That nanny state? July 21, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, Social Policy.trackback
A very telling article recently by Frank McDonald in the Irish Times where he discusses the ‘nanny state’. I’ve got to say that I’ve noticed an increasing tendency amongst some broadly Green inclined people to into a discourse where ‘nanny state’ is a term used in an entirely unironic fashion without any seeming embarrassment, or definition. I find this ironic in that proscription (often correct proscription) is far from unknown in their own approach to matters.
McDonald’s article is a case in point, he spreads his net wide – far too wide. From public liability laws, where there is indeed a case that they may be overly generous in some instances, to wheelchair access.
Take the latter example,
A few years ago, Temple Bar Cultural Trust had the smooth limestone paving on Curved Street roughened up with a concrete grinder, in case anyone might slip and make a personal injury claim. And lately, a crude steel handrail has been added to the flight of steps at Meeting House Square, even though there’s a built-in stone rail on the opposite side.
Yes, of course, there must be “universal access”. But should this mean cutting smooth pathways through the cobblestones of Trinity College (now being considered)?
He appears unable to distinguish between the two instances. Access is one issue, safety in a public space is a different one. I wonder whether a wheelchair user might feel quite as… sanguine… about access in TCD? Possibly so, possibly not, but given that TCD has been quite happy to introduce vast structures quite at odds with the overall aesthetic of the establishment over the last forty odd years it seems odd to worry overmuch about accessibility pathways – that most likely could be introduced at the side of buildings and would make little visual impact.
Or to put it another way, he’s effectively saying ‘yes there should be ‘universal access’ except if it impacts on the cobblestones of TCD’, again an issue which has no connection to a ‘nanny state’ but might have something to do with… er… access.
As for safety, well, he’s on stronger ground there in terms of pointing up the difficulties with public liability laws.
AS A bathing place, Kilkee in Co Clare… this Blue Flag beach, “swimmers have the choice of several sandy coves and natural rock-enclosed pools including the famous Pollock Holes in which the water is changed by every tide. For the more adventurous, diving boards are provided at Newfoundout and dives of up to 45 feet (13m) can be made into the open sea.”
Last month, without any prior notice, the diving boards and ladders at Newfoundout (known to generations of holidaymakers as “Newfy”) were whipped away. Defending this high-handed action, acting Kilkee town manager Nora Kaye said Clare County Council “must take all steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure the safety of people”.
Uh-huh. And why was that?
In reply, [Kaye] said the diving boards had been removed “due to the fact that there was no recent independent assessment carried out in relation to these boards. Their removal, therefore, was not because of any specific . . . public safety issue.”
She also said the local authorities were not aware of any deaths or injuries associated with the diving boards.
“In relation to claims for compensation, the records indicate that no claims have been made against Clare County Council or Kilkee Town Council in respect of accidents arising from the use of diving equipment,” she admitted this week.
So the only real issue, in effect, was an insurance one, to protect the two councils against any claims in the future.
But again, this isn’t the ‘nanny state’ operating from any deep ideological conviction. It is by contrast public institutions and operations running in fear of public liability. That distinction is so clear that his headline simply makes no sense.
Indeed subsequently the safety review conducted by the Irish Water Safety Association found that the diving boards…
In its report to the council, the association said the diving boards had been provided for public use for many decades and were “fit for purpose”. It recommended a handrail be put from the upper board to the lower board.
And that:
It also recommended that “No Diving” and “No Swimming” signs at Newfoundout should be replaced by new signage indicating that there was no lifeguard on duty and advising swimmers to “dive only when water is at a suitable level”.
The report said ladders giving access to the diving boards should be left in place, regularly inspected and maintained.
The only material change recommended was that sharp edges on top of the ladders be replaced by safe ones.
Hardly the nannypocalypse of his fears.
I agree with him that there are contexts where there are risks, contexts that include public spaces. I don’t climb diving boards for the simple reason that I’m the coward of the county and have never wanted to jump off one. I tend to edge my way around cliff paths with great care because they strike me as fundamentally dangerous places if used incorrectly.
But by crushing all these under a category where some notional state pressure is being brought to bear is absurd.
And even so some of his examples seem a bit odd…
More nanny statism was in evidence when George’s Dock was filled with gravel and its water depth reduced to 18 inches, just in case anyone would fall into it from a platform installed to cater for the Spiegeltent. And now, there’s a plan to surround all the water bodies in Docklands with railings, to protect people from, well, themselves.
Yeah, like why would one put railings around water bodies in the Docklands where kids play, where there’s a massive throughput of foot traffic, where his own beloved living city centre is meant to manifest itself. The very thought!
Actually, given that it’s a city scape, and given that – for example – the quays down to the Customs House are penned in with high enough stone walls I’m not sure what his complaint is. It seems sensible enough to me.
Then he mentions, and I’m aware of the sensitivities in this case the deaths at the Skelligs last year:
Accidents do happen. After two American tourists fell to their deaths last year on Skellig Michael, off the Co Kerry coast, there were calls for more safety measures. But a review carried out for the Office of Public Works rightly recommended that no fencing should be erected there; instead, visitors should be warned that climbing the rock is dangerous.
But it’s often not quite as simple as that, as a report in the Irish Times subsequently noting that the families have taken legal proceedings states:
The [OPW] safety review points out that a visit to the rock is akin to a mountaineering activity, and presents high risks, and it recommends against erecting safety barriers.
Which is fine… but…
Since the fatalities, the OPW has erected a safety chain near the ledge.
Warnings in line with the recommendations contained in the review are being issued to visitors to the site.
However, a recommendation to shorten the visiting season to the island is being resisted by local boat operators who fear loss of business.
So clearly there are other issues and pressures as well. And it’s curious that McDonald might not even allude to them.
And I’m also aware that the media is the very first to appear on the scene when something happens. Reading Andrew Rawnsley’s ‘The End of the Party’ it is clear that the shadow which dogged Tony Blair’s steps following the Iraq invasion was the fear that something would happen in the UK, some egregious terror attack on a scale that would have made all other political violence seem minimal. And consequent to that he personally would be blamed.
And this was very much the motor that drove the implementation of surveillance and security measures that have, rightly, appeared draconian.
Again, this wasn’t from a fundamental belief in a ‘nanny state’, indeed I wonder how many truly believe in such a concept?
It was a third party, in this case public opinion and the press.
Now, there is an obvious riposte in the Blair context which is that [overwhelmingly] unprovoked conflicts in the Middle East are unwise and may have ramifications which are uncontrollable.
But from my own experience as a parent I know how parents, again arguably rightly, demand that safety in specific spaces is near watertight. This can go to extremes, but anyone who has had the experience of watching from a distance a toddler climb up the inside of a pram and see it and them tip over onto a paved slab surface will know that safety dependent on context can be paramount.
A lot of this requires sense backed up by proper signage and a recognition that in certain areas people do take their life in their own hands to some degree.
But there are places and times where it is necessary to step in, railings around relatively deep open bodies of water in a city seems one such. And I can’t help thinking that this ‘nanny state’ trope is all very useful in the current economic climate as a rationale for doing little or nothing rather than actively engaging. Such engagement might be railings, or in many many instances simply a sign that indicated that to go further was at ones personal risk, or – and here we might reach the crux of it, to consider amendment to some legislation. But that would take political will and a recognition that some of that legislation is useful and good as much as some of it leaves the state itself at the mercy of specious claims.
Which is a long way away from attempting to shift the blame for others wrongdoing onto the state. Which, ironically or not, is near identical to what some of those public liability cases themselves seek to do.
As an opponent of nanny-statism in the sense of its manifestation in terms of prohibition, I think you make some good points here WBS.
The examples that McDonald use seem to be orientated around obvious health and safety issues with no consequent loss of liberty.
By the way, in relation to your point on Iraq – this may interest you
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10693001
It’s a weird, weird article, alright. Not least because the term “nanny state” is being used by someone who isn’t wearing an awkwardly-fitting shirt in Young Fine Gael.
I don’t know about Ireland, but in the UK, the more likely somebody is to use the term “nanny state”, the more likely they are to have, as a child, had an actual nanny.
If people don’t want to live in a nanny state, they shouldn’t behave like children.
As for Frank MacDonald, some of you may recall his famous book ‘The Destruction of Dublin’. This polemic about the loss of Georgian architecture in post-1960s Dublin has some rather peculiar assumptions if you closely enough at it. FM mentions in passing that developers would often introduce rats into a slum tenement, to drive out the tenants and allow the demolition of their home. Then an office block could be built on the site.
Now, it occurs to me that people being maliciously driven out of their homes is a more important story than the loss of a fanlight-equipped Georgian terraces, however much the latter may have been ‘nice for looking at’. FM, apparently, would not agree.
‘He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird’.
In the above post, for ‘if you closely enough at it’, please read ‘if you look closely enough at it’.
TTFN.
This reminds me of a rant that Stewart Lee, one of Britain’s finest stand-ups, went about people who denounce “political correctness gone mad”, he said that his granny’s generation had a tendency to confuse political correctness with basic health and safety legislation:
Bless ‘im. What a man.
If people don’t want to live in a nanny state, they shouldn’t behave like children.
Feck’s sake, why did I post that again? Am I going quite mad?
no, it’s worth repeating!
MacDonald’s comment are odd, for sure.
His former work on the destruction of Georgian architecture was fascinating, though. His criticisms in that case where directed toward those philistines hungry to erase the past for profit and a hatred of what they supposedly represented. Those were the same thugs that have always run the country, and I think his point was that we should always beware of those who want to wipe out history for an ill-conceived idea of “progress”.
It’s worth also being wary of those who want to wipe out progress for an ill-conceived idea of “history”.
That’s true enough – but his point might have reached a wider audience if he had had the gumption to join the dots between the wiping out of history, and the wiping of boots on ordinary people.
In his Construction of Dublin, there’s a paragraph where he expresses perplexity at the way in which Ballymun residents rejected the idea of high-density living, when the current redevelopment scheme started. That should have been perfectly understandable given the results of the last bright idea to hit that area. In his book he does make a good case for high-density living, but there’s no indication that he attempted to make that case to the residents of the ‘mun he was talking to. Apparently they should have deferred to his patrician superiority. . .
The problems of Ballymun were those of neglect and deprivation not inherently problems of high-rise building or a lack of “proper houses”.
A good point. The point I was trying to make, though, is that MacDonald did not appear to consider (as far as I could see) that Ballymun residents might have their own legitimate perspectives on their area and its problems, and that he could not reasonably expect them to merely defer to his expert status.
And the existence of latter attitudes is surely related to problems of neglect and deprivation, yes?
Absolutely it is, but media coverage and public discourse at large tends to lay the blame for the problems of Ballymun on “tower blocks” or high rise social housing in general. When that’s the general wisdom, it’s hardly surprising that a large number of locals also accept it.
Which doesn’t change the fact that it’s wrong. Ballymun’s problems are precisely those of pretty much every other neglected, deprived, abandoned area of public housing in Ireland. None of which are similarly high-rise.
Saying that those who object to high rise building, or modernist social housing, are wrong is not however the same as saying that people who don’t want it should be forced to live in it. You are quite right that you have to win that argument, and actually convince people, rather than simply bemoan the alleged backwardness of the locals. I do think it’s important though to note that by and large the anathemisation of high rise council housing was a process begun outside of Ballymun by snobs rather than a process begun inside Ballymun by locals.
well said, Mark P.
It’s a common feature of those who remark, ‘look at those poor deprived unwashed fellows, what they really need is some modernist high-rise architecture’ to return some years later to say, ‘those high-rise chaps really need to go and live in some proper houses, you know’
Well, yes, architects have not traditionally cared much for how their work affects people who have to live with it, although we are supposed to have “town planners” now who do. A few philosophers have discussed the effect of architecture on human beings, something which is taken increasingly seriously. Monolithic architecture, such as high-rises, is seen as dehumanising (Albert Speer anyone?), as Soviet architecture demostrates. The loss of the individual among such monoliths can lead to disconnectedness and alienation, it is argued. (It’s interesting to note too that Hitler could not paint people – only buildings.)
Complete fucking gibberish.
There is little more architecturally “dehumanising” than endless Prince Charles approved toy exurbs, pastiches of villages that never existed.
Sorry, just to be clear Tim, I was decribing the views you are describing as “complete fucking gibberish” rather than your own views (of which I am unaware).
Thanks for clarifying!
But it is compelling though, isn’t it? Even though it’s based on the dubious notion that people are mindless nonentities who only reflect the environment that surrounds them – I think a better point to make is that often those who design and create such architecture DO think of people as mindless drones, who need soothing architecture to numb them into totalitarian bliss.
Ironically, neo-classical may have been introduced for similar reasons, and we generally find that beautiful today. Buildings can be created to induce conformity – Hitler and Mussolini went neoclassical, Stalin and co. went “Realist” – but it doesn’t seem to induce conformity as intended.
Perhaps because, as you say, the argument is fucking gibberish.
Well, I don’t think that the idea that architecture is important and has social consequences is fucking gibberish. I do think however think that drawing an equals sign between high rise housing and stultifying, dehumanising, conformity is fucking gibberish.
It’s interesting by the way that you include neo-classical architecture. That stuff really does give me hives.
You don’t think architecture has any effect at all on people, then?
That’s not what I said.
I do not think that high rise building is inherently dehumanising, nor do I think that there is something inherently more humane about restricting additions to the built environment to little pastiches of the stuff our ancestors threw up.
(To be fair to our ancestors, when they built something like Christchurch, they knocked down the centuries old existing church without a second’s hesitation and then built a replacement in the most up to the minute style, using the most advanced building techniques available to them. I similarly doubt if they would have insisted on building wattle and daub housing in the name of tradition and claimed that less traditional styles were dehumanising if they’d had the opportunity to build something else).
I quite like some of the stark stalinist architecture in Moscow.
I think there’s a series of about seven buildings – one of which is some big time hotel now – which virtually scream “Totalitarian” but which are pretty impressive.
I appreciate I have added nothing to the debate here.
Those would be the “Seven Sisters”.
I’m not particularly fond of most Soviet architecture from the late 1930s onwards. During the 1920s and on, to some extent, into the 1930s some of the most interesting architectural experiments in modern history were designed (and sometimes even built). The destruction of that movement was of a piece with the general destruction of artistict and cultural avant-gardes during the (culturally conservative) Stalinist period.
@Ramzi
Stalinist architecture is far more interesting than most people give credit for. I do quite like some of his renaissance stuff.
When I last stayed in Dublin, I was surprised to learn that my nearest Social Welfare office was in Ballymun. I had last been there in 1995. I was apprehensive – but from real events not an irrational fear of “scary areas”.
I was amazed how it’s changed. I even got to watch one of the blocks get demolished. Of course, shiny new buildings don’t equate to change in and of themselves, and the lengths of the dole queue was an indicator that little had changed in at least one respect. In fact, the staff there were among the most polite, well-informed and helpful I’ve ever encountered at a government department.
What’s the point again? I dunno. Maybe it’s that now Ballymun looks all shiny on the outside. Which means that outsiders get to walk through it and it looks nice. Which is of absolutely no importance whatsoever to the people that live there.
On this subject the following two blog posts from Dublin Dilettante, sometimes of this manor, may be of interest:
http://circumlimina.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/ballymun-in-june-2010/
http://circumlimina.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/patholigising-poverty/
On the more general subject of modernist architecture, Owen Hatherley’s blog is well worth reading:
http://nastybrutalistandshort.blogspot.com/
Hatherley’s short polemical book “Militant Modernism” was mentioned here before, by EamonCork I think.
thanks for those links, Mark.
Mark P
I suppose another way of putting it would be to ask – can you think of where high-rises have been built and operated effectively?
(genuine question by the way).
Yes, if you are talking about high rise Council housing. So successfully that in quite a few cases they have been colonised by the more affluent. Trellick Tower is the most famous example. There are other, less famous, examples in London, Sheffield etc.
If you aren’t talking about high rise housing in general, then the list of successful examples would be nearly endless.
The key issues with social housing are money and attention. If you build cheap shit, it doesn’t matter what style you build it in. If you don’t maintain it, it doesn’t matter what style you build it in. If the area becomes a “dumping ground” for a disproportionate number of “problem tenants”, it doesn’t matter what style you build it in.
Sorry, that should be “If you are talking about high rise…”
Cape Town, particularly Seapoint and Green Point. They mostly have concierges and swimming pools/gyms and their residents are from all demographics.
High-rises are much more common on the Continent: it’s very normal in Spain, for instance, for people to live in flats, sometimes quite high flats, and sometimes quite well-off people. But they tend to be looked after, they tend to have concierges, they tend to have working lifts and so on.
I don’t like them much, but that’s because they’re unsuitable for cats.
I’m less convinced. A number of reasons present themselves, high rise developments tend to lose a sense of community, or rather never to develop one (it’s not absolutely inevitable but the larger a complex the greater the tendency towards that), they are filled with spaces which are blank or blind such as lifts, corridors etc, which at the least are alienating. They are divorced in practical terms from green space and again as a parent who lives close to a park and with a tiny scrap of a yard that’s a big issue.
I’m a 100% for social housing, I live in a house which was purchased through shared ownership so I would say that wouldn’t I, but I actually think the form does matter. If I had a preference it would be for higher density small housing.
What’s interesting is if one looks at more recent attempts at social housing which actually ask people themselves what they want to live in. This crowd here did something interesting some years back. One of the key requirements was the ability to see who was coming up to the house.
http://www.fashionarchitecturetaste.com/2006/11/islington_square_1.html
In relation to your original point Mark P, you might like reading this, http://gumagazine.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/the-high-rise-and-fall-of-modernism-claire-strickett/ which notes that a lot of the orginal precepts of modernism were lost in the translation to actuality, such as siting amenities within blocks. But even so…
Economist Tim Harfard also makes the case that proximity to street level can reduce crime on the street itself, citing a study on the subject; taller buildings can give the impression that no-one is watching.
Or worse, that everyone’s watching… Harlan Ellison had a story about that…
In my experience Ballymun is not noticeably lacking a sense of community, as compared to, say, much of Jobstown. This tends to imply that at the very least, the high rise architecture is not the primary determinant in social alienation. For that matter, and for overlapping but distinct reasons, there are few places as notoriously lacking in a sense of community as many large suburbs of relatively affluent detached homes.
That “attempt at social housing” you link to is marred by a quite bizarre and utterly pointless facade.
“the high rise architecture is not the primary determinant in social alienation.”
Very true. Although they seem to go hand in hand in some ways. If alienation is caused by a loss of social ownership, then the highrise can exemplify that loss. I say can, not does.
It’s interesting to note the strong sense of community that exists in South African townships, where people build their own homes close to people they know. The likes of the RDP (and Mellon, but that’s another story) come along and re-settle people according to lists, which moves people away from people they know and are related to.
Do people on Irish housing lists have any say in where they live?
Thanks for reminding me of the Seven Sisters name Mark P.
The Byker Wall in Newcastle is a good example of social housing by the way – very attractive to look at as well as live in (according to friends who live there).
(but its not high rise, I should have added)
Funnily enough when I lived in Newcastle I never liked it, but I appear to be in a minority of one on this
The key issues with social housing are money and attention. If you build cheap shit, it doesn’t matter what style you build it in.
Even if you build the best quality buildings in the world, if the occupants dont have any respect for their area, it will go to shit.
And having an ownership stake in their home seems key to that respect forming.
The wikipedia entry for the aforementioned Trellick Tower dates its transformation from the advent of the right-to-buy policy. Before that apparently it had, and I quote, a very poor reputation for crime (rapes in elevators and staircases, children attacked by drug addicts) and anti-social behaviour.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trellick_Tower
I think shared/co-ownership schemes tend to be optimal, so perhaps a personal interest is a useful ingredient. But I don’t think it’s absolutely an inevitability that non-ownership leads to negative outcomes. In the cases where it does that’s where I tend to think that the form and/or resources put in have a major part to play.
From the first great commonly held stupid opinion about Council housing (Modern architecture is bad! Only build “proper houses”) straight into a comment mixing together the second and third great commonly held stupid opinions about Council housing.
These are that (a) the people living there are somehow degenerates with “no respect for the area” and (b) that the problem is Council housing, encouraging as it supposedly does apathetic delinquency. Selling it off is the answer! Let them eat mortgages.
The point about Trellick Tower is that it was seen as architecturally “desirable” by those who had a choice about moving there. It did indeed have problems before wealthier people moved in, but once more, those problems were problems of neglect, povery, inadequate maintenance and inadequate services. What “improved” that particular tower block was an influx of money, not the superior moral character associated with property ownership.
I sometimes wonder how many of the people who spout any of these three idiocies have any experience of social housing in cities and countries where it is adequately serviced and maintained – ie where resources are spent on it.
While taking your response to Bartley generally – it is indeed absurd to try to assign motivations etc, isn’t there a danger that there’s a confusion between modern architecture and a very specific form of modern architecture? As the FAT example above shows you can have modernist architecture and social housing that is low level, small scale, high density, etc.
I never called anyone a degenerate.
Neither did I question anyones moral character.
Though you seem to believe that an area is automatically improved as more wealthy people move in?
My point was that people (poor, wealthy or middling) have more respect for anything they feel they\’ve bought and paid for. Even if its heavily discounted – one half to two thirds of nominal value would have been typical discounts for affordable housing schemes at the height of the boom. The simple act of a making a personal investment in something gives people a stake that they mightnt previously feel. Having made a sacrifice in the form of several years hard saving gives residents a stronger motivation to ensure that the area is well kept. Thats just human nature for you.
Oh God, we’re at “human nature” already. Do you get this shit from a random right wing cliche generating program?
No, I don’t believe that “wealthy people moving in” automatically improves an area. I believe that the expenditure of wealth on an area improves it, which really should be a statement of the fucking obvious. In a place like Trellick Tower, that money came not from the magical socially-improving influence of private property but from the physical arrival of people with relatively speaking a lot of money. It can just as easily, and more effectively, be achieved through the expenditure of state funds.
The rest of your post is a statement of political faith rather than a reasoned argument. Believe it or not, living in a place gives you plenty of incentive to care about it, and living in it in a permanent or semi-permanent basis gives you even more. What it doesn’t do is give you the money or political or social weight to do much about maintaining it.
Believe it or not, there are many countries where home ownership is not “the norm”. Their buildings do not rot with neglect any more than Irish buildings do. And of course the social housing in many other European countries is much better maintained than ours, again not because of the magic powers of property ownership, but because resources are spent on it.
I don’t think that the FAT stuff qualifies as modernist, that redbrick facade couldn’t be more post-modern if it started writing a discourse analysis right in front of you.
Buy yes, you can have low level, small scale, modern (or modernist) building. And I’m not against it. I don’t see why it’s inherently preferable to larger scale building however. The whole point of most of the larger scale modernist housing developments was to promote a sense of community, and while that goal can often be mangled along the way, distorted or abandoned, it is by no means impossible to achieve.
Sure, the facade is post-modern, but that’s essentially cosmetic styling, but the interior is clearly modernist.
re larger scale building again, I direct you to the idea that for family life large scale buildings are not great – not all and not always – but in large part. The very nature of those spaces is one that is closed and enclosed. I’ve lived myself in apartments, briefly in squats, in semi-detached and terraced housing. I spent a period in a rather infamous flat complex in Manchester. With no shadow of a doubt the least habitable were the flat complexes and apartments (the latter if purchase were often anonymous and nondescript).
There are other issues too, individuality in a positive way, community, all seem to develop more easily in smaller impact contexts.
Or let me put it a different way again. I’ve been an activist and canvassed across much of the northside of this city. I live north of the Liffey on the fringe of the inner city. In general terms flat complexes don’t seem to function terribly well whereas council or purchase housing seems to function better. I stress that that is general but I think that’s it’s real enough as a dynamic. I also have found that in general terms people tend to dislike complexes and prefer houses whether terraced or otherwise. I tally that with my own experience and it makes me wonder at the viability of larger developments.
The other issue is why? What particular advantages do such developments confer?
One of the problems with having this discussion in a parochial Dublin context is that it takes our particular experience of badly built, rapidly screwed-over and neglected, Council flats and assumes that this is inherent to the form. It is not.
Ireland has a particular cultural obsession with house ownership (although not as Conor McCabe as pointed out always the same ownership rates as the discourse suggests). It has a culture which treats both public housing and apartments as aberrant and in some important ways undesirable, still more the combination of the two together.
Remember that across most (not all) cities in Western Europe, apartments are the norm, and to put it mildly these cities are not uniformly less functional and less liveable than Dublin. Either in their private housing or in their social housing. We shouldn’t take the shit we’ve been fed as the limits of the possible!
Although it’s worth noting in a parochial Dublin context that the very grimmest estates I’ve ever been on, the very worst, have been ones with “proper houses” instead of flats. You also seem to me to be conflating the issue of scale with the issue of flat/apartment dwelling more generally – with the exception of Ballymun, Council flat buildings in Ireland are pretty low rise.
On three peripheral points:
1) You can’t say that something isn’t post-modern “apart from the facade”! That’s the overwhelmingly visually dominant thing about those buildings, this huge, ridiculous, knowing, redbrick, wink. And the flowerboxes and balconies!
2) Large scale building allows for the integration of communal space, of facilities, of services. It’s potentially more cost effective, leaving more money to be spent on quality and on maintenance, assuming the same overall spend. It allows for high concentrations of people, which in turn allows for a lower overall environmental impact. These are all potentialities, of course, and it’s very easy to build large complexes which neglect these things or screw them up.
3) I’m not sure what you mean by “individuality” in the above context.
I think it is possible to say that on a cosmetic level something is post-modern whereas on a functional level it’s clearly positioned within modernism.
I think it’s possible to detach one from the other, particularly these which If you can google the actual plan layout of the houses, you’ll see they’re mostly L-shaped, essentially Le Corbusier’s machines for living in. There’s no tricksiness typical of more avowedly post-modernist architecture in that regard.
If you want more genuine post-modernism check out FATS interior for a nightclub.
Again, I don’t think it’s that parochial. I’m very very aware of the situation in continental Europe and the UK. I simply don’t see any particular reason why we need to emulate it. The dynamic in the city has been to break up the Corpo flats and rehouse people in smaller less centralised accommodations. I think that is by and large a good thing and it’s very very evident to me that many if indeed most former tenants agree.
I think the house ownership obsession is irrelevant because that particular debate is more about the nature of ownership, ie the fixation on ‘private’ than the form of housing.
To be honest rehousing people in vast flat complexes, whether low or highrise, seems to me to be a positively retrograde step. This is not to say that apartments won’t provide part of a mix of housing, but to see it as a tailor made solution, nah… don’t think so. And realistically, what’s the plan, to do away with terraced houses, etc, etc, simply to centralise? I think it would be simply impossible to sell that idea to people – particularly given the failure of both public and private apartments in the main.
Re individuality, I like going up to doors and seeing what people have done with them both internally and externally. It seems to me that that is easier done with terraced and/or other housing forms than in apartments, for obvious reasons.
I fully agree that large scale developments are a hard sell at the moment. I just don’t see that it makes them a bad idea – quite a lot of my views (and yours) are a hard sell in the current period!
Even at the moment, at a low-ebb for the large scale housing project, there are plenty of them being built – it’s just that they tend to be built for and aimed at the wealthy rather than the working class. (See for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Torso ). It’s a strange dichotomy – not good enough for ordinary punters, desirable for the aesthetically inclined sections of the rich.
I live on a terraced street and the closest thing there is to a “sign of individuality” in the exteriors is a very occasional flowerbox or hanging basket.
I fully agree that there are modernist elements to the buildings you pointed to, but that mixture, the knowing plundering of different periods and styles, is the very essence of post-modernist architecture. That’s the point of it. If it was just a pastiche of 1920s terracing it wouldn’t be post-modern. It’s the combination.
By the way, a big part (although not the only part) of “and the tenants agree” is that a newly built home of any kind will quite reasonably be attractive to anyone who has been consigned to a building lacking anything approaching adequate Council maintenance for decades. Particularly after the Council have slowly decanted people out of it, leaving you living surrounded by the metal doors of dereliction for years on end.
I’d suggest that if you were go around some of the Council estates in Jobstown offering people the opportunity to get a similarly sized home in a new development many people would bite your hand off too. Which isn’t a damning indictment of semi-Ds, so much as it’s an indictment of Council neglect.
I agree that it’s not the only factor at work, though. At the moment, most people do prefer “proper houses”, for a number of reasons including the greater cachet society as a whole awards them.
Sure, that’s FATS thing, they’re post-modernist at least in the sense that they’re eclectic and playful, but in essence strip away the cosmetic stuff and these buildings are entirely modernist and functional – right down to asking the people who live in them what they want. And I think that that is distinctly different to high examples of post-modernist architecture – take for example the newish extension to the National Gallery as a case from close to home, where the interior space, it’s fabric and layout is structured in a way that transcends the functional. The FATS social housing is very different. There the post-modernism is a patina. I don’t take that aspect of the buildings seriously at all (or rather it’s grand as far as it goes – much much more important is the internal structure and the rationale for it).
I also think the issue of middle class usage of apartments here or elsewhere may perhaps be misleading. My own experience of Paris is of people who have apartments in the city and small houses in the country. That’s obviously a limited factor, but it’s not insignificant. I love Paris as much as the next man, and I love Barcelona a whole lot more, but again these are cities with much more equable climates, much greater provision of public spaces and so on. These aren’t minor issues. It’s not something we can reset the clock on, and again, I don’t think we should really. The efficiency argument is precisely the one used by the cities in the US and elsewhere when they put in dismal public housing in the 1960s.
In any event do you genuinely think that given the choice between a small house and an apartment complex, however well maintained – and the history of such maintenance by the state is lamentable – that most people wouldn’t go for the former? And it’s not just the ‘newness’ of it.
Jobstown, and other estates – I think of Darndale in the 1980s in particular from my own experience, can be dismal in parts and that too is due to maintenance and other issues – but Darndale also offers the example of how with a developing community spirit it has been possible to tamp down criminality and to see considerable improvement in terms of the social fabric.
And I don’t think it’s just a greater cachet. A house is a more pleasant space to live in for most (I want to stress that some love apartments and fair dues – hence the need for a mix). Again, and I don’t want to brow beat this issue, family life (whether with kids or without) in houses is easier. Access to a small owned space front or back is something that simply can’t be replicated. That’s nothing to do with social cachet. It’s simple practicality. Not having to depend on unreliable lifts, not having to negotiate multiple stairwells with shopping, with children, with buggies, when lifts break down. Not having to depend on others to keep public areas clean. Not being elderly in that context. And so on.
Like yourself I live in a terrace, and I won’t pretend that doesn’t bring its own problems but in the main they’re the same problems or lesser.
Move into apartments public or private and you’re dependent on a raft of things that have to per se be maintained. That adds levels of complexity, and potential elements that will inevitably go wrong.
No wonder people if they can go for houses, whether in Jobstown, East Wall or wherever.
I think that we’ve reached something of an impasse on the apartment issue. On the one hand you make a case for the inherent superiority of houses and then accept that others prefer apartments. In my view each has their benefits, but in cities, for reasons of the environment and space, there should be more of a preponderence of apartments than there is currently in Ireland. I’m not advocating the abolition of the house quite yet however.
As far as the postmodernism thing goes, this is exactly the form at least one strand of postmodernism tends to take when it comes to housing development. It mixes bits from modernism, bits from pre-modernist styles and then mixes them together with a slightly smug wink.
That facade isn’t just a minor piece of decoration (and anyway once you “strip away all the cosmetic stuff” most buildings begin to look more “modernist” and functional). The facade, so wildly larger than it needs to be, so fussy and yet so fucking knowing, isn’t something you can just ignore when you see those buildings. It dominates them, and to be honest I think its one of the ugliest, most irritating bits of architecture I’ve seen in a while.
Well, we have slightly different views, but given we both accept it’ll be a mix, it’s a matter emphasis. It’s not so much that I think apartments are less good, but that in practice there are problems with implementation, particularly but not exclusively here. Part of that is the resource/maintenance issue. I completely agree that high quality apartment space can be good and appropriate albeit it would require quite some reconfiguration of buildings to green space in this city to make that work for people in the way that is proposed. And it’ll always be part of the mix. But… my preference would still tilt towards higher density, smaller complexes of social housing rather than large and social policy appears to mirror that tilt. There’s also the point, and I’ve often thought this when I read Frank McDonald et al, that there’s something of a cultural ‘far hills are greener’ approach in operation about how we should emulate styles of living borrowed from elsewhere. Where it works well, fine, but where it doesn’t, not so good.
Given that the tenants liked the FAT designs overwhelmingly, and they were consulted at each stage, while I agree I too dislike the overall look of it, I think that has to have some value. But eclecticism in architectural styles is as nothing compared to the way in which people decorate and fill interiors of houses in an individual fashion… you’ll perhaps have read the various books on vernacular 1960s and 1970s interior decoration across working and middle classes… so perhaps the FAT people were locking into that.
Again, I think if I do disagree with you it’s re the facade being more than minor. Of course most buildings have common structural elements, and with modernism and as importantly universal modern construction techniques that’s become a truism, but as with the example I offered re the Nat Gall extension, truly post-modernist architecture generates more pervasive structures which these simply aren’t.
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