It’s only public space

Here’s an unfortunate article by Oliver Wainwright in the Guardian, describing Preston’s 1960s bus station as ‘majestic’ and deriding a new alternative design. No, it’s not a spoof.

Preston bus station is among the more unpleasant environments I’ve had to spend time in and I know I’m not alone in having had that experience. Through a link to one of Wainwright’s previous articles, I find a picture caption claiming that

‘Preston Bus Station is rightly recognised as one of the country’s most dramatic public buildings of its time.’

‘Rightly recognised’? Well it may be among the most dramatic, given much of the architecture we had to put up with from those years, but it’s not healthy to go on about it.

What we have here, I suspect, is another example of the Robin Hood Gardens phenomenon, where architects tell ordinary people that they have no taste. RHG was manifestly a disaster and a disgrace to civilisation, but architects were telling us to the death that it was some kind of masterpiece. There's a regrettable professional closed-ranks-refusal to accept that brutalism was a mistake. In a postscript on RHG I noted

‘What's most depressing about it though is that the louder the architects clamour, the less faith the rest of us can have that they will in future pay due account to what it's like to live there.’

It’s the old problem of architects seeing their output as objects defined by a mathematical aesthetic and not as occupied space that plays a part - often a huge part - in the everyday lives of people who (guess what?) can't afford penthouses and chauffeurs. People deserve public space that affords a sense of humanity. I don't understand why this is still such a problem.

 

Image from

Comments

[Beranrd Spiegal]

Kevin,

Your (ever-enjoyable) post remined me I had read soemthing on Robin Hood Gradens. It was in Owen Hatherley's A New Kind of Bleak.

Whilst I'd agree with much of what you say in general,Hatherley makes at least two interesting points: '...a recent survey by a long-term tenant found that 80% wanted it [the estate] renovatedand refurbished.' One is thus reminded of the fact that so much council housing is ill-maintained and not generally looked after, whatever the architectural merit, or otherwise, of the buildings; and then he makes the salient point 'The real story here is not about the qualities or otherwise of big concrete buildings, but the uniterrupted denigration of council housing and the expansion of London's second financial district.' [i.e. Canary Walk, a sort of Gotham City of a place)

[D]

Well said, Kevin. Bury bus station (Metro interchange) is crap but not as bad as Preston, I'm sure. Victoria bus station was awful , aren't they all?

Totally agree with you.

Isn’t there the equivalent of the Razzies- fan awards for bad films - the anti-Oscars?

If not we need to start it. How about the Carbunccle Awards?

Best wishes
Arthur Battram

[Kevin Harris]

Thanks Bernard and Arthur. It shows you can wait ages for a comment, then write a post about bus stations, and two come along at once.

Bernard - w.r.t the last point, I agree that Robin Hood Gardens was partly about the cultural denigration of council housing - very good point - but it was also surely (and I think predominantly) about downright dereliction of the social role of architecture.

And if we include bus stations in that social role - as Arthur hints, they do seem to present particular architectural challenges - then I think we get close to the point that bothers me most: which is the persistent denigration of that which is public by so many parts of the political and professional systems.

Arthur - Carbuncle awards already exist in Scotland I believe. I'd quite like to see a more positive approach which rewarded architects where they celebrate 'publicness' and demonstrate greater social inclusion.