The contemporary architecture of Belgium and The Netherlands is impressive, something I was repeatedly reminded of as I cycled through the Low Countries on holiday over the past couple of weeks.
For the visual delights of this part of the world are not limited to crow-step gables, baroque churches and wooden windmills - they extend to modern suburbs and housing projects, places that are elsewhere bywords for dreariness and banality. Dutch and Belgian architects, in contrast to their English brethren, do ordinary buildings with sensitivity, liveliness, and even a degree of panache:
What is it, then, with the architects of the Low Countries? What is the secret to the success of their work? I don't know any personally, so cannot pose the question directly, but, intuiting backwards from the evidence of what has actually been built, the answer seems to be as follows.
The secret, it appears, is that they set out, straight-forwardly, to design buildings for the delight of the people intended to enjoy them, namely their occupiers, visitors and passers-by.
You may say: 'hey, hang on Vitruvian Guy, now, that is a bit of a bland observation, isn't it? Surely all architects set out to design their works for the benefit of their end-users?'
Well, no, not in England. In England, architects, unfortunately, do something slightly different. They design primarily not for the end-users, but instead for imagined constituencies of critics. Their muse and their master is the spectre of a grim, beard-stroking character, judging every door jamb and piece of railing, alternatively wincing or nodding with approval in line with its prejudices.
As such spectral critics are creatures of the imagination, in theory, they should have individuated views; their tastes ought to be as personalised as the head of the architect which they inhabit. But then, in reality, imaginations are not as individuated as one might think, particularly when it comes to invented horrors, as the example of ghost folklore attests: ghosts are creatures that, despite being made up, belong to a surprisingly rigid taxonomy (apparitions, ectoplasms, poltergeists, and so on).
Similarly, for architects there are essentially two types of imagined critic. There is the traditionalist: wan-faced, thin-lipped, easily upset by the slightest noise, muttering under his/her breath about the importance of new buildings being "in keeping" with their surroundings. And there is the contemporarist: impossibly hip, roll-necked, connected, eyes rolling at anything that isn't bleeding-edge fashion and shrugging at anything which doesn't look 'stylish' (ie tastefully but conspicuously expensive). You can be in awe of only one or the other imagined constituency; the English architect chooses his or her poison.
Suppose the brief is to create in-fill housing in an area a few streets north of the historic centre of Antwerp. In a moment, we'll see how this brief has actually been tacked by the (almost certainly) local architects. But first, though, with the help of image manipulation software and some photos of Poundbury (Prince Charles' dismal housing estate in Dorset), I have imagined how an English architect designing for the traditionalist constituency would play it:
OK, the photoshopping is a little wonky... But you get the idea. Mottled brickwork providing in-your-face authenticity. Earnest localism courtesy of crow-step gables. Dull, inoffensive stucco detailing. Windows primly divided into panes.
The guiding principle of this sort of approach to architecture is to be "in keeping" with the existing vernacular. That expression is, by the way, a singularly damaging, inept piece of rhetoric. The commonplace instinct that it taps into, namely that it is pleasing when buildings acknowledge and reflect their neighbours, is completely sound - indeed, too many contemporary buildings fail to do this. But the injunction to remain "in keeping" is the most negative, limiting possible way of expressing that otherwise sensible idea. Rather than exhorting the incorporation of positive reflections of the surrounding environment ("that's a nice building, it makes a pattern with the one next to it"), the phrase "in keeping" focuses entirely on the negative, on the imagined deleterious effects of deviations from the local norm. The idea of a building being "in keeping" posits some sort of notional envelope of design possibility determined by the pre-existing built environment, deviations from which have, to earn the epithet, been studious avoided. It conjures up the image of an embittered person tensing up, as if responding to the sound of fingernails on the blackboard, at the hint of any not-in-keeping transgression, at any innovation in other words. It is thus an utterly stultifying injunction, a recipe for dreariness. But it fits in well with the mindset of a habitual slave to imagined criticism.
An architect who, on the other hand, considers the descriptor "contemporary" the highest form of praise for his or her work, will produce something equally slavish, equally dismal. Something, I would guess, like this:
This is the best sort of thing that British modernists can come up with, and indeed I am quite sure whatever they tried it would end up looking much like my mock-up above. Acres of glass, despite being wholly unsuitable for an urban domestic setting. The most limited, grudging concession to location in the triangular gable element. A complete absence of detail or character, which speaks good taste, together with precise finishing, which speaks expense. In other words, the British modernist response would, provided sufficient funding (probably a given in central Antwerp) certainly be an exercise in "blang", to adopt the pithy expression coined by Tim Waterman, meaning "bland meets bling", design which "... flies under the radar, avoiding any message at all except the hushed but urgent hint of money".
The architects of the Low Countries, however, manage to avoid either sort of caricature. This is what this scene actually looks like:
This exhibits design flair and interest without descending to attention-grabbing mannerism and without conspicuous expense. The steep triangular gable is there, but rather being done up with cautious, half-hearted impressions of 16th or 17th Flemish detailing, or else being sullenly covered in glazing or blank brickwork, the architect has introduced a nice arrangement of his/her own devising, namely the pair of hexagonal windows and the cement banding around them, which, in turn, nicely feeds into the vertical bands that run right down the facade. The fenestration beneath the roof level is straight-forward and its positioning echoes that of the old gabled buildings of the historic centre of town, without learing at it by incorporating muntins and/or old-fashioned sashes. The overall effect is pleasing. It feels like a happy continuation of the earlier urban fabric.
Here are some other examples from the district (possibly replacing an area of wartime damage?):
London architecture could be as good, if only architects stopped worrying about their imagined constituencies of doctrinaire critics, and in the process freed up their skill and imagination.
