All these challenges are part of the reason why Britain isn’t building enough homes. It will now fall to Michael Gove and his new levelling-up department to square these circles. Britain’s housing crisis is by no means over. But some of the tools that have the potential to ease or even end it are now in place.

Ike Ijeh
Place Matters is always keen to be informed of housing and architectural developments across the country which you deem to be of either exceptionally high or low quality. Please send these to ikeijeh.px@gmail.com and I would be happy to consider them for inclusion in future newsletters. Thank you.
 

1. In Memoriam – James Brokenshire                            
2. In Memoriam – Owen Luder   
3. In Memoriam – Richard Rogers
4. In Memoriam – Chris Wilkinson         
5. The Carbon Conundrum                                            
6. The Legacy of Liverpool’s UNESCO Demotion            
7. Building Beautiful Spaces                                           
8. Tall Storeys: Height vs Heritage                                  
9. Beauty & the Beast

In Memoriam

The untimely death at the age of 53 of former Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, James Brokenshire is a great loss not just for his friends and parliamentary colleagues but for those who care about the built environment. Brokenshire’s parliamentary career lasted 16 years and in it he had served in a number of senior ministerial roles including as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and more recently as Minister of State for Security. 

It is perhaps for his 15-month tenure as Housing Secretary that he will be most keenly remembered. During this relatively short period, Brokenshire set policy trends in motion whose benefits have yet to be seen in full. He was a stalwart champion of the Building Beautiful programme, he established the landmark Building Beautiful Building Better Commission some of whose recommendations in the form of an Office for Place and a National Design Code have now been realised and, in appointing acclaimed conservative philosopher Sir Roger Scruton as its chair, gave the Commission an intellectual heft that went some way to neutering its detractors. 

And, at least at the beginning, there were many detractors. Brokenshire became a lightning-rod for intense opposition to the Building Beautiful programme from planners, architects and even from within his own Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. 

Brokenshire bore all these tribulations with his customary good nature and soft-spoken charm. While Building Beautiful still has much more to achieve, it is inconceivable that it would have made the impact it has thus far without Brokenshire’s unwavering commitment and support. It is not true that all political careers end in failure. In helping to reinstall beauty back into our collective consciousness, Brokenshire’s legacy will live on in the constellation of British towns, cities, communities and homes his policies quietly sought to rejuvenate and which forms the reassuring backbone of our national life.

In Memoriam

The untimely death at the age of 53 of former Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, James Brokenshire is a great loss not just for his friends and parliamentary colleagues but for those who care about the built environment. Brokenshire’s parliamentary career lasted 16 years and in it he had served in a number of senior ministerial roles including as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and more recently as Minister of State for Security. 

It is perhaps for his 15-month tenure as Housing Secretary that he will be most keenly remembered. During this relatively short period, Brokenshire set policy trends in motion whose benefits have yet to be seen in full. He was a stalwart champion of the Building Beautiful programme, he established the landmark Building Beautiful Building Better Commission some of whose recommendations in the form of an Office for Place and a National Design Code have now been realised and, in appointing acclaimed conservative philosopher Sir Roger Scruton as its chair, gave the Commission an intellectual heft that went some way to neutering its detractors. 

And, at least at the beginning, there were many detractors. Brokenshire became a lightning-rod for intense opposition to the Building Beautiful programme from planners, architects and even from within his own Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. 

Brokenshire bore all these tribulations with his customary good nature and soft-spoken charm. While Building Beautiful still has much more to achieve, it is inconceivable that it would have made the impact it has thus far without Brokenshire’s unwavering commitment and support. It is not true that all political careers end in failure. In helping to reinstall beauty back into our collective consciousness, Brokenshire’s legacy will live on in the constellation of British towns, cities, communities and homes his policies quietly sought to rejuvenate and which forms the reassuring backbone of our national life.

In Memoriam

The sad death of Richard Rogers just before Christmas marks the passing of one of the greatest architectural figures of our age. For three consecutive decades from the 1970s onwards Rogers was responsible for creating arguably the defining building of the decade in both Britain and France. In the 1970s he and his practice partner at the time Italian modernist Renzo Piano designed the Pompidou Centre museum in Paris, finally prising open the door to foreign architects that France’s famously hermetic architectural system had left firmly shut for centuries. In so doing Rogers helped create a gregarious, high-tech, industrial machine right in the centre of historic Paris that initially terrorised conservative Parisian sensitivities before eventually being accepted as one of the most popular museums in the capital.

In the 1980s Rogers moved his attention to London and in the infamous Lloyds Building in the City created arguably the most controversial major British building of the decade. With its radical ‘inside-out’ construction dramatically placing cores, ductwork and services on the outside thereby optimising the interior for habitable space, it delighted modernists by quite literally turned a century of office architectural convention on its head. But in doing so it outraged conservationists by pugilistically projecting its armour-plated, high-tech, hyper-industrial, ‘oil-rig’ machine aesthetic to its helpless historic surroundings.

And in the 1990s Rogers won what was probably the keynote British public commission of the decade when he was selected to design the Millennium Dome, home to the Labour government’s ambitious Millennium Exhibition. Less mechanistically uncompromising than its predecessors, it still maintained Rogers’ trademark technical ingenuity by erecting a vast spherical, glass-fibre, tensile structure so lightweight that the building weighs less than the air inside it.

While Rogers was worshipped by the architectural establishment, it is no secret that he was no advocate of traditionalism and would never, ever have subscribed to the Scrutonian ideals that underpin the Building Beautiful movement. Like many schooled in the Modernist orthodoxy Rogers did not see beauty as a tangible or viable aesthetic commodity but more as an ideological construct that, if necessary, could be procured through the purity of technological ingenuity and structural expressionism, features particularly synonymous with his work. 

Accordingly, Rogers, along with one-time practice partner Normal Foster at the start of his career, was a pioneer of the High-Tech style, Modernism’s defiant last stand which pursued a radical new functionalist, industrial style of architecture developed from the early 1970s that celebrated buildings as machines. Decoration, contextual empathy, historic sensitivity and traditional ideas of beauty were utterly banished.

As a result, in the Battle of the Styles that raged between modernists and traditionalists in the 1980s Rogers was frequently cast as the archetypal hero to the former and bogeyman to the latter. His most unlikely nemesis throughout his career emerged as none other than the Prince of Wales whose much-publicised and at times outspoken traditionalist sympathies irked both Rogers and the architectural establishment. 

In a number of bruising skirmishes on various showpiece projects such as the National Gallery Extension, Paternoster Square, the Royal Opera House redevelopment and Chelsea Barracks, the prince and the architect essentially fought a bitter proxy war for their respective architectural ideologies.

But while Rogers stood for much that traditionalism was against, he made three significant contributions to the canon of architecture that transcend style and will inevitably define his legacy. Intriguingly these achievements concentrate more on his activism than his architecture. First was his highly prescient environmentalism and in his seminal 1995 book, Cities for a Small Planet, Rogers’ impassioned arguments for compact cities, efficient public transport and local materials expertly foreshadowed today’s sustainability movement. They also influenced a new generation of architects.

His second legacy contribution was his extraordinarily high regard for public realm and public spaces. While many Modernists were ideologically ambivalent about public space preferring to focus objectively on their buildings instead, Rogers saw public space as an essential conduit for urban life and civic engagement and sought to prioritise them accordingly. While his buildings might project mechanistic aggression stylistically, his approach to public realm engagement, as evidenced by his dynamic, partially submerged public plaza at the base of his City of London Leadenhall Tower (2014), displayed an altogether more humane and creative approach. 

Again, he displayed admirable prescience here too. In the landmark 1986 London As It Could Be exhibition at the Royal Academy, his masterplanning ideas for pedestrianising public spaces in central London were eventually partially realised by the part-pedestrianisation of Trafalgar Square in 2003 by his old partner, Norman Foster.

And Rogers’ third and probably foremost legacy was his extraordinary political effectiveness, a skill for which architects are not commonly known. Rogers was deeply ingratiated with the New Labour government of the late 1990s and 2000s and in 1992 along with Shadow Minister for the Arts and Media at the time Mark Fisher, had written A New London, an extraordinary book-manifesto calling for radical change in the capital’s urban infrastructure and public realm. 

Shortly after Labour was elected in 1997 Rogers was asked to chair the government’s new Urban Task Force charged with arresting urban decline. Its ground-breaking 1999 Report, Towards An Urban Renaissance, was hugely influential and set in motion many of the built environment policy positions – such as urban densification and housing planning guidance – that are still in operation today. After the reinstallation of the London mayoralty in 2000, Rogers was also chief urban advisor to Mayor Ken Livingstone during both his terms in office.

Rogers was undoubtedly a divisive figure. He often appeared to delight in provoking traditionalists and, like many great artists perhaps, rarely seemed interested in marrying conviction with consensus. He was also a contradictory figure; many were puzzled when an architect who had made such great play of his social awareness and political activism accepted the commission to design what were at the time the most expensive flats in the world at London’s One Hyde Park (2011).

But in his environmental activism, public space engagement and most strongly in his exceptional political commitment, Rogers achieved an historic level of influence on the urban framework and landscape of Britain that architects rarely attain. He undoubtedly leaves behind an extraordinary body of architectural work. But there is a strong argument to claim that his greatest legacy lies not in the places he designed but the policies he wrote. 

In Memoriam

Chris Wilkinson was one half of a ground-breaking, RIBA Stirling Prize-winning British architectural practice, Wilkinson Eyre, that arguably did more to transform architecture and engineering into visual spectacle than any since designer Brunel. Like Brunel Wilkinson was obsessed with infrastructure, was a fastidious futurist and had the utmost faith in the ability of technology to provide innovative solutions that would enhance our urban environment and ultimately uplift the human spirit. And like Brunel, he pushed the boundaries of engineering to produce a series of structural spectaculars across the world that, though they clearly rejected traditionalism, exhibited a scale, intricacy and technological purity that frequently attained a theatrical, sculptural beauty all of their own.

It is perhaps this final aspect that separates Wilkinson most from his High-Tech contemporaries. Like Richard Rogers, Norman Foster and Michael Hopkins, all of whom he worked with at the start of his career, Wilkinson was a committed subscriber to the High-Tech style, Modernism’s final, defiant push for industrial efficiency and technological functionalism before it was all swept away in the 1980s by the surge of Post-Modernism. 
But unlike many of his High-Tech peers and again like Brunel, Wilkinson had an eye for something else too, purity of form. For him, it was fine to assemble and process buildings like machines, as High-Tech instructed. But if these machine-buildings could have clean lines and elegant forms too, all the better. 

We see this intriguing fusion between elegance and engineering in Wilkinson’s best work. At the extraordinary Gardens By the Bay in Singapore he casts two gigantic glass conservatories as a pair of serrated elliptical domes inspired by the naturalistic form of an orchid flower. And in China’s Guangzhou IFC skyscraper, the gentle double-curved geometry of the façade helps create a gently twisting sculptural form. 

But as a consummate architect-engineer in Brunel’s own tradition, it is arguably on Wilkinson’s extraordinary collection of bridges where we see his extreme technological prowess modelled into forms of enduring visual beauty. At the famous Gateshead Millennium Bridge, walkway and arch are strung together by a series of tensile cables that allow the swooping curves of both to be dramatically tilted to allow ships to path underneath. Similar swinging bridges in locations as far afield as Denmark to London’s Denmark followed a similar pattern. And perhaps most memorably at his stunning Bridge of Aspiration that links London’s Royal Opera House to the adjacent Royal Ballet School across a narrow alley, the bridge’s rectilinear frame shudders and twists with the compressive fluidity of a concertina being successively compressed and released between two palms. 

The latter project also highlights Wilkinson’s ease working with historic contexts, conditions in which High-Tech almost never finds itself comfortable. This was again displayed at his refurbishment of Giles Gilbert Scott’s Weston Library in Oxford, where Wilkinson’s clean lines and gentle reorganisation sensitively extend the host 1930s building. 

Wilkinson leaves behind an extraordinary legacy of remarkable buildings and structures that prove that in the right hands, technology, engineering and beauty can comfortably co-exist.

The Carbon Conundrum

The Legacy of Liverpool’s UNESCO Demotion

Building Beautiful Spaces

Tall Storeys: Height vs Heritage