4 C O N T E X T 8 6 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4 ‘THE SYSTEMATIC design and delivery of buildings has led to the displacement of architectural design by engineering design. This is a more convenient way for the new integrated construction conglomerates to serve their clients. The service providers have turned to mass-customisation as an easy way to meet demand for buildings. ‘This industry is dominated by a few major conglomerates offering a complete service, in which the role of the independent professional is simply irrelevant. Electronic procurement and automated contract negotiation enable bargains to be struck quickly, instantly launching a semi-automated procurement process. ‘There is no aesthetic requirement and no need for imaginative solutions. Few people have the skill or money to maintain the old, manually constructed, bespoke buildings. So the stock of old buildings is quickly replaced by shiny new standardised products that can be maintained by a semi-skilled workforce.’ A possible future scenario for the built environment professions imagined by the authors of The Professionals’ Choice, a report commissioned by Building Futures, a joint initiative between CABE and the RIBA. ‘THE NATIONAL Trust’s work in conserving historical examples of working-class housing is admirable.Who is conserving the memory and fabric of the “alternative” working-class housing – the ambitious municipal schemes for rehousing the working poor that began almost a century before the slum clearance programmes of the 1960s and transformed Britain’s cities between the wars? ‘The media repeatedly reminds us of the failures of the ’60s high-rise experiment; a generation has grown up since Thatcherism killed public housing; and we have largely forgotten earlier council schemes that were architecturally innovative and socially informed, and are still remembered fondly by those who grew up in them. ‘In Liverpool, most of the 1930s council blocks that have not been bulldozed are being redeveloped as luxury housing to feed the City of Culture bubble. If working-class culture is going to be as museum piece, how about giving us all a chance to visit ‘the council flat’?’ Eve Rosenhaft in a letter to the Guardian. ‘THE PROPOSAL to identify and destroy buildings because they are perceived by some to be vile is disturbing. If a building has reached the end of its useful life and no appropriate reworking of the building is possible, then so be it. Take it down and develop it with a use more appropriate to the needs of today. Any archaeological dig in any city will reveal layers of previous buildings that have either made way for others or have been adapted as the city grew and flexed in response to change. ‘Growth and change are driven naturally by the opportunity for benefit and society’s acceptance of change, not by the form of intervention that RIBA president George Ferguson proposes. The good and the not so good, the beautiful and the ugly, exist side by side and should continue to do so in a tolerant society.’ Kevin Steer commenting on the RIBA president’s war of eyesores in a letter to Architects’ Journal. area character statements and similar documents can infringe the Freedom of Information Act or the Data Protection Act. Happily they are mistaken. The last part of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 comes into force on 1 January 2005. The act is purely about local authorities and other government bodies having to make available to anyone who asks a great deal of information that has hitherto not made readily available. It can not be construed as having anything to do with seeking the permission of individuals to photograph their buildings. Neither do you need permission under the Data Protection Act to photograph a building. That act deals only with personal information. A building can not in any way be construed to be such. Even details such as the house number and telephone number are classed as information in the public domain and hence not covered by the Data Protection Act. Neither is any problem caused by the fact that you can find out who lives in a house by knowing its address, as the information that allows you to do this – such as Land Registry data and census records – are also in the public domain. Even the fact that a captioned photograph of a grand house tells you that this is the home of the Duke of So-and-So is no problem, as the information is recognised as being public knowledge. Personal information is what it says: matters such as criminal records, school records, financial records and medical history.You would pretty well have to ban photography in all towns and villages if buildings were personal information. The only photographs that would be the concern of the Data Protection Act are those of identifiable individuals, but even then they must be the focus of the photograph. This point was clarified by the courts at the end of last year, when it was ruled that pictures of individuals recorded by CCTV cameras in a shop did not constitute personal data as the focus of the picture was the protection of the shop. There is absolutely no need to ask a private individual to take a picture of their property from a public vantage point under any circumstances. There are, though, controls on taking photographs of military establishments, government buildings, airports and other ‘strategic’ locations that come under public control. ‘THE RESPONSIBILITY of the architect charged with the care of a historic building should be to embrace the challenge of designing the necessary changes with creativity and integrity, and with an eye to posterity. How many public buildings have been disfigured by “temporary” access solutions that may remain in place indefinitely?… Are we really so timid that all interventions in future, from this arbitrary moment in the continuum of time, should be reversible?’ The architect Richard Griffiths complaining in Building Design of statutory bodies’ advice that alterations to historic buildings should be reversible.
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