Do We Need Architects?: A Journey Beneath the Surface of Architecture

By Alun Dolton

Do We Need Architects? Journey Beneath the Surface of Architecture is a journey of discovery that takes place over twenty-five years of my life, from exploring my own motivations to become an architect, learning about architecture, and the changing environment of practicing architecture to experiencing the impact of architecture on the built environment. The story investigates the meaning, perception, and relevance of architecture in todays world.

Have you ever had a favorite building, park, or square? A place that affects your mood? All of us at some stage have experienced the impact of architecture and landscape on the way we perceive reality. Let me invite you on a journey that examines what architects do, as well as the legacy of the architectural process that influences the environment, visiting places and exploring architectural interventions by taking them out of the glossy images shown in the architecture books and industry journals and placing them in the context of their urban or natural setting. It is always as a found object, always in the present, examining the impact of humanity on the environment and the contribution architecture has made and is continuing to make to the everyday environment where we all live, work, and play.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503578173

Alun Dolton

An architect specializing in urban design and master planning projects in the UK, Middle East, and Asia.

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Copyright © 2015 by Alun Dolton.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015909529

ISBN:      Hardcover   978-1-5035-7815-9

                Softcover      978-1-5035-7816-6

                eBook            978-1-5035-7817-3

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Rev. date: 06/18/2015

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction Why Be an Architect?

Chapter 1 Starting Out

Chapter 2 The Concrete Jungle

Chapter 3 Building or Architecture?

Chapter 4 Notion of Real

Chapter 5 City in Transition

Chapter 6 Globalisation

Chapter 7 The New Birmingham

Chapter 8 Worldview

Chapter 9 Shifting Landscape

Chapter 10 Beneath the Surface

Chapter 11 Hyperreality

Chapter 12 Arabian Adventure

Chapter 13 Shifting Tides

Chapter 14 Shifting Sands

Chapter 15 Welcome to London

Chapter 16 Business as Usual Is Not an Option

Chapter 17 Concrete Jungle revisited

Chapter 18 Birmingham with Sunshine

Chapter 19 Crazy from the Heat

Chapter 20 Incredible Journeys

Chapter 21 Where Do We Go from Here?

Bibliography

Do We Need Architects?

Acknowledgements

This is a story of a journey, and although it is a personal one, it could not have been made entirely alone. Over a quarter of a century, there are many that have joined me on any number of parts of the journey, some who have prompted observations regarding a particular situation, others who have questioned what I mean by certain terms and why I am describing a situation in a certain way. There are those who got behind the idea of me pulling all these stories together. You know who you are, and I thank you all, each and every one of you. Thank you.

Introduction

Why Be an Architect?

It’s a bit like asking an athlete why train so hard to enter an event that you have no guarantee of winning and, in some cases, no chance of finishing on the podium. As best summed up by Dr. Jacques Rogge in his speech at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, It is not about winning, it is about how you compete.

Sometimes being an architect feels a bit like competing at the highest level to secure last place. At other times, it feels like it is a major achievement qualifying, and it is enough to be content with that. Having been that athlete competing at an amateur level, it is easy to draw comparisons between the motivations for, say, entering a marathon or choosing to qualify as an architect. In one sense, it is about self-realization, the proving that it is achievable, in another it is competing for a cause. Architecture is the latter.

As a profession, we may be accused of fuelling our egos from time to time, being self-satisfied, making grand gestures with bigger, better, taller buildings, making the rich even richer, and so on. In reality, the buildings are the legacy of an intense process of imagination, devotion, and tenacity to get the project designed, agreed, and delivered in time and on budget; and it is the architects who are blamed when either of the last two are not met even though the project is in the control of countless professionals whose sole job it is to control costs and programs. Who ever heard of the quantity surveyor being blamed for cost overruns? Who ever heard of the project manager being blamed for late delivery? But in the case of the Millennium Dome and the often-misquoted price tag of seven hundred and fifty million pounds for a tent, it is the architects’ practice name that is associated with it and the negative publicity that was generated by the media at the time. It is political and economic forces that dictate if when or where development takes place, it is the architecture that attracts the attention, it is the lasting legacy of those decisions, and as architects, we become responsible for that legacy. Practices live or die on public opinion; the higher the profile of the project, the greater the risk taken by the architect.

The truth is, little was publicized at the time about the long-term strategies for regenerating East London. I seem to remember briefly reading in the architectural press at the time (Building Design in 1997, I think) that the Dome would form part of a future Olympic bid following Birmingham and Manchester’s unsuccessful bids in the 1980s and 1990s respectively.

In 2012 and after five years of what seems to be continual negative publicity related to the cost of hosting Olympic Games and concerns about the legacy, London hosted the most successful games ever from a Team GB perspective, widely regard as a triumph from an international perspective. The opening ceremony celebrated those human qualities that our people over generations have exhibited—imagination, tenacity, perseverance—and it is widely recognized that the Games could not have been hosted without it.

So what did we do as a profession? Some members of the public may associate architects’ names with the project: EDAW for the master plan of the Olympic park; others for the design of the venues; Populous for the design of the Olympic Stadium; Zaha Hadid, Aquatics Centre; Michael Hopkins, Velodrome, for example. Countless other nameless individuals as part of those teams would have no doubt put in stupidly long hours, competing to win the project in the first place, then fighting to make the project the best that it can be against cost cutting, time constraints, and the harsh reality of project delivery. So why do it? For some, it is just a job. For some, it is so they can say I worked on that even if it was only coordinating the fitting out of the toilets. For others, it could be for the experience, whether it is about getting the big name on the CV or having the project in the portfolio.

In terms of the global view of architecture in 2014 it seems that many feel that architecture is a profession that is undervalued. It is difficult to secure work when you are in a practice and even more difficult to find work if you are not in practice. When in practice, we have to compete for the work; and in many cases, it feels like the only criteria is who can do it for the lowest fee. There are continual debates about the ethics of buying work and devaluing the profession; there are other debates about the hijacking of the term architecture by IT professionals and the growing sense that people do not know what architects do.

Some would have us believe that the architect’s skills are not needed, probably best summed up by Joseph Rykwert: The architects and decorators actual designing is limited to advice on the surface dressing (mirror glass or Gothic or Renaissance or Chinese or some sheathing details derived from Art Deco patterning) (Rykwert 2000).

Others act like having a project management qualification automatically entitles them to lead the project. It seems like a whole profession has been created out of the administrative functions that make up one small part of an architect’s skill set, but can charge more in terms of remuneration. Some clients listen to project managers, but not architects. In considering the profession as a whole, it appears that I am not alone in the view that architecture is a profession that is undervalued and in some cases mistrusted by the public and the construction industry; I am certainly not the first to write about it. The point is, is bad architecture and planning responsible for this?

For some time, sensitive architects and designers have been fully aware that all is not well in the relationship between architecture and society (Blundell-Jones 1996).

Depending on the view of the individual, the architect is seen as the one who merely makes buildings look pretty or spend the client’s money on unnecessary personal gestures. For others, the architectural profession is blamed for various social problems that are the legacy of the so-called failure of the modern architecture in the reconstruction of European cites following the Second World War. Ironically, social problems associated with overcrowding and poor sanitation in cities are the problems that modern architecture was intended to solve. Much of the reconstruction was not at the hands of architects at all, but at the hands of transport engineers and city planners. Sure, architects worked for the local authorities and were very much part of the process, but to be blamed for all the social problems encountered as the legacy of postwar reconstruction, seems more than a little harsh.

The current crisis has been exacerbated by the financial meltdown in 2008, but is more the culmination of a long decline from the 1960s. Renzo Piano made reference to architecture as being a profession in crisis in 1997, observing that architecture is a socially dangerous art, using the metaphor of you don’t have to read a bad book, you don’t have to listen to a bad piece of music, but the ugly apartment block in front of your house leaves you with no alternative: you have to look at it. In Piano’s view, some architects relish their social uselessness, whether real or presumed, giving them excuses for taking refuge in pure form or pure technology. There are some players that in their hands architecture becomes more about sculpture, usually to create special public buildings, concert halls, museums, stadia, and so on.

As architects, are we really relegated to discussions on subjects related to style and ornament? Have we lost our authority? Are we potentially facing the burning out of architecture and with it the end of star architects? Is the profession doomed to extinction?

So why do we do it? I cannot speak for the entire profession, but for me, it is to make a difference, a positive contribution to the built environment in which we live. In my career to date, I have been involved in projects that have achieved that difference and others that have not; and in my experience, it is not aesthetics that makes the difference. It is not project management that makes the difference either. It is the built legacy of the process that people have to live with, and like an iceberg, there is far more going on below the surface of the water than what is visible above. Architecture is about far more than aesthetics, project management, budget, and on-time project delivery. There is far more that goes on beneath the surface starting with comprehending the social, political, and environmental condition that the project is seeking to address. By the time the project management processes related to project delivery are ongoing, the big decisions have been made, the strategies to intervene in a given situation have been implemented, and the legacy of those decisions that will affect the people positively or negatively has already started.

It is architects who look at the big picture, comprehend what are often contradictory requirements, and address the issues that we can within the scope of the project; then take all the design risk and negative publicity if something does not work out exactly as planned. With the immediate problem of architects out of work and leaving the profession, there is a pressing need for us to redefine what we do.

What Is Architecture?

In terms of redefining what we do, it is worth understanding what is meant by the term architecture and by extension establishing the term architecture when viewed from different contexts. Most people will probably share something of a view of architecture as given by the simplistic definition in the Collins Gem English Dictionary: architecture is style in which a building is designed and built; designing and construction of buildings.

In reality, it is far more than style and construction. In terms of the built environment such as a town or city, the architecture is described as everything that is built that defines the character of the place. Taking the architecture of New York, for example, it is the grid, skyscrapers, and Central Park, elements that themselves have nothing to do with the style of the buildings. In many cities, much of the built form may not have been designed and supervised by architects; the built result is the architecture.

In design terms of process, architecture is about making interventions into the living fabric of the city, responding to physical context and negotiating the bureaucratic minefield that is the social and political context, convincing clients, local authorities, and the public of the need to change and setting out an appropriate course of action to make it happen.

In production terms, it is considered differently. For some, it is about the process of making buildings. In this context, the expertise of architects becomes marginalized and sometimes it does feel like being relegated to giving advice on surface treatments. Landscape architecture deals with everything that is outside of the building. Engineering disciplines assume that they have priority over building elements, such as structural, mechanical, electrical systems. There are specialisms such as façade engineering and so on although without the architecture, there is no engineering and, in crude terms, all the engineering disciplines need the architectural backgrounds to be complete before they start their work and the process of practicing architecture becomes dominated by issues associated with coordination and managing the process.

Procurement processes can significantly influence the amount of control that the architect has over the process. In many cases, the concept design and production are divorced from one another, creating a disconnection between what is intended and what is built.

For some, it is a question of scale. On large urban projects, all disciplines fall under the umbrella of architecture. It is architecture that sets the program for the development; and in this context, urban design, master planning, landscape form part of the architecture and depending on the bias of the project. Take London’s Olympic Park, for example. The project was led by landscape architects; in this context, it is not only the process, but architecture also forms the framework that allows all the elements to interact with each other to create a unified whole.

The Journey

In working in architecture, each individual player will have a different set of skills based of their passions, knowledge, and experience and will have arrived at it from many different directions. In this sense, the story is one of exploration, a journey that examines what architects do as well as the legacy of the architectural process that impacts on the environment. This is achieved through visiting places; in some cases, it is about exploring individual interventions, taking them out of the glossy images shown in the architecture books and industry journals, and examining in the context of the environment where they are placed. In others, it is about visiting and experiencing a city with no architectural agenda in mind.

In terms of the journey, spanning over a time frame of twenty-five years, some cities are visited on numerous occasions. The journey becomes not only one in space but also in time, a process of learning; in this sense, the journey never stops. This work is also the culmination of over twenty-five years in the field of architecture through learning about architecture, practicing architecture, and experiencing architecture.

There are elements of the back story to create the context, but the journey starts in 1989, this being my first visit to London to look at more than the visitor attractions and actually experience them with an interest in architecture and the reality of how the city operates. The journey continues for twenty-five years, visiting, observing and examining, taking every destination, city, or environment as a found object, always in the present.

Chapter 1

Starting Out

In terms of arriving at architecture from different directions, mine is shaped by events and association with my hometown. In fact, there are two, one which is Paignton, a seaside town where I grew up, located on the English Riviera, for some a holiday destination in its own right, for others represents a town that visitors have to pass through to get from Torquay to Brixham. The conglomeration of Torquay, Paignton, and Brixham makes up Torbay, which has been known as the English Riviera since the 1960s; and the resort has been evolving since rail travel created the phenomenon of the seaside holiday.

The source of many of the visitors to Torbay is Birmingham, the UK’s second city that in a sense has become my adopted hometown, as seventeen of the twenty-five years of the journey have been spent living, studying, and working in Birmingham.

On the Beach

Much of the summer during the 1970s was spent on Paignton Beach, playing in the sea and on the beach; building not sand castles, but entire cities in the sand; looking across the bay to the white blocks, Imperial Hotel, Coral Island, Kilmorie, and other modern apartment blocks nestled amongst the trees on the limestone spit that accommodates the more affluent areas of Torquay, then later trying to replicate them in Lego although there never seemed to be enough white bricks. At the time, that view represented something of a contradiction to the experience of actually going to Torquay, which mainly involved walking around shopping streets in the rain to Marks & Spencer for school uniforms with all the signs saying Back to School and the inevitability of the end of the summer holidays. The repeated experience put me off Marks & Spencer for life.

Paignton Pier majestically marches out into the sea on steel legs for no other reason than to give visitors the experience of being out over the water, except to play on the amusements on the way through to the end of the pier, slot machines, bingo, and boat trips around the bay. There are, in fact, two towns named Paignton, one in the summer and another in the winter. The promenade is a prime example with wooden cabins selling fish and chips, ice creams, candyfloss, and toffee apples in the summer and the bare steel support frames in winter and trying to walk along the whole length of the beam without falling off in the winter. Surrey Cycles, a four-wheeled cycle seemingly formed of two Raleigh Choppers side by side with a bench between them and a canopy over the top, thread their way through the sea of people walking along the promenade in summer, with elderly people sitting on deck chairs watching the youngsters playing on the beach, along with the myriad of speedboats and pleasure craft on the water. The scene changes to the same elderly people sitting in their cars along the promenade eating sandwiches and drinking tea from thermos flasks in winter watching the seagulls flying over the waves.

The highlight of the year is regatta week where the Anderton and Rowlands fairground would materialize on the Green, the Red Arrows would appear from over the horizon to give their amazing aerobatic display, and then there is the fireworks display where the whole town would converge on the Green for one night.

Boat Project

In 1980, my father began a project to build a boat, a yacht, in the back garden. As an enthusiastic nine-year-old, I helped him lay down the keel beam and crossmembers on the lawn and watched in keen fascination as the frame began to take shape with me helping to carry members from the workshop to the construction site, holding members in place whilst glue was applied, then clamps and finally brass screws driven in with a pump-action screwdriver.

Come 1984, when the finished yacht made its way out of the garden and made its journey to the harbour, the expectation was that I would be excited about finally getting out on the boat. For me, it was something of an anticlimax, and sadly for him, I was not a natural seaman. The excitement was in the making, not the using, and so started a fascination with building things, creating components, and the process of their going together.

Into Architecture?

I left school with four O levels in 1987 to work for a small architectural practice founded by W. G. Couldrey in 1890. These were the town’s architects, who were responsible for building much of the Victorian town centre: Palace Avenue, Torbay Road (the summer hotspot lined with cafes and gift shops and filled with tourists), Queen’s Park Mansions, and the long-lamented Dellers Cafe. Later, the housing estates were planned as the town expanded in the 1950s. Many of the original drawings are still held in the office, in plan chests and in a series of rolls in a storeroom. The amazing thing about the drawings dating from the 1890s, except that they were drawn on linen, is that all the information to construct a complete building is contained on one drawing, plan, section, elevation, and all the specification notes, not that there needed to be many, just telling what walls are made of, with key dimensions, and that is it—the whole town was built from drawings such as these.

In the office, the IT department was an Amstrad word processor linked to a dot matrix printer. There were also two instantaneous word processor/printers known as typewriters. The office communications system was a single grey Bakelite telephone with a dial and a very loud bell ringer, the fax machine was at Prontaprint, the print bureau down the road, reprographics was a dye line printer which you fed negatives, ink line drawings on tracing paper to make copies for submissions, and of course, production was drawing board and T square. The Ctrl+Z function involved scratching out the ink lines with a razor blade, burnishing the paper with an ink rubber, and drawing the corrected lines back on the now slightly shiny tracing paper.

In the September of 1987, I embarked on the part-time BTEC (Business and Technology Education Council) building studies course at South Devon College of Arts and Technology, electing to pursue what I felt was a practical application of my skills as opposed to going on and taking A levels in the sixth form at the grammar school. My chosen career goal at that point was to become an architectural technician as opposed to an architect, the exact reasoning I am not sure now; but if memory serves, it was linked to the perception that A levels and university seemed like a very long time before I could start work. Working in practice became augmented by attending college one day a week, the course was actually two courses: Ordinary National certificate (ONC) for the first two years, then Higher National Certificate (HNC) for the second two years, where you could choose between the architectural stream or the construction stream. Many of my colleagues on the course worked for the contractor or within the local authority: planning, building control, highways, environmental health. I think I was one of four students working in architectural practice. The courses were structured in units, and if I remember correctly, this was a relatively new concept at the time. The units included land surveying, building surveying, materials in construction, construction technology, architectural design (taught by an architect), contract administration, environmental science, structures, services, practice management, measurement, specification.

White Elephant 1989

I first heard the term white elephant associated with architecture during a discussion in our class of fifteen part-time students on the topic what did we think of Rogers’s Lloyd’s building. The consensus seemed to be that it looked more like an oil refinery than an office building, but as an iconic statement, it was nothing short of spectacular and demanded respect.

The other topic under discussion was the notion of tackling problems of the inner cities and in particular areas of regeneration, where the redevelopment of London’s Docklands was referred to as a white elephant. The term white elephant refers to an object or possession of great expense that is out of proportion to its usefulness or value to its owner. The conversation stuck with me, and in the summer of 1989, I decided to check out the Docklands for myself.

Going Underground

Up until now, my views of London were the background to political commentators reporting outside the Palace of Westminster, as frequently shown on the news—images from films, TV shows, and references to great buildings as shown in the Architects’ Journal. My first actual visit to London represented something of a sense of the difference between the image and the reality. London’s transport system is based on the world-famous underground railway, officially called the Underground and referred by many as the Tube.

The Tube fragments London in such a way as the experience on the surface is confined to the proximity to the destinations marked by the stations on the Underground map—London Bridge for the London Dungeon, Baker Street for Madame Tussauds’s and the London Planetarium, Trafalgar Square, for, err… and so on. The clattering train journeys, the blank stare of passengers standing, sitting in close proximity to each other and forcefully avoiding eye contact, the slow escalator rides to the surface and negotiating a network of tunnels represent a completely different view of London to the one on the postcards.

Cardboard City

During the 1980s, key events dominated the news from the Falklands War to the miners’ strike. IRA bombings; cuts to public services and mass unemployment; the selling off of the whole country, water, gas, electricity, telecommunications; and the rise of a new class of society known as yuppies, along with the notion of a dog eat dog world, terms like negative equity and repossession became the topic of many conversations. There came the poll tax and the subsequent riots in London, as the cost of public services tripled overnight.

Walking along the embankment alongside the River Thames, the reality of the news stories is painfully apparent beneath the arches of the bridges that cross the Thames, another new class of society not talked about in the news, a symptom of the situation caused by an economy driven by individual gains and the dog-eat-dog world. In a community dominated by sleeping bags and corrugated cardboard, a large number of people sleep rough in the shelter of the arches.

On the surface of London Bridge, it is a different story—the archetypical view of London, black cabs, red buses, and the pavements on both sides of the road that run along the bridge alive with black suits, bowler hats, and briefcases, in complete contrast to the world below. On the north bank, glimpses of the Lloyd’s building, stunning against the anonymous blocks of the city, stainless steel pods and blue cranes resemble nothing of an oil refinery, but shows what it takes to make an office building. Services that are usually hidden within shafts that run invisibly through the core of the building are proudly exhibited on the outside, something of an iconic statement.

Above the Streets and Houses

On boarding the new Docklands Light Railway at Tower Gateway, close to the Tower of London, the new railway feels unremarkable as it passes alongside the existing lines entering London Fenchurch Street from Tilbury and Southend in Essex; then the new becomes apparent, and it does feel remarkable as a composition of blue aluminium frames and clear polycarbonate sheet make up the new stations, concrete walls line the route that threads its way up and over the streets and rooftops of East London, and the docks come into view as the route passes above deserted quays and still water.

Once across the water, passing above streets and houses once again on the Isle of Dogs, another expanse of water and the London Arena comes into view, a large aluminium-clad container; but the location of something cool going on, the recent residency by Pink Floyd for their Momentary Lapse of Reason tour, coupled with Jean Michel Jarre’s huge show Destination Docklands at Royal Victoria Dock, have started to place the Docklands on the map.

The end of the line is Island Gardens, where the railway remains elevated above the street, a blue steel and polycarbonate cylindrical tower with a spiral staircase coiled around a central lift shaft set in a cobbled courtyard. Small shops occupy the spaces below the two arms of the railway, set within brick and reconstituted stone arches in pretty much the same way that Victorian viaducts have their arches occupied by all manner of activities. The newness of the station gives a sense of being constructed in Lego set within a green park. On the opposite side of the river is the Cutty Sark, a regular visitor attraction, a visit that will have to wait until another day.

Onward and Upward 1991

Back in the office, production involved trimming the prints and colour washing, not a magic marker in sight. I used to love drawing and remember being called into the office of the head of building control at the local authority and being told that the drawings I had submitted were the best he had seen in twenty years on the job.

The practice handled everything in the design and construction process—architecture, master planning, construction detailing, site supervision, project management, even cost control. In college, some of the assignments were quite in-depth, including a full construction process from demolition and temporary shoring of adjacent structures, to production information to build a new office building including structural systems, services, external cladding, interior finishes.

Another assignment involved supervising a JCT 80 construction contract, completing the relevant certificates and correspondence to manage the interface between client and contractor in a live project scenario. Completion of the HNC enabled qualification as an architectural technician, and in 1991, attaining associate membership of the then British Institute of Architectural Technicians and proudly using the letters ABIAT after my name made me feel that I had made it.

Game Over 1992

One year later, I was one year of practical experience away from achieving full membership (MBIAT) and a licence to practice, running my own jobs and managing my own workflow within the practice. The dog-eat-dog world, negative equity, and the wave of repossessions, coupled with the general state of the economy, dealt a significant blow to what seemed to be a promising career in architecture. There came the inevitable day where I was handed my notice and my boss reminded me that I had been talking about going to university. The rest, as they say, is history—well, almost. I immediately telephoned (on the grey Bakelite phone with the loud ringer) Plymouth School of Architecture, the nearest architecture school, thinking I could just go and attend the course to qualify as an architect. I am already qualified as an architectural technician—that’s five years—so I have to do another two to top it up to being an architect, right? No, it takes three years to get a degree, another two to get a postgraduate diploma, and then another two in practice, and your qualifications might exempt you from the A level entry requirements to get into university… oh bugger!

I had to go through clearing and quickly learnt the difference between having A levels and not. The top schools at the established universities were not interested. It was only the polytechnics that were inviting me to open days and interviews, but not for the 1992 term start but 1993.

At the same time, being located in Devon, not exactly the epicenter of urban development like the docklands seemed to be, the situation proved to be very difficult, having knocked on the door of every architectural practice in Torbay, Exeter, and Plymouth, making Devon’s two cities the main target. Everywhere it was the same story it was devastating. Doors were locked, practices employing up to fifty people had ceased to be, areas buzzing with activity of development were now desolate. Where all those qualified professionals have gone is unknown. The whole scene confirmed that the decision to go to university was indeed the right one.

Chapter 2

The Concrete Jungle

What does the term concrete jungle really mean? Concrete trees perhaps? Concrete monkeys? Concrete parrots? Not exactly, it is more about an environment dominated by urban motorways, flyovers, underpasses, pedestrian subways, muggers, deserted plazas, and tower blocks. In short, urban devastation carried out in the name of rapid traffic movement through the city. Elements of concrete jungle exist in many cities, but Birmingham is one that has suffered greatly from the concrete jungle metaphor.

The Black Hole 1993

The first impression of Birmingham is the arrival into New Street Station, which from the point of view of the train passenger represents something of a poor first impression. Arrival from any direction is through a tunnel, so the windows of the train become black, to burst briefly into daylight, to be plunged into more darkness bravely illuminated by fluorescent tubes that create a dull-yellow glow against the blackness. The day-lit areas receive rain pouring from a decidedly dull-grey sky onto platforms that are also a dull grey. A change to a local service that heads out through a tunnel into a landscape of abandoned railway depots, industrial factories, and storage yards before arriving into a cutting and a very utilitarian space that is Perry Barr Station, which is situated under the Walsall Road and access to Birmingham Polytechnic that accommodates Birmingham School of Architecture is through a network of uninviting subways. Welcome to Birmingham!

Lonely Tower

A visit to the University of Greenwich, formerly the Thames Polytechnic, not located in Greenwich, but in Dartford, Kent, presented an opportunity for a very brief visit to London, experienced through the network of tunnels and tube stations to travelling from Paddington to Cannon Street. On crossing the Cannon Street Bridge, there on the horizon in the haze, a solitary tall block extruded fifty storeys above the docks and capped off with a pyramid, Cesar Pelli’s Canary Wharf tower, the landmark heralding the redevelopment of the Docklands and probably signifying what some people were referring to as a white elephant.

On the Edge

Having elected to go to Birmingham to be immersed in the city as opposed to being in a small town, the journey of discovery commences. Birmingham Polytechnic has been rebranded! Now it is the University of Central England in Birmingham (UCE), the immediate difference being the blue paintwork is now red and there are signs everywhere with the UCE branding. The school of architecture occupies two levels of Edge building, a six-storey block that also accommodates landscape architecture, planning, and the computer lab, where the Apple Macintosh classic reigns supreme.

It is fair to say that I arrived at RIBA education under a bit of a misapprehension; a qualified architectural technician and already knew what I was doing, right? Accustomed to scoring 85 percent in assignments and feeling a touch invincible, this should be easy. I remember showing examples of my work from practice to my fellow students. They were impressed, but our tutor’s comment was something along the lines of great drawings, but that is building, not architecture. He also told us at the very beginning of the course that architecture is about people, not buildings. It did come as bit of a shock to me at the time.

The journey was one of learning and in some cases unlearning as the course became immersed in Poetics of Space (Bachelard) and Blade Runner (Philip K. Dick/Ridley Scott). Based around studio projects with a strong emphasis on psychology, expression and representation of ideas using multiple media, art, verbal, film, all studio units were centered around presentation and discussion of ideas in a critical review, known as crit, environment and sure enough had very little to do with building. The first year of the course provided a broad foundation to the study of architecture and landscape architecture in the context of the urban condition. Many projects were based on aspects of the 1960s modern urban core that makes up Birmingham city centre, along with the industrial voids in the city and surrounding areas. Units were aimed at reading and interpreting the non-designed and designed environment.

Perry Barr is a suburb of Birmingham, located three miles north of the city centre on the Walsall Road. It is the location of the campus of UCE, designed by the city architects in 1970, and is a series of dark-brown-brick-clad blocks, with expressed lift and stair towers, in the manner of Louis Kahn’s Richards Laboratories at University of Pennsylvania. Grouped around a landscaped quadrangle, all the buildings are linked by a shaded walkway, a colonnade with a plastic matting surface that becomes very slippery when it rains, which is most of the time.

Pedestrian Pileup

Adjacent to the Perry Barr railway station is a new development, very much a product of the 1980s—blue steel signage totems, patent glazing and blue-and-white panels in alternate bays, giving a type of circus-tent appearance to the out-of-town shopping centre known as One Stop, a mall with a supermarket at one end and sloping travelator at the other that brings people down from the street level. Despite all the signs telling people to use the lift to transport buggies and trolleys between street and mall level, everyone still takes them down the travelator, which gets kind of interesting when an elderly couple with a wheelchair get stuck at the bottom, followed by three buggies, and a pileup ensues—chaos, panic, and nobody with the sense to hit the Stop button.

At the top of the travelator and out into the rain, buses