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Watched 'Architecture at the Crossroads: Houses fit for People' (1986), a really fascinating insight into the public discourse around mass housing in the mid-80s, mellifluously narrated by Andrew Sachs. Well worth a watch if you haven't seen it: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01rk3x0/architecture-at-the-crossroads-8-houses-fit-for-people (thread)
The documentary centres on the post-Pruitt-Igoe failures of modenist mass housing, with lots of discussion of overbearing architects/designers, neglectful local authorities etc, but some of the specific examples and the mode of representation is quite symptomatic of its moment
‘So why does it look so pathetically shabby after so few years of its existence… The architects claim that the council was too much concerned with reducing the housing list. Instead of creating a population mix, they allowed asocial elements to move in.’ — Maiden Lane Estate
‘The Brutalism of the material, the scale, and most of all the high density has again produced anonymity and monotony. As so often before, the aspirations of the architect and the resident were not the same.’ – Neave Brown's Alexandra Road, not a view shared by its tenants
Perfect critique of vernac PoMo: ‘Many of the British schemes are typical of British compromise, while providing pleasant enough dwellings, they lack the clarity of a modern design, but they also ill define the past they are trying to emulate. The result is fussy and confused.’
‘A forced aestheticism cannot distract from the harshness of people’s existence. The entrance through a Doric portal does not change the fact that most of the inhabitants are poor. What can a quote of Ledoux mean to a Vietnamese refugee trying to find a new home?’ on Bofill
It is quite bizarre that the doc has no consideration of the political context of the buildings! LCC projects, Camden council projects, private developers and Parisian Communists all thrown in together! You also get amazing contemporary interiors of the Bofill flats
Rob Krier's housing for Berlin is offered as one ideal model, with one foot in the past, the aesthetic of the factory and the typology of the city-block-courtyard, but with scale and force. Some of the compliments reminded me of the contemporary discourse around Peter Barber.
The GLC's Odham's Walk is also offered as the apogee of mass housing: 'many of the flats are clustered around internal courtyards, instead of dimly lit corridors there are small alleys, allowing inhabitants to participate in the life of the whole block.' ( @PpeterPeter)
But it's all so shockingly apolitical! It offers a level of architectural commentary very rarely seen on TV, but completely devoid of politics. The GLC had just been disbanded, it calls a GLC project the best housing in the UK, but doesn't address the elephant in the room
It was written and produced by Peter Adam, an inconceivably prolific figure in arts documentary, with over a hundred docs to his name: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/nov/15/peter-adam-obituary
