What the Heatherwick row tells us about attitudes to architecture

Apparently the story about accusations of plagiarism against Thomas Heatherwick crashed The Guardian's website, because there was so much interest. It was amazing to see it on the newspaper's front page. In the world of architecture, such stories happen fairly frequently, sometimes with justification from the aggrieved, sometimes not.
The difference of course is that Heatherwick has become so high-profile, and the Olympic cauldron even more so. It may have been a quietish news day, but it is interesting to see how far up the news agenda the combination of a charismatic designer and a design that has been watched by millions can get. The cauldron may only have existed for a few weeks, but it looms larger in the public consciousness at present than almost any building.
The other odd thing is the timing of the story, driven by the ban on publicity, which prevented Atopia from speaking out until now. And one of the ironies is that the accusations against Heatherwick were made against someone whose entire career is built on thinking differently. An architect may design similar rooms and spaces and details over and over again - and borrow from the past - and be none the worse for this. Heatherwick, however, relies on thinking from scratch on every occasions, which is why his objects (including tiny buildings) tend to be more satisfactory than his major incursions into architecture.
Perhaps what this really tells us is that, even for a most original thinker, there are only so many ideas available. If Heatherwick, as seems probable, came up with a similar solution to Atopia's without having seen the architect's proposal, it does not make his achievement any the less. Even for somebody who trades on his originality, being able to sell and execute his ideas so triumphantly is a great achievement as well.

Let's be sensible about housing

 Michele Hanson's latest 'A certain age' column  in today's Guardian is a corker. After telling us about her friend Clayden being attacked by cows on Hackney Marshes, she says she thinks she is trying to make herself think of urban life as rustic to compensate for the fact that planning minister Nick Boles wants to concrete over most of the countryside.
'How I wish I was planning, and housing, minister instead of Bolesy,' she writes. 'My plans are more sensible: use all brown-fill sites [I think you mean brown-field Michelle], fill all couuncil voids, cap rents, sto VAT on renovation of existing dwellings, and decriminalise squatting. That should help.'
It certainly should. And seems like plain common sense. Someone else who is advocating common sense is Piers Taylor in The Architects' Journal last week touched a nerve when he wrote a column 'An architecture of circumstance would help local character evolve'. OK, the title isn't all that catchy but he was arguing for planners to stop 'meddling and micro-managing' the appearance of housing. Britain should be more like Almere in The Netherlands, he argues, where builders have certain restrictions on volumes, space between buildings etc and then can build what they like.
The interesting thing is that the illustration he shows from Almere is of houses that all look like a family - as did streets of Victorian houses built in pairs by speculative builders. There might be an argument for more restrictions if the result, over the last few decades, had been lots of lovely houses. But it hasn't. Most houses have been ugly, shoddy, small and inflexible. Looser planning restrictions wouldn't necessarily put an end to that. But if they allowed us to build more houses, the market might kick in and people would no longer buy the worst. So here's to more freedom - but not to build over all our green land.

Make yourself at home

Smugness is not attractive so like everyone sensible I try to avoid it. But if I were to be smug about anything it would be about where I live. My small, not terribly convenient flat is in an inner London suburb where, if I were buying now, I would not be able to afford to live. There has been a ripple effect in London where successive waves of buyers talk wistfully about areas that their elders found barely acceptable. Now it has reached the point where first-time buyers, even in well-paid jobs, cannot afford to live in the capital at all unless subsidised by serious rich parents.
Housing starts are at an all time low, much of which is built is ugly and cramped because housebuilders can build anything they like, knowing it will sell. This despite the fact that potential buyers still find it hard to get loans, and even those living in social housing in London are being priced out. There was a touching interview on Radio 4 yesterday with a woman who is working part time and having her benefit cut. She is looking at moving to Birmingham or Glasgow but this would mean giving up her job and becoming even more dependent on the state. In The Guardian yesterday, Steve Rose wrote a feature headlined 'Squatters are not home stealers,' saying that the government has misrepresented their position in order to pass its laws on squatting.
In fact everything the government is doing in regard to housing seems to be driven by either rigid ideology or blind panic. Not enough housing? Let's tear up the Building Regulations. Still not enough housing? Let's allow people to build everywhere and disregard the green belt. House builders are not short of sites, and are not prevented from building by Building Regulations. Instead the situation is far more complex, tied up with the market and, it is true, by planning problems in dense areas.
In this dense tangle, what can architects do? According to The Architects' Journal, quite a lot. One of the comments on the launch of its More Homes, Better Homes campaign says that what we need are not more homes but fewer people and a redistribution of employment across the country. Maybe, but that is a big ask. In the meantime what we need are homes built now (or converted from existing buildings) in places where people want to live and, crucially, homes that people want to live in now and in the future. This means decent space standards for activities we can't yet contemplate, higher ceilings to retrofit fans that can cope with climate change, and the creation not just of reasonable individual homes but of proper functional neighbourhoods. It is a big ask, but the special intelligence of architects should help unravel it. The AJ is planning to publish a manifesto. It should be fascinating and, one hopes, influential.

Learning from Norman

Olly Wainwright has a great blog for the Guardian in which he describes the presentation process by four starchitects pitching to design a New York tower. Foster was the winner and we can see his pitch on video. Whether you love or hate his architecture, it is an object lesson in presentation. Wainwright praises him for using 'practical no-nonsense terms'. And he is right. But what really struck me was his abundant use of the word 'you'. He talks to the client all the time about 'you want', 'what you would like'. And there is very little use of the word 'I'. It is almost as if the design has happened as a natural concomitant of the client's needs - as interpreted by Foster.
It is of course a riskier strategy than it looks. If he gets those needs wrong, the client may think 'no this is not what we want'. But Foster is a consummate professional and this is a video every architect should watch.
There is a sting in the tail. Wainwright has some criticisms of the three unsuccessful bidders and their approaches. Originally their videos were available too but the client has taken them down - presumably under pressure from the architects. So viewers can learn from good practice - but not from bad.

The elephant in the office

There is a supplement out with today's Guardian, an annual report called Great Workplaces which is produced by Great Place to Work. I have a few issues with this. The winner is Admiral Group, the financial services and insurance group. Also featured are McDonald's restaurants, Pokerstars, and KFC UK & Ireland. I always feel that these companies have to make their working conditions good, because it is everything but the work that makes people want to be there. Whether it is the package, the prospect of promotion or a feeling of importance that keeps people there, it is unlikely to be the work itself.
Not surprisingly, there are no architects on the list.The nearest one gets to creativity are some advertising and media companies (plus Microsoft which may be a very interesting place to work). And from another angle, the nearest approach to our industry comes from Autodesk, which sells CAD and BIM to a huge proportion of the architectural community.
Architects are not the easiest of employers, although some make a real effort. But their staff are not there for the welcome packages, the onsite swimming pool or the dedicated pensions manager, all of which feature in the survey. Some architects may be attracted more by the IKEA approach, which donates its waste for 'innovative repurposing'. But the reason happy architects are happy is because of the work they do. And many of them of course also work in great offices. Which is my other beef. So much thought and effort goes into the best office design, to make it attractive, effective and inspirational, yet it receives no mention here. Is it really so irrelevant?