British architecture infantile?
5 December 2008 2 Comments
Miami planner Andres Duany has apparently teamed up with Prince Charles to do battle against modern architects and architecture in England. Duany unveiled a 64 point list of problems in British architecture this week, and referred to the country’s designers as “infantile” according to a Guardian article.
Sunand Prasad, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, conceded that “architects’ craft skills and traditional knowledge had been swept aside too easily between the 1950s and 1970s, but said architects were now building the ‘highest performance’ buildings ever.”
What are high performance buildings? I’m pretty sure they are less concerned with aesthetics — particularly contextual aesthetics, one of Duany’s complaints — than they are innovation, awards and magazine articles. There seems to be a contradiction in terms, though, because performance in a building implies solid craft, which Prasad admits his architects lack. Regardless, The president’s response, as recorded by the Guardian, is a pretty weak defense. Read the rest of the conversation in the article.
Hello,
Andres Duany didn’t plan Poundbury, Leon Krier did. Duany specifically told the Guardian reporter he was not the designer. (I imagine he would have been proud to be, but he never claimed to be.)
Your photograph of a corner in Poundbury is better than the one posted on other sites. It’s one of the newer parts of town so it still looks less lived-in than older parts. Urbanism must be given time, and should never be judged by one photograph. I spent the night in a B&B in Poundbury last year and the place has many charms and virtues, not the least of which is walking directly into unsprawled rural countryside from the town center. That’s an attribute of this kind of development that often gets neglected.
Thanks for your insights about “high performance.” Braggery about “high performance” buildings is always amusing. (We do
it here in the US too, with LEED.) Perhaps they are talking about
energy-efficiency, but they also seem to think buildings should be on a stage acting out a drama. Prasad confirms this with his next remark: “Architecture needs to represent its situation and its era.” Hmm. I trust that some architects (of any nationality) are currently designing some buildings that look like economic meltdowns. Perhaps they could act out piles of jobless persons living in the streets, and design some hotels with blown-out windows. Or how about a block-long wall made out of discounted SUVs. That would be fun to walk by.
Thanks for the correction. The photo is from Wikipedia, and I’d agree that it looks like a pretty spotless image, i.e., not lived it yet!