- The Observer,
- Sunday October 8 2000
When Tony Blair invited the great and good to drinks in Downing Street last Wednesday, he managed with jolting suddenness to transform an arcane subject, previously of interest only to design anoraks, into a serious political issue. Every big-spending department from the Treasury to the Foreign Office was dragged in to help launch a policy that purported to show not just why architecture matters to a society, but also set out to demonstrate how to improve the quality of government-sponsored architecture - from law courts to hospitals.
Here was the implicit promise of a new generation of social security offices, barracks, embassies and primary schools that would make Britain a byword for great architecture. It would, so Blair and his advisers blithely promised, have the effect not just of producing good buildings, but also of saving money and producing a healthier, happier society. Which is, even with the best will in the world, going a bit far.
Given that the guest list included Lord Falconer, the event ran the risk of turning into an embarrassment. A document which talks about construction best practice and value for money does not sit easily with Labour's angst over the Dome.
But extraordinarily, just at the same moment that Blair was launching the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment's (CABE) report on government architecture, William Hague, in Rambo mood, promised the Conservative Party conference he would demolish every tower block in sight and address the future of Britain's towns from a new, design-conscious perspective.
Hague was missing the point about high-rise living, focusing on an architectural fad of strictly peripheral significance rather than the hard slog of housing policy, just at the moment that high-rise living is again rising to the top of the housing agenda. But what could have become another stick with which to beat the Government's back turned into a safely bipartisan approach.
It is safe to assume that both parties had a raft of ulterior motives driving them on to embrace architecture. Not the least of which for New Labour was ridding its embarrassment at the lordly disdain with which Norman St John Stevas presided over the Royal Fine Art Commission. When confronted with the Millennium wheel, he stamped his foot and declared that it was horrid. The Queen Mother's gates in Hyde Park on the other hand were, as far as this constitutional expert was concerned, just lovely.
The whole idea of an official arbiter of taste had turned into a laughing stock, apparently driven by arbitrary prejudice more than any objective standard. Not surprisingly the commission was rapidly replaced by CABE when Blair came to power, under the leadership of the well-connected and respected property developer Sir Stuart Lipton. He was responsible for Broadgate, one of the most impressive developments in London for 40 years.
The move could be presented as part of Labour's modernising agenda. Lipton was charged not so much with the task of stopping bad buildings from happening, as making it possible for good new buildings to be realised. Instead of vulgar prejudice, CABE's job would be to give Britain's best architects their head.
Lipton now has to live up to the rhetoric that accompanied his appointment. Given the context, it is perhaps not surprising that most of CABE's report is full of platitudes about value for money rather than concrete examples. Turning the pages of the report, you find Will Alsop's library in Peckham and Benson and Forsyth's Museum of Scotland cited as examples of great official architecture. Which of course they are. But neither - nor any of the other illustrations - had anything to do with Lipton's initiatives; they all predate CABE.
But Lipton does attempt to deal with the most crucial issue, how to create a climate in which Britain opts for the best architectural solution, rather than the most expedient. And on this issue it is still far from clear if the answer is the kind of bureaucratic procedures CABE's document suggests or the headstrong wilfulness of individual clients determined to make their mark.
