Let’s talk about beauty

For a long time after the then Prince of Wales gave his carbuncle speech in 1984 in which he castigated contemporary architects there followed pretty fruitless style wars between the traditionalist and modernists, between neo-classical and high-tech, goths and minimalists, culminating in HRH’s interference in 2009 in the development of Chelsea Barracks where the Rogers Stirk Harbour’s masterplan was thrown out for some more conservative.

By that time the lines were beginning to blur, building design became more catholic, PoMo and the Prince had widened the style debate - let a thousand flowers bloom they said.

For a long time, the traditionalists bagged the word beauty, a word many architects found hard to stomach. Firmness commodity and delight were fine to describe good architecture, they thought.

Then at the end of last year, the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust launched its Building Beauty Awards which might just help designers to use the B word without embarrassment. Chairman of the RFACT and its award jurors is design guru Stephen Bayley who for many years has investigated the meaning of beauty, even proposing a major exhibition at the V&A on the subject.

Philosopher Simon May, a Trustee of RFACT, suggests that the awards remind us that beauty is not only defined by Aristotelian concepts of harmony, proportion and symmetry but by a wider response that can be anchored in the time and place we inhabit.

In that context the winners were the exceptionally beautiful bridge at Tintagel Castle by William Matthews and Ney and Partners; McGrath Road housing by Peter Barber; the River of Light by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands and Leo Villarreal and the Tower of Light in Manchester by Tonkin Liu. These give Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up who references Poundbury as his example of beautiful architecture, a wider vocabulary of references in future.

There’s a chapter on Beauty in a new book by OMA partner Reinier de Graaf, a very readable romp through many of the issues facing architecture today from iconitis to sustainability, from architecture for health to places for people. The chapter on Beauty is entitled The B Word recognising the difficulty many architects have in using it in full. De Graaf's writing is well-researched, journalistic in tone and without the sort of critical position one might have expected from a partner of OMA. However, he does not come across as a fan of the Building Beautiful Building Better Commission (BBBBC) whose report he quotes: “It should no longer be assumed that the people are to be led by the architects and the planners other than the other way round”. Graaf responds by referring to Tom Wolfe and Jane Jacobs who both broached the subject but neither contemplated the notion of a consensual notion of beauty. “Linking the two," writes de Graaf “it seems a small step from democracy to populism.”

Another new book which is highly relevant to this debate is No Free Parking by Nicholas Boys Smith an affectionate tour of the streets of London featured on the Monopoly Board. Nick is the founder of Create Streets but also the co-chair alongside the late Sir Roger Scruton of the BBBBC and Chair of the Office for Place at DLUHC. His book is a hugely enjoyable read for all London - and Monopoly - buffs. I was personally disappointed that he didn’t give more attention to Temple Bar and its importance to Fleet Street but I agree with his sentiments about the permanence of London’s streets in shaping the city “Where Celts and Romans journeyed, where we drive, so people of the future and far future will also travel.”

It made me think about what a complex job Nick has in promoting beauty in government. London is not an ordered classical beauty like Paris or Rome, its streets are a gallimaufry of styles, shapes and sizes. It is a city of clashing typologies rather than of harmony. That’s what makes it such an interesting and exciting place - but is it beautiful?

Perhaps this was solved at the RIBA’s event entitled Beauty: Who Cares, Wins! (held after NLQ went to press) and organised by Paul Monaghan, an advisor for the Government’s Office for Place and partner in AHMM, and which includes an exploration of ‘what is beauty?’ By the cheerful classicist Robert Adam, Stephen Bayley and LendLease’s Selina Mason.

“How do we define beauty at a local level, how can design standards be set to encourage more beautiful development and how can we demonstrate that what is built, is popular with local people?”
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We must be encouraged that raising the bar of design quality is now central to DLUHC policies. Design Codes and the NPPF will hopefully curb the depredations of the worst volume house builders, but whether we’ll get an agreement on what beauty means rests in the balance. ​