HULME
2 of page 12 MSC
Urban Design Strategies 2018/2019: Elective: Beyond Brutalism - Hulme crescents, south Manchester by Jonathan Fisher (s1796040)
Beyond Brutalism: post war housing, the ‘crescents’ in Hulme, south Manchester a thesis exploring the inception, construction, occupation and demolition of the Hulme Crescents housing scheme in south Manchester (Apr 2019)
Title Part page no.
1.0 Introduction 04 2.0 A brief history of Hulme, south Manchester 06 3.0 Defining design principles of the New Hulme 07 4.0 Post occupation, successes and failures 11 5.0 Conclusion 14 6.0 Bibliography and footnotes 16
Urban Design Strategies 2018/2019: Elective: Beyond Brutalism - Hulme crescents, south Manchester by Jonathan Fisher (s1796040)
03 of page 12 MSC
1.0 Introduction
By 1965, the year that the architects Wilson & Womersley submitted their report on the design for the New Hulme 5 Crescents, the city of Manchester had undergone a frenetic 150 years of radical social and urban change. It had experienced rapid industrialisation and all the pollution and environmental degradation that accompanied it. It had seen itself accrue vast levels of wealth and global status, and an equal measure of crippling poverty, disease and criminality, all built on global trade, empire advantage and cheap labour. It had built one of the first truly industrial cities in the world, so that by the eve of the first world war, Manchester was hailed as an Empire city, proudly international, independently wealthy, with magnificent civic buildings, such as the Town Hall, The Royal Exchange and the University, to its name.
By the time of the great depression in the 1930’s Manchester was building its magnificent Central Library building and looking to the future with plans of slum clearance and improved housing for all. The second world war meant plans were postponed. Manchester subsequently lost thousands of its younger generation in brutal industrialised combat; the second time in less than thirty years. The second world war had also meant the aerial bombardment of its homes and factories by incendiary devices, leaving many civilians dead or homeless (19). The 1945 victory brought with it debt, wrecked cities and wrecked lives, and a national fiscal tightening as the cost of the war made itself felt. Manchester began the long process of rebuilding itself as a city fit for the future, in hard times.
A plan had been drawn up in 1945 of what this new Manchester would be, anticipating a better future for Mancunians. The 1945 plan was a strategic attempt to envision how the whole city would work (19). It sought to build a better place, by design Twenty years later it had the CIS Tower (1962), the tallest office block in the UK, an expanding university campus, glamorous pop stars and football players and Granada Television studios broadcasting
the hugely popular Coronation Street. Thousands of people had been rehoused in the new council built garden suburbs of Wythenshawe, huge areas of slum neighbourhoods had been levelled, and big plans were underway to re-model the city centre.
The Manchester Corporation (forerunner of the City Council) had identified the vast areas of slums that encircled central Manchester as unfit for human inhabitation as early as 1931, so that by 1945, when Clement Atlee’s Labour government came to power in a landslide election victory, on a manifesto of expansive socialist government intervention into people’s lives, Manchester seized its opportunity. The bulldozers duly moved in to neighbourhoods such as Ardwick, Beswick, Cheetham Hill, and Hulme, and Manchester’s biggest slum clearance and re-housing programme got underway.
But this created a steep drop in Manchester’s inner city population. In addition, the decline of heavy industry due to increased global competition and a disintegrating empire, meant that work was now found on the outskirts of the city rather than the centre. And and a battered city littered with damaged buildings, bomb sites and huge areas of dereliction and abandonment, meant that people had no reason to stay.
Manchester thus sought to retain it residents by a city centre house building programme. The city would build new and attractive neighbourhoods to keep its people and its tax base. Up until the mid 1950’s, Manchester had favoured the garden suburb type model of new housing, that is, detached or semi detached units within generous gardens, set back from the pavement line. It had a degree of success with this model in Wythenshawe (23) in its southern demise but the garden suburb model required lots of land and Manchester was unable to provide it; even after purchasing extra land from neighbouring Cheshire it was becoming clear that a different approach was needed.
Urban Design Strategies 2018/2019: Elective: Beyond Brutalism - Hulme crescents, south Manchester by Jonathan Fisher (s1796040)
04 of page 12 MSC
Beyond Brutalism: post war housing, the ‘crescents’ in Hulme, south Manchester a thesis exploring the inception, construction, occupation and demolition of the Hulme Crescents housing scheme in south Manchester (Apr 2019)
Kennet House, Cheetham Hill, 1931
City of Manchester Plan, 1945
Thus, with land for houses scarce, low rise flats became the de facto, preferred solution. Flats for lower middle class and working class tenants had been constructed with varying degrees of success well before 1945, notably Victoria Square Dwellings in Ancoats, (1894), and Kennet House, Cheetham Hill, (1930), and also the Boundary Estate and Arnold Circus in Shoreditch, London (1900), and later at and Quarry Hill, Leeds, (1934), but they had never been built in Manchester on the scale of Hulme; that is, as a means of constructing a whole neighbourhood.
Traditional brick and masonry supporting construction was slow, and expensive; the number of labourers and available materials had been seriously depleted by the war. Prefabricated construction, or “pre-fab” had been used as early as 1938 with Lubetkin’s Spa Green estate in Finsbury, London (1938 designed, 1946 begun), but it wasn’t until after the war that pre-fab became more widely tested
and used. Firstly, it was used as an alternative to small scale, single storey, brick built bungalows, but it rapidly become used to construct detached and semi detached villas, and finally it was deployed as the means of constructing vast experimental housing estates, made up almost exclusively of flats.
The early pre-fabs were small, detached, single storey residential units, providing indoor sanitation, fitted kitchens, and above all, space that meant people no longer had to share their lives with relatives in cramped Victorian terraced houses. So despite the construction technology employed in their assembly being basic and somewhat problematic, many of the early pre-fab houses outlasted their anticipated lifespan by many decades. The early pre-fab’s success helped to embed within local and national governments the principle that factory made, site assembled components, or prefabricated construction, was one of the solutions to the problem to providing homes for very large numbers of people, quickly and cheaply. It was not until after the failure of schemes like Hulme that pre-fab as a construction method, became synonymous with cheep
2018/2019:
and sub standard.
By 1965, Hulme, one of the notoriously poor and dense residential neighbourhoods identified for slum clearance in 1931, had been bulldozed and its residents moved out to new accommodation, with very little consultation and with very little idea of what was going to be put in its place; in fact the site had lain empty for several years. The architects, Wilson & Womersley, well versed in the ideas of Corbusier and admirers of the Unite d’Habitation, were keen to show how they could solve the problems of urban housing and began developing designs. The local authority, riding the political wave of centralised planning and state socialism, had the power, ambition and confidence to proceed with a radical proposal.
Hulme, just a mile and a half south from central Manchester was to be at the vanguard of Europe’s largest, prefabricated, modernist, urban housing experiment. The prevailing architectural, political, social, technical and economic ideas were about to come together in a perfect storm.
05 of page 12 MSC
Urban Design Strategies
Elective: Beyond Brutalism - Hulme crescents, south Manchester by Jonathan Fisher (s1796040)
1.0
Beyond Brutalism: post war housing, the ‘crescents’ in Hulme, south Manchester a thesis exploring the inception, construction, occupation and demolition of the Hulme Crescents housing scheme in south Manchester (Apr 2019)
continued...
Manchester - mapping the city - 272pps.qxp 27/04/2018 16:20 Page 128
(11) Map showing housing conditions in Manchester & Salford (1904) with Hulme circled in red and Stretford Road running east west directly through the middle
2.0 A brief history of Hulme, south Manchester
Hulme began life as one of the many rapidly built neighbourhoods that encircled Manchester as the industrial revolution took hold in the early 19th century. As Manchester embraced new industrial technology and the advantages of power and empire, its wealth and population grew, and thousands of economic migrants needed somewhere to live.
As they poured into the city from the rural areas of south Lancashire and north Cheshire, homes were quickly built around the edges of the inner city by speculative developers, seeking a quick profit. The quicker and cheaper the homes could be built, and the more people that could be housed within them, the better for business. These inner city neighbourhoods subsequently became tightly packed with buildings and people, poorly constructed, and had little in the way of sanitation or daylight (11). They were the neighbourhoods that Frederich Engels would visit in 1844 as he wrote his seminal book, The Conditions of The Working Class in England
trees or greenery visible anywhere; it was unrelentingly urban, hard, and dirty. The hundreds of mills, factories and domestic chimneys that belched out soot and filth without relief all year round had blackened every surface.
By 1939 and the outbreak of world war 2, almost 100 years after Engels had visited Manchester, Hulme’s reputation was still one of poverty, disease and criminality, albeit with a tight knit community. Lives were lived within small, cramped houses and grim streets, but also around a rich variety of shops, entertainment venues, churches, clubs, pubs and industries, the majority of which were clustered around Stretford Road, one of the main commercial drags outside the centre of the city.
The 1945 City of Manchester plan (19) described the existing housing stock in areas like Hulme as follows:
Hulme’s urban fabric was not unusual to Manchester; the model of row upon row of red brick, two storey terraces with cellars, some back to back, arranged in a series of rigid interlocking grid iron street patterns was common all around the city. The streets were narrow, the houses had no defensible space to the front with doors and windows hard up against the back of the pavement line, affording little or no privacy, and the rear yards were small, cramped, and occupied with insanitary toilet facilities and dismal light penetration. The rows of terraces often had no architectural end condition which resulted in long streets of charmless gable ends. The road surfaces were cobbled with no
No statistics can convey the meanness and squalor of Hulme, Chorlton-on-Mcdlock, Ancoats and Miles Platting, or the dreary monotony of a typical byelaw street laid out in congested terraces with no concession to amenity. Imagination-or first-hand knowledge is required to read into the bare figures a true picture of the drab streets, the dilapidated shops, the sordid public houses, the dingy schools, the sulphurous and sunless atmosphere, the mill chimneys next door and the nearby gasworks. (19) page 157
By 1953 widespread demolition of the area was underway. The community in Hulme that had taken over a hundred years to form had been gradually systematically dismantled and dispersed away from the centre. In less than twenty years, the area had gone from being one of the most overcrowded slums to one of almost complete dereliction and abandonment.
06 of page 12 MSC
Urban Design Strategies 2018/2019: Elective: Beyond Brutalism - Hulme crescents, south Manchester by Jonathan Fisher (s1796040)
Beyond Brutalism: post war housing, the ‘crescents’ in Hulme, south Manchester a thesis exploring the inception, construction, occupation and demolition of the Hulme Crescents housing scheme in south Manchester (Apr 2019)
Hulme, shortly after the slum clearance had been completed, approx 1964
A typical street in Hulme, pre demolition, approx 1960
3.0 Defining design principles of the New Hulme
3.1 separate cars from people, provide open space
Manchester City Council had developed a masterplan in the early 1960’s for Hulme that split the works into five parts. The earlier phases were a mixture of low rise point blocks, and short rows of new terraces, designed in house by the council, with the last phase, Hulme 5, designed as four, large, six storey crescent blocks, designed by the private firm of architects, Wilson & Womersley.
Wilson had been the Chief Architect for the new town of Cumbernauld in Scotland, where one of the key design principles was that neighbourhoods would be connected to the main centre by pedestrian, vehicle free footpaths. J. Lewis Womersley had been the Chief Architect for the City of Sheffield in the 1950s and had been instrumental in hiring Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith to design the Park Hill flats, which was one of the first truly large scale social housing partly pre-fabricated, inner city, flat developments.
created. A cramped urban environment, with little or no open space and busy, dangerous streets were identified as the key problems in old Hulme and so the council’s first priority was to address this.
It should be noted that despite Cumbernauld and Park Hill’s poor reputation in later years, at the time of Hulme’s design development and Wilson & Womersley’s appointment, both had been completed and both were widely regarded as successes; popular with local authorities, tenants and the architectural press. Wilson & Womersley seemed ideally placed for the task at hand.
The guiding principle behind the masterplan for Hulme was thus the separation of vehicular traffic from pedestrian traffic with as much open space as could be
The conceptual drivers for the crescents at Hulme 5, were the Georgian crescents and regency planning principles of Bath and London’s Regent’s Park. High quality, generous urban spaces, formed by large scale, bold urban moves. In between these crescents would be large areas of landscaped green spaces providing relief from the urban environment; something that the old Hulme had sorely lacked.
There would be a mixture of generously proportioned, (to Parker Morris standards) 1 bed flats and 2 and 3 bedroom maisonettes in the design (01) . Garages, shops and public houses were proposed at ground level (although in the final design, it was predominantly garages).
The first and the most destructive of the urban moves after the slum clearances was to close off Stretford Road as a through route, severing the main arterial connection between east and west south Manchester. Stretford Road had once been the vibrant economic heart of old Hulme; new Hulme would have an entirely new economic and social district, where the residents would be separated from cars and theoretically, be safe from harm.
High level walkways across the whole area would eventually connect Hulme to the southern edge of the city centre, allowing children to reach school from their homes without ever having to cross a major road. The age old principle of a main road serving a community’s needs, and Stretford Road itself, was to be destroyed.
Urban Design Strategies 2018/2019: Elective: Beyond Brutalism - Hulme crescents, south Manchester by Jonathan Fisher (s1796040)
07 of page 12 MSC
Beyond Brutalism: post war housing, the ‘crescents’ in Hulme, south Manchester a thesis exploring the inception, construction, occupation and demolition of the Hulme Crescents housing scheme in south Manchester (Apr 2019)
Park Hill, Sheffield, mid 1960’s
Aerial view of the Hulme 5 Crescents; Stretford Road runs east west through the centre of the plan, severed in the middle
The Hulme proposals have been drawn up within the context of the proposed primary highway network for the city. The ultimate aim is to achieve maximum segregation of people and traffic and to create an environment that will not be disrupted by the presence of through traffic. (05) page 05
and…
The central principle of separating pedestrian and vehicular traffic is adopted throughout, and this more than any other single factor determines the broad disposition of the elements. (05) page 6
the development via six feet wide external decks on the south side. Each crescent would be connected to the others via continuous high level walkways, all connected to the ground by stairs and lifts. The external finish was a fair faced, shuttered concrete, a la Unite.
It would be possible to walk across the whole of Hulme and never touch the ground. The ground level condition would be devoted to vehicular access, deliveries, public transport and nebulous “open space”, to be used by the residents for recreation. The social life of the street that had existed on Stretford Road, would now happen above ground, on the walkways and decks.
3.3 problems with the design principles
This separation of people and traffic was a fundamental error in Hulme’s design and was a major contributory factor in the developments failure. By separating people from vehicular traffic, the risk of a traffic accident had indeed reduced, but the life and activity of the street had also diminished considerably. The remaining street level shops had fewer and fewer customers and began to close down, and the speed of vehicular traffic on the streets increased as they became exclusively through routes with no reason to stoop, making them ever more inhospitable (07)
3.2 a city extension, streets in the sky
In Wilson & Womersley’s report (01) , the architects outline their response to the council’s brief, and their design ideas and goals. As well as the separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic already discussed they state that their aims are to meet the planning brief requirements of:
...a truly urban environment of a city scale... (01) page 6.
Wilson & Womersley had been asked by the council, specifically, not to propose the garden suburb model of Letchworth or Welwyn, or even Wythenshawe or Cumbernauld. Criticism that would later emerge that architects were ignoring the ideas of garden suburb like Wythenshawe are inaccurate; the architects had been specifically asked to to design a piece of city.
Wilson & Womersley proposed four huge crescents of six storeys each, to be constructed from pre-fabricated concrete panels, bolted together, self supporting. Each continuous crescent block would be accessed at the ground via external stairs and internal lifts, and residents would then move horizontally across
Long, linear pedestrian walkways, with few shops or opportunity for casual interaction, enclosed in form and binary in direction, became monotonous, dull and eventually, ideal for low level petty crime, street muggings and intimidation. As the population of the area shrank, the clubs, pubs, shops and community facilities that were clustered around precincts away
Urban Design Strategies 2018/2019: Elective: Beyond Brutalism - Hulme crescents, south Manchester by Jonathan Fisher (s1796040)
08 of page 12 MSC
Beyond Brutalism: post war housing, the ‘crescents’ in Hulme, south Manchester a thesis exploring the inception, construction, occupation and demolition of the Hulme Crescents housing scheme in south Manchester (Apr 2019)
3.1 continued...
Hulme high level walkway with crescents in background, shortly after completion in 1972
Deterioration at Hulme, early 1980’s
Beyond Brutalism: post war housing, the ‘crescents’ in Hulme, south Manchester a thesis exploring the inception, construction, occupation and demolition of the Hulme Crescents housing scheme in south Manchester (Apr 2019)
from major road thoroughfares, intended as destination “nodes” along the pedestrian walkways, became increasingly underused, economically not viable and isolated from other neighbourhoods of the city. Passing footfall declined as people chose more lively alternatives where there were more people and where they felt safer. Soon these new neighbourhood centres were abandoned and empty.
did not regard the humble street, and in particularly Stretford Road, as a urban device to deliver all these things; that instead they thought it the problem, demolished it and sought to invent something new.
The crescents themselves were huge in scale, dehumanising and ugly in detail, but they could be built quickly, cheaply, and would provide thousands of good sized new homes, generous open space, good sanitary provision, indoor baths and toilets and fitted kitchens. In addition, the wider Hulme neighbourhood development would have new shops, schools, community facilities, churches and pubs.
The council, and the architect’s plans were big, bold and ambitious, and generous in their provision. But there is very little evidence of resident consultation in the design of the crescents of the neighbourhood masterplan, and it is hard not to conclude that maybe a more rigorous discussion with the residents would have meant less demolition and resulted in a more human scale development.
It is revealing that in A New Community: The Redevelopment of Hulme (05) , Manchester City Council is acutely aware of the need to create community and enjoyable, pleasant places for people to live, work and play. Contrary to the accusation that that designers and the council did not think about people and only thought of cars, or costs, or speed of construction, the council talk eloquently in the introduction of community, variety and a desire to avoid Hulme becoming...
“more than just a series of vast housing estates”. (05) page 02 and...
We are concerned that the new areas of the city shall not only function efficiently and be pleasant places to live, but that each one shall exhibit the qualities of individuality and humanity that can be best summed up in the word ‘character’. (05) page 09 and…
The New Hulme has been deliberately planned to allow the opportunity for as many people as possible to live near and have direct access to the centres of community life, the shops, clubs, libraries, public houses etc; the movement of people in their daily lives along well defined routes should encourage social contact and contribute to a sense of community. (05) page 07
It is depressing that the council and the designers
In their Design Report (01) , Wilson & Womersley speak conscientiously about scale, repetition, pattern, density, sanitation and open space. They talk about private sitting out space, the requirements for babies and small children, where to dry clothes, pedestrian safety, residential space requirements and pleasant public spaces and community engagement. There is evidence of really good intentions based on what people needed and what old Hulme had lacked.
However, Wilson & Womersely’s report is somewhat thin on evidence for why four large concrete crescents connected by high level pedestrian walkways are the answer to Hulme’s problems, and it often reads as a series of vague assumptions and broad generalisations
Urban Design Strategies 2018/2019: Elective: Beyond Brutalism - Hulme crescents, south Manchester by Jonathan Fisher (s1796040)
09 of page 12 MSC
3.3
continued...
Unused public space at Hulme, early 1980’s
A view from deck access low rise block, shortly after completion in 1972
carefully chosen to support their preferred design idea.
It would not be easy to achieve both larger scale and higher density within the Hulme 5 neighbourhood by repeating a similar development [to that in phases 1-4]. The solution therefore lies in increasing the size of various elements composing the building groups in such a way as to develop large areas of open space. This does not mean that the building height need be much increased. By building continuous block at 6 storey high in a few bold and simple forms, so as to develop large open spaces, both the necessary density and scale are achieved. (01) page 06
One might even surmise that they were more interested in the drama and thrill of constructing gargantuan geometric curved blocks than they were in seriously trying to understand what the impact of such an architectural move would have on the people who would have to live there.
why this is so, it is written as though it is self evident. Furthermore, old Hulme’s original demolished urban fabric was arguably bold and simple in for; rows and rows of terraces, but it had evidently still become a slum. Were bold and simple forms really the answer to the problems of Hulme, could they really in and of themselves be all that was needed to rebuild the highly complex network of human relationships, economic interconnections, housing needs and public realm?
In retrospect, the report comes across in parts as a post rationalised justification for an overly simplistic architectural idea; written by those in thrall to ideology and who are overly confident about their ability to resolve the numerous complexities involved in large scale urban city design and construction. This can be seen where they compare the scale of Hulme to Bath and Regents Park in London. They write:
Some conclusions to be drawn from the examples are that Hulme 5, in city terms, is not a large area, and that to achieve “city scale”, the treatment should be bold and simple. (01) page 07
The conclusion drawn here is peculiar in that it suggests firstly that Hulme is small; Hulme 5 is and was demonstrably very large in scale. Overlaid over central Manchester it is easily comparable with large chunks of the city such as the Northern Quarter (then known as Smithfield) or the central shopping and business district. The report then goes on to conclude that Hulme’s size requires that it should be approached with simplicity and boldness; there is no explanation
Similarly, were vast open spaces with no definition or discernible use really the answer to the squalid intensity of old Hulme’s streets? These spaces, identified by Wilson & Womersley in their design report, are only loosely defined; ownership and responsibility are vague. How the space should be used is barely mentioned at all. The result were huge areas of barely used, meaningless space, requiring significant maintenance and security costs. It feels that according to Wilson & Womersley, the provision of green space alone is all that is required, no more.
Wilson & Womersley’s belief in themselves and modernist ideology to improve the lives of thousands of people is admirable but seriously naïve and misplaced, and with hindsight, the report is an uncomfortable read.
We feel that the analogy we have made with Georgian London and Bath is entirely valid. By the use of similar shapes and proportions, large scale building groups and open spaces, and above all, skilful landscaping and extensive tree planting , it is our endeavour to achieve, at Hulme, a solution to the problems of 20th century living which would be the equivalent in quality of that reached for the requirements of Bloomsbury and Bath. (01) page 11
The Crescents were named after the four major architects of Georgian Bath: Charles Barry, John Nash, Robert Adam and William Kent! Modest they were not.
Urban Design Strategies 2018/2019: Elective: Beyond Brutalism - Hulme crescents, south Manchester by Jonathan Fisher (s1796040)
10 of page 12 MSC
3.3
Beyond Brutalism: post war housing, the ‘crescents’ in Hulme, south Manchester a thesis exploring the inception, construction, occupation and demolition of the Hulme Crescents housing scheme in south Manchester (Apr 2019)
continued...
Hulme 5 crescents behind the Nelson Inn public house, retained from the old Hulme, approx 1978
A residents descends the high level walkway, approx 1973
4.0 Post occupation, successes and failures
Hulme 5 was completed in the summer of 1971, just over two years from the start on site at a cost estimated to be £4 million. Approximately 3,284 deck-access homes and capacity for over 13,000 people was created in four six storey crescents in this short space of time. A whole new way of city living had been introduced to Manchester, and the development at Hulme, one of the largest public housing schemes in Europe at the time, was initially regarded positively.
The Manchester Evening News wrote gushingly of a “touch of 18th century grace and dignity” and there is anecdotal evidence of how pleased the first residents were of their new homes, with fitted kitchens and new indoor bathrooms and toilets. But by 1978, after mounting problems of lift failure, damp and pest infestation, petty crime and isolation, the positive press releases had dried up.
What had gone wrong? None of the good intentions had been achieved. As early as 1973 people were asking to be re-housed and by 1978, the Manchester Evening News was referring to Hulme as Colditz
The City Planning Department’s Reports of 1964/65 and 1965/67 were very clear in their intentions to build real communities, to replace the very worst left overs of industrial Manchester with something much better. The good intentions are evident from the 1945 City of Manchester Plan through to the reports of the mid 1960’s. Yet, Hulme’s reputation had worsened and it was becoming a national by-word for inner city redevelopment failure on a grand scale.
Moreover, in some circles it was tangible evidence of a deeper problem within a wider socio political economic culture of municipal paternalistic interventionist socialism.
There were undoubtedly serious construction flaws at the crescents caused by several factors such as construction cartels lacking an incentive to build well, pressures to build quickly and inexpensively from the local authority, and construction technology that was not yet up the task set by the design. But poor construction alone was not the cause of failure.
A typical street in Manchester’s inner suburbs prior to demolition
Similarly, the design proposed and executed at Hulme was not fundamentally doomed. Although flawed, similar projects in the UK have endured, as have many across the world. Examples such as Park Hill in Sheffield, the Alexandra Road estate in London, and the Barbican and the Brunswick Centre in central London, demonstrate that large monolithic crescents and continuous blocks, deck access and pedestrian walkways can work. The suburban model or garden city model that is often cited as what works and what people want, is often extremely inefficient in land and energy consumption, and many of these types of neighbourhoods across the country suffer from the social problems such as crime, drug dependency, alienation and loneliness, more commonly associated with large 1960’s housing estates.
The architectural elements are not in and of themselves the fundamental problem, and were not at Hulme.
And even though there are many examples where the large mono-block estate definitely did fail, there are
11 of page 12 MSC
Urban Design Strategies 2018/2019: Elective: Beyond Brutalism - Hulme crescents, south Manchester by Jonathan Fisher (s1796040)
Beyond Brutalism: post war housing, the ‘crescents’ in Hulme, south Manchester a thesis exploring the inception, construction, occupation and demolition of the Hulme Crescents housing scheme in south Manchester (Apr 2019)
Hulme 5, approx late 1980’s
also many example of all building typologies failing at some point or another. So if the problem is only partly construction and design, then what were the other factors that led to failure at Hulme.
4.1 Naivety, scale and context
Never before had Manchester City Council undertaken such a huge task of redeveloping an area of the size of Hulme. They had re-housed thousands of people between 1945 and 1967 but it had been much more piecemeal. The vast complexities of task at hand are referred to several times in the City Planning Department’s Report 1965/67, as are the lack of skilled trained staff; there are hints at a feeling that they may be out of their depth.
When Manchester City Council’s ambitions and programme of development for the whole city are considered comprehensively (03, 04, 05, 08, 09, 10, 19, 20, 21, 22), , the scale of their ambition is staggering. The Hulme development was just one of at least a half a dozen ambitious plans to level the city’s inner urban slums and build new houses, and the slum clearance and house building programme was just one part of a plan that also included the rebuilding of large chunks of the city centre, creating new American style shopping centres or malls, under ground railways and heliports!
manage these new mega block neighbourhoods. The city council had consciously created a new model of city living, but it had not created new methods of neighbourhood management to work along side them. They wrongly assumed that a street in the sky and the public stair wells and lifts could be largely left to their own devices like a ground level street, but this was a serious miscalculation. Moreover, it was one that should have been avoided just by looking at the urban problems of their industriual peers in Glasgow or Edinburgh, with their experiences of tenement living.
4.2 Ideology, fashion, empirical evidence and consultation
The long term impact of the modernist ideas being trumpeted by the architects had, in 1965, still to be truly tested on a wider scale. There had been large housing blocks built in Europe and the US since well before the construction of Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in 194752 and the publication of the Athens Charter in 1943, but the success or failure of them had not yet been widely scrutinised or questioned.
Jane Jacob’s Death and Life of Great American Cities, one of the first and most important texts to challenge modernist ideology in city development, was only published in 1961 and its ideas were certainly not universally accepted. By the time of Hulme’s construction, architects and public bodies were still very much modernists; the ideas of Jane Jacobs were a long way away from being used in city design.
It was not until the collapse of Ronan Point in the UK in 1968 and the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe scheme in St Louis (US) in 1972, just as Hulme was welcoming its first residents, that the presumed solution of a large monolithic housing block, funded by the state, was seriously drawn into question.
Catalogue cover from an exhibition of schemes that failed to be built, showing Manchester’s underground railway.
It is no surprise that when considered in this wider context, that Hulme was going to suffer from lack of attention to detail. Manchester simply did not have the manpower or skills required to tackle everything. Nor did they have the money or manpower to successfully
There is also very little evidence that the needs and desires of those living in old Hulme were taken into consideration at the slum clearance or design stage, something that is fundamental to any large scale, public, city housing development in 2019. Both the architects and the city council assumed they knew what was required; better sanitation, more open space and fewer cars. Had Wilson & Womersley or Manchester City Council asked what the people living in old Hulme actually wanted, they may have found that as well as an indoor toilet and a fitted kitchen, they also wanted to keep at least some of their pubs, shops, businesses, streets and homes.
12 of page 12 MSC
Urban Design Strategies 2018/2019: Elective: Beyond Brutalism - Hulme crescents, south Manchester by Jonathan Fisher (s1796040)
Beyond Brutalism: post war housing, the ‘crescents’ in Hulme, south Manchester a thesis exploring the inception, construction, occupation and demolition of the Hulme Crescents housing scheme in south Manchester (Apr 2019)
1.4 continued...
4.3 socio political philosophies and understanding the value of heritage
One of the critical failures at Hulme is one of a broader architectural and philosophical variety. Wilson & Womersley’s design was symptomatic of a belief that architecture alone was the discipline best placed to resolve a multitude of complex social, spatial and economic problems. Wilson & Womersley were not alone in this conviction and it has taken several decades since the errors of post war reconstruction, of experiments in both centralised state planning and free market laissez fair economics, for architects, city planners and politician’s to realise the limits of their abilities, the advantages and pitfalls of both socio economic models and ultimately, the complexity of the problem.
There were also very few voices in either the profession or the public sector who were not seduced by modernism’s solutions, and in 1965 virtually nobody was calling for the sensitive intervention and preservation of endless grimy rows of terraced housing; these things were understandably regarded as an embarrassment to be removed.
Even the Victorian Society, itself only formed in 1957, had failed to prevent the demolition of the Euston Arch, and had only just managed to save St Pancras station in 1967. What chance did a grim
industrial neighbourhood in south central Manchester have if grand architectural masterpieces were being demolished in the face of stiff opposition.
The old Hulme and the new Hulme sit uncomfortably side by side in 1968
Urban Design Strategies 2018/2019: Elective: Beyond Brutalism - Hulme crescents, south Manchester by Jonathan Fisher (s1796040)
13 of page 12
MSC
Beyond Brutalism: post war housing, the ‘crescents’ in Hulme, south Manchester a thesis exploring the inception, construction, occupation and demolition of the Hulme Crescents housing scheme in south Manchester (Apr 2019)
5.0 Conclusion
Hulme 5 was demolished between 1993 and 1995, as were much of the other phases of the Hulme redevelopment. Hulme has been extensively rebuilt after a great deal of resident consultation in the late 1990’s and has a much better reputation for quality of life now than it has ever had. However, the new Hulme of the 2000’s, while much more human in scale, made up of urban blocks forming streets and squares, is undeniably architecturally uninspiring and almost suburban in style.
The architectural and urban ideas of the late 20th century has resulted in bland conformity, albeit with much happier residents. The scale and ambition of the crescents was thrilling, and photographs of it soon after completion in the summer sun, show a neighbourhood that is of the future. It looks clean, special, almost seductive. The plan of Hulme’s layout, the four big crescents, is now used as a logo, printed on mugs and t-shirts, used as an identifier of a Manchester that once existed; a Manchester that wasn’t scared to be radical but one that then lost its nerve and retreated.
its 1964/65 and 1967 reports, being undertaken in other parts of the city, but the idea was in its infancy and the dominant, response throughout the whole country in architectural and political circles, was at the time, tabula rasa.
Stretford Road, once a vibrant centre of commerce and activity right up to the point where its buildings were compulsory purchased has never recovered, even after it was reinstated as a through road in the 1990’.
The old Hulme was absolutely squalid in parts, but it did have good proximity to the city, a thriving microeconomy, a tight knit community and lots of people giving it energy and life. A great deal of the built fabric was poorly built and small, the streets were relentless and public space was virtually non existent with no parks or squares to speak of, especially to the northern end of the neighbourhood close to the river Medlock, but wholesale demolition need not have been its fate. There were areas that could have been improved, indeed the council does refer to these experiments in
Hulme in the mid 1990’s
This approach was not unique to Manchester and the pattern can be seen in every major city in the UK during the 1950s and 1960’s. With hindsight and decades of experience to draw on, it is clear that communities take decades to embed and mature, and cities need people to give them life and interest. If the aim of Manchester City Council was to build a thriving new city neighbourhood with improved houses and facilities for those most in need then the scorched earth policy was a fundamental error.
Maybe Hulme 5 could have been made to work; it will be interesting to see if the refurbishment of Park Hill in Sheffield succeeds and endures. It is of a very similar scale and typology to Hulme, albeit much better constructed. But it too is made up of streets in the sky, large open spaces, monolithic block and pedestrian walkways. Modernist blocks are very fashionable again at the moment, people actually want to live in Trellick Tower, Balfron Tower and Park Hill. Manchester’s Toast Rack, a.k.a. The Hollings Building is celebrated on the side of mugs along with the Barbican and the South Bank Centre. Could Hulme have been Manchester’s
14 of page 12 MSC
Urban Design Strategies 2018/2019: Elective: Beyond Brutalism - Hulme crescents, south Manchester by Jonathan Fisher (s1796040)
Beyond Brutalism: post war housing, the ‘crescents’ in Hulme, south Manchester a thesis exploring the inception, construction, occupation and demolition of the Hulme Crescents housing scheme in south Manchester (Apr 2019)
Students and a new community emerging in Hulme in the mid 1980’s
very own Barbican? By the late 1980’s a community of artists, students and creative had moved in to the crescents and a new community was starting to form. But this was quickly snuffed out; the fear in the local authorities of late 80’s rave culture and party drugs that accompanied Hulme in this period were enough to signal that the bulldozers needed to moved into Hulme again.
The real tragedy of Hulme is not the crescents that were constructed and then demolished, flawed though they were, but the destruction of a community and an urban fabric that had potential to be much better, and one that once displaced and destroyed could never be rebuilt. Urban fabric is merely the container of our lives, demolishing it simply moves life somewhere else.
Hulme was poverty stricken, hard and grimy, but it had the potential to improve when the circumstances and
opportunities of those people living within it improved. One only has to look at neighbourhoods like Peckham and Hackney in London, Chorlton and Ancoats in Manchester, Sefton in Liverpool, lower east side neighbourhoods in New York, Venice in LA, Temple Bar in Dublin, Kreuzberg in Berlin, Leith in Edinburgh, and countless others in Europe, the US and Asia to see that old Hulme, as a neighbourhood, could have been a good place to live and work, had its residents had opportunity and hope, and had at least some of its urban fabric survived.
Hulme 5 in the mid 1970’s shortly after completion
15 of page 12
MSC Urban Design Strategies 2018/2019: Elective: Beyond Brutalism - Hulme crescents, south Manchester by Jonathan Fisher (s1796040)
5.0
Beyond Brutalism: post war housing, the ‘crescents’ in Hulme, south Manchester a thesis exploring the inception, construction, occupation and demolition of the Hulme Crescents housing scheme in south Manchester (Apr 2019)
continued...
Beyond Brutalism: post war housing, the ‘crescents’ in Hulme, south Manchester a thesis exploring the inception, construction, occupation and demolition of the Hulme Crescents housing scheme in south Manchester (Apr 2019)
6.0 Bibliography and footnotes
1. H Wilson & L Womersley, City of Manchester, Hulme 5 Redevelopment, Report on Design (Manchester, 1965).
2. Manchester Technology Centre, Making post-war Manchester: visions of an unmade city, (Manchester, 2016).
3. The City of Manchester Publicity Office, Manchester Renaissance (Manchester, 1967).
4. Housing Development Group of the Housing Department, Urban Renewal Manchester, (Manchester 1967).
5. City Planning Department, A New Community, The Redevelopment of Hulme, (Manchester, 1967).
6. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Lessons from Hulme, (York, 1994).
7. Edited by Sasha Tsenkova, Urban Regeneration, Learning from the British Experience, (Calgary, Canada, 2002) .
8. J S Miller, City Planning Department Report 1965/67, (Manchester, 1967).
9. J S Miller, City Planning Department Report 1964/65, (Manchester, 1965).
10. J S Miller, City County and Borough of Manchester, City Centre Map, (Manchester, 1967).
11. Terry Wyke, Brian Robson, Martin Dodge, Manchester, Mapping the City, (Edinburgh, 2018).
12. Hulme Regeneration Ltd & Manchester City Council, A Guide to Development, Hulme, (Manchester, 1994).
13. J Grindrod, Concretopia; A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain, (Brecon: Old St Publishing, 2013).
14. E Asbrink and F Graham, 1947; When Now Begins, (London, 2017).
15. E Harwood, Space, Hope and Brutalism, (Yale University Press, 2015).
16. D Sandbrook, State of Emergency: the way we were. Britain, 1970-1974, (London, Penguin, 2015).
17. D Sandbrook, Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain, 1974-1979, (London, Penguin, 2013).
18. F Wheen, Strange Days Indeed, (London, 2009).
19. R Nicholas, City of Manchester Plan, (Manchester 1945).
20. R Nicholas and M J Hellier, South Lancashire and North Cheshire, An Advisory Plan, (Manchester 1947).
21. T R Marr, Housing Conditions in Manchester and Salford, (Manchester, 1904).
22. P B Dingle & R Nicholas, Development Plan for the County Borough of Manchester, (Manchester, 1951).
MSC Urban Design Strategies 2018/2019: Elective: Beyond Brutalism - Hulme crescents, south Manchester by Jonathan Fisher (s1796040)
16 of page 12
