Demolish and be damned
The National Trust raised over £20 million to save Tyntesfield
near Bristol
Barry Batchelor/ PA/EMPICS
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Too much public money is spent propping up buildings that should be pulled down to make room for great modern architecture, says Janet Street-Porter
If you’re an ageing relative, expect your family to shove you in a care home out of sight when you start to crumble around the edges. But when it comes to buildings that are long past their sell-by date, it’s another matter. As a nation, Britain is obsessed to an unhealthy degree with preserving the past. Via the National Trust, the National Heritage Lottery Fund and countless organisations like the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), millions of pounds are channelled every year into propping up structures that quite simply aren’t worth it.
BBC television screened a second series of Restoration earlier this year and in one episode viewers were asked to vote for three buildings in Wales: a Regency house with a bit of castle attached to it; a Victorian workhouse; and an early 20th century working men’s club, once a cinema. I ask just one question: why bother? Are our lives going to be enriched because a workhouse is turned into a centre for small businesses or Cardigan Castle has been spruced up for local arts groups and choirs to sing in?
Saved for no purpose
I realise that it is considered heresy to hold these opinions. These days we love old buildings as much as we care about pets, and that’s saying something. Restoration hijacks Eurovision song contest tactics and applies them ruthlessly to 21 buildings in a state of considerable disrepair. The first series in 2004 was a surprise television hit: a total of 2.3 million votes were cast, and the winning entry, the Victoria Baths in Manchester, achieved nearly 300,000 votes. Each phone call raises 34p which is placed into a restoration fund – a considerable sum.
This season the structures range from a wool mill in Scotland to a playhouse in Derry, a medieval school outside Birmingham and a Regency Castle in Greenwich. At the end of the process, the National Heritage Lottery Fund donates £2.3 million towards bringing the winning structure back to life. That’s using money the British public have spent on lottery tickets – and it’s a use I thoroughly object to. The Heritage Lottery Fund only gives money to preserve buildings whose new use must benefit the public in some way, hence all the proposed coffee bars, learning centres, educational facilities and music halls that are part and parcel of bringing these redundant properties back into use.
English Heritage decides which buildings in Britain are listed, and therefore worthy of being saved. To be fair, they have moved to include an increasing number of 20th century structures, though not enough in my book. Too much of their money is spent saving the Georgian, the Victorian and the cosily ancient.
Wrong priorities
Take Tyntesfield, a vast and extravagantly decorated listed Victorian gothic mansion outside Bristol, bought by the National Trust for £24 million in 2002. This was the largest sum the charity had ever paid for a single property. British taxpayers contributed £17.4 million of that through the National Heritage Memorial Fund. Now the National Trust has asked the Heritage Lottery Fund (which conveniently has the same trustees) for another £20 million to restore the place. Quite honestly, I wish that the owner of Chelsea Football club or Brad Pitt had purchased Tyntesfield in the first place because to spend nearly £40 million of our money restoring one 43-bedroom house is obscene. Just think of the number of hospitals that could be built, schools that could be upgraded, not to mention nurses and teachers who could be adequately recompensed for the Herculean tasks ahead if they are to deliver New Labour’s promises.
Another critical battle has been played out in the City of London, round the corner from my home, where, once again, the conservationists are fighting the modernisers. Millions have been spent on restoring the fabulous main part of the Smithfield building and bringing it up to EU standards so it can still operate as a wholesale meat market. Then Prince Charles has stepped in to add weight to those who want to stop the empty western end of the building from being demolished. English Heritage has consistently refused to list the three buildings that form an annexe to the main market, in spite of being asked four times over a 15-year period. But, royal pressure prevailed, and the buildings were listed, setting a rare precedent, because the government has overruled advice from English Heritage in less than one case in 100.
These buildings are quite pleasing Victorian structures, but emphatically nothing special. To allow a philistine Prince, who has done nothing but harm to the cause of modern architecture, to influence a simple planning decision should be nothing short of a scandal. HRH is said to want the buildings restored to ‘benefit the local community’. There are plenty more worthy buildings in Clerkenwell for Prince Charles to get exercised about, including a beautiful small chapel which could be a playcentre, classroom, museum or whatever, if he’d like to donate 34p to a renovation fund from the sale of each pot of Duchy Originals Tomato Chutney.
The Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati designed by British architect Zaha Hadid
Roland Halbe/RIBA Library Photographs Collection
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Modern architecture gets a pretty rough ride in Britain without Prince Charles lobbing his tiara into the ring every time there’s a chance to build something contemporary anywhere near anything ancient. This is the man responsible for the fake-Georgian horror of Poundbury, a Disney-like ghetto of twee stone houses near his estate. In contrast, one of Britain’s most highly regarded architects, Zaha Hadid, has yet to build anything in this country, in spite of being awarded to the top architecture prize in the world earlier this year and winning the competition to build a new opera house in Cardiff years ago. Now the knives are out for Will Allsop, whose futuristic Cloud building for Liverpool’s waterfront has raised local hackles and invoked the hatred of fellow architect Graham Morrison, who called it a 'blob’.
Clear space for the new
The Restoration series begs us to cast votes and ‘save’ one building for Britain. In fact the building ‘saved’ this year –- a Victorian swimming pool in Manchester – still lies derelict because the money cannot be raised to fund its refurbishment. I was so annoyed about this state of affairs that I wrote a column in the Independent saying that the public’s money would be better spent setting up a rival television series entitled ‘Demolish’, in which viewers vote to have ruins removed and gorgeous new iconic buildings erected in their place.
It’s a win win situation – the public (who are the Lottery Fund investors) get modern, purpose-built structures that fulfil local requirements, while Britain's best architects get work here, rather than in Shangai, Milan or Tokyo, which is where they are appreciated at present. This way we’re putting together a new Britain which is not a theme park mired in the past.
Well, luckily for me, Channel 4 executives agreed. The series has enabled the public to nominate some of the ugliest buildings in Britain, which they would like to see pulled down. The trouble is, this is only one part of the solution. All too often, poor architecture is the result of feeble planning decisions as well as weak local politicians allowing developers too much freedom.
I still hope that, in the future, no new housing can be built without an architect signing off on the plans. I also pray that Britain will soon start to build more iconic buildings, which truly reflect the talent within our architectural profession. The awarding of the 2012 Olympics should see a renaissance of new design of which Britain can be proud. It is time to look forward, not back.