LSE Pamphlet Collection (via haddock). See especially the section on housing, which illustrates that contemporary concerns about planning, style and policy are actually nothing new. From 'Castles in the Street', from a wartime series called 'Design for Britain', calling for greater attention to quality, space and greenery in new housing for all classes. 'It is preposterous that it should be possible to "tell at a glance" whether a block of flats or a street of houses is working-class or middle-class; the section of society to inhabit the homes should have no bearing whatsoever on their architecture and general planning'. And yet style became inextricably bound to class identity.

A modern way to think about the modernists, an extract from Owen Hatherley's new book, Militant Modernism, laments the lack of socially progressive architecture and the retrospective application of a dull veneer of failure over the aspirations of the modern movement. With the 'icons' of modernism being fetishised and fawned over, Hatherley writes that 'modernism is proclaimed, again, to be too good for the worker (or the "underclass"), and is left for the affluent to play with.'

Mr H has swiftly carved a niche as an informed commentator on social housing, both from the perspective of its role as a totem of heroic/brutal failure (depending on your viewpoint), and the way mass housing projects are now kicked around between politics and aesthetics, with any sense of wider social purpose overlooked in the scramble to preserve and gentrify (or demolish and start again from privately-funded scratch). In Penthouse and Pavement, a recent Guardian piece on Sheffield's Park Hill Estate, now in the agonising process of being Urban Splashed, he notes that the looming block is 'an overwhelming reminder of what the city once wanted to be - the capital of the socialist republic of South Yorkshire, rather than what it wants to be now, a local service-industry centre.'

Most of the time, the debate about the need for more, better, denser housing remains mired in aesthetic squabbles, ably illustrated by lists like 15 housing projects from hell (via kottke), a peculiar mix of social housing megastructures, unbuilt conceptual designs and large scale private housing. Optimism and dystopianism blend into one.

Obligatory flickr sets: Council Estate of Mind; London Council and Social Housing; Council and Social Housing; Council Estate Maps; Social Housing from France and Beyond and the related, but not entirely relevant, Finisterre (and Geoffrey Fletcher's London). The above image, Sheffield 1982: Hyde Park and Park Hill, comes from Simon_K's photostream. There's also an impressive set of Sheffield pictures here, with a dedicated Park Hill section.

Castles in the Street again: 'The war on the slums has still to be waged, and along with it war on the potential slums. War on the jerry-builder, war on the shoddy little bungalows, on the pseudo-Tudor, and the whole creeping sickness of the cheap-and-nasty.'

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Other things. Article title straight from Wes Anderson, 'The Preppy, Eclectic Dorm Room of Drew University Senior Maximilian Sinsteden. 'By the time Sinsteden was 12 years old, he’d redecorated most of the rooms in his parents’ house a few times, and had started in on the guest bedrooms of family friends. He had a precocious understanding of the perfect detail.'

We love the Bombardier B-12 / N-word dilemma bounces on for Dam Busters II, cultural sensitivity and historical accuracy collide, messily / Retail Facility, buy products designed by Industrial Facility (review) / an exhibition of Carlo Mollino's (nsfw) polaroids.

The illustrations of John Hanna, at Asbury and Asbury, via MagCulture. Also liking Dodge or Fall?, 'See if you can tell the difference between a corporate tax avoidance scheme and a Fall song title'.

Labels: architecture

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