‘Everything in architecture and urbanism is political’ Benjamin Dresner-Reynolds

‘Everything in architecture and urbanism is political’.

A critical discussion of the Ferrier Estate’s regeneration as an example of government policy surrounding London’s housing crisis.

Benjamin Dresner-Reynolds

Benjamin Dresner-Reynolds University of Greenwich Theories ARCT1064 Tutor: Mark Garcia 2017

Cover Image: Figure 1: Ferrier Estate, children playing (Source: Iqbal Aalam, n.d.)

Figure 2: Discarded placard from Stirling Prize protest (Source: Architect’s Journal, 2016)

Figure 2 is a photograph taken in the aftermath of a protest organised by Architects for Social Housing in demonstration against the nomination of luxury development Neo Bankside for the Stirling Prize, 2016.

“The city is the form of human presence… the visible city is the human interface with (the rest of) the world… that is why, in Aristotle’s terms, politics is an architectonic science – not because it is an externally imposed constraint on human behaviour but because it is the shape human being takes in the world.”

- Schroeder, 2014

The etymology of the word politics leads us to the Greek politika; "affairs of the cities" (Liddell, H. G., Scott, R., Jones, H. S. and McKenzie, R.,1996). Whilst its contemporary usage typically refers to matters specific to governance, Schroeder’s revision of the Aristotelian definition of the city to refer to ‘all places of human presence’ ties the political to the urban by its very nature of representing the presence of civilisation, leaving the two inextricable entwined: “Politics is the settling that makes the polis.” (Schroeder, 2014) Insofar as it constitutes the very physical results of our victories against natural entropy, the theory and practise of the built environment cannot escape its civic significance. For those that live everyday with its consequences, the results of architectural decisions have profound, enduring effects. Architecture imposes itself upon the citizen, moulding the parameters that define their action within the city and their engagement with the city itself. That architectural theory strives to define its formal and philosophical nature on human terms, with rationales that are concerned with good design,

Figure 3: London City Council model of the Ferrier Estate (Source: Iqbal Aalam, n.d.)

Figure 3 is an image of the original design for the Ferrier Estate. Iqbal Aalam worked for London City Council during this period.

demonstrates that architecture’s purpose is inherently ethical; it is ultimately not about buildings, but about people (Bragg, 1999). Nonetheless, architecture’s role is one of design, not policy. The industry is bound by the political realities in which it exists. Design’s capacity to operate as a means of social agency is dependent upon the conditions that bare a project into existence - conditions which are determined not by the architect, but by the client’s brief and by the laws and policies of the state.

To what extent, then, are architects culpable for any negative social ramifications of their work? Regardless of circumstance, I argue that the profession is indelibly tied to an ethical framework that results from its basic teleological function: the creation of physical contexts appropriate to the healthy functioning of society, (Collier, 2006) of which the most fundamental is shelter. Using the example of Greenwich Council’s Ferrier Estate/Kidbrooke Village development to examine the politics particular to London’s housing crisis, this essay seeks to explore the extent to which the architectural profession is accountable for the social impact of UK housing policy.

At its time of completion in 1972, the Ferrier Estate, which brought 1,906 new socially rented homes to the borough of Greenwich, was considered a ‘classic piece of modernist architecture’ (Preston, 2016). Designed by London City Council’s architecture department, the Ferrier Estate was typical of the much-derided system of prefabricated housing that came to prominence in the 1960s. In 1965, 3 years before construction on the Ferrier began, 85% of UK

Figure 4: The Ferrier Estate under construction (Source: Iqbal Aalam, n.d.)

Figure 4, also by Iqbal Aalam, shows one of the Ferrier’s towers nearing completion.

architects worked in the public sector; today it is only 2%.

(Architects for Social Housing, 2016) This was an era in which one could clearly delineate a relationship between modernist social ideals and state sanctioned values of the public good. Minton, Pace and Williams (2016) describe: “the unconscious - and in many cases conscious” political impact of socially focussed modernism as producing: “a feeling of wonder at the usefulness and grace of a space designed for collective use and public benefit”. However, such optimism with regard to social housing was to be short lived. By the end of the century, the dystopian stereotype of the estate as synonymous with social ruin was deeply ingrained in the public imagination. A reductive media narrative often ignored the complex range of construction and management factors responsible for the physical shortcomings of certain estates, and focussed on design and materiality, rather than failures of public policy, as the primary reasons behind the array of social issues for which these buildings became known (Campkin, 2012; Beswick, 2015). The implication was that “social decline was an inevitability” (Preston, 2016) of modernist social housing.

The 1997 film ‘Nil By Mouth’ was set on the Ferrier, and depicted a tragic and violent world on the estate. However, residents have claimed that “the film’s exaggerated portrayal of the estate’s iconic buildings as squalid and hopeless places to live, lead to the build-up of a ‘mythology’, whereby the press and public perceived the level of crime on the Ferrier to be greater than the reality,

Figure 5: Nil By Mouth poster (Source: Se8 Group Ltd, 1994)

Figure 5 is the cinema release poster for the film Nil By Mouth, a gritty drama set on the Ferrier Estate.

thus contributing to its reputation in the media as ‘Britain’s Hardest Estate’” (Preston, 2016). This is exemplified by the fact that prior to filming, graffiti was added to the walls of buildings for effect. This happened on another occasion, when the BBC employed people to vandalise the estate prior to the filming of a television drama (Batchelor and Colson, 2012). Campkin (2012) argues that such manipulations, performed in order to live up to viewers’ expectations of an affected reality, directly contributed to the accepted notion that there was not much hope in trying to find solutions for improving estates such as the Ferrier, save for wholesale demolition.

When one reads accounts from the Ferrier’s residents, however, one sees a more nuanced picture than that painted in the press. I interviewed Melinda Jackson, who grew up on the Ferrier and whose parents remained there until they were evicted. She is adamant that the estate’s reputation was “(blown) out of proportion… we never had trouble… I’m not saying it was squeaky clean, but… my mum used to leave our door unlocked when I was growing up and I was never afraid to walk across the estate… I have very fond memories from growing up… it was a carefree childhood” (Jackson, 2016). Kathy and Dennis, who lived on the estate since it had first opened, lament “they’ve got rid of a marvellous community that you could never ever get again”; whilst local youth worker Nick speaks of “a beacon of tolerance” where residents “coexisted harmoniously” (Batchelor and Colson, 2012).

These memories contrast sharply with the traditionally negative perception of the Ferrier Estate.

Figure 6: Melinda Jackson and her parents (Source: Melinda Jackson, n.d.)

Figure 6 shows Melinda and her parents this Christmas at her current home in Eltham. Her parents currently reside in a bungalow in Kidbrooke.

The politicisation of such media stigma is demonstrated by then Prime Minister David Cameron’s use of the following architectural rhetoric: “concrete slabs dropped from on high, brutal high-rise towers…” when committing to policies of regenerating so-called ‘sink estates’ in 2016 (Preston, 2016). Melinda Jackson speaks favourably of the estate’s design, arguing that “the council let the flats fall in to disrepair… I loved that you could walk from one side of the estate to the other through the walkways, so that on rainy days (you) did not have to get too wet when going to the supermarket, the doctor’s or the library” (Jackson, 2016).

The correlation of this architecture with inevitable social problems remains a subjective issue, at best. One would assume that such a supposition on Cameron’s part, alluding as it does to the welfare of the residents, would be in light of proposing policy that had their interests at heart.

Indeed, Ferrier residents were originally informed that the regeneration would offer them “new homes for old and improved transport links to better jobs” (Batchelor and Colson, 2012). However, this was not to be the case.

Demolition began on the Ferrier Estate in 2010. Its replacement, Kidbrooke Village, was officially launched in 2012, and of its 4,398 new apartments, not one of them is for social rent, despite the number of families on Greenwich housing waiting list standing at 14,994 in July 2014, a figure that continues to increase (Elmer, 2016).

Furthermore, Kidbrooke’s cheapest property is a one bedroom apartment at £450,000 – it is no surprise that consequently, more than five thousand former residents

Figure 7: Kidbrooke Village rendering (Source: Berkeley Homes Plc, 2016)

Figure 7 is a digital rendering of Kidbrooke Village from a promotional brochure.

“Since Machiavelli, politicians have perhaps always known that the mastery of a simulated space is at the source of their power, that politics is not a real activity, but a simulation model, whose manifest acts are but actualized impressions‌ a hole in reality, an ironic transfiguration, an exact simulacrum hidden at the heart of reality, and on which the latter depends for its functioning. This is the very secret of appearances.â€?

-

Jean Beaudrillard, 2003

have been evicted from the area, despite being promised approximately ten years earlier that they would have the right to return. “What Greenwich Council didn’t mention” remarks former member of said council Roy Kindle, “is that they would need to win the Lottery (in order) to do so”’ (Elmer, 2016).

Kidbrooke Village’s promotional video, that sells an aspirational, affluent lifestyle though idyllic and romantiscised footage of middle-class family and professional life, implies that security of such a lifestyle is dependant on there being “no unemployed, no single mothers, nobody on benefits… nobody from a poor ‘background’” (Elmer, 2016); a sales pitch which is tantamount to the erasure of the community for whom the development was promised to offer opportunities for their own advancement.

The Kidbrooke website offers one line of text about the Ferrier Estate, in which it refers to it as: “a 1,900 home single tenure estate with a brutal reputation.” (Berkeley Homes Plc, 2016). Simultaneously, Kidbrooke Village purports to offer: “(the) highest quality of architecture and design… variety of building typologies, scales and uses are employed to create distinct communities and areas of identity… high quality materials which will stand the test of time and develop a sense of place…” (Berkeley Homes Plc, 2016). Preston (2016) remarks: “the irony… is that the marginalisation and social inequality, which is claimed to be solved through the improved architecture of new developments like Kidbrooke Village, is also more widely

Figure 8: Still images from Welcome to Kidbrooke Village (Source: Berkeley Group Plc, 2013)

Figure 8 shows still images taken from the Youtube version of the promotional video Welcome to Kidbrooke Village, released in 2013.

exasperated by this process of regeneration, through its nationally marketed rhetoric that reinforces the negative ideas which, in recent decades, have come to be embodied in the decaying concrete of these neglected buildings.” Furthermore, Melinda Jackson describes how the council equated the Ferrier’s towers with social problems, but then went on to commission such designs for Kidbrooke Village. Residents were told: “that no high rises would be built, but now one is at least 20 floors high… (their motive was) to get rid of social housing and by getting rid of the estate, they have” (Jackson, 2016).

This demonstrates the manipulation of architecture as a tool for rationalising regeneration, crystallised in a 2015 report for George Osborne’s National Infrastructure Commission by the former policy chief to Tony Blair, Lord Adonis, who openly argues in favour of demolishing estates on the grounds that they occupy some of the most valuable land on earth (Minton, Pace and Williams 2016).

The report, which has now become UK housing policy, advises the re-categorisation of all Greater London’s 3500 housing estates as ‘brownfield land’ (Dening and Elmer, 2016), effectively condemning the homes of over a million council residents with what appears to be an end goal of bringing about “the end of council housing as we know it” (Minton and Watt, 2016). Whilst most regeneration projects provide a small amount of socially rented homes, they “have never come close” to making up for huge net losses (Minton and Watt, 2016).

Figure 9: Children playing on the Ferrier Estate (Source: Iqbal Aalam, n.d.)

Figure 9 shows children playing in the open spaces of the Ferrier Estate in the 1970s.

The term ‘housing crisis’ would be an inaccurate way to describe the fortunes of most of those whose business is in fact concerned with housing. Developers and speculators profit greatly from these policies of demolition, that are “actively produced out of the synergy between neoliberal politics and international finance capital” (Minton and Watt, 2016); Simon Elmer (2016) argues that: “The housing crisis in London is not one of supply but of affordability”. The term ‘affordable housing’ is itself highly politicised - whilst intended to sound like an egalitarian measure, its definition has been manipulated to refer to housing listed at 80% of market value. Furthermore, viability assessments are regularly gamed in order to reduce affordable housing quotas in new developments (Dening and Elmer, 2016).

This has led to a situation where almost all the housing generated from regeneration projects is only accessible to buy-to-let landlords, investors, or those already with a foot firmly on the housing ladder. Subsequently, former council tenants of housing estates are pushed out of the city, in what Minton and Watt (2016) describe as the “state-led gentrification”, if not social cleansing, of London’s poorest communities; the advancement of neoliberal policies have stopped London councils from being either able or willing to fulfil the needs of their residents (Minton and Watt, 2016).

If one accepts this analysis, it would follow that architects involved in such schemes may be in contravention of the RIBA’s Code of Professional Conduct, which states that architects “should have proper concern and regard for the effect that their work may have on its users and the local

Figure 10: Diagram showing the displacement of residents from the Heygate Estate (Source: Herwig Scherabon, 2016)

Figure 10 is an infographic that demonstrates the extent of displacement following the regeneration of London’s Heygate Estate.

community” (RIBA, 2005). However, the Head of Central Saint Martin’s College, Jeremy Till, maintains that both the ARB and the RIBA’s ethical codes are “simply about how one subscribes to the value system and phoney ethics of the marketplace” rather than being “a source of ethical guidance” (Hurst, Marrs 2015) and fail to hold architecture accountable for its work. Collier (2006) argues that practise draws its behavioural standards from its contemporary context “where ethical norms are ‘hard-wired’ into the social system by professional rules and cultural expectations”. Whilst its nature as an ideology is less visible than the socialist values that lay behind the Ferrier Estate, the logic of neoliberalism is undoubtedly the ethical norm towards which UK architecture is currently heading.

In fact, it is “precisely the function of ideology to make existing economic and social relations seem part of the natural order of things” Dening and Elmer (2016). The extent to which this belief system has succeeded to become a pervasive force throughout so much of British society has taken it “almost to the point of passing as the “ideology of no ideology.””(Spencer, 2016).

With regard to its influence on matters of UK housing, neoliberalism has moved from the Right To Buy era of Thatcher - who did not actually believe in the complete eradication of social housing (Minton, Pace and Williams, 2016) - through New Labour’s ‘modernisation’ era, towards something closer to Patrik Schumacher’s Hayekian vision of the city with no social, ‘affordable’ or subsidised housing whatsoever (Frearson, 2016). Schumacher’s support for the “self-correcting… self-organised order” (Spencer, 2016)

Figures 11, 12: The Ferrier Estate during demolition (Source: Waterford_Man, n.d.)

Figures 11 & 12 show the Ferrier’s Ryan Close buildings in various stages of demolition.

of the market to direct the future of our built environment is demonstrative of a number of comfortable parallels between neoliberal values and contemporary architecture.

Beginning in the 1960s, criticism of ‘totalitarian’ planning and the championing of the free, adaptive and rational individual have come to run parallel through both (Spencer, 2016). This logic has allowed architecture to shift its ethics from those of modernist social responsibility to the liberationist morality of the market. However, Spencer (2016), referencing Foucault, concludes that this ideal that claims to liberate the subject is a fallacy. Neoliberalism liberates only within its own operational structure; in the unending pursuit of “systemic optimisation” it rides roughshod over the realities of the human condition, and its repudiation of any critique prevents it from recognising or adapting to its shortcomings.

In London today, one example of such a shortcoming is the phenomenon of extremely wealthy foreign investors competing for inflated land deals that result in enormous, speculatively built developments that sit empty and unused, whilst numbers on housing lists and the amount of homeless people in the capital continue to increase.

Another pertinent example of economic injustice within the architectural sphere is the abuse of Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which financially rewards councils which encourage developers to propose larger and more lavish housing schemes due to the proportional amount of money the council receives from the sales profits. Developers are then able to make use of financial assessments to skirt their affordable housing

Figure 13: Home Sweet Home Embroidery (Source: Sarah Colson, 2012)

Figure 13 is a piece of cross-stitch embroidery artwork by Sarah Colson for her and Anna Batchelor’s 2012 exhibition Home Sweet Home; the quote is from a former Ferrier Resident

“Although (the twin towers) have disappeared, they have not been annihilated. Even in their pulverised space, they have left behind an intense awareness of their presence… their end in material space has borne them off into a definitive imaginary space” - Jean Beaudrillard, 2003

quotas if their projects turn out to no longer be commercially viable as a result of their exorbitant construction cost projections (Wainwright, 2014). This entirely legal, if unsavoury state of symbiosis demonstrates the risk of moral corruption within a political structure that does not properly hold primary players to account for unethical practice, leaving them free to game the system to their benefit.

Whilst architecture’s submission to the yoke of politics remains largely unchanged from one generation to the next, the housing policy enacted by this Conservative government (yet most effectively executed by Labour councils) marks a radical paradigm shift towards an era that entirely removes the state’s responsibility to house the most vulnerable in society, a situation that leaves architecture in somewhat of a moral dilemma. If the architect’s role is to theorise and work around issues of shelter, they are ethically tied to matters of conscience regarding housing. However, if they have little agency with regards to choosing what kind of projects they will work on, and neither the state nor the market are addressing said problems, what are they to do, and how responsible are they for these political outcomes?

Architects for Social Housing (proponents of alternatives to demolition) accuse the RIBA of betraying the social legacy of the post-war period, arguing that if the profession is not to “become mere tools of the building industry, it has to work to reclaim a wider remit than its current reduction to an employee’s duty to the client” (Architects for Social

Figure 14: Diagram of East London’s income inequality (Source: Herwig Scherabon, 2016)

Figure 14 show’s London’s income disparity, described by height from lowest to highest.

“The community was split apart and friendships severed, people were moved here and there… the council seemed to just dump tenants and not give a thought to them or their safety… soon (people) will have nowhere to go. (My parents) see no one and no one pops in to see them like they did on the Ferrier…I know they miss that, they miss their friends” - Melinda Jackson, 2016

Housing, 2016). It is certainly true that the profession is not currently demonstrating a large degree of active political organisation or collective agency, but architects are not here to write policy, and they are under no obligation to risk job security in pursuit of principle.

The political realities of practice create something of an intellectual duality between architectural academia and the working profession – there is often much in theory that cannot be easily realised, whilst practise must philosophically submit to the conditions of the day. Spencer (2016) refers to Speaks’ memorable phrase: “Theory was interesting… but now we have work.” Theory, in the latter part of the twentieth century, became a negative force for practice, resulting in their further and further separation: “theory’s presence within architecture is troubling and demonic because it posits all manner of unforeseen connections between architecture, on the one hand, and language, the unconscious, capital…” etcetera. Whilst the term ‘post-theory’ cannot, by definition, stand up to any degree of intellectual scrutiny, Spencer (2016) supposes that the idea can be understood in the sense that theory has been “retooled for architecture’s current objectives… architecture now manages theory, at the same time as it turns towards theories of management.” Thus, architecture is managing to resolve its ethical quandaries by championing the inherent virtue of practice and celebrating the parallels between neoliberal ideals and post-Deleuzian architectural thought, whilst turning a blind eye to the human fallout of today’s politics. “There is more to being ethical than ‘telos’…” retorts Collier (2006), suggesting that

Figure 15: Teresa in her home (Source: Anna Batchelor, 2012)

Figure 15 Shows Teresa in her home on the Ferrier Estate.

“I haven’t really coped - its made me quite ill actually. I was sectioned a few weeks ago… none of my boys recognise me now, they’ve said “you’re not the mum we know”. I have changed - this has changed me, the council have really pushed me to the limit, it’s been hard” - Teresa, former resident Batchelor and Colson, 2012

this rationale is ultimately flawed; “‘Practice’, where ethical purposes are realised, (is) the locus of virtue, the situation and the place where people can develop and demonstrate virtuous behaviour.”

Dening and Elmer (2016) begin their paper The London Clearances by (perhaps somewhat predictably) quoting Marx: “"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.’ This famous statement poses the question of the role of knowledge within the relations of power. It’s a role we should consider within the housing movement when engaging in what is not an academic debate, but a struggle for survival”. The reality faced by the residents of estates like the Ferrier is one of victimhood and injustice.

Architecture, no matter how uncomfortably, is here to think on matters of shelter, and despite conflicts with practise, cannot shy away from facing such truths.

Bernard Tschumi’s notion of architectural violence, a “metaphor for the intensity of a relationship between individuals and their surrounding spaces” (Tschumi, 1994) proposes that “architecture’s violence is fundamental and unavoidable”. This bears truth not only to the immediate architectural experience, but to the long-term relationships formed with one’s city, one’s home, the memories of a place, the networks of neighbourly interactions, the route from one’s front door to the bus stop; the daily spatial interactions that make up the routines of a person’s life.

Physical disturbance, that “not only destroys what it replaces but also violates the territory it occupies”, is

categorised by Tschumi as “formal violence…nothing but the polemical violence of difference” (Tschumi, 1994). His assertion that “to discuss it is the task of sociology” may be true with regards to debating design, but falls short when examining architecture’s political responsibilities. When enacted with knowing intent of its consequences, formal violence resulting in forced eviction and other forms of human displacement is just as literally violent as the programmatic violence of an internment camp. Architecture is imbued with a potential for violence that is not just metaphorical, but actual, enduring and explicitly political when forcefully enacted against the will of its recipients.

The point is made very simply by Architects for Social Housing (2016): “The overriding duty of an architect is not to the client but to the residents who live in the homes and spaces they design”. Regardless of architecture’s capacity for agency, the albatross of political consequence will always weigh upon the shoulders of the industry.

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