A London street in Lincolnshire

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Tucked away in an area of woodland in Kew Gardens there is a timber-framed brick cottage with a thatched roof. It was originally single storey but later had an upper floor added. It was built between 1754 and 1771 for Queen Charlotte, a cottage orné to serve as a destination for her rural walks, a place to rest and take tea; to experience what she imagined to be the bucolic lifestyle of a yeoman farmer without getting her hands dirty. The desire to build in old styles was a notable feature of the Georgian period. Alongside the styles that they invented they also built using features of Greek and Roman architecture, invented a style of Gothic architecture sufficiently different, yet like the original that it came to be called "Gothick".

The Victorians continued this trend emulating the Italianate villas of the Mediterranean in their suburban detached and semi-detached housing, and at the most extreme borrowing details from Egyptian, Saracenic and Indian architecture. They too plundered Gothic with abandon. However, like the Georgians they built much that owed little or nothing to past styles. And, unlike the Georgians they built it virtually anywhere, too often heedless of vernacular and local traditions. The twentieth century followed suit with, for example, watered down European "Moderne" influencing suburban houses of the 1930s, Georgian columns and bulls-eye windows favoured in the 1970s and Victorian tile-hanging, plinths, roof cresting and fake half-timbering being popular in the 1990s. The same style of house appeared on estates and streets the length and breadth of the country.

I was reflecting on this the other day when I was looking at Barkham Street in Wainfleet All Saints, Lincolnshire. The centre of this small country town is filled with modest brick buildings of the Georgian and Victorian periods, usually two storey, often with the door opening on to the pavement. Consequently to turn a corner and see a London street plonked down amongst the unassuming Lincolnshire housing is something of a surprise. And it is a London Street too. A plaque on the buildings notes: "Barkham Street. Built in 1847 for Bethlem Hospital according to the design of Sydney Smirke, their architect, and named after their benefactor. A number of similar terraces stood in Southwark near Bethlem hospital." Smirke is best known as the architect of the circular Reading Room of the British Museum. Both sides of his street have the same rather grand elevations with the main living storey slightly elevated by a basement and emphasised by steps to the front door and stone framed windows. The relative importance of the two floors above is signified by differing window treatments. The houses make a fine sight, though a very unusual one for this locality.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14.1mm (38mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/50 sec
ISO:125
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Age, the past and the future

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An unfortunate characteristic of many older people is looking at the past through rose-tinted spectacles. Psychologists have tried to explain this phenomenon. Some say it is because people experience emotions from the past more strongly than those from the present. Others argue that when judging the present people do it in relation to past experience, and that judgements made in the past (about the quality of films or the wholesomeness of food, for example) are inevitably made on the basis of  more limited experience (you were younger). Therefore, the argument goes, that which is judged is likely to have seemed better (and still seem so) compared with the present-day equivalent which is judged against much more experience of films or food. Then there are those who say that current judgements are made in the context of stresses, annoyances and difficulties that are air-brushed out of our memory of the past, so today inevitably compares badly with thirty or forty years ago. When I sense the approach of, "the past was always better, today is rubbish", frame of mind, I make a conscious effort to crush it because it's simply not so. Some things were better in the past, but many were worse.

From that you'll gather I'm someone who relishes the present and looks forward to the future. And I suppose that's why I don't like to see retro styles in architecture. Take today's photograph of a Thames-side building that I've become very familiar with in recent years. The landward side looks like it could have been the work of Walter Gropius, Eric Mendelsohn, Serge Chermayeff or any other architect influenced by the Bauhaus and the International Style of the 1920s and 1930s. The handling of the white walls, the black painted, wrap-around windows, the pilotis, the narrow stairwell windows, the glazed balconies, the lettering, the recessed entry and the use of glass bricks all illustrate the architect's knowledge and understanding of that which is emulated. However, the structure rests not on reinforced concrete but a steel frame and this building doesn't date from 1930 but from 1990. It is by the architectural firm of Troughton McAslan and Tim Brennan. Learned and interesting though the building is (and in a style that I like), I nonetheless have to ask why this retro look was chosen for a building in 1990? Why wasn't it built in a style of the time, or why didn't it use the vocabulary of the International Style in a new and original way, much as some Victorian and Edwardian architects used the vocabulary of Gothic and the Renaissance.

Looking back and copying a style seems to me to be a sterile exercise. It is commonplace in the speculative housing that disfigures our land, receives "official" blessing from Prince Charles through his Poundbury fantasy and his meddling in planning matters, and remains an attraction for architects such as Quinlan Terry.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Look forwards, not backwards

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A few months ago I happened upon a photograph of the winner in Boston Borough Council's "Building Excellence Awards 2012". It was a new farmhouse in Kirton, and when I looked at it my heart sank. The accompanying text described it as being in the "traditional country house style". Quite what the writer meant by that I have no idea because the features of the English country house as we know it were nowhere evident. In fact, the exterior was, as are far too many English houses, an amalgam of vernacular details. The best you could say of this example was that they were derived with a reasonable degree of consistency from the eighteenth century where, often, they are plucked eclectically from any or all of the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries. Though the photograph was small I could see gable chimney stacks, shouldered gable wall parapets, dormers, a plait band and brick hoodmoulds. The main elevation was symmetrical except for one of the two main ground floor windows being in the form of a bay with a splayed lead roof. The walls were brick and the roof appeared to be an artfully mottled collection of plain tiles. I'm sure that this is a perfectly satisfactory house to live in, and will serve its owners well. What disappointed me so was that it had been chosen as the very best example of local building to be found in the area during the designated 2011-2012 period. If that's the best, I thought, the others can't be much. Why, I thought, does anyone today want to clothe a building in the appearance of a modest eighteenth century house? Admittedly, the eighteenth century did more with less than most centuries and produced simple, pleasing brick houses that look better than many later examples. But where, I wondered, were the innovative, modern houses, the buildings that sought to push forward the boundaries of what can be achieved within a budget? Buildings that were built in response to today's families' needs rather than the sort of thing that might feature as a background in a kitsch watercolour featuring men in Tattersall check shirts and moleskins and women in Laura Ashley dresses.

Similar thoughts descended on me when I attended the Boston Classic Car Club show (also at Kirton) a short while ago. I was standing in front of what, with my limited knowledge, I thought was an SS100 Jaguar. This sports car was built between 1936 and 1940 by SS Cars Ltd of Coventry, England, the company that after the war was renamed Jaguar (the SS initials having acquired negative associations). However, on reading my booklet, and after further research, I discovered that it was a replica manufactured by Suffolk Sportscars in 1978. The idea of building a replica of an old car is as alien to me as building a modern version of an eighteenth century house in 2011-12, or creating a "new" Mini or a "new" VW Beetle. It represents a failure of vision, a lack of belief in now, it promotes the sham over the authentic, the past over the present, and it shunts design into a cul-de-sac. Most of all it is a missed opportunity for progress. Retro that involves merely aping the past should have no place in either design or styling. Taking old forms and deploying them in new and innovative ways is another matter. Some Renaissance, Victorian and Edwardian architects managed this very well. But, unfortunately, that's not often what we see nowadays.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 47mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On 

No, no to retro!

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The success of the "new" Mini has been trumpeted in the press in recent days. It seems to be selling very well and production is to be increased. Commentators like it and, apparently, so do the car-buying public. I don't! My view of this car is the same as my thinking on the "new" VW Beetle - they are shams: pale imitations of the vehicles that they are designed to echo, and based on a corrupt design principle.

Alec Issigonis, the designer of the original Mini had a clear brief to make a small, mass-produced, inexpensive vehicle. He succeeded by being innovatory. The new car had to fit in a space 10 feet X 4 feet X 4 feet, the passenger cell had to be at least 6 feet long, and it had to use an existing engine. The designers came up with a monocoque shell, mounted the engine transversely, and gave it front-wheel drive. The wheels at each corner conferred great stability and handling, and the firm ride came from the use of rubber cones instead of conventional springs. Other innovations like welded seams, sliding windows and external hinges kept the cost down and contributed to a quirky and appealing aesthetic. Despite its cost being initially more than was intended people wanted to buy it, and it became a great success. By contrast the "new" Mini simply apes the appearance and details of the old car, and uses the same bog standard designs found on every new car. Retro and copyist styling of this sort shows lazy, bankrupt thinking. It's like building a mock-Georgian house in the twenty-first century. Why would you do it? People should build for now. They should create designs of their own time and push forward, not look back!

What, you're probably thinking, has this got to do with a shelter on the Blackpool's North Shore - all pediments, cartouches and ornate iron brackets. Well, new shelters have been built on the South Shore that completely disregard old designs of this sort. And, further up the coast new, modern shelters are appearing as part of Cleveleys' new sea-defences. No one thought for a moment to create shelters that looked like, or drew their inspiration from examples such as the one in the photograph. This shelter is of its time, is not without distinction, but certainly isn't of today. Car designers need to take note!

I took this shot on cold sunny day when the biting wind made a cliff-top walk a challenge rather than a pleasure. But that didn't stop the determined, two of whom I included in my image. I placed the shelter very slightly off centre to balance the people, and post-processed in contrasty black and white to emphasise the strong forms. The photograph was taken with a medium zoom lens at 36mm (35mm equivalent) with the camera set to Aperture Priority (f7.1 at 1/320 second), ISO 100, with -1.3EV.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen