Estatism, Escapism, and Inhabiting the Inhibitive
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Estatism, Escapism, and Inhabiting the Inhibitive. Examining the limits of confinement in an institution, an estate and an idyll. Rowan Prady MA Architecture Royal College of Art 9’982 words. With thanks to Naomi, for her unfailing patience and support throughout the process. And Adam, for his. The Story of a Wall in Aylesbury 6-10 Preface 6-10 Language: Names, Definitions, Constructs 11-16 A Name for [a] Names’ sake 11-13 Deconstructing Constructs 14-16 Liminality: Edges, Borders, Territories 17-22 Privatising Privacy 17-19 Rites of Passage 20-22 Part One The Institution: HMYOI Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire 23-42 Liminal Justice Suspended Sentence 23-28 Indeterminate Confines 29-37 Hanging in the Balance 38-42 Part Two The Estate: The Aylesbury Estate, Elephant and Castle 43-61 Arrested Development Promised Utopia 43-49 Home Truths 50-53 Real Estate(s) 54-61 Part Three The Idyll: Aylesbury, County Town of Buckinghamshire 62-78 Density Inside Out Suburbs of Suburbia 62-69 London’s City Limits 70-72 NeGated Development 73-78 Constrictive Constructs 79-94 Epilogue 79-84 Bibliography 85-91 Image References 92-94 6 Fig. 2 The Old Prison Wall HMYOI Aylesbury The Story of a Wall in Aylesbury Preface ‘We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us’ 1 Growing up, I had the naively childish sense that the sphere of my existence positioned itself at the very centre of all things, with all wider occurrences and social developments responding to the minutiae of my everyday progress through life. Geographically, a childhood spent in a not-quite-village unperceivably sited under the mapped and pointed edge-lines of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire – three counties of the British midlands - meant I grew up in the very middle of the midlands and, as I saw it, in the middle of nowhere in particular. In fact, on his journey from Southampton to Carlisle, Ian Nairn referred to the wider context of my upbringing as ‘dead centre’ as well as ‘dead at the centre’ as, ‘although once prosperous, you would have thought it had laid down and died’ 2 Albeit not particularly encouraging, I grew up oblivious to the insignificance of my surroundings and I was confined only by nature - streams, undergrowth, coppices and thickets. Very few of the boundaries that halted my youthful exploration were man-made. It is perhaps these explorative beginnings and this sense of being in some kind of middle that begins to explain my fascination with man-made containment and with the definition with walls and fences of every territory to which we lay claim. Further to its expansive invasion of the natural territories of my upbringing, maybe my concern for suburbia comes, in part, from being an outsider. With 86%3 of the UK’s population inhabiting suburban territories, I can consider myself in the minority. As I begin this study, untainted by any sense of emotional connection or Preface 1 Churchill, W. (1944), Speech in the House of Commons, London. 2 Nairn, I. (1970), Nairn’s Travels, Manchester. BBC. 3 WWF. (2006), One Planet Living in the Suburbs Report, WWF Publications. 8 associative trauma, I consider myself as much a scorner of suburbia as a sympathiser to the freedoms it promises. Seven years since I left the middle of the midlands, I find myself at the heart of another landlocked region of the UK, face to face with two burly Prison Officers at Aylesbury Young Offenders Institution. I am being questioned as to why I have been photographing the 10m high brick wall that surrounds the institution, and I can summon little explanation. Aylesbury Young Offenders Institution holds the largest population of young adult males serving the longest sentences in the UK’s prison system 1 and, invisible but for the high brick wall, there may well be four hundred of these inmates looking back as I study the confining wall. My fascination is their occupation, and my interest is in the purpose of the liberty defying typologies we construct for sections of society to inhabit, or to be forced to inhabit against their will. Preface 1 Inside Times, (2013) HMYOI Aylesbury Prison and Regime Information, Available at: http://www.insidetime.org/info-regimes2. asp?nameofprison=HMYOI_AYLESBURY [Accessed 15.06.13] 9 Part Three Part Two Part One Fig. 5 The Idyll Fig. 4 The Estate Fig. 3 The Institution Language Names, Definitions, Constructs ‘What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet’ 1 If a rose by any other name would be as sweet, would a place by any other name bring with it the burdens and the blessings of its preexisting namesakes? Would it make promises of success and the nurturing of domestic sanctity? Perhaps it would be desolate and devoid of aspirational value by comparison. Do namesakes aim to mimic the trajectories of their eponymous predecessor to evoke dreams of a better place, when the inhabited place leaves little to dream of? ‘Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose’ 2 I examine the ways in which Aylesbury – the county town of Buckinghamshire, coined the idyll for the purposes of this study – The Aylesbury Estate – arguably South London’s most notorious estate – and Her Majesty’s Young Offenders Institution Aylesbury – referred to herein as HMYOI Aylesbury, the institution – lie parallel in their aims as architectural typologies and in their outcomes as places of abjectly implied or applied confinement. ‘Our lives are no more than the sum of manifold contingencies, and no matter how diverse they might be in their details, they all share an essential randomness in their design: this then that, and because of that, this’ 3 The monolithic blocks of the Aylesbury Estate are named after Foxcote, Wendover, Winslow, Padbury, Taplow, Ravenstone, Latimer and Chiltern - All villages A Name for [a] Names’ sake for [a] Names’ A Name 1 Shakespeare, W. (2005), Romeo and Juliet, London: Penguin Shakespeare. [p.28] 2 Stein, G. (1990), Sacred Emily from Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, New York: Vintage Books. [p.387] 3 Auster, P. (1989), In the Country of Last Things, London: Faber and Faber. [p.35] 12 and towns within the county of Buckinghamshire. Beyond a flippant and under considered aspiration, I intend to examine what more these blocks share with their namesakes. Do people dream of rolling hills as they pace the miles of aerial pedways, as they consider day to day the expanses of concrete; does this twinning become an enabler for their escapism? Are these places imbued with the qualities or the failings of their namesakes? ‘The danger is in the neatness of identifications’ 1 A Name for [a] Names’ sake for [a] Names’ A Name 1 Beckett, S. (1975), Modernism: An Anthology, London: Wiley-Blackwell [p.1061] 13 Fig. 7 Wendover South London Fig. 6 Wendover Buckinghamshire ‘The mass production of salvation seemed within our grasp, just as buildings were becoming so delicate and technical that they actually began to disappear. A sadness and absence haunted the modern building, because it could only aspire to space and freedom. When, after the violence of the middle twentieth century we sought the ground and the security of its mass, it was too late. At our mausoleums to an unrecoverable relationship to nature, we sighed and shuffled on’ 1 I will consider the role and objectives of predetermined futures in the process of designing mid-century housing in the UK. The societal move from the vernacular, self-built home to mass-produced housing schemes, that respond to the urgent need to house a rapidly increasing population, has represented a move from building for ourselves to building for the masses. This has had an impact on all housing typologies, from prisons to estates to the sprawl that characterises suburbia. In the afterlives of these evolving architectures, I intend to examine the role of names, alongside the potentially confining nature of naming as a process. The three studies and chapters of this study not only represent architectural typologies – the suburban sprawl, the post-war estate, and the young offenders institution. They also represent the constructs of contemporary society in that they look at how we deal with the past, how we allow our failings to redefine our future, and how we deal with those who step outside the defining lines of our self-governed society. The typologies we construct lie in parallel with, and reflect upon contemporary attitudes. With reference to Tony Blair and New Labour’s ‘urban renaissance’ 2 that has lead Deconstructing Constructs 1 Pulliam, A. (2013), A Historical Nature in Brutalism from Brutalism, New York: Clog [p.99] 2 Lees, L. (2013), The Urban Injustices of New Labour’s New Urban Renewal, London: King’s College London. [p.4] 15 to the ongoing demolition of The Aylesbury Estate, I examine the carefully chosen and powerful language of regeneration employed as a device to demonise the poor and obliterate any power they might have in determining their future homes and communities. Finally, I question the way we define space and how we, in turn, are defined by the spaces we inhabit. Within the parameters of confinement, from that entirely applied in a prison, to that implied in suburbia, people become defined by their association with each of the typologies. And yet the spaces become resultant typological constructs defined firstly by the people that inhabit them and secondly by the social expectation that surrounds them. I question, does the suburban define suburbia? Does the social housing tenant define the estate? Does the young offender define his institution? Or are we defined, and do we have our own trajectories defined, by the architectures in which we dwell? ‘Through dreams, the various dwelling-places in our lives co-penetrate and retain the treasures of former days.