Architectural Record, October, 1996, p. 8.
The May (1996) issue of ARCHITECTURAL RECORD contains a one-page-long review
of Leon Krier's Poundbury (page 15) so unrelentingly detrimental to its
reputation that one could only hope that the correspondent was merely innocent
of matters urban, rather than simply slanderous. I undertook a correction
which resulted in a text, also one page long -- the correction of misinformation
taking no less effort than its willful promulgation.
To the submittal of this letter, I received the following reply "Regretfully,
we will not be able to publish Andres Duany's letter in ARCHITECTURAL RECORD,
since it would occupy at least a full printed page." The need of the precious
page for other purposes being self-evident, I desist from my attempts and
direct those interested to access this useful text through the Web at
http//:www.dpz-architects.com.
Andres M. Duany
Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk Architects Inc.
Miami, Florida
http://www.dpz-architects.com/controv1.htm
(The AR review was published in May)
To the Editors of Architectural Record,
The review of Poundbury by Mr. Aldersey-Williams is as close to yellow journalism
as I have read in an architectural periodical. It is nothing but a collection
of gossip, slander and misinformation.
Before beginning: the three sentences and the one snapshot allocated to Poundbury
are not an adequate description for ANY project, let alone one with a
sophisticated social and formal structure. Poundbury cannot be described
as: One quarter of Phase One of 3000 units on 400 acres. Such statistics
may be applied to modernist housing, but their barren insufficiency betrays
the author's lack of interest in the substance of town planning. There are
drawings, diagrams, codes and eye-level photography available to explain
what is, after all, not some formal frippery, but the mature work of one
of the few wise men who is also a great architect. But this is not the place
to describe Krier's design, only to deal with the inaccuracies of the review.
First: the project did not "sail through its planning application". Quite
the contrary, it was a three-year siege on entrenched standards and practices.
Like all attempts at true urbanism, Poundbury required many variances: traffic,
drainage, parking, and zoning, as well as changes to marketing and banking
practice. All were overcome by conviction and tenacity. The process was extremely
difficult, particularly for the Prince of Wales who is subject to special
scrutiny.
There is the matter of the local architects who have been "involved in modifying
the master plan", a statement which insinuates a slur against Krier's design.
Actually these architects are participants in the common practice of handing
over to local designers the creative supervision of the construction. Building
a town is a process without end which requires constant circumstantial
adjustment. This role, which is both necessary and enriching to the character
of a town, eventually leads to the creation of a public works department.
What is remarkable is not that the original design has evolved, but how uncannily
it has followed Krier's drawings. This is rare in a process as complex and
contested as town planning.
Mr. Aldersey-Williams says that even the site is "wrong" because Dorset towns
"since neolithic times" have grown along river valleys and not on hilltops.
This criticism is the first of his several bouts with nostalgia. It was river
transportation, now obsolete, which resulted in the valley location of Dorset
towns. Poundbury is modern development attached to a highway which provides
its economic energy. The publication of just two of Krier's thumbnail diagrams
would show Poundbury to be a textbook example of correct urban extension.
It is seamlessly attached to the existing urban fabric, not "just far enough
from Dorchester to make people car-dependent". It is structured as a set
of four neighborhoods, the first of which incorporates and completes the
adjacent housing sector. And never mind that the initiative to build in this
location was entirely the decision of the Town Council.
Then there are the opinions of the architect "who request anonymity". One
says: "when it is finished it is just going to be another housing estate".
To believe that requires a sense of sight so coarse that it would disqualify
the person from a driver's license, let alone an architectural one. Another
bemoans the "cooked-up potted history of architecture" and adds "why can't
we find an acceptable style for the third millennium?". This individual should
be interviewed for the Smithsonian's Oral History Recordings: can there still
exist a breathing relic who actually believes that a modernist "style" can
outlast a single decade? But the real problem is Mr. Aldersey-Williams' confused
relationship to history. He apparently believes that the past is only to
be slavishly copied, not emulated, as he further accuses Krier of
a) "succumbing to the demands of today's realtors, not the evolution of a
historic town."
(b) of being "unauthentic for there are no boring Victorian terraces, no
1890's worker's cottages"
(c) of providing "modern kitchens and bathrooms...incorporated where the
modern homebuyer expects to find them" instead of "where they would have
been added on at a later date, often at awkward junctures" and adding
(d) that "there are no oddities of manorial waste." What an endearing fuddy-dud
Mr. Aldersley-Williams must be in person, but should not the editors of RECORD
have spared him such bumbling in a public forum?
Actually, Mr. Aldersey-Williams does inadvertently make a point: Krier is
not simply conservative. He is, in fact, being utterly practical in the manner
captured by the American term Neotraditionalism. Neotraditionalism is defined
by the LEXICON OF THE NEW URBANISM as: "A social, cultural and economic ethos
characterized by the pragmatic selection of options. It is distinct from
the concurrent trends of traditionalism and modernism which are purist and
ideological. Identified by Stanford Research in the mid-1980s to describe
the mind-set of the baby-boom generation, it is expected to be the dominant
culture to ca. 2020. A typical Neotraditional product is the Mazda Miata:
the old British roadster with modern Japanese dependability. It is manifested
in housing by conventional rooms stocked with the latest appliances; in retailing
by the main street managed like a shopping center; in social mores by the
cafe plugged into the internet."
The practical results of Krier's judicious design were reported by the AP
wire service on May 21: "Houses in Poundbury are selling well, despite the
recession. All but two of the 34 for private sale have been snapped up and
all 35 built for rent to local people are occupied. Work has now started
on the second section of 83 homes, 10 of which have already been reserved.
The available quotes are: "This has probably been our best-selling scheme."
and "People are voting with their feet." Residents say "People no longer
want to live in a box. They want somewhere with character." and "I have never
got to know so many people before." This vernacular praise for Poundbury
show the concerns of the architects "who request anonymity" to be detached
from reality.
But what of the "potpourri of historic styles"? This accusation would be
trivial, were it not of passionate interest to the many architects who are
able to develop mutual contempt at the sight of each other's buildings. A
professional report on this topic would have explained that Poundbury is
coded in two ways: typologically and tectonically; the former controlling
building type and public space, the latter controlling the craft and assemblage
of materials. That is all; Poundbury does not code style (in contrast to
Disney's Celebration which does have a style code). The typological discipline,
indeed the formal austerity which is evident in the aerial photograph, is
superior to that of any (supposedly) rationalist architecture -- the Weissenhof
Siedlung is a telling comparison. And to display the tectonic logic of the
buildings, it would have been enough to include an eye-level photograph;
although the real evidence will appear over the years as the projects shown
elsewhere in the May issue slowly disintegrate while the buildings of Poundbury
only acquire patina.
Traces of a "potpourri", are present precisely because Krier has NOT coded
for style. Although the term is rather negative to describe what is only
the aesthetic prerogative of country builders serving a middle class with
as much right to diversity as an urban avant-garde. (Incidentally, one of
the many reform programs of the Prince of Wales is the restitution of the
means of production to the small country builder.) If there is an authentic
architectural problem, it is caused by the involvement of a few self-conscious
architects who, as usual, cannot abide the self-effacement of private buildings
that participate in effective urbanism. This criticism is not applicable
to the "bizarre vertical feature" designed by Krier, which is merely a tower
displaying a creative eccentricity which Mr. Aldersey-Williams fails to recognize
as English. He also fails to understand that a public building such as this
one, in the dialectic of urbanism, should be unfettered by the codes which
control private buildings. Public buildings are expected to freely manifest
the creative aspirations of their designers and the character of the institutions
they embody.
Mr. Aldersey-Williams adds that the tower exists only to fill the void left
when the local churches "turned town" Poundbury. This is a simple lie, for
the tower was always there in the design. More insidious is the implication
of being undesirable, which is extended by statements like "shops may come,
but jobs will probably not follow and a genuine focus is not likely to arrive
either." But reality has confounded him instantly. Since his dire predictions,
the electronics firm SMTech has moved into Poundbury, and all the workshops
have been sold. In his ignorance of urbanism, Mr. Aldersey-Williams has
undervalued the factor of TIME. Time permits a vision of completeness, as
time invariably brings all things to truly livable communities. He has failed
to notice that to live and shop and work in Poundbury will not be a punitive
experience; it will be a PLEASURE. As the Welsh Professor, Leopold Kohr has
written "For only a beautiful community will prevent its residents from
constantly flitting about in search of livelihood and pleasure elsewhere."
Admittedly, this scenario is inconceivable to those who have only experienced
the conventional housing projects of the post-war era.
There still remains Mr. Aldersey-Williams other befuddled statements on sidewalks
("too wide"), signage ("too craftsy" AND "too regimented") transportation
("to superstores"). It would be a pleasure to continue instructing him, but
perhaps it is time to ask how this drivel came to be published in a respected
periodical. Did the editors count on a response like this one to redress
it? Or has RECORD, like ARCHITECTURE, lost the capacity to distinguish that
which is truly important from that which is fashion? The May issue seems
to indicate the latter as it dismisses Poundbury in one page, only to fill
the rest with buildings of little consequence beyond that created by their
fawning publication.
Perhaps the editors agree with Mr. Aldersey- Williams when he attempts to
administer the coup de grace: "But above all, Poundbury is flawed because
it has no real reason to exist." That may be so, but only if one ignores
the difference that Poundbury will make to the lives of its citizens for
decades to come, the pervasive influence that it will have as an alternate
to sprawl, and the luminous stand it takes against the shoddy discourse and
cynical postulates of architecture today.
Andres Duany
Architectural Record, October, 1996, p. 15.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros has recommended
that public-housing officials from around the country start applying "new
urbanist" principles to the redesign of troubled inner-city housing projects.
New urbanist architects use ideas extracted from traditional town plans to
design new communities that are pedestrian-oriented and organized around
mixed-use neighborhoods. While new urbanist developments such as Seaside,
Fla., and the Kentlands outside of Washington, D.C., have attracted attention
during the past 10 years, the new urbanists have also been criticized for
working mostly in suburbia and on "greenfield" sites beyond metropolitan
centers. The new HUD endorsement should give new urbanist planners the chance
to bring their ideas downtown to tough public-housing projects.
The first such opportunities will come from Hope VI, a HUD program created
in 1993 to find innovative means of transforming the nation's most severely
distressed housing projects. Two billion dollars has been appropriated for
the program so far and $1.5 billion has been awarded to 38 public-housing
authorities.
"Hope VI is the end of public housing as we know it," stated Christopher
Hornig, HUD's deputy assistant secretary for public-housing investments,
at a two-day seminar in August in Cambridge, Mass. The seminar was sponsored
by HUD, the Congress for the New Urbanism, and the Housing Research Foundation.
The Hope VI program encourages local authorities to work with private developers
to create mixed-income, mixed-use communities, explained Marc Weiss, special
assistant to Cisneros.
Clifford A. Pearson