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The New Ruins of Great Britain |
New Labour came to power in 1997 amid much talk of regenerating the inner cities left to rot under successive Conservative governments. Over the next decade, urban environments became the laboratories of the new enterprise economy. In A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, Owen Hatherley explores the wreckage of the architecture that epitomised greed and selfish aspiration. From riverside apartment complexes, art galleries and amorphous interactive ‘centres’ to shopping malls, call centres and factories turned into expensive lofts, Hatherley maps the derelict Britain of the 2010s, an emphatic expression of a failed politics. Owen is currently working on a second volume, which includes Bristol, and he provides a preview here. Owen is in discussion with former RIBA President and architect George Ferguson and there is an optional boat tour of the city’s docks guided by Owen and George in which they discuss the Harbourside development and dockside developments generally.
Owen Hatherley writes primarily on architecture, politics and culture. He is a regular contributor to Building Design, New Statesman and New Humanist and has also written for The Guardian, Icon, Socialist Worker and Socialist Review. He sits on the editorial boards of Archinect and Historical Materialism, and maintains three blogs. His most recent book is A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain.
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May 23rd, 2011 at 5:15 pm
Although I am not a fan of the Brutalist architecture that Hatherley so admires, I share his distaste for the “ingratiating” fixed-grin cheerfulness of Regeneration Britain – a blight that has trashed our urban landscape over recent decades.
Tracing the damage back to the de-industrialisation (and wasteland creating) frenzy of the Thatcher years, Hatherley explained how under New Labour both economic policy and architecture became locked in a neo-liberal death spiral. As Hatherley says, it is aesthetic and political ruination going hand in hand.
The result? Housing where the only discernable construction criterion is maximum return on capital. Miniscule flats crammed into unsuitable spaces and glossed with exteriors seemingly inspired by The Early Learning Centre. Shopping malls resembling nightmarish postmodern wedding cakes.
Praising the success of the Byker project, Hatherley explained that the present government’s praise of it is hypocritical. The idea of long-term public funding ia anathema to the present administration, and ending lifelong council tenancy, slashing housing benefit and wiping out council house building will ensure that similar projects will never even get on to the drawing board.
To me, Hatherley is the “”go-to” commentator on UK architecture, and one should not allow his often acidic wit to detract from the seriousness of his passionately held concerns about how the architectural face of the UK has been – and is being – heedlessly disfigured.
Sadly, I was too unwell to join the boat trip. Anyone like to post here and put me in the picture?