The International Housing and Town Planning Congress, which meets in London on July 16th, is one of those important international events which influence very significant movements. For that reason it will probably be fairly adequately neglected by the Press.
It is idle to expect from any international committee resolutions preparatory to definite action. At best they act as a centre of discussion, where authorities from different countries can exchange views and assess their experience. At worst they may degenerate into a bad imitation of the American convention, without any of the latter’s high animal spirits. One cannot determine in advance the character of the present conference. It is meeting under the most auspicious conditions; the organising personnel has made ambitious plans and the material presented in the form of papers from different countries, while scarcely as comprehensive as was presented in the United States at the President’s Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership, may be sufficient to allow us to understand just where we are in housing design and in the planning of new communities.
The Contribution of Britain
We publish extracts elsewhere from British contributions to the Conference, with a series of illustrations representing the most recent developments in housing construction and design. Even from those scattered indications, it will be evident that we have, in this country, advanced some considerable distance in the direction of good building and good planning, and the conference will have served a useful purpose if it does show that we are actively aware of a social background and not altogether contemptuous of pioneering work carried on outside of this country.
During the past two years, particularly, housing authorities and architects have been pre-occupied with experiments and new ideas. They have visited practically every scheme of any importance carried out on the Continent. They have absorbed masses of ideas from all sources and, what is more important still, have even forced the Ministry of Health and the Scottish Department of Health to appreciate the importance not merely of good workmanship but also of symmetrical and beautiful design. They have not yet been able to influence the speculative builder to any great extent although there are indications of a desire on the part of the latter, possibly the consequence of increased competition, to make a more intelligent use of new methods, new processes, new shapes and new arrangements.
There are, in the course of construction or planned, certain housing estates which are, to say the least of it, intriguing. The new estate at Frinton, the very large scheme proposed for Glasgow and planned by Professor Abercrombie, and the most recent projected garden city at Addington in Surrey, are indications of a change in attitude which is probably more significant than the desire of enlightened local authorities to use their slum clearance and overcrowding schemes to re-design and re-build existing communities.
Town Planning at Brussels
It is rather unfortunate that the exhibition attached to the Conference should not be more elaborate than it is, and that it should be so exclusively British. At the Brussels exhibition, for example, there was a very considerable section in the French pavilion, organised by Robert Mallet-Stevens, illustrative of town-planning not merely in France, but of some of the most important schemes of historical and contemporary interest. The plans for certain suburbs in the vicinity of Paris, such as Creil and Sceaux, and the re-building of the areas occupied by the old fortifications such as the Porte d’lvry and the Porte d’Orleans, had an added interest through the circumstance that they are actually being carried out, quite unlike the plans which have been adumbrated from time to time for Greater London.
Garden City Planning in Britain
As far as this country is concerned, it is possible to show thousands of plans but hardly one single example of achievement either completed or in course of construction. It is possible to indicate garden cities such as Letchworth or Welwyn, a few large housing estates such as Becontree and St. Helier or Wolverhampton and Nottingham, but those are not so much examples of town planning as of compulsorily acquired communities housed with a minimum of expense. The only attempt in this country to add a measure of amenity to the housing scheme, apart from the garden city proper, is provided by Wythenshawe, near Manchester, but one can only hope that the delegates on their provincial tours will not visit
Wythenshawe. The action of Manchester Corporation in throwing open so much of the adjoining territory and part of the Wythenshawe estate itself to the speculative builder has served to ruin the conception of the original owners of the land. The layout, design and general appearance of the speculative builder’s houses near Wythenshawe are so bad that they neutralise any beauty there is in the carefully and rigorously garden-city planned houses of the Corporation itself.
Working Class Flats
What we can show, however, are some extraordinarily interesting new blocks of working-class flats, and among them pride of place must be given to the Smedley Point flats of Manchester Corporation and to the Emmett Street flats of Poplar Borough Council. They do represent an attempt to bring the design of working-class flats into conformity with modern ideas, and it is interesting to think that the best building in Manchester, with probably the best view in Manchester, should be used for slum clearance purposes. The sensation of penetrating into the depths of Limehouse and emerging in front of a thoroughly modern block of flats is one which must cause a feeling of excitement even in the most hardened international delegate. The new scheme for the St. Pancras House Improvement Society, which is now begun, may be even more exciting, particularly from the point of view of interior equipment, but at the present time those two are pre-eminent.
There are, however, innumerable other schemes which do show a high standard of achievement. The schemes of the St. Pancras House Improvement Society, the St. Marylebone Housing Association, the Commissioners of Crown Lands, the Lordship Terrace scheme of Stoke Newington Borough Council, the L.C.C. schemes at Ossulston and Kennington, the older schemes of Bermondsey Borough Council with their delightful framework of trees, and, to a lesser degree, the schemes carried out by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, all provide good examples not so much of striking architectural planning as of good interior equipment in certain cases and of a desire to observe natural amenities.
The new flats of Liverpool Corporation, which were opened officially a short time ago, could scarcely be judged either from the point of view of equipment or amenity until the whole of the surrounding area is planned. At the present time they are definitely inferior to the Manchester scheme and certainly not better than the various schemes carried out in the St. Pancras area. If, however, they have wide open spaces round them they may, through the effect of perspective, be very greatly improved, because in their confined area at the present time it is almost impossible to get a proper view of them.
Cottage Housing Schemes
The great British contribution to housing is not so much in new blocks of flats as in simple, unspectacular and largely unoriginal cottage housing schemes. In the hands of housing directors of towns like Brighton, Bolton, York, Chester, Nottingham, Wolverhampton, they can be very pleasant adventures in building of a type peculiar to this country, and a type which it would be a mistake to put aside in favour of flats. There are few schemes, for example, more attractive than the Hal i’ the Wood estate at Bolton, built on the side of a gentle hill, with clear air round it and a view of wide rolling landscape. There has been a tendency to despise such estates as not being spectacular and blatantly modern, but the answer to that criticism is provided in no uncertain fashion by the Moorish type of houses built by private enterprise at Wythenshawe at only a short distance from the housing estate of Manchester Corporation. There can be no doubt on comparing those two types about which is the better adapted to the English landscape.
The International Conference ought to throw some light on the proposals of the Federal Housing Division in the United States and their elaborate and extensive proposals for standardising housing accommodation, and the grouping of such houses, and will almost certainly provide a clear picture of Continental practice, particularly in France, Germany and Holland, but we may find the position has been changed so radically during the last five years that Continental designers may find something to learn from British practice.
Initiative and Opportunity
There is little doubt that the countries which are now engaged on the most important experiments and have the necessary resources to carry them out on a very large scale are Great Britain, France and the United States. There is some similarity in method between British and French practice but practically none between what is proposed by the Federal Housing Division and the authorities in this country. In addition to those activities, one should instance a few isolated plans completed in countries like Czechoslovakia and Italy, while even Belgium, which has been notoriously weak in housing development, is coming into line.
The importance of the Conference lies precisely in the survey it gives and in the stimulus it may impart to the more active, and the more original of the housing directors and architects who are in charge of our great housing developments.
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The article in our last issue dealing with The School of Architecture and the New Students Union of University of Liverpool was by Mrs. C. G. Tomrley.
