Forgotten Estates: at last, the video
November 15th, 2016
Like many other London events I don’t get to, I had a ticket for this, it looked interesting, and now the Royal Academy have posted the video. So if, like me, you couldn’t get there the recording is here to watch:-
From left to right
Kate Macintosh – Architect, formerly of the London Boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth, and East Sussex and Hampshire County Councils; designer of Dawson’s Heights, East Dulwich (1964–72)
Dawson’s Heights – my walk with C20th Society
Mark Crinson – Professor of Architectural History, Birkbeck, University of London
who spent twenty minutes being rude about the Smithsons. He made no attempt to hide the fact that he doesn’t like RHG or the people who designed it. Watch the debate and decide for yourself.
The Smithsons on housing – watch the film and see what you think
Owen Hopkins – Architecture Programme Curator, Royal Academy (chair)
Jessie Brennan – Artist; author of Regeneration! Conversations, Drawings, Archives & Photographs from Robin Hood Gardens (2015)
Dr Paul Watt – Reader in Urban Studies, Birkbeck, University of London
An excellent history of council estates from right to buy to the present day
Save Cressingham Gardens Judicial Review
November 14th, 2016
Judicial review report here:-
Glasgow – shipbuilding and architecture on film
November 12th, 2016
Films
All Our Working Lives – The Shipbuilders.mp4 (download and play)
Original 1984 documentary of one hour then a half hour update programme
British Connection Clydebank – Kelso.mp4
BBC Alba – subtitles in English – Clydebank forms the first half hour
Dreaming the impossible: Unbuilt Britain – A revolution in the City
BBC Four 58m59s
The Secret History of our Streets – Duke_Street.mp4
BBC Four – subtitles – 59m22s
Jonathan Meades – films
November 12th, 2016
Abroad Again – part 4 of 5 – Heaven – Folkwoven In England.avi – Letchworth
Bunkers Brutalism and Bloodymindedness Concrete Poetry_pt1.mp4
Bunkers Brutalism and Bloodymindedness Concrete Poetry_pt1.srt (subtitle file)
Bunkers Brutalism and Bloodymindedness Concrete Poetry_pt2.mp4
Bunkers Brutalism and Bloodymindedness Concrete Poetry_pt2.srt (subtitle file)
City of Towers and other documentaries
November 9th, 2016
“Back in 1979, I made a BBC documentary called City of Towers, charting how the futuristic dreams crystallised in the Twenties by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier had led to the high-rise nightmare that blighted Britain’s cities in the Sixties. The film won some acclaim – not least, surprisingly, from some of the modern architects whose work it had featured, from Maxwell Fry to Richard Seifert, creator of the Centre Point tower.”
“But when, some years later, there were calls for the programme to be repeated, Mr Yentob startled a BBC meeting by expostulating that the film would only ever be shown again “over my dead body”.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11833042/A-fitting-end-for-Alan-Yentob.html
Now this in the Guardian
Alan Yentob: the last impresario
City of Towers – Christopher Booker / Christopher Martin
Click here to play or download
In reply to The Five Estates, Peckham, Part III: Back to the Future
November 4th, 2016
Firstly I was struck by a hypothetical question:-
“Would the regeneration have been necessary had the Thatcher cuts in maintenance been avoided and the inflation proofed money still been available?”
I suspect yes, owing to the change in residential makeup of the estates owing to the effects of right to buy (in subsequent decades companies and individuals bought onto council estates and let the flats to unemployed people on the then DSS thus further weakening the estate demographic) and the 1977 Housing Act – priority needs based lettings.
In my personal opinion the estates and council housing in general were damaged by those two pieces of legislation, the second of which was enacted under a Labour Government albeit with unintended consequences.
Aberfan remembered III
October 29th, 2016
https://www.alangeorge.co.uk/AberfanDisaster_Page2.htm
On the evening of October 21st 2016 I drove from Merthyr to Cardiff to hear the Aberfan Memorial Lectures by five members of the London Geological Society. My recordings of the talks are linked below, split into the relevant parts:-
Introduction by Paul Maliphant - Development and Projects Director, Mott MacDonald Ltd
Aberfan remembered II
October 24th, 2016
The morning of Friday 21st October 2016 arrived cold, crisp, clear and sunny. I drove from Merthyr Tydfil via the nearby village of Troed-y-rhiw to a busy Aberfan already filling with cars and parked on a steep street before walking quickly up to the cemetery for the 0915 memorial service. I was handed the leaflet below on approaching the memorial area. (see footnote)
Despite the chill in the air, as the morning wore on the sun’s warmth won through and before long it was a lovely morning up on the hillside on this sad occasion.
Aberfan remembered
October 21st, 2016
“Blame for the disaster rests upon the National Coal Board” – Inquiry
“Chairman . . .
Could anybody before Tip 7 started — not necessarily a surveyor or an engineer or anything of that kind — could I walking up that mountainside before Tip 7 began fail firstly to see that there was a stream on the land which later became covered by Tip 7? If I used my eyes at all, could I possibly fail to see it?
A. – You could not fail to see it, my lord, no.
Q. – What about the spring you have been referring to? Could a lawyer, with no knowledge of these expert matters at all, taking a country walk up that mountainside, fail to see the place of the spring you have spoken of, or (if the weather was dry) that there was a place where in wetter weather a spring probably ran — could you fail to see that?
A. – He could not fail to see it, my lord, no.
Q. – Those are the stream and the spring, we understand, you tell us later on were covered by Tip 7?
A. – Yes, my lord.”
Paragraph 98 – Evidence of the slinger, Mr. D. B. Jones
