Danger is not where you expect

Guardian writer George Monbiot has created quite a stir with an article entitled The Grime behind the Crime in which he reports research finding links between levels of lead pollution and violent crime. Serious scientists were interviewed about this on the radio this morning, and it seems as if the research is pretty watertight. They are showing correlation not causation, but it is fairly easy to imagine a cause. Lead poisoning is known to show brain damage, and damaged brains can easily be imagined losing inhibitions against violent acts.
This reminds me of the assertion by the authors of Freakonomics that legalised abortion in the US helped to bring down crime. Again their assertion was based on statistics, and again they had a reason - fewer unwanted children grew up in misery to become criminals.
What does all this have to do with architecture? Yesterday Building Design covered a report by the New Economics Foundation which said that Secured by Design techniques were cutting off school students by turning them into fortresses. The report was co-written by Anna Minton whose excellent book Ground Control argues, among other things, that living in gated environments increases people's perception of threat. Presumably the same will be true of children in 'gated' schools?
In a week in which the sociologist Jared Diamond has a new book out on the lessons that we can learn from traditional societies, including the fact that children need to learn about risk by experiencing it, it is worth asking again whether our ever escalating security measures are counter-productive - especially when the factors that influence crime seem to be so different from what we have all fondly believed.

New year no money

Happy new year. But a lot of people may be wondering just how happy a one it will prove to be. In personal terms of course pockets will be feeling empty after the festivities (and perhaps some imprudent expenditure during the sales). But it seems that the world of architecture and construction is feeling similarly gloomy.
Building has just reported that the British Council for Schools Environments has closed down.
The organisation, set up by Ty Goddard during the last government to gather and disseminate knowledge that could make schools better, has run out of money. Although Goddard ( who left some time ago) was no unthinking fan of programmes such as Building Schools for the Future, it was an organisation that looked increasingly uncomfortable in the new mean, lean days of stripped down schools. Although perhaps needed more than ever. But with no money to keep it going there was no option.
The Architecture Centre Network was a similar casualty of lack of funding last year, but has now come back, the AJ reports, as the Architecture Built Environment Centre. Congratulations and good luck, but the main difference between the old organisation and the new is that the new organisation (as well as extending beyond England to all of the UK) has no funding and no paid staff. In other words, it will be dependent on good will from hard pressed organisations already trying to make their own Architecture Centres viable.
The architecture centres will be trying to find money in a number of ways, not least through paid-for design reviews. Which, on a national scale, is what Design Council CABE is also endeavouring to do. Organisations are increasingly dependent on the one hand on goodwill, and on the other trying to find money from increasingly smaller pots, finding private funding for what were previously deemed government funded goods.
And it is not only this not directly commercial activity that has suffered. BD reports the latest financial problems at innovative developer Urban Splash. Unfortunately one of the developer's USPs is that it operates almost entirely outside London - which would be fine except that London is the only place where anything is happening. In the latest issue of the London Review of Books John Lanchester highlights how London is rapidly becoming an entirely separate economy from the rest of the country, to the ultimate benefit of neither. He also takes the government to task for severe economic failure. Not much hope there then.
As I said, happy new year.

All about the infrastructure?

The government's announcement about its planned investment in the rail network is welcome for several reasons. Firstly, government investment in current circumstances is a good thing. Secondly it is going to rail, which is relatively non-polluting, and will be even more so with electrification. And thirdly, the government has resisted the desire for another 'show off' project and has decided to spend its money on making existing services better - conceptually this is only a couple of notches up in status from fixing potholes in the road.
Of course, nothing is perfect. A large chunk of the money had already been allocated, so Government is trying to make more political capital than it really deserves - but what's new? There is some doubt about where the rest of the money will come from although it is amusing to hear pundits alternately complaining 'Does this mean the taxpayer will pay?' and 'Will rail fares go up?' Surely one or the other is inevitable, unless we find a fairy godmother - and we may have more urgent calls on her largesse than rail electrification. Thirdly, not everywhere will benefit equally. Cornwall, for example, one of the least advantaged regions, is not only worried about not receiving any benefit, but also that its services may actually be cut.
Finally, does a government that sees most buildings as an unacceptable luxury unless they are so basic that they are scarcely usable have less of a problem with infrastructure? This bias would not be great. Outdated railways need an upgrade but so do failing schools. Perhaps the coalition partners could talk about that when they need an announcement to make up their next tiff?

The sound of good architecture

I had a life-changing - at least for a while - experience today, when I had my ears syringed. Not only did previously muffled sounds become louder, but I started hearing things that had previously been inaudible - the rustle of my clothes, the clicking of my mouse. What happens if your ears become blocked is that, almost imperceptibly, you use detail in the sound of your environment.
There is an analogy with architecture. In fact, sound is a much under-rated element of architecture. Acoustics are not just important in special places like concert halls, or in classrooms where students may miss a vital point. They are also vital in shaping the feeling of a space. Jo van Heyningen of van Heyningen and Haward believes that too little attention is paid to acoustics, and prides herself on having designed the only Oxbridge college hall where you can actually interpret speech. Her practice also paid a great deal of attention to the acoustic design of its own office, creating a feeling of calm and intimacy which is very special. She talked to me about it for the content of a book I have written, and her insights were fascinating.
But it is not only acoustics that matter. In all elements of design, where value engineering is king, detail can easily be blurred and lost in the same way as happened with my ears. I could still function, and so can most compromised buildings. But how much richness we lose when we compromise our architecture, in the same way that I compromised my hearing.