I think in simple terms the simon literaly percieves himself to have an opinion that is superior to 99% of the population, which is why I guess his ego allows him to run around browbeating and abusing people in general, maybe the poor sods been edited to look that way, but certainly he does not come of well in the programme in question, or maybe that is just the general personality trait and function of someone at the top of an organisation, whichever his arrogance and lack of humility, is objectionable to observe. But that is the filthy Modern trend today and hes no doubt only in keeping with the organisation, which by the view of the website sees its prime role as self promotion of its own brilliance ? As far as I can see English Heritage mainly preserves the buildings that the iniquitously rich familys of england, who generally descended from the unfairly priviliged feudal or monarch patronised past, managed to exploit from the poor or unempowered. Allot of the buildings are nothing more than monuments to exploitation or cathedrals of greed in most cases, whenever looking at these buildings, often the first thing to establish is who was screwed who in order to make them.
Yet does English Heritage preserve those buildings that the common man used for instance, most often it fails in this respect. And yet EH has run around trying to preserve some of the recent modernist past that should quite obviously be knocked down. But Simon thurley himself quite obviously belongs to that class, that without evidence perceives his opinions are more valid than anyone elses. im sure he was most definately of that class that new which side the bread was buttered in historical terms. Why the heck English Heritage, which should be relating and representative of this isles population in general, employs what I would class as an upper class prig as a figurehead, or at least if not provably historically, at least currently apsirational to be so, and in charge of such a huge organisation, is it because the commoners that have made it high up in the organisation, still feel a certain inadequacy and the necessity to defer to people of a certain class when it comes to wielding power in such organisations. whichever way it seems like the class system is rolling on for ever.
Modernism and EH :
The Park Hill Estate being a tragic case in point, where theyre attempting to preserve the disasters of the past again, merely because they were designed by so called modernist architect geniuses of the past, and these weak twats in turn were inspired and had their noses so far up supposed european architecture gurus arses. But modernist architecture is full of this rubbish, and it wont die its like some kind of taste cancer that has been indoctrinated into all trained architects since the 50’s, as those often failed architects of britains modernist era then went into teaching, and proceeded to pump their vile philosophys onto equally indoctrinatable twats, the best way to judge an architect is to see whether he lives in the building he designs for the common man or not. As in my opinion Architectures true calling is to improve the lot of humanity habitationally, not to improve the habitational lot of those with money to burn, as this can quite obviously be acheived and is no particular challenge.
Some of those architects made gestures by living in their works for a couple of years but most are to be found in much more comfortable personal circumstances, usually detatched and somewhere pleasant. And this preservation of this 50’s legacy of inhumanist machine for living crap, is the last puffed chest of failed british architecture to try and preserve for posterity the rubbish they often built in that era, this preservation is a final way trying to legitimise theyre failures and egotistically re-write their failed legacys as great successes into the history books against the wishes of the people who actually had to live or work in them. The fundamental element that they are preserving in the park hill estate is the fundamental sign of mean-ness, which the middle class architect tried to pass off to the urban poor as a gift, ie the framework of the building is penny pinching, how ever you dress it up, its rabbit hutches in the sky for poor people, low ceilings, small rooms, a lack of light. Yes when they were first built some were no doubt an improvement over tenement back to backs, but to be honest thats isnt saying much any more.
The worst thing about architecture today is it is full of perverted architecture nerds who worship the 50’s modernist past, who buy their subscriptions to AR, have a full complement of black turtleneck sweaters, drink allot of coffee and worship at the temple on their designer coffee tables to corbusier and his like etc. And spend their time trying to preserve buildings like the tricorn, which having lived around and near and shopped in on numerous occassions thought to be one one of the ugliest most dehumanising buildings ever built, certainly when walking around it. occasionly you could find a photographer who can make it look symbolystic and graphic from one angle much like its orginal drawing no doubt.
But no building exists in one dimension in one kind of light, it must work from all angles in all light and all weathers for all of its users on a human scale. these brutalist masses never acheived this, they were just design experiments of ego and privilige designed by the few acted out on the many almost whimfully.
In any area the modernist cycle generally went like this, council looks around for someone to design a cheap way of housing a large number of poor people, an ambitious middle class to upper class twit, comes along with a large ego who says he has a solution to all their problems, offers them some brutalist/modernist concrete design, which looks good from a mile up in a helicopter, as a white model or a line drawing, but no other perspective, is ill designed for human habitation, as it has not evolved over time to meet the needs of the people who live their, like any true community has, not that in this age that word “community” means much in an anonymous urban monetarist sprawl like london.
The council then ravages the plans, works out where it can cut costs and corners to further compromise the design, bundles the poor into the building which while theyre new dont look to bad, takes a few staged promotion videos showing the happy poor so damn gratefull for their new rabbit hutch’s. Then rights it down as a great success, other councils follow suit. 10 years down the line it becomes apparent the communitys are beginning to fall apart within these places, the children have become brutalised by the brutal nature of their environment, and this figures in their makeup. the whole things degrades to the point where it becomes an eyesore, and the architects of the modernist era are being damned left and right and center for having created an appalling legacy of bad architecture, then theyre hackles and ego’s and that of their acolytes rise up, and try and assert with their middle class assurety that in fact the buildings are great, its just the people living in them that are at fault, huge battles are fought to preserve the said awfull buildings, and the only purpose often behind that is to preserve the ego’s of their original designers and those that follow their philosophy, allot of this preservation is literally about ego.
Imagine trying to force the car drivers of today, to use ford granada’s from the seventys just because the designer of the granada wished it to be so, truth is design moves on, and that fact we try and preserve so much of this modernist dross, just highlights how egotistical those who designed those buildings still are and how much influence with those who have power they still have, and at the same time is a real endightment as to how little faith we have in new building today, for if we cannot knock these buildings down and build something better in their place, we need shooting, as times and technology have moved and we should be as with modern car design perfectly capable of surpassing and vastly improving on the design of forty years ago.
The reality is this … Simon Thurley and those of his ilk, will most often be found living in places like this:
image linked from the telegraph.
Yet they are the sort that will attempt to convince the lower orders, that this kind of acomodation is fine for them.
The only real reason to protect a building, is if it is un-recreatable, one of a kind, or environmentally it would be better to re-purpose it, but most often in this culture today we preserve too much rubbish. You only have to look around london to be appalled by the complete filthy hodge podge that is out their. Yet look at EH’s headquarters, they haven’t exactly skimped on the personal salubriousness of their offices ? We really need to take a hard look and where people would really like to live and why, and I think you will realise we are often making vain design decisions rather than offering people the environments and communitys they would like to live in. In cities like london developers have been building what fits their needs profit wise for too long, rather than the customers and worse theyres a large underclass of young people completely priced out of the property market. and the only opportunitys they have on the ladder are 40% shares in crap overpriced stacked rabbit hutches, on the outskirts of no-where london.
Don’t get me wrong I do not hate all recent design, I was about to say “modernist design” but what a cockup of terminology and obvious con trick that movement name is. Truth is some modern interiors are really quite suitable for living in, But theyre exteriors are often such a drab impersonal characterless let down its in excusable.
“Modernism” … Only a real arsehole would call their movement that, its like trying to hijack the idea of design beyond the current as your own, as though the designer who is ‘modernist’ has the keys to tommorrow forever in his pocket, the truth is “brutalism” no doubt by the architectural cogniscenti perverts that seem to rule these debates is a seperate movement, but is in fact a much more realistic name for the movement of modernism. But modernism is a movement which is only copying other movements before it in being stupidly named and defined, ie futurism was an equal hijack job. And no wonder the only way forward from “modernism” was “post modernism” how drole, jeesh the people who work this stuff out need shooting. We need a new architectural movement today along the lines of “humanism” which is a much greater idea than brutalism, which focus’es on the idea of making environments that people are comfortable with and happy to live in, and in some way are some form of consolation for life’s other inequity’s, and will preserve and maintain and nurture the community within and around them far into the future lives of the buildings, as that in itself is the test of how great a building really is. certainly if it retained and repurposed across time then it was originally designed wih some unbreakable harmony and spirit, that all people over time can recognise and preserve, few buildings built today get anywhere near acheiving this.