Prince Charles Was Right: Modern Architecture is Still All Glass Stumps and Carbuncles

[Applause] welcome to this baate ladies and gentlemen on the merits or otherwise of modern architecture I think most of you probably because I've seen some of you here before know uh what the rules are of the evening but just in case you don't I'll explain we use normal debating uh rules uh where we have three speakers for three speakers against they will all speak for 8 to 9 minutes I will be quite severe with them and make them sum up absolutely on time and as you came in you were asked to vote so what we will do is announce that vote when the speakers have stopped speaking then we will go to the audience and throw the whole debate open and you can ask questions you can make points I hope you won't make speeches that are too long because usually quite a lot of people want to speak and it's very nice within that 40 minutes when we get the audience to get as many of you contributing as possible then when we've opened it to the floor you vote and you all have a card with four and against on it if you're very clear and you want to vote for or against tear your card in two and put the appropriate piece in the box that they bring round if you still haven't decided which side you're on then put your whole ticket in then whilst the speakers are summing up and they have 2 minutes each to sum up at the end we will be those votes again and see how they have swayed you or not in favor or against the motion and the motion tonight is as I said on the merits or otherwise of modern architecture whether modern architecture is um a series of great erections to the egos of even greater Architects or whether they're emblems of the enormous creativity of our culture or perhaps they're both our first Speaker this evening is Roger scrutin he's a philosopher public commentator he's currently research Professor for The Institute of psychological sciences and he teaches philosophy at their graduate school in both Washington and Oxford he's well known as a conservative thinker and a very powerful pist and lots of other things and I know you go hunting as well Roger and you love the countryside lots of other things I can say about you but most of you have got the notes Roger scrutin [Applause] [Music] just to read for you the topic for debate is Prince Charles was right modern architecture is still all glass stumps and carb unles it would be foolish to deny that there are beautiful modern buildings whether secular like the houses of Frank Lloyd Wright or sacred like the Chapels at hon and V the debate however concerns the rule not the exceptions the complaint issued against modern architecture by the Prince of Wales and many others concerns the ordinary buildings which have recently sprung up in our towns which seem designed not to fit in but to stand out the modern office block apartment house or public building is not made for the city but against it like the spiral proposed by libus Kint for the V and a which you see on the screen architects of become careless of the city and its inhabitants more concerned to draw attention to themselves and their Creations than to fit modestly into their surroundings as good manners demand and the result is seen by the rest of us as a threat comparable to loudmouthed insolence on the buses or drunken puking in the street discussion of this issue should begin I think from Common Sense principles and I'll suggest three of them the first is that we build in order to dwell and to dwell is to dwell among neighbors who as who have as great an interest in how we build as we have ourselves a town is a home where strangers settle side by side and enjoy a shared sense of belonging it streets are public spaces and the facades of its buildings stand in a personal relation to all who pass them by the second principle is that genius is as rare among Architects as it is among the rest of us most buildings will be the creation of talentless people who are simply doing a job like you and me the less they try to be original and expressive the better to pretend to these qualities in their absence is to jettison the three most important social virtues which are modesty humility and the ability to act as though others are more important than yourself most of our beautiful towns were not the work of Architects but of modest Builders working with materials that they understood and on a scale that does not challenge our perceptions the third principle follows buildings should fit together in a public space that is accessible and friendly to all of us this is most easily achieved if there is a shared repertoire of details materials that blend and do not come apart visually at the joints and proportions that can be emulated by each new addition to the townscape and here I hope is an example of what I mean I apologize to the slides I'm an amateur um this is a simple Street in witby executed in the vernacular classical idiom which was the common property of Builders from the late 17th century until the time when modernist erron swept it away nobody knows who built these houses and nobody cares they were put up at different times for different purposes using the local brick and with parts made to order by local carpenters and Timber Merchants they are not great works of art but there is a restfulness a day-to-day gentleness of manners which makes it make it a pleasure to walk beside them this is a welcoming Street the windows and doors being taken from pattern books harmonize with each other the gutters and down Pipes make a pleasant Fugue from house to house and the sky is not punctured and scratched as it is by the junk that is piled up on so many modern buildings but it spreads like a canopy from roof to roof and chimney to chimney you see street light attached to the wall of one of the houses it is expressed in the same classical language as the houses it is not an excrescence but a a solid piece of Street Furniture emphasizing the emotional reality of this street as both a public space and a home these houses are not overtly classical there are no palladian windows no pilasters or cornices just the faintest hint of an order in the unobtrusive string courses which make such a pleasing contrast with the slope of the street they hint at a kind of beauty which they neither achieve nor attempt like a note struck on a piano in which all the harmonics of the Triad can be faintly heard and here by way of contrast is a street in Bristol on one side of which is a row of buildings in the classical vacular Style on the other side a collection of buildings in the modernest vernacular using curtain W walls of glass and laminated paneling the detailing on the left hand side of the street where it exists is visual nonsense the surfaces have no perceivable relation to the structure which is hidden behind them the buildings have no posture and no real relation to the passer by they AB but against each other arbitrarily like aggressive people jostling in a crowd they stick out at will and without visual reason there is a kind of grammars chaos here of a kind that we can be can be witnessed everywhere in our towns now I envisage the response that I'm demanding too much after all these buildings are designed as offic they have a specific use which dictates their shape and all that we see is the outer shell of a space that in itself is perfectly adapted to its purpose but there is an obvious reply to that the houses on the right are also offices they were designed as private houses but because they are so well-mannered the residents of Bristol campaigned for their preservation and they serve their new purpose perfectly just as they would serve any purpose in which civility is needed the buildings on the left by contrast could never serve any purpose but that for which they were built and that purpose they will fulfill badly precisely because those condemned to work in them will never be able to regard them as a home it is inconceivable that anyone should wish to convert one of them to private Apartments a university or a church they will continue to be offices until the day not very long hence when they will have to be demolished at great financial and environmental cost by that time the houses on the right would have found another use as a school perhaps or a theater here is the only cheerful aspect of modern architecture um okay let me emphasize that I'm not talking about the masterpieces I'm talking about ordinary buildings in our cities and I'm saying that the modern archetypes which are designed at a computer and very often look like one show no respect for their surroundings they jart into the fabric of the Town often destroying the line of the street or making violent assaults on the skyline all too often the effect is of an of an assemblage of modern buildings in a city is like this vignette of modern Amsterdam taken at random on a recent visit the piece of Railway architecture in the foreground does not stand as a building stands it's like a plastic Gadget washed up between two unsightly blocks of concrete a kind of symbolic representation of the rubbish that can be neither recycled nor composted but which will remain forever as a sign of how our generation of wails has trashed the planet by contrast here is a Victorian Railway building once a siding shed at Rochford people have liked it and therefore kept it and it is now a restaurant and Conference Center this is a symbol not of waste but of the careful husbandry of resources a long-term and cheerful settlement of the land not for this generation or this moment but forever and that forever is written in the Arches and moldings which belong to the Ageless language of design thank you thank you very much Roger for getting us off to such a very good start now the first Speaker against the motion is Steven Bailey who is perhaps one of the best known authorities on design architecture popular culture and taste and he was educated luckily for him at Manchester University um in the 80s of course he set up the boiler house project with Terren conran and they put on many imaginative exhibitions there Clive James has said of him he has The Knack of getting ahead of everybody with values that turn out to be permanent Steph Bailey thank [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you um thank you and um good evening well um you can as the Prince of Wales is reputed to do talk to plants but it's always a bit of a one-sided conversation because they tend not to talk back I think the scope of inquiry with a rose uh or a potato is relatively limited but buildings on the other hand I think are much more sophisticated subtle and multi-layered with buildings conversations evolve over time and the tone of these conversations changes according to weather and experience you can interrogate a building and sometimes they interrogate you back anyway we're all very grateful to the Prince of Wales certainly for his thoughts on gardening and farming but I genuinely believe that his simplistic hierarchical single path criticism of modern architect and modern architecture has done no one any good I mean one example from his intrusion in um the so-called debate is the pural name calling which began with carbuncles and stumps this catch Penny glib Nursery culture has caught on and now masquerades as architectural criticism large new buildings are reduced to a crude morphological metaphor so you have walkie-talkies and cheese graters and girkin and so on should anybody be really surpris that after this most influential of architecture critics Brands complex structures with shapely insults that so many Architects have responded by delivering a succession of shallow on liners it's like when your wife calls you lousy two timing no good uh you know n do well there's very little to prevent you um know um being so but anyway the point is the motion let's get back to the motion what Roger scrutin said was interesting and articulate but actually avoided the subject we heard to discuss the motion is that um modern architecture is All Glass stumps and car bankers that's manifestly not the case so the the actual proposal can be IM immediately disposed of there are superb examples of modern archage nothing of the sort look abuser of course Hans sheron's classic Berlin uh you know Concert Hall Just to give another example more recently uh you know some fine housing in Cambridge by you know field and C Bradley there's there's lots of it um even the so often demonized look abuser hardly ever made a glass stump and when he did it's universally admired like the handsome uh United ations in um in New York but any Roger scrutin so helpfully conceded that there was some talent in core um but let's be clear I think that the actual wording of the motion disguises the real debate the real subject here is hatred of novelty and experimentation the real beliefs of the proposers are that culture is stagnant even dead and of course that's the way they prefer it Excellence they believe only can exist in the past what a dreadfully depressing psychology it is to be so fearful of the future and so dismissive of the present this is what the Prince of Wales has given us silly metaphors and a distrust of creativity of course no one but a fool would deny that lots of utterly atrocious modern buildings have been made in the past Century but so too were lots of atrocious buildings made in other centuries but they've been lost and it's the phenomenon known as survival bias that muddles uh the prince of wales's view of history and besides none of the historic buildings so admired by the Gang that's going to save us from the future none of these actual Builders the jobbing builders who um to whom Roger scrutin referred none of them would recognize the timorous uh conservatism suggested by this motion what then are the prince of wales's own credentials well the original carbunkle speecher 25 years ago led to the current National Gallery extension for one example a design as vacuous as it is pretentious and one not at all well adapted to its purpose um another example and I hope it's not sort of Les maest to disclose a person personal anecdote but 20 years ago as Anna Ford said I was busy finishing off London's design Museum we went to the Prince of Wales to ask him to open it I gave what I thought was a reasonably eloquent account of the importance of uh design to the economy and to the cult to culture but National purpose um the Prince of Wales uh these these these larger issues interested him not at all he just looked at me dolefully and he said Mr Bailey why has it got a flat roof there wasn't I think a cintilla of intellectual inquiry or architectural knowledge and then of course there is talking of that pound Bri continue to continue the literary theme with which I began pound poundbury is dogal and pasti it's uninspired Craven and derivative it is sham fake and bogus now we don't like these qualities much in writing or in people why would we admire admire these things in buildings and townscape and what twoo of the inconsistent highness does not visit Dorset in 18th century helicopters you know uh you know met you know metap guy and trigs are all very well um for those who want them but we make buildings with different building technology today besides no one speaks attic Greek anymore you know the best truth I know about architecture is that you don't finish a building you start it and the same goes for towns and if poundbury has anything to go by the Prince of Wales is not right he is very very wrong the assumption and the design of the prince of wales's pet architectural project is that architecture is finished we all know everything we need to know and all we need to do as Roger screw suggested is copy the past and frankly um it gets copied in a rather illiterate fashion the architectural future as seen by the proposers of this motion is not to be Carles and stumps but it's going to be fakes and forgeries um anyway thank you but my real concern with the prince's negativism and the negativism inherent in the um in the motion is that wanting to make things new and better is I believe a defining characteristic of civilization The Proposal in this motion represent the first moment in history when thoughtful men hid in the past I guess they've all read lampedusa's great novel The Leopard where the hero looks out of the rubble of his collapsing plat and he says if you want things to stay the same they're going to have to change Such a Pity that they don't recognize the profound truth of this modern architect as I say is manifestly not all carbuncles and stumps it's not even a style it's an attitude it's a belief in making the most of contemporary possibilities it's not about destroying history instead it learns from the past but has the confidence not to AP it no one denies at least of all not me that there are very many very bad modern buildings but they're bad because they're bad uh they're not bad because they're new the Prince of Wales is absolutely right to condemn poor design but he's wrong to condemn modern architecture to do so is to condemn the creative spirit and I therefore oppose the motion thank you thank you well I wonder how you voted when you came in and whether you're wavering already our next speaker for the motion is Simon Jenkins who's an author and a journalist of course he's edited the times and the evening standard he's written numerous books one of them on the architecture of London and the development of London and others on England's thousand best churches and England's thousand best houses [Applause] Simon well thank you very much thank you stevenh for your Splendid speech it's the first time I felt I ought to imp a listed building order on a speech um paper abuse um we we um uh we've been very restrained on our side of the house this evening um I haven't got any slides I did think mischievously of getting a photographer to go out and photograph all the buildings in which the um opponents of this motion have lived and moved and had their being throughout their lives um but uh it would have been expensive um and uh I'm sure that they're very true to their principles and they they all live in uh concrete blighted stump somewhere off the East India Dock Road um where some cor buan from the association of Architects uh felt it would be good for the working classes to live um the uh the essential point I want to make this evening is that the architecture which I think we're discussing has always been unpopular uh we are discussing uh modern architecture in my view not with a capital M with a small M but with a capital m it's the style of architecture which evolved between the wars in Germany out of the abstract minimalist movement um and was characterized by a rejection of all forms of style and has proved uh remarkably um vigorous at least within architectural schools and the architectural profession itself um but remarkably unig uh among those people who choose to choose their own places to live and work if you go out along the Great West Road you'll see the works of the inter War Ideal Home exhibition neot chuda suburbs Neo Georgian suburbs Neo Queen an suburbs but there's a wonderful moment somewhere in East Acton um for connoisseurs of these subjects uh where you'll see a row actually facing the the road out to the airport of about four Neo housee structures clearly the result of some bright spark coming back to the new Ideal Home homes Association they were called and uh suggesting that um maybe this year we could break away from Neo to Neo Georg and nean and put up something made of of pre-stressed concrete or render with a flat roof No Nonsense about a porch and metal windows it was abundantly clear that as soon as anyone uh from the public saw this uh structure they said but the flat roof will leak uh we need a porch to stop the draft getting in and metal windows rust uh not a single one of them sold and the evidence of that is if you look at them that every one of them has now got a huge Queen Anne roof plunked on top of it looking absolutely ludicrous but presumably in order to get it to sell there are only uh in my view two groups of people who've taken to the modern movement uh one is public sector housing since the 70s uh ' 80s and 90s um uh because those people who are ordering public sector housing knew for sure they wouldn't have to live in it uh and formed a peculiar uh and in my view pernicious alliance with the products of the architectural academies at the time to build in the style that looier and others who is I think rightly castigated as the progenitor of most of this movement um to produce a utopian new society which uh would in a sense be social engineering through architecture now I W go over the products of their Endeavors um they are being demolished all over the world uh they were particularly prominent in Eastern Europe for obvious reasons interestingly when they were being demolished in Liverpool under the militant tendency of all people the militant tendency despite their um otherwise predispositions did actually ask the people of Lial where they'd like to live the people of Liverpool at least along vool Road uh said they would like to live in the sorts of places they used to live in before they were demolished and they have reconstructed a sort of Neo queenan vernacular which uh is extremely fing is very popular and is the absolute contrast to what the Liverpool architecture Department under shankland had built in the 1960s and70s if you ask people where they want to live they do not choose the modern movement uh the other group who have proved um very susceptible to the modern movement um are essentially those people who build very large office blocks in City centers uh in the hope that they will thereby attract a tenant who wants an icon to his or her um commercial prowess again uh the motive here is ostentation show um demonstrativeness not utility or even popularity uh the tall buildings that went up in London in the 70s and ' 80s and attracted Prince Charles's scorn uh Center Point Houston Tower stag Place were essentially buildings um fashioned by planners with Architects uh in in in collusion um in order to get profit uh out of busting the building code and build an under pass or a roundabout um supposedly to benefit the public um they were universally unpopular and almost all of them had to be taken by the only employer that doesn't give a damn about its employees the government um interestingly when uh the inhabitants of these buildings get rich and get to choose uh where to do their work the hedge fund managers the private Equity capitalists moving out of the city where do they go they go to a nice Georgian house in Mayfair uh they know what they really like uh and I think we do too now the uh the outcome of this as far as I'm concerned is that it's it's Authority it's always Authority uh that imposes modern architecture it is not bottom up demand that requires it and I think there's a reason for this deep in our cultural DNA there is a love of ornament two minutes we like decoration uh we like style there is something about style proportion that appeals to us we resonate with it that is why wherever anybody builds a housing estate or even a commercial estate um they find that the people want uh the traditional um motifs uh the um the designs uh The Echoes of the past and I find that extremely significant when I'm viewing uh the modern minimalist glass box or concrete stump architecture it is simply not what we respond to the victorians understood this The victorians Knowing they were tearing apart their communities their society deliberately took refuge in the styles of the past they did not build reproduction they developed uh they thought they did variations on the styles of the past but they built what I believe to be some of the greatest buildings in Britain Victorian architecture I don't agree with everything Prince Charles says but on this thing he was right thank you thank you Simon our next speaker against the motion is aland debaton he is a philosopher an essayist he's written numerous books really about the philosophy of everyday life how PR can change your life his most latest book is the architecture of Happiness which discusses questions of beauty and ugliness in architecture Alan there was clearly a lot of wonderful architecture uh in the past here's the Villa Rotonda here the Ron um and there's a lot of appalling architecture in the modern day this is a Convention Center in Malaysia uh this is the view from my window um I don't live in it but I live uh it's true I do live in a traditional house um but this is the view from it and it's appalling this is where I stayed a couple of weeks ago this is the Travel Lodge near Colchester not not a place to be recommended I remember lying on that bed and uh dreaming of uh this place uh cathedral in Ras and thinking how lovely it would be if only the Travel Lodge had taken that over this has led a lot of very well-meaning and otherwise intelligent people to suppose that we must clearly build a little bit in this sort of spirit we must go back in time because clearly uh the masters of the past knew how to build this idea has been very influential uh as I say among uh some people it captured the mind of a completely insane Japanese property developer who a few years ago traveled the medieval Netherlands or rather looked at the architecture of the medieval Netherlands and thought well it's so beautiful why don't I take a little bit of this and bring it back home to Japan um so this is the this is the suburbs of Nagasaki uh and uh uh it's also a reproduction of some of the choicest parts of the as I say the medieval Netherlands this is not Amsterdam it's as I say Nagasaki there's something clearly very wrong here it's got nothing to do with the individual building clearly very well finished very well detailed bricks imported uh uh from the Netherlands Etc it's got to do with the fact that these buildings have forgotten where they are it seems very important that a building remembers two things a where it is be what the time is let me look at the uh where it is bit I'm a great fan of light switches whenever I go to a hotel and arrive in a foreign country I love to look at the light switches and I love to take photographs of them very strange person I am uh if you look at the image on uh uh this image here um you'll notice that you might notice that this is a Swiss light switch and when you hit that you know you're in Switzerland that somehow that light switch has captured some of the key qualities of Swiss uh the Swiss way of life uh this light switch is of course a North American light switch again when you hit that you know uh you're in the states there's nothing more depressing when you travel abroad than when you go to a place like this it could be anywhere uh it could be in Denver it could be in uh uh uh in Georgia in Atlanta it's in fact downtown Tokyo but you don't know where it is in other words we want an architecture that somehow alludes to its place uh through its use of materials and through the language of its design not only do we need a an architecture that remembers the place we also need to uh find an architecture that remembers what the time is um this is a building that's really forgotten what the time is uh this is a building that was built in 1992 or was it 1750 we don't know um it's in poundbury and it houses a group of IT workers who uh work down the road there's clearly something going on here that makes us uncomfortable it reminds us in a way of Nagasaki as does this uh a building by quinland ter in Regent Park uh however finely detailed it may be and well made it's somehow speaking to us of the wrong things architecture and works of design speak they speak of politics a way of life a way of ordering Society take a couple of te sets if you had to put politics to this this is leftwing this is rightwing this is uh this uh this drives a this rides a bicycle this drives a topend Mercedes I'm I'm joking but what we can see is in the simplest works of design there is a spirit and I think I think when we're choosing buildings or just te- sets we often want a kind of uh work of design that reflects our own ideals uh take some uh uh uh Taps um all of them have a character you could turn all of them into people and they would have a distinct character if you had to go on holiday with any one of them I'd choose probably this one um but we we can all we all very clearly recognize that there is a spirit to works of design now what's wrong with modern archit with the idea that we can go backwards in time and build things of an old Spirit today well this is some of the problem uh this is the Schloss Brooker designed by shinkle classical architect in Berlin goes up in 1824 this is his Altus Museum again in Berlin now when uh shinkle built this he wanted us to think about the values of ancient Greece and Rome that's why he built like this um I think it's the values of ancient Greece and Rome are in many ways admirable but they are also in certain key ways anachronistic in other words if we build buildings that speak to us of the values of ancient Greece and Rome we will have an awkward shift of gear when we walk out of these buildings into a world of modern it uh systems and uh uh office life and also Family Life which has changed incomparably since uh uh these buildings were originally designed we need buildings to capture the modern Spirit what does that mean uh this is a modern building uh this is a set of modern buildings this is The Finnish uh Pavilion at the sevil Expo in 1992 it summons up an image of Finland which is both recognizably modern and rooted in Tradition um uh this is Brazilia uh uh Oscar nemi's capital in Brazil uh most of Brazil looks nothing like this however this is a picture an image that Brazilians uh uh wanted to build for themselves promising themselves what their future might look like um we seem to be in danger of going backwards and somehow uh uh idealizing a past which simply doesn't fit the reality of the present we're in danger of doing a Maran twet this was Mari anet's Toy Village at the bottom of the garden of versailes where she went to rec capture the spirit of the olden days uh and of the peasant Rural Life the only people who live like this are not peasants um we are obsessed we are obsessed by a peasant architecture because we're frightened of the modern world we haven't found a way of making ourselves at home in the modern world and so we run away to this there is a timidity by the way a lot of Barrett housing looks a little bit like this um there is a timidity to this kind of architecture I'm saying that we should try and make ourselves at home in modernity there are examp examp of Japanese buildings for example I showed you some Japanese buildings that didn't fit their time or place these are some Japanese buildings that I think as a modern a very wealthy Japanese Simon Jenkins was saying that no wealthy modern people want to live in modern architecture well they do this is a top stock broker in uh Tokyo where does he live he lives in a building that is both modern and attuned to the Past uh this is a man who's made a fortune in it uh in Tokyo where does he just outside Tokyo where does he live in a modern building that remembers the past um here are some other examples of buildings that are modern but remember the past this is the Yale Center for British art done by Louie khah this is a villa for an extremely rich American who decided to live here very attractive kind of architecture Herzog and Deon building for another very wealthy couple who have chosen not by dict out of the state but by their own free choice uh to live here of course there is such a thing as pasti when you're doing modern buildings uh this is Georgian architecture this is bad fake Georgian architecture what we want is not to imitate the pass slavishly but to take inspiration from it this is Michael hopkins's Queen Building uh uh in Cambridge uh this is a building that is both recognizably modern and ATT tune to the Past um that's what I'm arguing for an architecture that doesn't hide um that doesn't feel that we shouldn't develop land that takes inspiration from the way that the architects of Venice turned this into this um and they did so not by being afraid of modernity this was an extremely modern building in its day um and what I'm arguing uh uh against the motion for is the idea that we should not be frightened of drawing from the past but making something distinctive and attune to the spirit and the needs of the present thank you very much our next speaker for the motion is Leon Creer who is an architect in urban planner and he's been one of the most influential neotraditional architect and planners he's best known of course for his development of poundbury with Prince Charles which I think Steven Bailey referred to as dogr and pasti Sham fake and bogus but Leon has written lots of books he's uh joined the office of James Sterling and the uh 68 to 74 and his latest book is architecture choice or fate [Applause] Leon thank you and good evening ladies and gentlemen uh I'm always stunned by the shallow of the critiques which are addressed to the Prince of Wales when you see the film of Michael Fran he appears to be an idiot uh in any documentation I have seen on him he appears to be a very shallow person and also the speakers who are against the motion he appears to be a nitwit I am not a royalist I never was and uh but I remember very I think most of you here remember incredibly the moment when he made that speech at the RBA conference at Hampton Court he was invited by the RBA and I I'm thankful that R IBA should come back to the subject because uh what the Prince of Wales did was actually give voice to something a terrible feeling of uh an ill feeling of uncomfort and despair about architecture which nobody D to express indeed many people don't even dare to express it now miton had become the great defender of neomodernism and the prince of Wales became the defender of traditional architecture now we live in democracy and it should be considered that these positions which are very different that they belong to this same time and you don't have to say that you reach back to the past and that you have a simplistic mind if you speak English we all speak English here and that is you know we could say we just reach back to the past how can we use a language which has been spoken in the past now traditional architecture and I know I have been knowing the prince now for 22 years I worked for him for 20 years he was my fourth client in England and all my colleagues said you must refuse this job by Charlie expletive you know I said to my then the first employer James Sterling but he is my only client in this damn country no why should I refuse him uh in next in 20 years experience I have never seen anything approaching of His Image in public appears to be simplistic now to do uh in a situation where we are uh a culture of synthetics an industrial culture entirely based that our specificity is entirely uh signified and characterized by our excessive use of fossil fuels without the use of fossil fuels there is no modernism there's only modernity now the mistake of modernism is to take itself for the only legitimate representative of modernity and all the rest they just belong to the past they are ridiculous now all the people who live in traditional houses are then idiots and ridiculous they look back into the past it's of course this doesn't stand to scrutiny and yet these incredibly childish arguments they dominate education they dominate the media they dominate in indeed the architectural scene most of the teaching in this country you can actually not uh learn traditional architecture in this country and any school uh traditional architecture in its definition is technology of building with natural materials and fitting natural material in such a way that they stand up it's not a style of the past it's a technology now to historicize a technology uh using natural materials is of course rejecting an entire branch of uh man-made environment as being a matter of the past and you cut yourself from the roots is like saying if you speak English you you are not a modern person it's of the same nature now all the prince did is to open a possibility for traditional architecture to be practiced again now in a situation where industry produces a synthetic culture with synthetic methods and synthetic materials it is extremely difficult to work with architects who have not been trained to design traditional buildings to do a traditional town is almost impossible it's much more difficult than to design a decent modernist building so the condition to produce this is not an easy one and the prince of Wales has not taken an easy step into doing this his own organization was against it they comp plotted for four years before this became possible in order not to do it and he stuck through it I had many clients before the Prince of Wales and whenever there was the slightest difficulties with the media they would immediately give up because of course who wants bad publicity and the prince of oil stuck it through he's truly I'm not a royalist I say it again but he's a heroic character who through his action is giving royalty in this country a legitimacy it didn't have and it has a tragic side to it and it's to be taken extremely seriously I can also promise you that he has stuck through it and the next phase of poundbury will be authentically built it will not just be uh decently built with natural materials but it will be structurally also coherent now anyone who goes to that place and pretends that this Disneyland doesn't know Disneyland no Disneyland if you go to Disneyland and Disney World also has always a site of modernism you may have forgotten this know epod and so on was the vision of the future uh yet it's only the historicist or the kind of traditionalist uh imitations which are accused of being of the Disney World they on to yeah so I think that traditional architecture is going to come back extremely soon it's already upon us with the increase in fossil fuel cost and so on we have to go back to Natural materials we have to go back to pedestrian cities vertically and horizontally and this is going to be the condition of the future and Architects have to learn again to fit natural materials in ways which are Pleasant and I think the Prince of Wales has been showing the way to be to simplify the thing traditional architecture is not a style it as many styles as there are Landscapes as there are climatic conditions and it is an extremely rich polyglot language modernism instead is a single man's language it's a it's a new speak which purely is can only exist with synthetic materials and it will die with the increasing cost of natural of synthetic materials thank you thank [Applause] you thank you our final speaker a in against the motion is Shan Griffiths who is founding director of the architectural practice fat fashion architecture taste it's very provocative architecture that he believes in it explores issues of taste and communication he's also visiting Professor Louie khah visiting professor of architecture at the Yale School of Architecture Sean [Applause] Griffith oh my God what is there left to say on this subject um I think it was May the 17th 1984 that the Prince of Wales uh mounted this uh famous attack on the architectural profession and on modern architecture in particular um four months after that I enrolled on an architecture course I've got some gray hairs as you might notice um at the not particularly glamorous Manchester poly Technic um not surprisingly the drafting rooms of that illustrious institution were full of the talk of the prince's speech and as we we dawned our smoking jackets and retired to the comfort of the leather armchairs of Nelson Mandela house as the students union was then known we lit our cigars and pondered the question is the prince right about modern architecture of course we did not smoke cigars in the leather armchairs of Manchester poly Technic it was run by the Revolutionary Communist party at the time nor did we give much thought to the prince's views on modern architecture in fact I think it's fair to say and excuse my modernist uncouthness but I I think it's fair to say we didn't give a about the Prince of Wales views on architecture there were actually far more important things going on so my question tonight is not was the prince right about modern architecture is why the hell are we still talking about this 24 years later it's not as even in 1984 that the prince was at the Leading Edge of the debate modernism was not the reigning Orthodoxy in 1984 postmodernism and neoclassic neoclassicism uh reigned uh by 1984 postm modernism was itself under attack from a new generation I think this no it doesn't work aha it does work eventually here we go um this is a work by zahar Hadid recent recipient of the pritsker prize first woman to ever receive the pitka prize interestingly you'll notice there's only one woman on the uh on the top table tonight um this was done in 1982 as a reaction against postmodernism so what the prince was exhibiting uh in 1984 was really how utterly out of fashion he was and I think probably not for the first time and you may laugh and say well fashion what has that got to do with do with it and fashion is very much a dirty word in architecture has nothing to do with architecture and if there's one thing that unites Architects modern and traditional it is a view that architecture and fashion have nothing to do with each other but architecture is resp responsive to fashion and does change as Fashions change so architectural Styles go in and out of fashion so to exclude one particular architectural style as not the spirit of the age or not appropriate seems to me completely ridiculous in an age of pluralism here's an example um trell Tower you see it on the west way you see it as you come in from uh Paddington Station exactly the type of thing that the Prince of Wales was attacking and certainly at the time it was very very unpopular but now it's hugely popular in fact if you tried to buy a apartment in one of these uh Towers now you probably wouldn't be able to afford it or at least I wouldn't because I'm just a mere architect similarly this building the barbacan oh sorry no that's another TR the barbacan complex now this is a prime example of uh modern architecture not designed by a very famous architect designed by um a very competent firm of commercial Architects called Chamberlin born power Powell and this isn't at all a kind of uh a sort of canonical example and Exhibits all of the qualities of modernism it's it has a certain kind of planning which is not based on the street it has a a form of construction which is certainly not traditional and I found myself actually agreeing with Leon quite a lot as one of the two architects that craft is really important and this is a fantastically crafted building I walk through it a lot and um the quality of the concrete work is quite astounding and these buildings are the sort that I think Simon Jenkins was attacking recently in a guardian article he wrote uh calling for the demolition of Robinhood Gardens which is a building by the Smithson in the East End of London he described traic Tower as intrusive and I'm sure he feels in a similar a similar way about this kind of thing and um he described new brutalism somewhat sneeringly as something that its creative it creators were were proud of this brutality the point I'm trying to make is that Simon and his colleagues over there might like this stuff but there are actually lots of people who do similarly these buildings if you want to buy two bedroom flat in One Of in in this complex you you won't get much change out of a million quid that's how popular it is okay and so what I'm trying to say is that fashion change something that was unpopular at one time because was popular later so you shouldn't dismiss it the point I really wanted to make I think which goes back to what I was saying at the beginning was that this argument about Styles is actually irrelevant we should be talking about quality and I said that we weren't really interested in debating the um uh the argument about the prince in in architecture school in 1984 because at that time we were busy organizing protests against the government of the time which as you will remember was run by Margaret Thatcher and what was going on at that time and we still exper experiencing the results of that was a promotion of the free market where all values to do with the public good with the idea of architecture or any other profession being some kind of noble calling for the for the public good was being thrown out in favor of a series of values that to do with business and we're living with the consequences of that today the new labor project of course being a continuation of fism and this not any kind of debate about style is the issue we should be talking about because we have these hideous procurement systems called design and build called PFI which are delivering the most revolting cheaply made poor space standards in which our kids are going to be educated in which if you're ill you're going to be incarcerated and if you're really unlucky you get to live in a product of these systems and these are the things we should be talking about not some kind of stupid debate about one style or another so what I'm calling for tonight is that this is the swans song of this debate and can we please talk about something a little bit more important thank you thank you very much and I'd like to thank all the speakers for keeping within their time limit um and it would be really kind if you could do that too when you speak now I've got the results of the voters you came in and I wonder whether you've changed your minds and who has been the most influential speaker you've heard this evening the result so far is before the debate those in favor of the motion 199 those against the motion 365 and don't knows 119 so let me throw the debate open to the floor now there are microphones wandering about so will you wait until the microphone comes and would you tell us out of Interest who you are and maybe what you do if you feel like it yes my name is Sarah Cook my question is for Leon on Sunday the Prince of Wales announced a billion pound initiative to develop eco-friendly cities in Great Britain now this is an brilliant piece of urban planning and something that is so essential why on Earth shouldn't the exteriors match the Brilliance of the technology and the interiors that will be required to create these astounding buildings and there's no conflict between using natural materials and modern design thank you Liam would you like to answer that I think the idea of ecological technology is still uh futuristic because it doesn't exist yet but what we know is that the future will not be high-tech that is Absolut it's it will be Hightech will be reduced to a very small uh crowd of people of which you have an inkling a bit in ex Soviet Russia or in totally inegalitarian societies the cost of fossil fuels and when you think about the the importance of fossil fuels on everything we have been doing on each one of our Lives you read the book by kinler about the long emergency and you will you know you will change your thinking there's absolutely the confusion which exists today of modernism and modernity is still with you you have to think that modernity has nothing to do with style we are all modern whether we like it or not modernity is not a condition of style of high or low Tech it's a presence its existence unavoidable and we can't help it but ecological design will certainly not be what is now you know it's just everyone tries to sell his we but it's not yet developed I'm not but it's absolutely certain that will be natural materials we are going back I'm not going to let you speak for too long Leon because uh I don't want to get people from in the audience is that all right yes somebody over there and then somebody down here and then somebody there so this man here with here yes but you first hi uh Austin Williams I'm with the manifesto um I just wanted to sort of half agree with Allan's point that he seemed not to be on either side of this discussion not not a don't know but almost don't don't agree because I my starting point here is is that even though modern architecture whatever that might be may look radical it seemed to be shown of any real radical content so appearances can be deceiving and I think that that's primarily maybe because it's being led by the NOS by an awful lot of spreadsheets and quangos and government edicts and social policy directives and also the kind of the environmental Orthodoxy that Leon bangs on about uh which seems to be this kind of cozy Heartland where Architects can now design buildings to carbon emissions criteria without actually bothering with the actual discussion of the intellectual content of what they're putting into the building so it just seems to me that the modern side of the argument on this table seems to have lost the debate because obviously Leon Crea and the kind of the reactionary content to the localist uh Community generated argument is the Hallmark of the traditionalists so I just think that the pro the problem here in this discussion is that modernism has lost its nerve the future as Steven pointed out it seems to be a kind of a problematic place to be rather than somewhere aspirational and therefore we seem to be harking back to the past as almost like a cozy Heartland uh where we can actually have our certainties maybe if modernism was a little bit more bold a bit more risk-taking then maybe we'd have a future in architecture thank you I think it would be helpful if people can hold the microphone a little bit away from their mouth because it is quite difficult to hear sometimes yes gentleman here um hello is that good it's Robert Adam I just like to start off with a brief quote um and it goes this public opinion will be led to adopt without knowing it proposals that we dare not present to them directly that was Valerie giscard dein talking about the EU Constitution and as we know from the Irish re from the um Irish referendum um many of the uh our ruling Elite don't want to talk to the public we also know very well that the vast majority of people prer traditional architecture as Simon has mentioned I'm sorry Sean but survey after survey after survey consistently demonstrates this and why are Architects not interested why to quote Allah are they not interested in reflecting their ideals because they're only interested in the opinions of other Architects um what I object to most of all is the constant claim uh to own the present and the future uh the present is what it is and that includes popular desire for traditional architecture that is modern the future is not pre-ordained but what we make it and that always includes the past to say that good architecture must be something dis disliked by the public is an insult to the public an abdication of social responsibility and admission of creative failure of course High culture is not made solely of the popular but it is not the culture of the people unless it is theirs Architects owe it to their public to design what they want and to make it better thank you thank you somebody up in the balcony a woman a woman hi unlike the last two people I actually have a question and it's a small question that may have large consequences I'm an academically trained historian so the question I need to ask is what did his Royal Highness mean by modern and what does each of you mean by modernism because no good debate can continue without either attempting to build consensus about your definition or without personally stating what each of your multiple definitions may be thank you I think if I ask each of the panelists to Define m we may be here till the end of next week but Simon you've got in sentence haven't you there is a confusion here um we use the word modernity modern with a small M and modern with a big M and I think it's important to clear it up uh no one is against modern architecture architecture is what we build with I'm in favor of modern architecture we're discussing a particular style it was a period when I think architecture was stylefree it pretended that you didn't have to refer back at all it pretended that people didn't want you to refer back at all that was the modern movement and that is what we're really arguing about thank you alen um I think that um the word modernity the modern architecture at one level it obviously alludes to buildings being built now another level it alludes to the almost the cliche um concrete or or white stucco uh um brutal uh kind of structure that we know uh from as it's an sort of architectural cliche but I suppose I'm sticking up for um a kind of architecture which um is is both recognizably in tune with some of the themes of its age but doesn't necessarily slavishly follow what we might call High modernism as it developed uh uh principally in Germany uh after the first world war so and I guess I'm you know I'm saying that there's um many ways of building in uh modern times if if you take something like the tapate modern um is is that a modernist building is that a high modernist building is that a build building that built that's built now that just looks quite cool um we might you know have arguments about that tape modern is inly an extremely popular building uh it's also a building that in its interior at least is recognizably in the spirit of its age and um uh I'd like to argue that that that is one of the great successes the success of the tape modern is one of the great successes of um what what I think is an intelligent contemporary architecture and of course we have to consider the word intelligence in any definition any workable definition of of good modernism Prince well would totally agree with that he doesn't like the tape model he doesn't like the tap model he's attack the yeah but well there I yeah it's a very interesting question and almost impossible to uh to answer succinctly because there's what the Prince of Wales believes modernism is and what you know what modernism you know might actually be but um to me as I think everybody here agrees I mean uh we're not talking about Styles we're talking about attitudes and and you know modernist Architects believe in making things new they believe in the know the Primacy of you know creativity um and invention and um you know and making things new doesn't mean you can't take it seems be I use the literary imagery talking about dog roll and pasti we don't admire writers who just copy copy copy copy copy why should we you know making the most of contemporary possibilities in architecture as Alan said involves you in meaningful relationships with changes in society the language we use the technology we use the materials we use it's not about Kuru gargoyles fretworks and spandrels they were entirely Artic know Guai metapas and trigglets they were expressions of an earlier but you say you say we use but actually we the people don't have much say in what our towns look like any longer do we wa um I I at all did they ever mean thats that begs a lot of questions didn't it I mean did they did they did they ever was you know the Athenians didn't vote for the didn't vote for the um for the ponon well I think vernacular architecture was aumed as somebody said to um but I'm sh my colors um yes somebody here oh hello can you hear me my name is Ralph P Robinson I was a student at the prince wells's Institute of architecture 15 years ago I was the token modernist at the uh Institute I spent 15 years recovering from it and I now uh design houses for the super rich in Wilshire um they all want what do they look like they all look like um uh the sort of houses that everybody would like to live in in Wilshire part of Myers no no they're actually quite agreeable things yes my part of my recovery program is sitting on a mountain in mid Wales studying environmental architecture um which I do once a month um I'm wondering what the modern Wing uh who don't seem to address the environmental issues of architecture um have to say about uh the um sustainable and carbon sensitive architecture which the only person who has actually seem to address that was one of my former tutors at the Prince Wells Institute Leon Crea Ste yes well that's that's an extremely interesting point but it's not actually what the emotion is um uh is about I think but I just want to say when you're talking about the the uh you know there's a mismatch something which does betray what I would say it was the the philosophical vacuity of the the the people people proposing the um the motion was raised by Robert Adam the distinguished architect who spoke a little bit before and I hope I'm not Robert giving away um uh something privileged information I remember you telling me that the very rich clients you work for in Hampshire they like a bit of a Doric Portico at the front but they actually like minimalist modern Interiors now that seems to be an extraordinary betrayal of something I mean I couldn't we'll have to ask you what but there seems to be you know I just I have a passion about design has a all forms of design whether architecture design or Allan Taps design has a sort of moral character now what I mean by that is it has the same qualities as human beings have you know honest you know honesty and and truthfulness anything which it works well whether it's a building or an object has a sort of authenticity about it I believe and that's what modernists they've often failed that's what that's what modernist with the capital or L case them are always trying to achieve something which speaks of the age Le well I'm pained I thought we would be a bit further by now to come here and say they just copy copy copy and we are creative is so imbecile and childish because nature copies nature is imitative system everything we do is copying now to pretend that copying is being an imbecile is just imbecile nature doesn't work otherwise you have been copied by two parents you know otherwise you wouldn't exist and thank thanks God these people they still look like people that's how nature works typologically and in a repetitive way most of them now to pretend that because one uses one form of architecture you are uncreative and by using another you suddenly become creative is completely absurd It Is by using an instrument by playing a piano by drawing by doing anything that your talent come forth you don't invent the computer you don't invent the piano no usually the people who invent the piano are not the people who who write the music but anyway you know these things are repetitive and it's through repetition that Excellence uh gets educated and finally the new Talent which is born uses these new instruments and plays with him Sovereign and it's the first Generations who struggle with it but to pretend that you can only be creative by Reinventing architecture is complete lie if you look at the great star architects now they copy each other I mean you know how little sources there are nowadays whereas you look at the richness of traditional architecture around the world is just Indescribable you move 10 kilometers and you have a different architecture now you get the same architecture all around the globe so where is the rich and creative pattern it's you know it's the traditional systems which are absolutely unavoidable mathematics science all the things we use are imitative are copying things and it's through copying that your Genius or your talent uh finally comes forth let me take another point I'm aware that you were asking about materials and how important at the present time it is to think of sustainability materials and maybe somebody else would like to take that up on the panel on the audience in a moment yes uh I would actually have a question for the people for the motion I think there's a distinction to be made between um and type of what role we want to give to architecture whether it's institutional architecture or housing and I think Alam actually made a very interesting point which is what values do we want to portray through architecture and Winston Churchill made a very interesting comment in 1941 when the House of Lords was bombed which was we build our building we shape our buildings and our buildings shape us and what was a very controversial move was that he made he voted for the house of Lords to be reconstructed in the identical and not because it was comfortable precisely because it was a discomfort it was an uncomfortable building that would remind people of the trauma that the country had gone through and my question would be do you think that you can have a progressive vision of society by building traditional institutional architecture Roger yes I do think that we can have a a perfectly acceptable Society uh housed within buildings of a traditional kind and I think nothing has been said that um points in another Direction Alan Debon gave us some extremely interesting examples of what he regarded as successful modern architecture including the Queen's building at Cambridge where it is quite obvious that it had become successful because it has leared that a tradition is a is an organic thing that must be connected to the the past if it is to say anything new and I think that this is a general truth about human society that we that we can't actually be comfortable in the present if we think we have no roots in the past and if we simply live in the present moment as though nothing had come before us then we're not actually living as human beings thank you yes somebody up there on a balcony Mark Archer um we've heard a lot about blaming Architects or blaming Architects but um what about blaming the patrons and I just wonder if the panel has any comments about patronage and the role that plays I mean we've heard that a lot of poor modernist work was commissioned by public servants we've seen some good examples of of houses modernist houses built by very rich people but how do we if every age gets the architecture it deserves how do Architects get the patrons they deserve Simon you've written a lot about this I mean who is the patron of a building surely it's the person who lives in it uh the people who live in houses now go and look depressing their it may be to the architectural profession uh go and look at the newest States spreading across Essex and Cambridge and ele and so on they are all traditional in style they're traditional in style because people have had enough frankly of modern movement I use this term very carefully um development of urban centers uh we heard a lot about the barbacan uh how many people here ever go for a stroll on a Sunday afternoon through the baron I think vant at the back and I wonder how many go for a stroll through doting Hill I mean the the the the fact of the matter is and this is not something about modern architecture as such it's about a particular style that I believe was a cultural culdesac that has dominated English architecture for the past 50 years but only a particular branch of English architecture you never see a slide at an architecture seminar of a British housing estate from the private sector in which people actually want to go and live they ban it it doesn't appear it's forbidden it's shameful all you see are unbelievably rich Japanese building Dar houses that'll fall down in 6 months no I'm I'm I'm not on either side of this debate I promise you but I do have a joke uh which was a cartoon um and it was a woman at a missing person's Bureau looking for her childhood got lost and the policeman behind the missing person's Bureau cter said have you tried the baracon yes Stuart Lipton I'm a developer but I don't build icons as Simon will tell you I just like to pick up this Patron Point good patrons are here in the UK what do they do I think they express love and care for their projects and Simon there are plenty of modern projects to walk through you can walk through broadgate in the city more people walk there than any other project in the city you can walk through through chisik Park by Richard Rogers a perhaps a reinvention of the Georgian Villa you can walk through many projects P NOA Square there are many in London what happens unfortunately is that the planning system doesn't allow us to build what we should really be building and we can't we can't let this conversation go by without referring to the planning system it's bogged down our quality it's bogged down our lives it's produced the lowest common denominator of design it certainly doesn't encourage quality as Sha has said and it certainly hasn't produced wonderful places and I'm rather disappointed that great places Parks uh squares have not figured in the context I think we had one comment about them from the panel surely in this country what we need is great places the buildings are almost incidental don't worry about them thank you [Applause] sure which which is very much Richard rogers's theme isn't it that great places to walk and be yes sorry I mean I think I think the argument that um the argument that be that no one really wants if there's a if there's a choice no one really wants uh modernist architecture is really contenti cuz there's basically not very much Choice as Stuart was suggesting I mean we're living in a world it's rather like a Soviet Supermarket where everyone's really buying some revolting tin of food and then there's a poll done about who likes the revolting food and that food comes relatively near the top because there's nothing else um so people are buying pasti bad architecture of the kind that Simon seems to like um not because they like it there nothing else on the market uh so it's not until we get a true uh proliferation I mean the other thing to mention is Kevin McLoud and Grand designs now what happens with grand designs Grand designs is the the first offering it's like the first sort of modern British restaurant to open in the UK and say 1982 people flock to it people are desperate it's got the highest viewing figures of any program on Channel 4 bar Big Brother um this is clearly not a sign that contemporary architecture is unpopular people con I know this people constantly after every showing of of um big of um um big brother too of grand designs people call up Channel 4 and say where can I buy this and the answer is nowhere and the reason is because of the planning system and the timidity of developers every now and then a developer does take a huge risk as the developer accordia did in Cambridge and builds a wonderful modern uh uh development and it sells like hot cakes much faster than the sort of subprime uh unsellable stuff that's now sitting on the uh uh uh in the bad lands of Essex so I think that argument about popularity really needs to be used with care yes Ruth Lang I'm just finishing my uh training as an architect at the moment um one of the arguments for the motion was that we speak English but we're not actually retrospective imbe um isn't it the case though that language is evolving every day to reflect society and accommodate new technological advances and shouldn't architecture therefore be doing the same thing thank you Stephen yes absolutely that's my that that's that's my own conviction this is why I find the the the arguments coming from the people are supporting the motion um so so so stultifying I mean it's uh you I I don't want to get trapped into details about sustainability or plan all the things we said what Alan said before and said before plan is absolutely correct but for me the issue here is about the absolute fundamental Primacy of the need to make something new and I know Bart Simpson yes said that you know trying is the first step towards failure and we've had you know we've had lots of failures in modern architecture but it seems to me to be the princip is wrong and we're right because it's important and Humane to try to make things new Roger I believe yeah I think that this is a pernicious platitude that that novelty is the essence of the modern and that if we don't pursue novelty we're in some way becoming stagnant immed in the past and unable to cope with the modern world if you look back at the greatest period of what I think is the greatest period of vernacular architecture in Europe which was the Renaissance and what immediately followed it that was an extremely novel thing in one respect but it was also an attempt to recapture a tradition and to develop a vocabulary that would have an organic sense of its own and that would permit constant development of the kind that Leon Crea was defending and I think we should just get rid of this dichotomizing mentality it says we either new or we're old the the whole point of a tradition is that it's a developing thing that owes its life to what went before and only if you accept that can you have any conception of what you're doing towards the future thank you thank you uh my name is Yan massia architect um I have to say that um in a sense I'm sort of disappointed by this evening's discussion and I share Leon's frustration with uh in a sense the frippery that's been going on uh in discussing architecture uh where we are in the early part of the 21st century there are some very serious issues that in a sense Prince Charles wasn't aware of uh back in the 80s when he made his famous speech at Hampton Court and one of the key ones that we really do have to address is uh what Leon brought up which is the um the whole issue of peak oil the running out of resources and the need for us to um build buildings that are sustainable and the key part of sustainability is longevity and that's something that modernism has never addressed and in fact uh we've had examples of great modernism all from the 1940s and 50s as far as I can tell uh the stuff doesn't last and it needs huge amounts of resources not only to build but then to maintain and repair now that's something that is going to come up behind us and in a sense take this argument Beyond uh a question of styles to one of uh of uh survivability and if you go back to uh a tradition it isn't Nostalgia it is going back to the last good setting of where things were sustainable the guys that built the old cities in the old towns had no choice they had to build in a manner that meant they didn't go bankrupt in a in an energy sense and we have had a great party it's been good fun for the last 60 years but it's got to end now the question I want to ask is at what point will the panel who are for modernist architecture actually acknowledge that [Applause] Sean it's interesting the whole kind of point about style about sustainability about uh patronage and procurement I mean I agree with Simon about modernism being a style which means that it goes in and out of fashion you can build sustainable buildings in a modern style you can build sustainable buildings in a traditional style you can build build sustainable buildings in any style you want it's not that's not the issue I mean for example if you use a material like concrete you're told that that is a a bad material to use environmentally when in fact if you look at carbon footprint only 3% of our individual carbon footprint is made up of the materials that uh make up the built environment that we live in where something like 10 to 15% is in the use of buildings regardless of how they're made similarly if you want to reduce your carbon footprint you should worry less about the buildings you're inhabiting in how many times you're going to Australia on an airplane or for that matter to Malaga on an airplane or for that matter to Manchester on an airplane but Sean many many modern buildings have sealed windows and a very expensive air conditioning system of course sustainable cuz those buildings were built uh using a an ideology from the 1960s and '70s the the buildings of buildings today are being built like that that's because that's what the market requires it again it's not an issue I think of style or you know whether it looks like a corium like to do materials but it's materal again materials can be you know you can use a a a brick which to all intents and purposes is a sustainable material if you transport it 400 mi from Scotland or across the ocean it's less sustainable I think these things are not to do whe whether it's modernist or whether it's traditional in fact I think the issue is not modernist or traditional it's to do with the quality it's to do with the sustainability it's to do with a whole series of issues that have nothing to do with style that's why I think this whole debate is rather an acronis well I think that's exactly the point mean I I don't take second place to anybody in my interest in sustainable um issues anybody concerned with technology wouldn't um you know wouldn't want it any other way I mean what the world needs I personally is more technology but know not less but technology tends to be more and more efficient that's you know but anyway sustainability is absolutely fine but I just keep no one everybody keeps on getting away from the you know what you know what the motion is that the modern architect the motion is modern architect as Prince well says is car bules and stumps it's manifestly simply um um you know not the case the the it's not about style either we've said this it was said repeatedly the questions from the floor keep on coming back accusing us of being doing some sort of sty mongering it's not it's not that at all I mean it is modern architect it's an attitude it's that thing that it's that belief that you can uh you know it's that belief in in in in in creativity and you know and not relying you know not relying on the prop of the past it's about having it's about having respect for the past you know and some sort of belief in the future and I find the the arguments which are negative about the future rather neist I mean to pretend that these people don't rely on the past it's just a lie know you can trace any shape used by modernist architect the most creative so-called today you can trace it to past events because all experience with nature is past well of course there culture culture an entire there is no experience in the future of course all experience is past so whatever we base on experience is pist it's ridiculous argument Sten it's ch it's immature I think I think it's important to just to pass just for a second on the politics of it the the um this particular style that we're discussing emerged from a particular political climate between the wars it took hold of a particular profession that of architect it infected the rebuilding of Europe after the war I I leared my in so far as I know it as an Amazon architecture sitting at the feet of of grah shankland in Liverpool when he presented his plan for the new Liverpool to the Liverpool city council he proposed to pull down Liverpool and I remember thinking this man is completely crazy he was hired by Liverpool city council and he pulled down half of Liverpool that was the attitude of M to which I object that is authoritarian it is not Democratic uh it is it is totally subject to Evolution we are having we have indeed moved on from it one of the great things about modern architecture with a small m is it's moved on from it's seen the fault of that way but that was a culdesac a dangerous authoritarian culdesac let's not let them get away with it have a question here from perhaps our youngest M um hi I'm Fredy W I have three points for people for the motion uh firstly uh surely you need to respect the originality of so many modern buildings in this day and secondly surely modern architecture isn't just an influence and a response to the ideas of the modern world and finally the with um old building surely the past is gone and you need to like open your mind to the future thank [Music] you and can I can I ask you if you're going to be an architect you are good yes somebody here wants to make a point man with behind you my name is quinland Terry um I've already been insulted by a picture of one of my buildings on the on the thing um I I really think um a lot of nonsense been talking about the particularly uh on the right hand side about materials because uh the in the past they used materials which did not depend on burning up the resources of the Earth stone brick lime mortar Timber and slate all of which um the modernist establishment um a stew and what one of the things I I feel the main point of getting back to the main point of the issue the issue of whether Prince Charles was right and I think I need to instruct the people in this room who haven't been to an architectural school but I had The Misfortune to go to the AA in the six in the ' 50s and uh as sim jenin said it was um after War everybody thought that everybody must be modern there were about three of us who couldn't quite see why we had to be and we produced traditional schemes very bad traditional schemes and finally we were told by pet Peter Smithson you're undermining the whole principle of the modern movement and therefore if you do your final scheme in the modern style you will fail and I don't think people realize how uh students have been forced into this mold of doing the modern style it's an architect's thing the public don't realize and of course when you done five years of modern Architects you come out and you're incapable of doing anything else [Applause] you well the the last speaker was absolutely right there appalling absurdities and U um like that that's that's no more that's no more corrupting and wicked than Architects a century ago being required to do boar designs it's it's always been there's always been a prevailing Orthodoxy and that Orthodoxy you the last questioner from the floor described was long since gone I inter take one more point from the floor and then ask the speakers to sum up yes my name is Christopher Rogers I'm not an architect either um in having this debate we know that we're not doing anything new and we know that neither side can win if we go back to the 1660s we've got the same debate with uh with Ren deciding he wants to knock down half of the city to build his great Avenues from St Paul's and of course the result was a compromise he got a bit of it but he didn't get to knock down all the churches and rebuild them in in his new grand plan he followed the same street plans as were there before or the 1840s with Ruskin uh the debate between the organic and the classical uh we enjoy this sort of debate and we know which side we're on at the start and we need this debate to keep moving forward but we know that neither side can win Sean am I yeah yes no I just wondered whether you wanted the last word from the okay no I will have the last word I want I wanted to say something about um authoritarian Tendencies which have just been raised in a number of um well in different manners um most great architecture that we admire today um is the result of hideous authoritarian Tendencies um the gothic Cathedrals were built by the uh medieval Catholic Church not known for their liberalism as I call it in fact uh they formed magnificent backdrops for burning people at the stake I think it would be historically true to say um one thinks of uh some of my favorite architecture I love I love Barack architecture and uh Barack architecture is the architecture of The Counter Reformation which is also I think about burning people at the stake a lot of the time certainly not allowing them to think freely um we can walk through the boulevard of Paris uh and enjoy them of course they were driven through by Baron Housman uh OB stens to provide a hygiene for the working classes but also handily to move troops around the city in order that those working classes could be handily suppressed so there is always a relationship between authoritarianism and architecture and unfortunately it actually does produce some rather good architecture well thank you thank you in the audience very much for some absolutely wonderful point points I know there are other people who wanted to speak and I'm sorry there isn't time but it's time to vote now now will you please get out your cards and you can tear them in half if you want to definitely vote for or against or if you still haven't made up your mind just put the whole ticket in the box when it comes around now whilst still doing that um the speakers are going to sum up so if you could do it with the minimum amount of noise I'd be grateful um and also whilst just before I ask the speakers I'm going to ask each of the speakers how old the house is that they live in Leon how old is the house you live in it's difficult to say a few hundred years few hundred years it was redone in 1900 uh to sum up I think no no no don't sum up yet no 1900 1900 Simon when was your H bu 1840 Roger probably 1720 Stephen um 1834 and but i' tear it down but the planners won't allow me to IO very regrettably 1900 but I hope one day 2008 Sean uh 2002 and I did it myself thank you right let the voting go on now we're going to take the speakers in reverse order to sum up for two minutes each Shan you're first okay um I think the main point I I was trying to make and I don't think I would change my view on it on the basis of the debate was that um yeah that this argument rather anachronistic I I Tred to point out that it was going on even before I entered architecture school it's still going on today and why just modern be traditional there are all kinds of different styles and approaches to architecture these days why are we still arguing this essentially about a kind of 1960s type architecture versus a 1800 type architecture I think what's great about architecture today and the potential that it has is that there are all kinds of different approaches and I I for one welcome places like pound Bri which uh Leon designed probably for not the reasons he would like me to welcome it I kind of rather like the fact that it has to deal with the motorc car which makes it really kind of odd in a sort of David Lynch kind of way sort of kind of spooky but I rather like that about it I'm not sure um Leo would would quite quite agree with that but I think Styles change preferences changed I was rather surprised pleasantly to hear that most of the audience in here at the beginning at least were in favor of modern architecture I'm sure that wouldn't have been the case in 1984 had we been having this debate shortly after the Prince of Wales had made his speech but um I think really what's really important are all of the other issues which we've got great modern architecture we've got great traditional archit we've got great barck architecture the stuff that we're building today most of it is crap and it's to do with the Hideous procurement mechanisms it's to do with terrible space standards it's to do with terrible ill-informed planners and these are the issues we should be really addressing and we can have we can have good architecture of any style whatsoever if we can deal with those issues thank you Leon cria two minutes uh well I think you are extremely lucky country to have somebody like the Prince of Wales because there's been no leader around the world who has had that sort of courage to talk about something which was scandalously wrong now to revert to a reasonable intelligence system of producing cities and environments cannot be done just like that because first of all the profession was not ready and science is not ready CU science looked into extreme scales into the micro scale macro scale and didn't look at how our countries were messed up with unbelievable wastage of energies and lives the Suburban dilution of cities and the Metropolitan H hyper concentrations are futureless creatures and they will collapse with the increase in oil of PR of the price of oils and then will come come the the day when things will be can be discussed seriously when we are still bloated and uh behave like spoiled children no thank [Applause] you Al long two minutes um this feels like a very British debate and the reason why this debate would really surprise anyone from Switzerland the country I grew up in in a 1962 modern concrete beautiful house uh is that it wouldn't occur to anyone in many contemporary uh uh European countries to argue for old-fashioned architecture because there's not such a debate modernism is not frightening and the reason why modernism isn't frightening because is because there' have been a succession of very talented modern Architects the problem with the reason why modernism got into trouble in the UK is that it was handled by some very poor Architects working with some very bad local planners and very bad uh construction teams uh and that's why it got into trouble so it's important to remember um if you it's important to remember that if you love modern if you love traditional architecture most traditional architecture being built looks like pound and with all due respect to Leon cre poundbury does not honor the true principles of good architecture it is a Pastiche that means a betrayal of the principles of good architecture uh if you want good uh architecture that remembers the past look at someone like Sir Michael Hopkins who knows yes I have thank you uh if you look at the architecture of someone like Sir Michael Hopkins he is a man deeply infused with tradition who nevertheless does not want to build Pastiche the Prince of Wales has routinely rebuked him uh but but anyone who looks at say uh uh uh the The Queen's building that I mentioned will realize that there is an alternative between this uncomfortable dichotomy on the one hand pasti on the other hand uh brutal modern there is a middle way and that middle way is an intelligent uh uh modernism that it does definitely remember the past that gets away from the cliches of the 1960s that doesn't look like trell Tower which I think is u a good thing uh and and and looks like something that we can all love that those who uh uh admire the past can love and those who admire modern construction and modern themes in architecture can always love so I think we we're we're used to up y that's it thank you very much s drup you Simon I've never understood why why the word pasti always applies to traditional architecture but never to Mis vaner um everything Norman Foster builds is apart from the wonderful girin is pasti M Fandera um you can't do a pasti of a modernist building they all look the same um the the the it is true as as um as I think I forget who said um that authoritarianism has ruled architecture a very long time the point about um authoritarianism is that it's in its Essence dangerous it's somebody telling somebody else what's going to be good for them the uh the architecture that we're discussing that's what might be called good modernism is invariably a big iconic building the modern movement hated streets Street hatred was its characteristic it's why there no streets in the barbon people love streets Jane Jacobs was right streets are the essence of good mannered urbanism uh I have no problem at all with modern architecture fitted into a street the street imposes its own discipline its own tradition its own style on a modern building there's no problem with that at all it's the hatred for the street that the modern movement so often demonstrated expecting people to walk across great Windswept spaces in between their bloody monuments uh that's what was wrong with the modern movement thank [Applause] you Stephen um well I'd agree with Simon Jenkins he was right um um his like the Prince of Wales his I'm afraid Simon's view is really rather um simplistic and dated he's also wrong about people you know do like living in good well-designed new buildings um if they have the chance and anybody's been fortunate enough I don't want to or I will raise the the spirit of the demonized luus again everybody's actually stayed in the UN davito in Mar knows that it's a heroic handsome comfortable and delightful delightful place and it be that as it may I'm against the we keep on wandering off the motion but I oppose the motion for the very simple reason that the prince of wales's rhetoric has been crude and distorted it's skewed the debate the argument and I think everybody's in agreement here the argument shouldn't be between modern traditional and but it should be between you know what's good and what's bad uh it's all about must ultimately be about quality um that said I do find the the the soulless and illiterate historicism proposed by the Prince of Wales and his architectur admirers uh dismaying I much prefer the spirits of inquiry and invention which I think the best contemporary architecture has remember making things new is a defining aspect of civilization said to condemn modern architecture is to condemn the creative Spirit itself I find the motion stultifying uh because creativity is Humane making things new his Humane and um like intelligence it always wants to move forward not backwards thank you and finally Roger yeah the modern movement was introduced with a piece of pretentious rhetoric saying that architecture must Express the spirit of the age we've seen this uh banal idea lent upon by the other side throughout their argument we ought to know how how novel and parochial that idea is architecture throughout human history has not tried to express the spirit of the age is trying to express the Eternal reality of the human Spirit as such and I think this is something that you'll find in the mosques of sinan just as much as you find it in the gothic churches built in Europe and I think that we must get away from that kind of rhetoric and recognize that if people have reacted against modern architecture it's because they have felt that it's an architecture which refuses the human spirit that in some way it is anti-human and now Alan debotton said that architecture must know where it is and he he showed a picture of the only AG Prospect in Nagasaki by way of refuting uh what people like quinland Terry and Leo Crea do and I think that is true architecture must know where it is but that where is precisely what architecture creates and if we just think that there is aware that we are independently of the buildings that we put in it we actually betray the cause of architecture we build in as I said in order to dwell and that means making us somewhere out of nowhere and I think that the modern vernacular Styles have made a nowhere out of somewhere thank [Applause] you do we have a result not yet how long will the result be long as a piece of string well we will talk amongst ourselves I've asked the members of the panel how old the houses are that they live in it's interesting that most of them live in apart from sha who built his own most of them live in old houses and there does seem to be a movement amongst uh my children's generation they're 26 and 23 to start looking at houses in places like Holland and Finland where there is houses that they can afford which are very beautifully built and are completely sustainable and aren't going to use much energy so maybe the new generation are going to say these are the sort of houses we built combining both things beauty and sustainability but I don't know what sort of houses you all live in or what sort of houses you want to live in or whether you like streets like yes do you want to make a comment can you hear no have we still got a microphone just just wait till the microphone gets to this is an article in the it's it was an article in the times about 10 15 years ago and it showed photographs of about eight period houses and they all without exception were lived in by the most famous architects in the land including Richard Rogers whose house I know very well and uh can you hold the microphone near to your MK Richard Rogers lives in a period house and actually got permission to gut it something that most of us who live in Period houses wouldn't be allowed to but Norman Foster doesn't in nor Foster lives actually outside San Mor it's in a period house in the Nature Reserve in National Park thank you I wanted to ask somebody why most great Architects are left-handed but that's another debate altogether I think how many architect can we see how many Architects there are in the audience would you put your hands up please quite a goodly collection you you you can always tell you're an audience of Architects because if you insult if you insult planning you get a round of applause how many planners are in the audience any one person brave enough to put their hand up and they're way back in the architectural historians how many tectural historians in the audience architectural historians 2 3 4 five well I think we've done that I won't ask about coal miners and bank managers but I'm sure they're well represented now the debate result before the debate was for the motion 199 against the motion 365 and don't knows 119 just let me remind you of the motion Prince Charles was right modern architecture is still all glass stumps and carb unles after the debate for the motion 266 against the motion 391 and don't knows 29 so many of you were [Applause] SED so I miss I must congratulate all the speakers who spoke against the motion and swayed you so beautifully and thank you for being a great audience thank you very much [Applause] indeed

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 88,290

Keywords: Architecture, Stephen Bayley, Alain de Botton, Leon Krier, Roger Scruton, Anna Ford, Sean Griffiths, Simon Jenkins, Design, Versus, VS, Hangouts, Global debate series, Google+, Google+ hangout, vs debate, versus debates, google+ debates, google+ debate, google plus debates, Intelligence Squared, intelligence2, intelligencesquared, is debate, iq2, iq2 debate, iqsquared

Id: 5uM1Srw5vwM

Length: 103min 56sec (6236 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 01 2014