REALISATION: DESIGN AND AMENITY
It is all very well to plot out
a complete
scheme of population, industry, communications, play spaces, social
centres,
shops, water supply and drains: to propose to add here, to colonise
there,
to regenerate and to group; all written on paper and shown on two
dimensional
maps. It is indeed the great disadvantage of the art and science of
planning
that its realisation must be so gradual, that it remains on paper so
long,
only coming to life by bits here and there, the single tesserae of the
mosaic, whose complete design is easily lost sight of. It is also an
initial
drawback that it must be presented in this flat way; no one would dream
of judging the work of an architect merely on his drawing. Wren would
come
off poorly in his design for St. Paul’s, compared with the cathedral as
we have it in the solid. Perspective drawings, the architect’s attempt
at forestalling this realisation, models, which get nearer still - even
these can only be used very slightly to illustrate single features or
details
in a wide scheme of planning covering 2,599 square miles.
Nevertheless it must be stated
with the
greatest emphasis that the most logical and sociological scheme
conceivable
on paper will ultimately be judged by its realisation in works of
architecture,
engineering and landscape. There is not only scope, but the necessity
for
the highest skill in every direction in the design of buildings, singly
and in the mass. Roads and bridges, the new motorways, give great new
opportunities;
as has been shown in U.S.A. they can be things of beauty to the user
and
can drop into the landscape unobtrusively and enhancingly.
It is not sufficient for those who
are
to provide houses or other buildings to rely upon some “controlling
authority”
with powers to reject or amend poor quality design, and to consider
that
all is well if these authorities have properly equipped staffs for the
purpose. We must aim at good design in the first instance which does
not
rely upon being licked into shape by an official, however competent and
painstaking, in order that it may pass muster. A community is not made
up of a number of single buildings, unrelated to each other, and which
manage to be at best harmless or devoid of offence. House-builders
especially,
who have failed in the recent past, must set themselves a higher
standard.
It is indeed a gigantic task because, in place of one great single
conception,
we have a mosaic made up of innumerable pieces [half a million houses
alone,
with the addition of larger buildings and smaller details such as
lamp-posts,
railings and kerbs] which cannot be designed by one single office and
yet
must be harmonised and proved to be worthy of the central idea, London,
the capital of the Empire.
The word amenity, to which
constant official
use has given a chilling sound by no means possessed in its original
classical
context, covers those matters in which positive original design is not
so much sought as the maintenance of pleasant surroundings, of which
the
first is a clean air, with nothing worse than the mists which the
Thames
may send us, not thickened into pea-soup.
The exclamation against change,
from people
living in pleasant surroundings, has been in the main justified, for
nearly
every change in the country round London in the recent past has been
for
the worse. Those who are fortunate enough to remember the villages of
the
Middlesex plain (a few still miraculously remain), the lanes of
Hertfordshire,
the heaths and chalk valleys of Surrey, the woods and slopes of
Buckinghamshire,
the orchards of Kent and the deep seclusion of rural Essex within ten
miles
of London, cannot but rage at what has been substituted for them.
This natural and justifiable
reaction
against change must be conquered by proving that, in place of
innumerable
houses of various sizes without grouping or climax, peppered over the
countryside
or strung along the roads, it is possible to create real communities in
which people can be proud to live. To look down from the chalk
escarpment
upon a medieval or renaissance town two or three miles away in the
Weald
would not offend: it would delight the eye, close pent within its
walls,
with perhaps an encirclement of tree planted walks around, its
silhouette
cutting the horizontal line of the South Downs, its colour in harmony
with,
or in consistent contrast with the green country of its setting. Cannot
all the skill of architects and landscapists to-day produce something
equally
beautiful, both seen at a distance and near to?
Fortunately most of the normal
countryside,
as emphasised in the Scott Report, derives its beauty largely from the
occupation and operation of farming based upon nature’s background with
its variety of contour, geology and soil and its dynamic features, the
Thames with its tributaries large and small: we have also inherited
much
of man’s historic addition in the form of villages, farmhouses,
tree-planting
and landscaped parks. The farming, to produce the typical beauty of
rural
England, must, as the Scott Report also points out, be prosperous:
decayed
farmland is not the same as wild nature. Agriculture must be given its
chance, and not invaded by intrusive building.
There are, finally, disfigurements
which
are apt to collect in the neighbourhood of large towns: ill-placed
advertisement
is perhaps the chief offender. It is also easy for litter, which in its
ephemeral form, however objectionable, can be cleared away, to assume
the
quasi-permanent untidiness of dumps, abandoned workings, etc.
It is unfortunate that certain
essential
industrial concerns, based upon a geological occurrence, become
disfigurements,
especially where they clash with recreational use. The three principal
ones, brick-making, lime burning and cement manufacture, and gravel
digging,
are all concerned with building, for which there will be an
unprecedented
demand after the war. Fortunately brick-making on a large scale, of
which
the most pervasive disfigurement is the fume, lies outside this Region.
The others require most careful balanced consideration, including
especially
the regeneration of the site after the workings are exhausted. These,
and
some other industrial concerns, refute the theory that if an operation
is useful and efficient, it must be beautiful.