Building within and imagining outside: a case
study of three architectural organisations working
within the housing crisis.
Name: Zoë Cave
Student number: 12075108
Track: Social Problems and Social Policy Word count (excluding Bibliography): 23,860 First Reader: dr. Adeola Enigbokan
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Rachel, Fay and Ophelia for answering my inane questions. Thank you to Marguerite for the initial negotiations.
Thank you to Adeola for the consistent support (+1 crisis phone call). Thank you to Ella and Tom for endless patience with my grammar. Thank you to Richard and Rhona for the real talk.
Table of Content Table of Content
Acknowledgements ……….. 2
Abstract ………...4
1. Introduction ………6
1.1 The built environment is political ………. 6
1.2 The case studies ………8
2. Methodology ………11
2.1 Data collection ………11
2.2 Analysis ………12
2.3 Interviewer/respondent relationship………12
3. The Housing Crisis and Architecture as a Field ………16
3.1 Infrastructure to commodity - a brief history ……….17
3.2 The legacy of Grenfell Tower fire ………21
3.3 Architecture as a field ……….24
4. Discourse and Built Projects Within the System/Lifeworld ………...28
4.1 Designing space for occupier agency and everyday urbanism ………...31
4.2 Improving the lived experience for occupiers and communities ……….. 35
4.3 Navigating tension between value and values ……….37
5. Imagining Alternatives ………44
5.1 Sketching to imagine ………47
5.2 Imagining how it should be ………50
5.3 Imaginations in actuality ……….53
6. Conclusion ………..59
6.1 Answering the question ……….59
6.2 Limitations ……….60
6.3 Recommendations ………61
Abstract
This thesis looks at how two architectural practices, Peter Barber Architects, RCKa and one
community organisation, the Foodhall, work within the system/lifeworld and how they also imagine outside of it. I apply Habermas’ (1987) colonisation of the lifeworld and understanding of a system in crisis, in this case, ‘the housing crisis’ within which the three case studies are working. Value and values can be seen as features of the system/lifeworld and will be drawn out in the analysis using Skeggs (2004) conceptualisation. Using Bourdieu (1977) and Jones (2009), I will show how architecture is a field of cultural production and is particularly dependent on the capitalist system. This thesis explores how they are working within the system/lifeworld. Through focussing on their built projects and how they design in unprogrammed space (Ertas 2010) for occupier agency and everyday urbanism (Crawford 1999), we see how the case studies navigate working within a system/lifeworld that prioritises value over any sense of values, such as social relations and
community. Finally, applying Latimer’s and Skegg’s (2011) conceptualisation of the imagination, this thesis shows how the imagination generates space for alternatives outside this system. Therefore, this thesis will answer the question: how are three architectural organisations working within, and imagining outside, the housing crisis?
By expanding design so it is relevant everywhere, designers take up the mantle of morality… [T]his normative dimension that is intrinsic to design offers a good handle from which to extend the question of design to politics
1: Introduction
How are three architectural organisations working within, and imagining outside, the housing crisis? 1.1 The built environment is political
The UK is said to be in a housing crisis. This has lead to a 7% home ownership decrease since 2003 and is pushing people into the unregulated private rental sector which is of poor quality, has limited protection for tenants and is experiencing inflated rents (Gallent et al 2017). Those affected by the housing crisis range from those who pay over 40% of their income on rent but can otherwise afford to live where they want (Shelter 2018) and those ‘at the bottom’ who are severely affected facing homelessness and rough sleeping (Watt and Minton 2016). The situation is made more precarious because the safety-net of public or third sector housing is limited and the government’s policies focus on those within reach of home ownership, such as first-time buyers (Gallent et al 2017). Such policies aim to regain the potential of a property owning democracy but neglect the most vulnerable (Gallent et al 2017).
The charity Shelter (2018) conducted a cross party report that concluded 3.1 million houses need to be built by 2040 to meet the demand. Nevertheless, consistently, the private rental market is cited as a key factor behind the symptoms of the housing crisis: overcrowding, hazardous conditions, precarious tenures and unresponsive landlords (Shelter 2018, Watt and Minton 2016). For instance, Citizens Advice found that 46% of private renters who complained about poor conditions, like damp and mould, were evicted within six months of the complaint (Rodgers et al 2018). This lack of protection for private rental tenants has seen a considerable increase in homelessness and those in temporary accommodation (Shelter 2018). The UK Government highlight a number of social issues that stem from the housing crisis:
Housing need manifests itself in a variety of ways, such as increased levels of
overcrowding, acute affordability issues, more young people living with their parents for longer periods, impaired labour mobility resulting in businesses finding it difficult to recruit and retain staff, and increased levels of homelessness.
Wilson and Barton 2018:3 This shows how varying social issues can be rooted in one underlying phenomenon. Yet, Thoburn
unmanageable situation, … obscures that it is actively manufactured” (Thoburn 2018:614). Arguably this is exemplified by the property and development industries continued growth during this time (Elmer and Dening 2016). Moreover, land value has continued to rise and the IPPR report states the value of land is the predominant but hidden reason behind the crisis (Murphy 2018). The rate of increase over the last two decades means land is now double the value of the property built on it (Murphy 2017). Therefore labelling it a ‘housing’ crisis reduces the reality of the inextricable
variables involved whilst making the solution - build more housing - the seemingly obvious (Gallent et al 2017). However, citing globalised financial forces and soaring land value as causes disembodies the social relations and human choices behind the making of our built environment (Tonkiss 2013). These choices are embedded in the grand and iconic architecture and urban planning, as well as the informal practices of the everyday, all of which organise people and order space (Tonkiss 2013). Harvey (2008) states the city is made from our ‘hearts desires’, but whose desires and whose choices? Asking such questions highlights that the built environment is inherently political because it is a physical manifestation of who has access and the power to change it and who does not. This thesis focuses on those who are part of the design and choice-making process.
Professions are studied in sociology because of how social actors create, define and autonomise knowledge, discourse, social practices and the relative power this involves and affords (Sang et al 2014). Professionalisation “always requires that one defines and controls a unique body of expertise that is acknowledged by outsiders” (Upton 2002:709) which offers a protective wall. Architecture is relatively less assessed than other professions (Cohen et al 2005, Sang et al 2014) but they are (re)producers of knowledge, social narratives and truisms, which then become concreted in our built environment (Bremmer 2010). Architect Jeremy Till (2013) is acutely aware of architecture’s status as a black-box profession, how it has “avoided engagement with the uncertainties of the world through a retreat into an autonomous realm” (Till 2013:5). The ‘black-box’ label, however, depicts a false essentialism, thus overlooking the construction of architecture by social actors who are ingrained in the everyday. Architect Lisa Bremmer (2010) deems architects as everyday social actors, thereby evoking the argument that all architecture is embedded within the social with its “shifting terrains and fluid landscapes, its relentless economy, its... cultural life” (Bremmer 2010:28).
I will be situating three case studies (two architecture practices, one community organisation) within the current system/lifeworld that is experiencing a housing crisis. From here I describe and explain how they work within the system/lifeworld and how they imagine alternatives outside of it.
1.2 The case studies
Established in 1989, Peter Barber Architects (PBA henceforth) is an award-winning ‘design-orientated’ practice with Peter Barber being described as one of the UK’s most distinguished housing architects (Brooks 2018). The practice’s “varied portfolio of work is underpinned by a consistent commitment to ‘radical solutions’ and excellence in design” (‘Peter Barber Architects’ n/d). They design ‘non-iconic’ architecture: domestic, healthcare and educational buildings (Brooks 2018) and clients include housing associations and local authorities. They have won a range of awards spanning from 2004 when they won the RIBA award for Housing Design for Donnybrook Quarter, to 2019, winning the RIBA London Awards for Ordnance Road and Moray Mews. Peter draws heavily on urbanist and activist Jane Jacobs with street-based urban design (Peter Barber, Project Interrupt, 2017) and the practice quote Marxist cultural critique, and Walter Benjamin in their manifesto (‘Peter Barber Architects Manifesto’ n/d). Peter is particularly vocal around the issues of housing, taking a political and critical stance on the current crisis. He also lectures at the University of Westminster. The practice was asked to participate in this thesis because of how well-established they are and how outwardly critical Peter has been about the crisis.
Formed in 2008, RCKa are known for community and housing projects. RCKa describe themselves as producers of “socially responsive architecture … that realise both social and economic value” (‘RCKa Homepage’ n/d). As a practice their main onus is ‘socially responsive’ architecture which includes retirement housing, community centres, technology and business centres, and galleries. Their clients are local authorities, housing associations and real estate companies. Their awards include the RIBA National Building Award for the TNG Community Centre in 2014 and in the same year won the RIBA Emerging Architect award. In 2018, they won the Housing Design Awards for their Highgate Newtown Community Centre. Russell Curtis is the Founding Director, along with being a trustee for the Architecture Foundation and most recently has become one of the fifty London Mayor’s Design Advocates (MDA henceforth). I approached RCKa because they are a newer practice who continuously forefront the concept of ‘socially responsive architecture’; moreover, as an MDA, Russell has an interesting position bridging the field of architecture with the political field within London.
The Foodhall is a public space and community service in Sheffield for sharing food and events. It is a converted morgue in the city centre and is open three days a week. In order to promote the ideals of
citizenship it isn’t commercially focused (‘The Foodhall is a Public Space’ 2017). This is achieved by cooking for the community using reclaimed and donated food that would otherwise go to waste (‘The Foodhall is a Public Space’ 2017). They operate as a pay-as-you-feel, which means some can eat for free, subsidised by those who can pay more. They run mainly on volunteer work. Louis is one of three Founders and Directors of the Foodhall in Sheffield and structures the Foodhall on a radical and anarchist ideology; it is co-created by the community rather than in a typical hierarchical nature. In 2016 they won the Sheffield Design Awards Small Project and the People’s Choice and in 2017 they received The MacEwen Award Highly Commended from RIBA. The Foodhall were asked because it can be seen as an alternative to organising space and a broader definition of architecture. Based in Sheffield, this case study demonstrates how different political-economic factors shape different built environments (Tonkiss 2013).
PBA and RCKa are established within the field of architecture and hold a relatively critical approach whilst still running the practices. The Foodhall is what Warner (2002) would consider a
‘counterpublic’ to the field of architecture. Positioned outside the main public of architecture, or for this analysis ‘field’, the Foodhall and Louis hold a critical distance. Moreover, being an activist and community member of this built project, rather than a practicing architect, Louis is embedded in the everyday continued creation of the Foodhall. This again, offers a different perspective to the
architecture practice and is an example of informal practices shaping the city. From a more
conceptual level too, this thesis shows that not just architects create architecture, and in doing so it considers architecture beyond the profession and what is traditionally produced. The Foodhall is used in this thesis to show how architecture is a much looser and messier idea, and can take on an informal, DIY and thus activist role in opposition to the formal rules and processes shaping the city (Iveson 2013). Moreover the Foodhall is based in Sheffield which is hugely different to London with different political and economic factors and this in turn allows different values to emerge. Sheffield as a comparative location will be further explored in Chapter 3. Despite differences, all three were asked to take part because of their critical perspective on the prevailing system and their work on non-iconic architecture, rather than iconic or flagship architecture (Jones 2009).
After the Introduction (Chapter 1) and Methodology (Chapter 2), the main body of thesis is in three further chapters. Chapter 3 (The Housing Crisis and Architecture as a Field) looks at the first sub-question: what is the housing crisis and why should we consider architects within it. We start by looking at top-line policy changes of UK centred on housing but considering other forms of non-iconic architecture, like community centres. Arriving at 2017, we look at the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower
fire and the legacy it left. We then asses architecture as a field of cultural production within this system (Jones 2009). Chapter 4 (Discourse and Built Projects Within the System) is an analysis of the data. It will answer the second sub-question: how are the three architectural organisations working within the current system/lifeworld? We look at how the case studies design in
unprogrammed space for occupier agency and everyday urbanism because it’s believed to improve the lived experience of occupiers/community, and finally, how they navigate tensions between value and values (Skeggs 2004). Chapter 5 (Imagining Alternatives) further analyses the data and will answer the third sub-question: how are the three architectural organisations using the imagination to generate alternatives? This looks at how the case studies engage with the imagination to generate alternatives outside the system/lifeworld; Peter, using sketching as a form of imagination; Russell, imagining how things should be in the current system; the Foodhall, an imagination in actuality.
2: Methodology
This study takes an interpretative approach based on the epistemological understanding that the experiences of each case study are constructed through relations to the social world of which the researcher is part of (Hennick et al 2011). Within this paradigm, the research is based on my interpretation of their experience and perspective, therefore a qualitative study was chosen to generate thick descriptions of this (Hennick et al 2011). Qualitative also offered a chance to explore interesting lines of enquiry as they arose (Sang et al 2014), feeding back into the research cycle (Hennick et al 2011). The data was collected using a mixed methods approach within the
interpretivist paradigm (rather than across quantitative and qualitative) (Hennick et al 2011). I used in-depth interviews and discourse analysis, plus one additional method suited to each case study. The discourse analysis was cross referenced with the interview transcripts to find gaps or overlaps between what was said in person and what had been constructed through different outlets of written discourse.
2.1 Data collection
The data collection focused on built projects and discourse. For RCKa and PBA this was any number of different projects by their practice, for the Foodhall, this would be their Sheffield site. Discourse was understood as “language [that] does not merely “name” or passively describe reality, but frames it, and in so doing promotes particular attitudes and discourages others” (Oswick et al 1997 cited in Cohen et al 2005:778). Therefore the interview schedules were created from researching each organisation’s existing projects and work they did outside of designing, such as talks given/articles written.
● Peter Barber Architects: non-participant observation, in-depth interview, discourse analysis. I attended a talk Peter gave at the RIBA as a form of non-participant observation. This was followed up with a telephone interview and discourse analysis of articles written about him and a chapter written by him. Peter had the most extensive discourse analysis to allow for any detail that might be lost over the phone. The discourse analysis was on an interview he gave to the The Guardian, the online newspaper, titled: “Washing line warrior: the architect who wants to get the neighbours singing”. The Guardian is a centre-left wing online newspaper. I analysed a Dezeen article: “Peter Barber is designing a city every day for a year”. Dezeen is an architecture and interior design
magazine. Finally, a chapter from the book ‘Project Interrupt’ was analysed. This book is published by the Architecture Foundation (where Russell is a Trustee), the UK’s first independent architecture centre. The book platforms a number of different architects responses to the housing crisis. Peter wrote a chapter for it which includes current projects and speculative ones, including the Hundred Mile City.
● The Foodhall: two in-depth interviews, non-participant observations of the Foodhall’s finance meeting and the strategy meeting for the CLT project, and discourse analysis.
I visited the Foodhall in Sheffield for the day. This started with an interview with Louis and I then observed two meetings, one with a professor in architecture from Sheffield Hallam University who was helping Louis prepare for a meeting with Sheffield City Council to discuss the proposed CLT. The second meeting was a finance meeting with members of the Foodhall community. The discourse analysis was on the Sheffield CLT strategy document co-produced and written by Louis along with others who are working on this proposal (at the time of writing this was a work in progress). The second is an article from the online RIBA Journal reviewing the Foodhall, titled “Everyone Welcome” and written after the Foodhall came Highly Commended in the RIBA MacEwan Awards. The next article is a short piece written by Louis for the RIBA Journal as an award finalist, ‘Beyond Bricks and Mortar”. Finally, I analysed a collection of extracts from the Foodhall publication, “Foodhall Open Journal”, which publishes pieces written by the Foodhall community.
● RCKa: in-depth interview, a visual aid and discourse analysis.
I had an in-depth interview at the RCKa practice with Russell which started using the visual aid of two current projects, TNG Community Centre and PegasusLife retirement housing. For the discourse analysis, I used Russell’s open letter/application to be a Mayor’s Design Advocate: “Letter to the Mayor of London — Design Advocate Submission”. The MDA is explained in the following chapter. I also reviewed the practices review of their project, PegasusLife Hortsley project: “Social Cohesion, PegasusLife Hortsley”. I analysed Architects Journal article reviewing the TNG Community Centre: “BUILDING STUDY Outgoing and retiring: RCKa’s Hortsley housing scheme for PegasusLife”. Architects Journal is a major architect media outlet.
2.2 Analysis
The codes were developed using the Atlas.ti software. All the interviews were transcribed and then codes were developed. Codes were established that covered sociological, urban and
commercial/market themes and were based on both inductive and deductive coding (Hennick et al 2011). These main codes were subcoded to add nuance before reaching saturation and no more themes or issues could be highlighted (Hennick et al 2011). Concepts and theories were then worked through the coded data because the coding process highlighted more themes that needed addressing through theory. This was exemplified when looking at what the case studies were able to build and how they navigated their work within the system; factors which hadn’t been considered prior to this stage.
2.3 Interviewer/respondent relationship
Russell/RCKa and Peter/PBA were approached directly to take part in the study, I had no prior relationship to them. I knew Louis prior to the research and was recommended to speak to him for my research by a friend who studied architecture with him.
In acknowledging my own position, I had little knowledge of architecture but a number of friends studied it which gave me an initial ‘in’ to the field and by Bourdieu’s analysis, offered a form of social capital once in the field. The aim of this research is to unpack how architectural knowledge is formed (Roy 2011), this required extensive desk research to gain a foundation of understanding. Moreover, prior to the interviews I had more general conversations with other architects, members of the Design Council, employees of the GLA, professors of architecture, members of regeneration team from London Borough councils and a protest walk with architectural activists. Nevertheless, Smith (2003) highlights how interviewing professionals means as a researcher, one has to push past the wall of professional ‘jargon’ in order to actually conceptualise the work. So despite having a general understanding to the field, it might not prevent how professionals “characteristically use the [jargon] of their professional work and characteristically takes for granted and doesn’t describe what they actually do” (Smith 2003:64). Yet, as an interviewer, being an ‘outsider’ was a benefit because it encouraged interviewees to unpack and make explicit their tacit knowledge, which gave me insight into how this knowledge is constructed (Sang et al 2014).
To briefly note, this thesis does not look specifically at the role of gender and race, but to avoid perpetuating the legitimation of the hegemonic masculinity of architecture (Sang et al 2014), it
should be noted that the three individuals I spoke to were white male, as is the norm of this field. However, the social construction of this norm that affords them this position as (re)producers of knowledge, should be acknowledged (Sang et al 2014). Moreover, it highlights how different forms of labour are valued because of their association with specific forms of personhood (Skeggs 2004). The market’s idealised person, Mr Homo Economicus, is the embodiment of the rational, public and masculine and exists in opposition to the feminine, irrational and private (Skeggs 2004). Mr Homo Economicus can ‘bracket’ off this subjectivities and move through the public with this objective and rational knowledge (Warner 2002). The three individuals closely align with this personhood but I use this brief point to highlight the socially constructed, rather than naturally endowed, nature of their positioning.
Architecture is so interwoven with social relations of land, commissioning, and speculation that it is the most capitalist of arts.
3: The Housing Crisis and Architecture as a Field
How are three architectural organisations working within, and imagining outside, the housing crisis? This chapter will answer the first sub-question: what is the housing crisis and why should we consider architects within it. This chapter will contextualise the three case studies within the system/lifeworld and ‘field’, before the next chapter which looks at looks at their built projects and
discourse within the field, and the concept of the imagination generating alternatives outside the current system/lifeworld.
Chapter 3 starts by looking at the history of housing and, through the application of Habermas’ (1987) colonisation of the lifeworld, considers how this system is experiencing a crisis, or ‘the housing crisis’. Using Bourdieu (1993) and Jones (2009), I will show how architecture is a field of cultural production and is particularly dependent on the capitalist system. This chapter will establish PBA, RCKa and the Foodhall within historical political changes, the concept of the field and the system in crisis, in turn contextualising their built projects and discourse. Chapter 4 (Discourse and Built Projects Within the System) then zooms in on how they design unprogrammed space into their built projects for occupier agency and everyday urbanism (Crawford 2005, Ertas 2010). The analysis in Chapter 4 interrogates the tensions between a system that prioritises value whilst they attempt to forefront their own values of social relations, community and having a right to the city (Skeggs 2004, Harvey 2008). This finally leads us to conceptualise the imagination and how the three case studies engage the imagination to generate space for alternatives outside this system (Chapter 5).
To explain the housing crisis, this chapter starts by describing sequential UK governments and their change from state supplied, to private and market regulated housing and land (3.1). This change started with Conservative’s Right to Buy scheme, then compounded by New Labour’s ‘fixing’ of the housing market and the Coalition’s austerity governance. These policy changes that lead to the crisis can be theorised with Habermas’ (1987) idea of the lifeworld being colonised by the system, and Skeggs’ (2004) value/s. Grenfell Tower Fire (3.2) is then positioned as the critical moment of the crisis and a physical manifestation of the resulting inequalities from changes in political and economic ideology. The fire resulted in housing being put back on the political agenda, leading to direct government responses and subsequent local government schemes. By situating the analysis within a system/lifeworld which is in crisis, we can unpack current responses of the state and how they still engage in market-rule as a continuation of the system. Having established the idea of a
system/lifeworld, I then place architecture within this. Architecture is conceptualised as a field of cultural production (3.3). The field positions actors based on cultural, social and economic capital that will in turn shape what is produced by the field (Bourdieu 1993). Some forms of produced cultural capital can be used as ‘soft capitalism’ to legitimise the system reinforcing the political-economic powers that maintain the system (Jones 2009).
3.1 Infrastructure to commodity: a brief history
The UK is in a ‘housing crisis’ and the issue is framed as those who most need housing are unable to access it. This has led to overcrowding, precarious living situations, less people owning houses and instead being trapped in an inflated unregulated rental market (Watt and Minton 2016). It is estimated 12.7 million people are considered in need of housing, with 631,000 living in hazardous conditions, 240,000 in overcrowded accommodation and 277,000 are homeless (Shelter 2018). People are being displaced as they are priced out of regenerated areas (Elmer and Denning 2016). This change in our relationship to housing has happened through a series of political and economic ideological changes over forty years which led to close partnerships between private organisations and the state (Crouch 2004). I argue this is an example of the lifeworld being colonised by the system within which we are situated. Running through top-line government changes, the analysis will arrive at 2017 and the Grenfell Tower fire.
Housing has changed from a government supplied infrastructure to a commodity through the process of privatising housing. In 1984, Margaret Thatcher addressed the National Housebuilding Council stating the “private sector alone can meet lifelong housing needs” (Thatcher 1984). Within the five years between her taking office and this speech, “1.7 million more people have come to own their homes—1.7 million more “sole kings upon their own sole ground.” (Thatcher 1984). From 1979, the move was towards a ‘property owning democracy’ as the stake of individualism, as opposed to redistribution of capital through collective egalitarianism, as was previously associated with postwar welfare state (Forrest and Murie 1988). The market was the enabler, rather than the state. The aim was to undo the net effect of postwar mass social housing that had resulted in 42% of Britons living in council housing (Woodward 2009). The Right-to-Buy is an iconic scheme that allowed tenants to buy their council homes at discount rates of up to 70%, without the government replacing any of the stock. This turned housing from an infrastructure to a commodity and was the initial political turn that spearheaded the privatisation and marketisation of housing (Hodkinson et al 2013).
New Labour, led by Tony Blair, came to power in 1997. Over 1.8 million council homes, or one in four, were sold to sitting tenants, and home ownership rose from 57% to 68% of UK households (Hodkinson et al 2013). Rather than undoing any of these changes, New Labour continued the dismantling of the welfare state along with policies such as ‘Quality and Choice: A Decent Home for All’, exemplifying New Labour’s vision for housing in the new Millennium (Cowan and Marsh 2001). Such policies, underpinned by discourse such as ‘choice’ and ‘quality’, represent values of the market and of the consumer (Cowan and Marsh 2001). Local authorities became ‘enablers’ rather than ‘providers’ (Cowan and Marsh 2001, Crouch 2004), transferring council land and housing stock to privately owned developers and housing associations (Hodkinson et al 2013). The political
justification was the need to ‘fix’ housing market failures and ‘remake communities’ across the UK. This in turn created space for developments appropriate for middle class ‘target markets’
(Hodkinson et al 2013, Butler 2007, Crouch 2004), whilst demonising the working class (Graham 2015). This rhetoric helped justify withdrawal of state support.
The Coalition government inherited a ‘Broken Britain’ post financial-crisis and thus Prime Minister, David Cameron, and Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, implemented austerity governance from 2010 (Lee 2015). The re-building of a ‘big society’ through programmes of renewed privatization and faith in market-rule compounded the residualisation of not only social housing provision, but stripped local governments of money for public services and spaces too (Hodkinson et al 2013, Robinson and Sheldon 2013). This included community centres, day care centres and libraries (Robinson and Sheldon 2016). Nonetheless, Robinson and Sheldon (2018) advocate the importance of community centres as “pivotal yet under-acknowledged participants in the maintenance of forms of life”
(2018:112). Similarly to New Labour, the Coalition used language of ‘choice’ and ‘opportunity’, again, echoing ideologies of consumerism and marketisation (Hodkinson et al 2013). Such language was twinned with further demonising of remnants of state welfare, as Cameron vowed to ‘blitz sink estates’, framing them as the cause of drugs, gangs and the subsequent riots in 2011 that swept across the UK (Davies 2016). This rhetoric from central government produced a wider discourse, typified in reports like IPPR and Lord Adonis’: “City villages: More homes, better communities”
(Adonis & Davies 2015). Written just at the end of the Coalition government, it claims council estates in inner-city London are counterintuitive to the sense of community associated with middle-England villages. Simultaneously, the report highlights that such estates sit on and block some of the most valuable land in the world from being developed (Adonis & Davies 2015, Elmer and Dening 2016, Thoburn 2018).
Demonising state-supplied housing and those who lived in it became the justification for its demolition, and thus, released land value (Thoburn 2018). Land is a crucial aspect to this and the recent IPPR1 report confidently states that land is the hidden force driving the housing crisis (Murphy 2018). In 1995, the price paid for a home was even;y split between land value and property cost. In 2016, the land cost is now 70% of the price paid for the home (Murphy 2018). Existing council and affordable housing does not release the speculated land value, but housing such as the proposed replacement Victorian terrace-housing does, as recommended by the Savills author of the
regeneration chapter (Adonis & Davies 2015). Such recommendations have led to the ‘decanting’ of social housing tenants as developments are demolished and/or regenerated (Watt and Minton 2016). There’s extensive debate about how guaranteed tenants’ ‘right to return’ is once the development is complete (Watt and Minton 2016, Elmer and Dening 2016). This is acutely felt in London where those who can no longer afford it are priced out, moved out and displaced.
The above were UK-wide policies, but the analysis tends to orientate towards a London perspective (Gallent et al 2017). The housing crisis is most keenly felt in London because of its reputation of being a centre for footloose financial capitalism, leading to the highest concentration of Ultra High Net Worth individuals globally (Graham 2015). However, as mentioned in the Introduction, Sheffield is being used as a contrasting place and space; its economy, politics and thus urban fabric are different to London. By shifting the lens solely from London, Sheffield can be used to demonstrate alternatives. As an alternative it has a different economic value to London and because of this, it can organise differently (Skeggs 2004). Sheffield is a northern city in England with a population of 500,000 compared to London’s 8.5 million. Sheffield’s economy was industrial based but in 1974 the increase in global trade and manufacturing hugely affected Sheffield’s economy and it went through an intense period of de-industrialisation (Winkler 2007). By 1984, the manufacturing
industry which had employed 50% of the city’s workforce, was reduced to 24% (Sheffield City Council 1993). Moreover, the privatised steel companies deserted the city, leaving derelict and commercially valueless land (Winkler 2007). Sheffield still struggles to develop city centre land (Sheffield Strategic Housing Market Assessment 2013). Lacking private finance - the spearhead ideology of Thatcher - and being at odds with central government, Sheffield was essentially ‘cut off’ from central funding (Winkler 2007). Sheffield City Council took it upon themselves to re-boost the local economy but was limited because of the hollowed out local government (Winkler 2007, Crouch 2004). By the late
1 Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) partnered with Lord Adonis for the first mentioned report in 2015, encouraging demolition to release land value. In 2018, they wrote the paper saying land value increase is the reason behind the housing crisis.
1990s, the weak housing market meant the North of England was at a 30% risk of being ‘low demand’, ten times the risk rate of London (Ferrari 2007). As a result, areas in the North were characterised by social housing residualisation, poor quality public services and neighbourhood stigmatisation (Ferrari 2007). This led to low house prices and empty homes (Ferrari 2007). Nevertheless, Sheffield has gone through a number of regeneration programmes, with the local government working with private organisations partnerships (Winkler 2007, Hodinkson et al 2013). The last Housing Market Assessment in 2013 (the next is due later in 2019) found that Sheffield’s housing stock has grown slowly, the majority of it is considered ‘old’ stock (Sheffield Strategic Housing Market Assessment 2013). This has lead to poor conditions in the private market, but the issue of overcrowding is worse in socially rented housing (Sheffield Strategic Housing Market Assessment 2013). In 2018, new housing developments were said to have only 97 (1.4%) affordable homes out of the total 6,943 new homes (Pidd 2018). Sheffield’s main aim now is to generate 70,000 jobs over the next ten years which will mean creating between 1-10,000 new dwellings a year (SCR 2016). Sheffield is at odds with central government’s Affordable Housing Programme which focuses on home ownership (SCR 2016); the general feeling is this will limit housing stock and is not suited to the socio-economics of the area (SCR 2016).
This topline of UK policy changes shows how market-rule has come to dominate. In applying Habermas’ (1987) lifeworld and system, as well as Skegg’s (2004) value/s, I will unpack the housing crisis by applying a theoretical lens to the political and economic changes made by successive UK governments. Arguably, these changes have led to the colonisation of the lifeworld and prioritising value rather than values. Baxter (1987) summarises Habermas’ lifeworld as the backdrop to social actors’ actions. These are relational actions, bound by institutionalised norms to create stable common ends and coordinated with others in shared and collective goals (Baxter 1987). The lifeworld is “the reservoir of implicitly known traditions, the background assumptions that are embedded in language and culture and drawn upon by individuals in everyday life” (Cohen & Arato 1992:427). Through economic, political and administrative systems, the lifeworld has become rationalised as part of modernisation, a concept borrowed from Weber (Baxter 1987). However, these systems can ‘colonise’ and dominate the lifeworld, rather than simply organise it, which has arguably happened through recent housing and land policy. The system, which should meet our technical interest, has intervened with the lifeworld’s norms and meanings, thus the lifeworld then reproduces itself in the shape of “functional imperatives of the state and the economy, characterized by the cult of efficiency and the inappropriate deployment of technology” (Flemming 2000:3).
Forty years of ‘neo-liberal’ policy means the state and private organisations are fully integrated (Crouch 2004) and so separation between lifeworld and system is lost. Moreover, the coercivity of the systems is typified from Sheffield council’s resistance to central government and the cuts in funding they experienced (Winkler 2007, Edgar 2006). Such a colonisation has allowed the system to determine social actors’ relationship with their shelter, the land it is built on and subsequently, each other. The system’s domination of lifeworld norms is evident in changed discourse and visible from the shift in political rhetoric demonstrated by aforementioned New Labour and Coalition examples (Habermas 1987). Habermas explains how through such “discourse of functionality individuals and groups increasingly define themselves and their aspirations in system terms [seeing] themselves as consumers and clients” (1987:356). The system produces consumers and clients rather than citizens and it prioritises the logic of exchange that results in financial gains (Crouch 2004). Such financial gains are evident when considering UK land was worth £9.8 trillion or 51% of the UK’s total net worth in 2016 (Murphy 2018), when on the other hand 1.27 million are in need of housing (Shelter 2018).
From this, my interpretation is that the system/lifeworld have produced two clear features: value and values that are now at odds. “Value is economic, quantifiable and can be measured. It is primarily monetized, but … not always, whereas values are moral, cultural, qualitative and difficult to measure” (Skeggs 2004:3). Thus, Habermas provides a strong theoretical backdrop for this thesis with the understanding we are within the lifeworld, colonised by the system. Value/s are features of the process of colonisation which can be analytically drawn out in how our city is shaped (Harvey 2008). This in turn shapes the discourse and built projects of the case studies who must work within a system and negotiate a...
…current planning practice [that] does not offer a vocabulary to defend or promote places which hold no explicit instrumental value, or more precisely, it cannot articulate the value of the aspect of places which fall outside this sort of measurement
(McClymont 2015 cited in Robinson and Seldon 2018:113) 3.2 The legacy of Grenfell Tower Fire
As the system determines the actions that shape social relations and the built environment, what does not generate value, or is not associated with value, becomes overruled by that which does.
Social values lost to relations of value leads to inequalities; the role-back of the welfare state and the role-out of privatisation led by market-rule is arguably why the UK has the highest levels of income inequality (McGuinness & Harrari 2019) which has grown from 27.7% in 1977 to 35.6% in 2018 (ONS 2018). This level of inequality has become inscribed in our urban landscapes (Tonkiss 2013), exemplified by the case of the Grenfell Tower fire. At 1am on the 14th of June 2017, 72 people lost their lives in the fire of a 24-storey residential tower block (Grenfell Inquiry 2018). Half the adult deaths were people who had arrived in the UK in the last 30 years (Rice-Oxley 2016). The fire happened in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, West London, which has some of the highest incomes in London and the highest mean house price of £1,300,000 in 2017 (London Datastore 2017). Nevertheless, there are pockets of deprivation in the borough including the ward in which Grenfell Tower is located (Trust for London 2017). Such inequalities were summarised by Lynsey Hanley’s (2017) headline: “Look at Grenfell Tower and see the terrible price of Britain’s inequality”. Grenfell prompted five official and non-official reviews, and is a critical moment that...
was very quickly seen as symbolic of the neglect of social housing and its residents, leading to calls for it to form a turning point in policy, in official attitudes and in public perceptions of the sector.
Perry and Stephens 2018:30 The responses to this included the cross-party report by Shelter (2018), stating the UK is in a
housing crisis and 2 million houses are needed by the mid 2020s and another 3 million by 2040 (Shelter 2018). In response to Grenfell, the Conservative government’s Green Paper - a New Deal for Social Housing - was made up of interviews of social housing residents across the UK (MHCLG 2018). The overall findings were residents’ reporting they felt stigmatised and negatively stereotyped by the media and governments with social housing (MHCLG 2018), unsurprising given the
aforementioned rhetoric of the New Labour and Coalition governments (Watt and Minton 2016). The resulting recommendations was an onus on ending the stigma through ‘good’ design of new
developments (Raab 2018, MHCLG 2018). Since then and on a more local level, Sadiq Khan, Labour Mayor of London has announced the programme ‘Homes for Londeners’. The bottom line of the programme is that all new developments must have 35% ‘genuinely affordable housing’ (‘Homes for Londoners’ n/d). Sadiq Khan and the GLA, have established the programme ‘Good Growth By Design’, and 50 built-environment experts - Mayor’s Design Advocates - will run and oversee Design Review Panels and Design Audits on proposed projects. The aim is designing inclusive space for ‘all
May (2016) sees building more homes as mistaken and harmful; house prices would need to fall by 50% in London and South East of England to be deemed affordable. Moreover, building to meet ‘demand’ is infinite because of purchases based on investment, particularly from overseas (May 2016). Since the 1980s, personal wealth, such as pensions, and wider economic and commercial structures have become so wrapped up in property that significantly decreasing house prices would lead to a financial collapse (May 2016). For instance, our banking system relies on house prices going up; house price inflation has been encouraged as a metric of economic success (May 2016). However, whilst May (2016) highlights the problematic nature of current responses, paraphrasing his response of the attempts to resolve the crisis reduces this thesis to a discourse of the system and associated functionality (Habermas 1987). A consistent issue is that, by framing the crisis as
something to ‘solve’ by ‘responding’ to it, the crisis is treated as an external entity. Instead, it is more fruitful to see the crisis as that of the system and thus something we are within, not in opposition to (Habermas 1987).
A crisis in the capitalist system is defined as “a critical moment that requires decisive action in order to resolve” (Edgar 2006:29). Grenfell can be seen as this ‘critical moment’, but Brownhill and Sharp (1992) highlighted issues with the supply of housing as far back as the late 1980s when market-rule was being introduced. Nevertheless, at this stage market-rule and the system were deemed
successful because home-ownership was being achieved as an end unto itself. It wasn’t a crisis in popular rhetoric until the critical moment where 72 lives were lost, only then did housing transition from being a private trouble to a public issue (Mills 1959). Nevertheless, crises do have
emancipatory potential (Habermas cited in Edgar 2006). However, this is less likely to be realised in the case of UK property because the power afforded to those have, compared to those who-have-not, is what prevents the undoing of property ownership and thus the undoing of what Marx would call the ‘bourgeois’, or the property owning middle class (Marx 1970). This disparity of ownership, and thus power, is seemingly impossible to emancipate from (Watt and Minton 2016) - particularly once public land for civic action has been sold off. With that in mind, it is clear why ruling powers want to control such crises through direct intervention that ensures the system’s
continuation (Edgar 2006). In this case, the decisive action to resolve the crisis of this system is through state administration partnered with the market (Edgar 2006). For instance, all ‘responses’ ensure subsequent action is partnered with private profit-driven organisations to build more and uses design to legitimise such developments (Watt and Minton 2016, Jones 2009).
But why does the conceptualisation of being ‘within’ rather than ‘responding’ to the crisis affect this research question? Understanding that we are within a system/lifeworld that boundaries our actions helps to clarify that our actions of resolution are also within this system/lifeworld. Thus, the actions of the case studies in relation to the research question are also ‘within’. Furthermore, ‘within’ is relational as it suggests an ‘outside’. Being ‘outside’ the system allows alternative actions that need not rely on the norms and actions shaped by the system and monopolised by value and logic of exchange. This ability to conceptually ‘zoom out’ from just ‘responding’ to the housing crisis
generates a more critical perspective thereby avoiding an analytical cul-de-sac, both for this analysis and wider actions. To ‘respond’ and to ‘solve’ are to plaster over the crisis as if it’s a crack in the system; to fix this crack ensures a continuation of the system. Nevertheless, the risk in using a capitalist system as the answer to every social pathology means there “often appears to be an uncanny correspondence between social theories and the logic of capital, so much so that what at first appears to be critique often ends as legitimation” (Skeggs 2004:3). This critiques how social theorising approaches market-rule, system, capital and value as a given can actually “performatively reproduce” the settings which they describe (Skeggs 2004:1). Considering what is done ‘within’ and moreover, what can be generated ‘outside’ the system, this thesis forefronts how the case studies are able to include imaginations that generate alternatives outside the current system. But before looking at how the case studies do this, I will position them within the concept of the field.
3.3 Architecture as a field
We have established we’re within the system/lifeworld of which the housing crisis is a symptom. Within this system/lifeworld, I position Bourdieu’s (1977) theory of field. Field is a concept of space or a social arena organised around acknowledged forms of capital. It includes the informal
engagements of social actors, up to the formal organising of institutions (Bourdieu 1977). Capital in the field of architecture is cultural, such as architectural knowledge, the products created,
training/education etc (Jones 2009). It can be social capital too, like social connections (‘who you know’), which in architecture are important ways of bringing on new clients and projects (Cohen et al 2005). Finally, capital can also be economic and financial (Fuchs 2003). The movement of capital around this field denotes actors’ positioning and those with similar capital are drawn together, for example, if they studied at the same school, have similar taste, similar political ideologies (Bourdieu 1977). This forms pockets of homogeneity within the field whilst acknowledging (relative) diversity across the field (Fuchs 2003). Garry Stevens, architect turned sociologist, highlights this on the micro scale of the studio, which is the location of “internment [that] produces a socially and mentally
homogenous set of individuals” (Stevens cited in Till 2013:9). Moreover, understanding it as a field helps us understand it holistically rather than the fracturing between architecture as a product, architecture as a profession and architects as professionals (Till 2013); thereby enabling us to approach it more critically (Jones 2009).
We can consider architecture as a producer of culture, closely aligned with, and a vehicle of,
legitimation of the system. Jones (2009) looks at the way in which iconic architecture is used by the entrepreneurial city to market a place, globally. This means the architect designing iconic work will be more than just closely situated to, but also interrelated and reliant on, economic and political powers to have these designs realised (Jones 2009). Jones (2009) highlights that other fields of cultural production have a certain independence above their target market: “an artist without a market can still paint or draw, a writer without a publisher can write, a songwriter without a record label can sing” (Jones 2009:521). Architecture however needs a client to have their designs built in actuality, as well as land, financial capital and human labour (Till 2011). It is therefore more
contingent than other producers of cultural capital on economic and political powers that uphold and administrate the current system (Jones 2009, Habermas 1976). Despite being a highly dependent field, its reputation of being a ‘black box’ demonstrates ‘boundary maintenance’ (Bourdieu 1993, Till 2011). This is the relative power needed for a field to establish autonomy, but autonomy in this sense is not that this field stands as a separate entity; instead it’s the ability to determine the rules of their field (Jones 2009). This can be seen in how architects maintain a status of artist and producer of aesthetics, thus eschewing the close relation with systems of political economic powers (Jones 2009, Cohen et al 2005). They uphold the reputation of a neutral and objective profession which in turn obscures the role they play in actually legitimating the current system they are working within (Jessop 2004, Jones 2009).
Culturally-led regeneration of capitalism when in crisis (in our case, the housing crisis) uses the ‘soft’ capitalism of creativity, knowledge and culture to re-establish itself (Jessop 2004). Habermas too, saw culture as a way of generating meaning for the system in our everyday lives (Edgar 2006). Jones demonstrates this by focusing on the role of iconic architecture. Used to brand cities, iconic
architecture provides capitalist gains from middle class consumption (Jones 2009, Harvey 1989). This is exemplified through the iconic architecture such as that of Zaha Hadid for the London 2012 Olympics. The Olympics was seen as a key regenerative force to establish the city on the global scale whilst creating a local legacy (see Watt 2012 for discussion on actual effects to the local area). The idea of creating a legacy through architecture exemplifies that what dominates our built environment
and what is positioned as iconic is the physical manifestation of the power of that era (Kaika and Thielen 2006). This has moved from cathedrals, to government buildings and now iconic architecture for corporations and sky scrapers for the mega-rich (Kaika and Thielen 2006, Graham 2015). The iconic architecture Jones wrote about in his article in 2009 shapes this analysis ten years later because the effects of iconic architecture in global cities is coming to fruition. Since written, London has become a highly concentrated site for iconic architecture and commerce, which is mirrored in housing value and underpinned by land value; “the total value of housing stock in London is now greater than the housing stock of all of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the North combined” (Murphy 2018:8). A hectare of land in the richest part of London costs £181 million, the same size land in Redcar, an ex-steel working town, is £370,000. London now needs property types that realise this level of value (Graham 2015, Murphy 2018). This is further assessed by Graham’s (2015) writing of the ‘Luxfield Skies’ and how the modernist concrete tower blocks of social housing from previous generations are demolished to release the land value and replaced with the glass bodied mega-skyscrapers for the mega-rich. Such inequalities of who has a ‘right to the city’ becomes inscribed in our built environment, embodied in iconic architecture (Harvey 2008, Tonkiss 2013). Looking at iconic architecture is useful to situate architecture as a contingent field legitimising the system. Moreover, it helps understand soaring land values that have benefited some through extensive profits, and become a crisis for others as they are priced out of the city. Grenfell and the subsequent reports have shifted focus back to housing, meaning we now need to look at the role of non-iconic architecture. I am defining non-iconic architecture as part of our built environment that focuses around the local and everyday, such as housing and community centres and echoes the original sentiments of urbanist and activist, Jane Jacobs (1961). Much of the built environment is arguably in crisis for instance the number of community-centres being closed, yet there is no ‘community-centre crisis’ (Robinson and Sheldon 2016). Despite how many have been lost,
community-centres do not generate profit like housing does because there is little to no direct value in community-centres, even though they are vital for those who can not access the city as a client or consumer (Harvey 2008). Yet, these values can not be translated into logic of exchange (Robinson and Sheldon 2018, Skeggs 2004). Therefore this analysis looks at the everyday built environment holistically and how these case studies are working on projects that are needed, from shelter, to citizen focused space, whilst negotiating their own contingency to the system.
This chapter has answered the first sub-question (what is the housing crisis and why should we consider architects within it?) by looking at the history of housing and land in relation to Habermas
(1987) system/lifeworld and crisis, and value/s (Skeggs 2004) as the products of this. This further highlights how the crisis is not an entity to respond to but a symptom of the system we are within. Drawing from Bourdieu (1993), architecture as a field of cultural production is then situated within the field. I’ve demonstrated using Jones (2009), this is not only a contingent field, but it can be a form of legitimation for the system, particularly when in crisis. However, given the concern of the crisis, with the political onus shifting to housing, it is important to look at those within the field of architecture who are designing and building non-iconic architecture.
The people need more homes. They need them quickly…. At the same time, since we are not dealing with ephemeral or temporary projects, we must preserve standards. For we have to think of the future as well as of the present.
4: Discourse and Built Projects Within the System/Lifeworld.
How are three architectural organisations working within, and imagining outside, the housing crisis? This chapter will answer the second sub-question: how are the case studies working within the system/lifeworld? The last chapter set the analytical backdrop of the system/lifeworld, housing crisis and field of architecture. This chapter will answer the second sub-question by looking at the case studies built projects and discourse within the system/lifeworld. Then the penultimate chapter
(5) will look at how they use the imagination to generate alternatives outside current system/lifeworld.
Chapter 4 analyses the data from the interviews and discourse analysis to describe how the three case studies are working within the system through their built projects and discourse. Chapter 3 assessed the history of housing and land, applying Habermas’ (1987) theory of lifeworld colonisation and how this system is experiencing a crisis, or ‘the housing crisis’. Using Bourdieu (1993) and Jones (2009), architecture was conceptualised as a field of cultural production that is particularly dependent on the capitalist system. This analysis situates Peter Barber Architects (PBA), RCKa and the Foodhall within the field and the system/lifeworld in crisis, with this chapter zooming-in on the case studies’ built projects and discourse. The research highlighted three key themes:
4.1 Designing unprogrammed space into their built projects for occupier agency and everyday urbanism (Ertas 2010, Crawford 1999)
4.2 Improving the lived experience of occupiers and communities 4.3 Navigating tensions between a system that prioritises value and the ideology of forefronting values, such as community, citizenship and co-creation (Skeggs 2004).
Having assessed what they can do within the system, using the concept of the imagination, I look to describe how the three case studies engage with the imagination to generate space for alternatives outside this system (Latimer and Skeggs 2011).
This chapter will carry over the understanding from the previous, that the lifeworld has been colonised by the system which has meant value, that which can be quantified and monetized, has
taken priority over values, which are associated with the lifeworld and orientate around morality and culture (Skeggs 2004, Habermas 1987). Because the lifeworld has been colonised by the system, norms and actions are shaped by value (Baxter 1987, Skeggs 2004). That considered, this chapter shows that work is carried out by social actors to forefront values despite what the system might dictate. This supports the notion that “values [can be] generated in opposition to the logic of capital, against an instrumental ‘dog eat dog world’” (Skeggs 2004:14). This was evident in the case studies’ want and ability to design in ‘unprogrammed space’ (Ertas 2010) that allowed occupiers’ ownership, that then resulted in everyday urbanism and community (Crawford 2005). Unprogrammed space and everyday urbanism allows space for values such as being able to access the city as a citizen rather than a consumer, being able to have agency and co-create space and the ability to generate interactions and thus community. Yet none of these activities tend to generate profit, but are included by the case studies in their built projects and discourse. Moreover, the informality of the everyday was found to be odds with the field of architecture. Nevertheless, the second theme is based on how the three case studies felt these values would improve the lived experience of the communities/occupiers.
The third theme shows how, being situated within a system/lifeworld that prioritises value and the logic of exchange, the forefronting of values resulted in tensions which the case studies had to reconcile. This is evidenced in Russell’s account of RCKa’s work to include space for values such as interaction, social relations and community, which is now so divorced from the built environment it must be built back in and negotiated with the client. This is mirrored in Louis’ experience with the Foodhall and their main activity of community cooking; the everyday activity of cooking on a communal level is so abstracted from how space and activity is organised within this
system/lifeworld it’s deemed radical. Peter highlights the difficulty in being alienated from those they design for, but still wanting to work to the nuances and subjectives of occupiers’ changing moods or personalities. Therefore, having gone through the themes of what the case studies can do within their sphere of control within the system, the analysis then to the idea of alternatives existing outside the system through the concept of the imagination (Latimer and Skeggs 2011).
Having continued system/lifeworld, value/s and the field from the previous chapter, I will now briefly outline the idea of ‘everyday urbanism’ (Crawford 1999) and ‘unprogrammed space’ (Etras 2010). ‘The everyday’ applies an analytical lens to informal everyday practices which had previously been deemed trivial and ignored by urban experts (Upton 2002) However, we should consider it because “the utterly ordinary reveals a fabric of space and time defined by a complex realm of social
practices - a conjuncture of accident, desire, and habit” (Crawford 1999:8). In relation to the city, this fabric is the connective tissue that binds the more clearly delineated space of public/private,
work/home (Crawford 1999). This can include what Etras (2010) refers to as ‘unprogrammed space’; a space which “does not require ... people [to] come and create activities within it; it is just there waiting to be discovered and improvised. It is self-organising, unstable and variable”
(2010:53). Etras (2010) applies this to Istanbul and how citizens make claims over unprogrammed space to create a sense of ownership within a city and beyond the privacy of residency. However, the everyday urbanism and its unprogrammed space is at odds with the planned city because it’s messy and requires an acceptance of life taking place which in turn creates such mess (Crawford 1999). Moreover, these spaces and activities don’t generate profit, so are at odds with the consistent search for profitable space in the city (Iveson 2013, Harvey 2008). In striving to convert all space to profit, the spaces hosting the everyday are regenerated to become bland space in the boutique lifestyle (Harvey 2008). This is commonly referred to as ‘gentrification’ (Hou 2011). In contrast, the everyday urbanism is not focused on perfecting a city, instead its values and idealism is of citizen participation and social equity: “it is grass-roots and populist” (Kelbaugh 2005:8) and based on heterogeneity and citizenship (Etras 2010). Yet, in such pacifying cities that prioritise system and value (Habermas 1987), the spontaneity of the everyday urbanism can also be seen in activist form, or DIY urbanism (Iveson 2013). In the planned city there are gaps that can be exploited by those who cannot shape through the formal routes (Iveson 2013).
The case studies are designing unprogrammed space for the messiness of the everyday urbanism in, because a previous generation had supposedly designed it out (Urban 2012). In the early twentieth century, architecture was a science and ideologically driven by an urbanism focused on efficiency, rationality and standardisation (Bremmer 2010:9). This was legitimised with the ‘expert’ of the architect and production of knowledge like manifestos such as the Athens Charter by Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) (Bremmer 2010). As an example of which, housing for all was built en-mass and supplied by the state for egalitarian citizenship (Urban 2012). They were building for everyone yet no one (Rowe 2011). In trying to eradicate the pathologies of the urban, architecture as a science soon “lost contact with the basic facts and mysteries of daily life” (Bremmer 2010:14). This hyper-centralised, top-down approach left many who lived there feeling trapped and isolated (Urban 2012). There was resistance against the modernist urban planning, most famously in Jane Jacobs (1961) activism against Richard Mosses in 1960s New York. Jacobs (1961) believed the standardised and rationalised approach of planning overlooked the vitality of social interactions that happened around the everyday sites such as the street.
4.1 Designing space to allow occupiers agency and everyday urbanisms.
Some architects will claim that there is a causal relationship between how buildings are designed and behavior… I don’t think that at all but buildings provide the opportunity for people to do things, and if they take that opportunity, that’s all well and good [...] So that to me is a good barometer really, a successful project, people are kind of taking control
Peter Barber, April 2019 Peter’s statement starts this discussion by indicating his approach to non-iconic architecture. He situates himself and his practice separately from the approach that architecture and building design will cause certain behaviour and is reminiscent of the Lefebrve’s statement that Tonkiss quotes: “the architect is no more a miracle-worker than the sociologist. Neither can create social relations” (Lefebvre 1996 cited in Tonkiss 2013:1). This contextualises PBA as a move away from the top-down mass urban housing of the postwar era created by ‘messianic’ architects and urban planners that later was seen as ‘causing’ urban blight and poverty (Graham 2015). Peter contrasts the causal approach with how he designs buildings that can offer occupiers the opportunity for agency to shape the space. In his wider discourse, Peter is very clear in stating what they perceive as ‘people taking control’. When returning to sites, PBA perceives everyday objects like ‘tomato plants’, ‘outdoor gym’, ‘fixing bikes’ (Peter Barber, Project Interrupt 2017) as signs of ‘taking control’ and therefore a ‘successful project’. The practice builds space into designs allowing for these everyday activities and their artifacts, all of which are the signs of everyday urbanisms and ‘signals of occupancy’.
So I remember going down [to Donnybrook Quarter], when the World Cup was on and [...] people had hung flags out on every balcony. [...] And people use their bay windows, windows projecting out on the street, and they sit in them, which means they can look up and down the street, they put flowers in then, little cuddly toys, and it kind of signals the occupancy
Peter Barber April 2019 Donnybrook Quarter is an award winning project in Tower Hamlets, London. It is described as a lower-rise, high-density, street-based city quarter (Peter Barber, Project Interrupt 2017). Donnybrook Quarter doesn’t have front gardens and the front doors open directly onto the street. Instead of front gardens which are associated with private ‘defensible space’ (Graham 2015), each unit has
balconies and bay windows over the street which are designed to be private spaces ‘hovering’ over the public space of the street (Peter Barber, April 2019). The above quote from the interview further demonstrates the signals of occupancy related to these spaces (‘flags hung out’, ‘flowers’, ‘cuddly toys’). Private space ‘hovering’ over public space is a specific feature of PBA designs. It offers occupants private space but when occupied it is done so in a public way because it is visible from the street (Peter Barber, Project Interrupt 2017). This means that streets feel lived in and visually builds a sense of community (Peter Barber, Project Interrupt 2017). These everyday objects signal social relations, occupancy and dwelling, and have a humanising effect on urban space (Crawford 2005). Crawford (2005) speaks of the everyday urbanism being found in the space between home, work and the institution, as a ‘kind of’ public space. The balconies and bay windows, the private hovering over the public, act as this ‘kind of’ public space. Moreover, in it’s banality, this space offers potential for transformation (Crawford 2005); those who live in Donnybrook can transform the balconies for the Football World Cup, and after the tournament, they can transform it with other daily events or activities. Nevertheless, it is debatable if a balcony would fit Ertas’ (2010) previous
definition of unprogrammed space - a balcony is privately accessed and to some extent it has a prescribed activity. However, PBA’s balconies offer spontaneity and transformative potential through occupier agency, which is encouraged and hoped for by the practice. Therefore, given that truly unprogrammed space exemplified by Ertas (2010) in Istanbul is hard to come by in London as a global city of capital, PBA’s balconies within the context of London do offer some level of
unprogrammed space for residents that allows for everyday urbanism (Ertas 2010, Crawford 2005). Comparably, the Foodhall project is specifically designed to be co-created by the community who use it and has avoided any elements of overly programmed space. The Foodhall is in a building which looks like an industrial unit, but was previously a morgue. They’ve occupied this space with furniture built from chipboard by members of the community and can operate as a number of things (coffee table/rocking chair, table/stage). At the start, they would used donated furniture from a well-known department store, but the furniture, which is designed around specific notions of domestic activity (Blunt 2005), was deemed too sterile and prescriptive, stunting co-creativity and potential
community activities (Young 2017). With the chipboard furniture, Louis describes the space like ‘tetris’ in its ability to be changed depending on activity (Louis Phol, April 2019). The Foodhall rejects domestic and prescriptive furniture that overly programmes the space, thus keeping it
unprogrammed and allowing for co-creation (Etras 2010).
It sometimes feels a bit disconfigured and stuff... it's kind of like a nightmare. But you know... it’s messy. Actually, that's the difficult situation, if you let people do what they want, they also
