Social Housing and Grenfell Tower

My first job when I went to London for my OE in 1976 was in Latimer Road. Fitter in a garage that panel-beated damaged luxury cars. It wasn't a flash area then. Isn't now. But it is becoming gentrified.

Where I stayed in London (AirBnB at Stockwell) was a little cafe that carried leaflets about the Grenfell Tower disaster and about the terms of reference for the inquiry. I came across Max Boucher who edited the leaflets and who has been involved in London social housing issues since before 1976 (mainly Lambeth Council Housing).

He pointed me in the direction of an "opendemocracy" website which has campaigned hard:

...."So here's a question we could ask independently of the tragedy at Grenfell Tower: why should people have to put up with so little control over their living conditions? Why should they have to put up with organisations more interested in profit than in housing them safely? Why have successive governments been making housing organisations less accountable rather than more accountable? Isn't that a sign of contempt for those who live in social housing? Isn't it a sign of the lack of respect and lack of care towards residents? Isn't that a political decision? Do people deserve this unresponsiveness and lack of accountability in their housing?

You can see that article here. And go to the main site, and search under "Grenfell".

What strikes you is the fact that life is going on around the tower - though it is fenced off, and there is now a 7/24 police presence. This is months after the event.

The terms of reference for the inquiry have been announced. You can find them here. There has been a major debate about the future of social housing. Submitters have asked that the inquiry also "create a model that can be rolled out for all social housing". The inquiry itself appears to focus on the fire at Grenfell Tower, and to make its findings known to the PM as soon as possible, and to make recommendations.

Those recommendations could well relate to the decision-making of the relevant "Tenants Management Organisation". Much of the focus of critics has been of the function (or disfunction) of the TMO. For example a Grenfell Action Group has also existed for some time - and had made repeated complaints about fire safety in the block.

This image can be clicked and expanded so you can read some of the grassroots anger and concern.

Everywhere around the tower, on all the fences, in doorways, on walls, there are memories.

Commuters alighting and getting aboard the tube at Latimer Road are constantly reminded. On 14 June 2017 there was a fire at Grenfell Tower. At least 80 people died.

Insidious creep of pseudo-public-space

Manchester’s Spinningfields business quarter, where the parkland is privately owned. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian.

According to a UK Guardian investigation (reported 26 Sept 2017) ..... "Many of Britain’s largest cities are refusing to reveal information regarding the private ownership of seemingly public spaces, the Guardian has discovered, fuelling concerns about a growing democratic deficit within local city government.

"...A Guardian Cities investigation earlier this summer revealed for the first time the spread of pseudo-public space in London – large squares, parks and thoroughfares that appear to be public but are actually owned and controlled by developers and their private backers – and an almost complete lack of transparency over secret restrictions imposed by corporations that limit the rights of citizens passing through their sites.

"...The Guardian has since requested data on pseudo-public spaces, which are sometimes known as privately owned public spaces (Pops), from the country’s biggest urban centres beyond the capital.

The relevance of this to Auckland will become more apparent over time. One controversial pseudo-public space is the laneway/shopping arcade link proposed in the redevelopment of land previously known as Queen Elizabeth Square. The land is now owned privately. Auckland Council has secured some sort of easement for public access. It's a pseudo-public space.

In the Guardian investigation..."Councils were asked about the extent of existing pseudo-public spaces in their area and details of any upcoming development plans that will include such spaces in the future. They were also questioned on how local citizens could access information about pseudo-public spaces, and about the nature of any private restrictions imposed by corporate landowners which may prevent members of the public from holding protests, taking photos, or exercising many of the other rights they are entitled to on genuinely public land....

You can read the whole story here.

In July this year I reported two earlier Guardian investigations about this issue: 

• Guardian: Privatised Public Space - Be Angry

Strange London Buildings on Vauxhall Bridge

The SIS Building or MI6 Building at Vauxhall Cross houses the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, MI6), the United Kingdom's foreign intelligence agency. It is located at 85 Albert Embankment in Vauxhall, a south western part of central London, on the bank of the River Thames beside Vauxhall Bridge. The building has been the headquarters of the SIS since 1994. In 1983 the site was bought by property developers Regalian Properties. A competition to develop the site was won by architect Terry Farrell, with an urban village as Farrell's original proposal. A scheme of office blocks was subsequently developed for the site, with a government agency as their occupier. The building had been sold for £130 million in 1989, with construction planned to take three years, built by John Laing. SIS ultimately became the occupiers of the building. Farrell's design for the SIS building was influenced by 1930s industrial modernist architecture such as Bankside and Battersea Power Stations and Mayan and Aztec religious temples. Regalian approached the government in 1987 to assess their interest in the proposed building. In 1988 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher approved the purchase of the new building for the SIS. The NAO put the final cost at £135.05 million for site purchase and the basic building or £152.6 million including the service's special requirements. The site is rumoured to include a tunnel from the building to Whitehall. The numerous layers over which the building is laid out create 60 separate roof areas. 25 different types of glass were used in the building, with 130,000 square feet (12,000 m2) of glass and aluminium used in the building's construction. The windows in the SIS building are triple glazed for security purposes. Due to the sensitive nature of MI6's work, large parts of the building are below street level, with numerous underground corridors serving the building. Amenities for staff include a sports hall, gymnasium, aerobics studio, a squash court and a restaurant. The building also features two moats for protection. (Wikipedia)

St Georges Wharf apartment development. Apparently has won "worst architecture" award or two. Found in an architecture tour commentary: "....The tour guide told us that this series of slick, greenish buildings has many harsh critics. She also said that the structures have been likened to “three massive owls,” and she really went out on a limb by confessing that she found them “quite jolly, actually.” I have to agree, although I don’t think the word “jolly” has ever come to mind. I’ve often admired the wharf from the train....". Maybe someone can enlighten further about the competition. In the vicinity are several proposed (one already exists) towers over 50 stories. The one that's up got hit by a helicopter flying the "normal" flight path. Was in the news at the time... two people killed.

Paris Planning with Emily

The woman reflected in the mirror is Emily. My daughter (recently qualified in Architecture at University of Victoria) and I visited Paris recently. It's planning was a mystery to both of us - despite the combination of urban planning and architecture educations.

Is it an art or a science - urban planning - or is it rather more than that? This picture is one of the "rooms" exhibited at an interior design display held in Hotel de Ville in the centre of Paris. Each room contained items of furniture and decoration typical of various periods. It was such fun.

Which brings me to the bit of Paris we lived in and walked around for a while. It's the heart of the 13th arrondissement. A largely residential area, we were about 3kms as the crow flows to Notre Dame cathedral (Paris is so walkable) well served by public transport (bus, rail, metro). The intersection shown here is just down the street. You can see there are 7 access points - with Rue Bobillot forming 2 of them. At ground level the acute angle corners look to be about 30 degrees, but from this aerial, maybe only one of them is 30 degrees. The question this begs - and there are many - what is the rationale for the Paris street pattern? Rue Bobillot runs north from this point into Place d'Italie - another star like intersection - though much larger - with much more public space - and more intersecting streets. It has been an interesting investigation. The first place we went was The Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine (Architecture and Heritage City) which is a museum of architecture and monumental sculpture located in the Palais de Chaillot (Trocadéro), in Paris.

The museum occupies all of the space in the right hand curving section of the building shown in the picture. (Can you guess the vantage point from where the photograph was taken ... Eiffel Tower...).

While the museum is extraordinary for its displays of monumental masonry from Roman construction methods through to Gothic engineering, for architectural models, and in particular - as far as I was concerned - for its concentration on building  typologies for medium density construction, the exhibition is largely silent on the whys and wherefores of urban planning. For that we needed to visit the displays at The Pavillon de l'Arsenal which "...enables you to understand the evolution of Paris, the influence of its history on urbanism....".

This is part of the interior. The ground floor is a permanent exhibition on the history of the evolution of Paris and its planning. There are other exhibition areas - when we attended these were a history of Japanese architecture; and the results of design competitions for very large towers to be constructed in the heart of Paris. My focus was the chronological accounts that made up the wall displays you can see behind huge digital floor map (made up from Google Earth images). The rest of this posting contains my chronological selections from those displays....my emphasis and purpose is to capture what appears to be the key decision points that have shaped the city form, but which also embody ideas and values of equality and egalitarianism....

Really interesting to read about this. The city walls taken down, so long ago...

...and it is only now, from 1853 onward, that the legendary Haussmann enters the planning fray in this account of the Paris planning history...

...coincidentally, I noticed that the street name in the museum exhibit is very close to where we are staying, and I managed to find these buildings, and below display the google aerial of the site, and two images of the elevation shown in the museum plan...

Which brings me to the end of this account of the museum's account of the urban planning and development history of Paris. And I thought I'd leave you with this final image - from the design competition for towers in old Paris. (By the way - the new business or finance centre of Paris is away from the old city centre. That way the towers can be constructed without affecting the skylines and heritage cityscape that is currently an important objective of urban planning. That would have to change for this sort of vision to go ahead....)

Here's me reflecting. So - the questions posed right at the start of this posting - how did that set of street intersections happen near here - didn't really get answered. You can see that the layerings and patina you see here in Paris are not described by an easy analysis. Like life itself.