The Observer
04.08.19 43BELOW The
‘cautious, middle-
brow’ Eddington
development in
Cambridge, also
on the shortlist.
Photograph by Jack
HobhouseBELOW
‘The apogee
of modernist
design’: the 1960s
Alexandra Road
estate in Camden,
north London,
by the late
Neave Brown.
Alamysince 2010. Her glibly insensitive
assertions about food banks and the
impact of universal credit delays ,
coupled with a dim witted Tory
leadership campaign, suggests she
is another career mediocrity who
will tug ineffectually at the Gordian
knot of housing and then sink
without trace.
From the sidelines, the Royal
Institute of British Architects (RIBA)
extended a tentative welcome to the
latest ministerial team, while calling
for action on the government’s
changes to permitted development
rights, which enable redundant
offi ce blocks to be cannibalised for
housing. Seen as an in extremis
response to the housing crisis, the
outcome is, more often than not,
cramped and substandard dwellings
that compromise the mental and
physical health of occupants. Britain
already has some of the smallest
domestic space standards in Europe.
The day after the changing of
the Tory guard , the RIBA released
the shortlist for the inaugural
Neave Brown a ward for housing ,
a long overdue recognition of the
importance of decent, dignifi ed
dwelling design. A project for mass
housing has not won the Stirling
prize since 2008 , as its “best in
show” mentality tends to favour
more architecturally adventurous
submissions. Now housing has its
own dedicated award, named after
the late American-born British
architect Neave Brown (1929-
2018) , whose work for Camden
council represented the apogee
of modernist design, delivered by
well-resourced borough architects’
departments before the public sector
was ruthlessly dismantled through
Thatcherite right-to-buy policies.
Despite the new award’s
admirable ambitions, it has thrown
up a rather lacklustre shortlist.
With their carefully calibrated
mixture of tenures, cross-subsidy
arrangements and muted palettes
of brick, the four schemes – two
in London, one in Cambridge and
one in Norwich – seem virtually
indistinguishable from one another,
refl ecting the distance travelled
since Brown’s swashbuckling
days. From helping to drive and
implement a progressive social
agenda for housing, architects
now fi nd themselves increasingly
marginalised and this is refl ected
in a more cautious, middle-brow
design approach.Of the quartet, the most
exemplary is Goldsmith Street ,
a development of 100 houses in
Norwich , built by the city council ,
offering secure tenures at fi xed
rents. Designed by Mikhail Riches
and Cathy Hawley, it is that rare
thing – actual social housing – in a
modern reincarnation of Victorian
terraces. Unlike their 19th-century
predecessors, however, the houses
are ultra-parsimonious in their
use of energy. Annual heating bills
should be around £150.
With the lifting of the borrowing
cap on local authorities, announced
last year , there are fi tful signs
of movement in the moribund
public housing sector that has
hitherto had to rely on Faustian
pacts with private developers to
deliver a proportion of “affordable”
dwellings. This has led to the
obscene spectacle of “ poor
doors ” for different occupant
constituencies. Housing charity
Shelter estimates that lifting the
borrowing cap could increase new
social housing provision to 27,500
dwellings annually, from just
5,000 built in 2017. Yet more is still
desperately needed. In 2018, there
were 1.11m households on local
authority waiting lists.
This year marks the centenary
of the Addison Act , which made
housing a national responsibility.
Subsidised by government grants,
local authorities were given the
task of developing new housing
and rented accommodation where
it was needed by working people.
It represents the birth of the public
sector housing movement and the
expression of social ideas through
architecture in a rich concerto of
nation building. During the inter war
period, local councils built 1.1m
homes in total, an unthinkable
prospect today.
After 40 years of catastrophic
inaction, there is an urgent need
for a reframing of priorities across
the board, in funding, procurement,
design and delivery. This constitutes
a challenge that any prime minister
should be eager to address, but it
seems clear that Boris Johnson’s
attention will, as usual, be elsewhere.
Reader, if you seek his monument...The winner of the Neave Brown award
for housing will be announced at the
RIBA Stirling prize ceremony on 8
October at the Roundhouse, LondonTate’s Van Gogh and Britain
exhibition will have been seen by
about 400,000 people by the time
it closes next weekend. Only for
the David Hockney extravaganza
in early 2017 did more enter
the portals of Tate Britain.
Th e gallery’s Don McCullin
show from earlier this year
also did far better than
expected - 170,000 in just
three months.
After several years in the
doldrums, partly because of its
big sister Tate Modern, which many
tourists think is the only Tate in town,
and partly because of some lousy
exhibitions, Tate Britain is fi nally
on a roll. Th e strength of the Van
Gogh - other than the obvious lure
of major paintings like Starry Night
over the Rhône - has been a story
cleverly told of the artist’s formative
three years in Britain from 1873.
Another surprise success at the
gallery is its current retrospective
of the black British artist Frank
Bowling , unjustly an unknown name
to many until now.
And, from mid-November ,
there’s another photo
exhibition - Steve
McQueen’s Year Th ree
projec t in collaboration
with the ever-original
Artangel. Th e Turner and
Oscar winner has been
snapping most of London’s seven-
and eight-year-olds in school
pictures , which will show the city’s
hugely varied ethnic mix. No doubt
a large chunk of these 75,000
kids will themselves go to the
exhibition, most with proud parents
in tow. And just before the show
opens at Tate Britain , some of thephotos will be put up for 10 days on
billboards around London. A very
clever project.Will the arts be encouraged
by the arrival of Boris Johnson?
I don’t mean in his alleged hobby
of making buses from wooden
wine crates before painting them.
In a speech last weekend he
surprisingly included “culture” as
one of his four “ingredients” for
the UK to succeed. I suspect this is
prompted by two women who are
extremely close to him.
His girlfriend Carrie Symonds
has a degree in the history
of art and theatre studies,
and used to work in the
Department for Digital,
Culture, Media and Sport.
And Munira Mirza, left,
his new director of the No
10 policy unit , a communist
turned Tory Brexit-enthusiast who
was his deputy mayor covering
culture and education. Maybe their
know how can rub off on Johnson?
Not a natural arts lover, I recall him
as mayor of London opening the
British Museum’s exhibition on
Hadrian , where he tried to show off
with some cod Latin before dashing
around some statues.A play written by the Palestinian
Ahmed Masoud starring Maxine
Peake , left, was an obvious draw.
Obliterated was to be performed
this Friday at Amnesty
International’s theatre in
London. With free tickets,
not surprisingly more
than 2,500 tried to book.
But last Tuesday , they
were informed online of its
cancellation. Actually there
never was a play. Th e cancellation
message explains that Masoud
and Peake had come up with the
idea as a wheeze to draw attention
to the wanton destruction by the
Israelis of Gaza’s only theatre, the
Sa id al-Mishal cultural centre on
9 August 2018 – exactly a year ago.
Obliterated. A decidedly apt title.Richard Brooks
Behind the scenes
Tate Britain comes out
of its modern sister’s
shadow; the new PM tries
to convince as an art
lover; and Amnesty’s free
theatre ticket mystery...Visitors to
Tate Britain’s
acclaimed
Don McCullin
exhibition
earlier this
year. Around
170,000
people saw
the show in
just three
months.
Photograph
by Matt
Dunham/PAРЕЛИЗ
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