A Love/Hate Relationship With Architecture

I have a love/hate relationship with architecture. Love/hate in so much as when it is done well, it’s something that can be admired and can inspire, but when it is done badly it just creates another blot on our landscape. My home county of Kent is an example of this – we have some great buildings but we also have some terrible ones. So as I sit at St Pancras station (a shining example of traditional architecture that has been carefully re-engineered for modern use) waiting for my train and I get an email advising me of the RIBA Southeast shortlist, I can’t help but wonder what legacy we are creating?

Kent has some exceptional buildings. Yes we are fortunate to have a historical legacy that includes Canterbury Cathedral, Leeds Castle (dubbed ‘the most beautiful castle in the world’) and dozens of painstakingly preserved manor houses. But what of modern architecture? Well we have the Turner Contemporary by David Chipperfield architects, Baynes and Mitchell’s ‘Command of the Oceans’ museum at Chatham Dockyard and Caring Wood country home in Kent designed by architects James Macdonald Wright and Niall Maxwell as but three examples. Now these buildings all have one thing in common – they were all designed by British architects and they all won major RIBA accolades – a RIBA Regional Building of the Year award (amongst others), 3 RIBA Southeast Regional awards and a Sterling Prize short list and the RIBA House of the Year 2017 respectively, to name but a few.

In addition to these buildings, there are scores of architecturally designed private homes scattered across the country, hidden by hedges, trees and fences but it is the public architecture that needs addressing – and it’s not something that is limited to Kent, it is a country wide issue.

However, all too often I see new buildings being constructed and sigh as a result of knowing what we are going to get instead of what we could have had. Unimaginative boxes where the decision was functional and cost effective rather than imaginative and well thought out. Facades that are dull and expressionless, or worse still, facades where imagination has run away and we have a jumble of colours and textures that have no right being together. Elevations that don’t take into consideration their surroundings and spaces that are not designed for the people that are going to use them. And all too often the outsides look dirty before they have been completed, setting a downward spiral for their looks over the coming months and years.

Who’s to blame? That’s a difficult question. Sometimes the architectural intent is there but by the time it gets to site the dreaded ‘value engineering’ has taken hold and the ‘race to the bottom’ has seen the detail and the carefully considered materials replaced with something that ‘will do the job’. And the opportunity is lost. 

But all is not lost, the RIBA Southeast shortlist gives an inkling that we may be heading in the right direction. There are fourteen buildings shortlisted for RIBA South East Awards 2018, a short list created from 43 submissions, covering Kent, Surrey and Sussex.

A cinema, school swimming pool and an artist’s studio are amongst the fourteen buildings which have been shortlisted for this year’s RIBA South East Awards. Of the fourteen it is refreshing to see that eight are from Kent.  This includes Palamon Court, Canterbury by Guy Hollaway Architects; Sibson Building, University of Kent, Canterbury by Penoyre & Prasad; Knole House Conservation Studio and Café, Sevenoaks by Rodney Melville + Partners; Black House, Kent by AR Design Studio; Highland House, Kent by Ben Adams Architects; The Apple Store, Kent by pH+; The Cottage, Kent by Guy Hollaway Architects and The Wood House, Kent by Allies and Morrison.

There are some truly great buildings here – both public and private - and who knows what could go on to win this year’s Sterling Prize. For me the shortlist shows that we can do it, we can design and build outstanding buildings, buildings that will leave a proud legacy. We just need to do this more often.

I appreciate that not every building can be an architectural masterpiece – budgets restraints will see to that. However, we need to look at what we are creating and ask ourselves, can we do better? One possibility is that do we try to over-complicate buildings? The Turner Contemporary, the museum at Chatham Dockyard and Caring Wood country home are all relatively simple in their choice of materials and it works.

Kent has an exceptional heritage and I hope that good architecture starts to outweigh the poorly conceived and poorly delivered to see this legacy continues. I for one wish all of the RIBA shortlisted projects the best of luck and wait in anticipation to see how Kent fares.