Posted by Richard Haut on February 28, 2002 at 13:09:49:In Reply to: Re: A Housing Vision posted by Mariano Caro on February 28, 2002 at 11:17:43:
unfortunately, it is not a lack of memory that this scheme refers to - but a real (if slightly deceptive) memory.this scheme, as we see it in the illustrations, does not refer to a British street, but to the area at the back of a very particular type of house built during the Victorian era.
these were the so-called 2-up, 2-down back-to-back houses, which can still be seen in many of Britain's former industrial towns. Behind the houses, between two rows, was an alleyway with gates. In some cases they produced real communities - more often slums. They were the symbol of the poverty in the industrial regions. If there was community life, it was in the streets at the front, not the alleyway at the back.
Were they such a successful design that it is worth having a scheme refer back to them now ? I don't think so. The rose-tinted memories of those who view modern housing estates as cold high-rise may look back to earlier times, but it was not this humble design which achieved it.
People's lives today must be very sad if they look back so nostaligically to housing that in my lifetime was considered as unacceptably poor. British architecture - and their teachers - should be ashamed of their blinkered knowledge. I return to my earlier view: too many British architects are not interested in architecture - and it is beginning to show.
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