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 in the Balance 38-42

Part Two

The Estate: The Aylesbury Estate, Elephant and Castle 43-61 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 ’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 designing mid-century housing intheUK.designing mid-century The societalmove from the vernacular, considerI will therole andobjectives ofpredetermined futures intheprocess of nature, sighedandshuffled we on’ itsmass, of security itwastoo late. ourmausoleums At to anunrecoverable relationshipto andthe soughttheground we When, century after themiddletwentieth theviolence of absence haunted building, themodern because to itcouldonlyaspire spaceandfreedom. becoming sodelicate andtechnicalbegan actually thatthey to disappear. and Asadness grasp, salvation massproductionseemedwithinour of justasbuildingswere ‘The 2 1 reference to With Tony Blairand NewLabour’s ‘ attitudes. with, lieinparallel we construct typologies The and reflect upon contemporary deal withthosewhostepoutsidethedefininglinesofour self-governed society. deal withthepast, how we allowourfailingstoredefine ourfuture, andhow we look inthatthey athow we society also represent ofcontemporary theconstructs sprawl,suburban thepost-warestate, andtheyoung institution. offenders They –the represent ofthisstudynotonly studies andchapters architecturaltypologies names, confining nature alongside ofnamingasaprocess. thepotentially Thethree architectures, oftheseevolving In theafterlives Iintendtoexaminetherole of housing typologies, suburbia. from thatcharacterises toestatesthesprawl prisons themasses. tobuildingfor ourselves building for This hashad animpact on all increasing population,need tohousearapidly hasrepresented amove from self-built home tomass-produced housingschemes, thatrespond tothe urgent Lees, L. (2013), Pulliam, A. (2013), The Urban Injustices of Labour’sThe Urban Injusticesof New Urban Renewal New A Historical Nature in Brutalism from Brutalism A Historical NatureinBrutalism from 1 , New York: Clog[p.99] , London: King’s CollegeLondon. [p.4] urban renaissance’ 2

that haslead 15 Deconstructing Constructs 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. And after we are in the new house, when memories of other places we have lived in come back to us, we travel to the land of Motionless Childhood, motionless the wall all Immemorial things are. We live fixations, fixations of happiness. We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images’ 1 Deconstructing Constructs

1 Bachelard, G. (1992), The Poetics of Space, London: Beacon Press [p.6] 16 Liminality

Edges, Borders, Territories of modern prisons,of modern hasbeenfrom theevolution ofpunitive systems astructure reference Foucaut’s toMichel With writing, through andechoed thearchitecture unbearable of art sensationspunishmenthasbecomesuspended aneconomyof rights’ thebodypain of itself, thepenalty. element isnolongertheconstituent of From being an in asystemconstraints andprivations, of obligations and prohibitions. pain, Physical the regarded bothandasproperty. asaright The body, according to this penalty,caught isup it,imprison orto makeitwork, to thatis itisinorder deprivealiberty theindividual of upon it oneintervenes to if orintermediary: asaninstrument body serves now ‘The 1 employed by ofdetention, systems on Jeremy centring Bentham’s ideal panoptican I endeavour toaddress thisparadox through astudyofthepower-defined devices freedom tomakedecisions abouthisfuture andenvironment are scarceasitis? confiningHow walls? are freedoms ofanindividualwhose the physically stripped continue prison toactcommitted asadeterrentoncan crimes eithersideof for each are unitedby freedom. theirwantfor Ifthisisassumedtobethecase, how convergences within between thetwo asenvironments begintoexistandlifestyles andestatelife, intersectbothprison prevalentmeasures ofsurveillance Where areboth freedom deniedofit. andprivacy ofconfinement. hisperiod spend timewhilstserving Thebody actsas property, and within this, thenegation ofcontrol oftheenvironment will theoffender inwhich a threat tosociety. Despitethis, thedenialoffreedom and, remains device akey facilities aimingtomendthemindofwrong-doer sothathenolonger poses pain-towardsand theinfliction ofintolerable physical rehabilitating correctional designed toenforcerestraint detention andrepentance on -withfocus corporal Foucault, M. (1991), Discipline andPunish , London: Penguin. [p.26] 1 18 Privatising Privacy completion’ their coda of to fanfare acrucial , theself-justificatory wear forms andwork they weather enhanceorderail society can andwider their users thebest intentions. Moreover, how ‘Architecture social isaninherently art. How buildings engage engaged withandare by go on toreshape future architectures. typology,so astoexaminethesocietaloutcomes ofeach confining andhow these London: Architectural Review [p.13] London: ArchitecturalReview 2 1 Slessor, C. (2012), Foucault, M. (1991) DisciplineandPunish. London: Penguin. [p.201] 1 Editorial View Editorial View from Architectural Review , 2 Foucault, M. (1991) DisciplineandPunish. London: Penguin. [p.201] 19 Privatising Privacy Fig. 9 Historic Centre Aylesbury Fig. 8 The Aylesbury Estate South London ‘Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage’ 1

Through the writing of Arnold Van Gennep, I examine the significance of the liminal and of transitional rites in defining territories. In his principle text, Rites de Passage, Van Gennep describes the three phases of the transitional rite as ‘separation’, ‘margin’ and ‘aggregation’ 2. According to Victor Turner’s further discussion of the text, the ‘first phase of separation comprises symbolic behaviour signifying the detachment of the individual or group either from an earlier fixed point in the social structure or a set of cultural conditions (a state); during the intervening liminal period, the state of the ritual subject (the passenger) is ambiguous; he passes through a realm that has few or none of those attributed to the past or coming state; in the third phase the passage is consummated.’ 3 As such, once the subject has passed through these phases, they are expected to comply with the norms and ethical standards of the after-phase society. Lloyd Warner describes this as ‘the movement of a man through his lifetime, from a fixed placental placement within his mother’s womb to his death and ultimate fixed point of his tombstone and final containment in his grave as a dead organism’ 4 but it is representative of the many more temporary transitional rites that take place throughout the lifetime of an individual, and this process is specifically applicable to that of rehabilitation in young offenders.

Through this study I examine the thresholds themselves, both literal - walls, fences, barbed wire - and implied - uninviting pedways and stairwells, the boundary to the cul de sac, and the gatehouse to the prison - looking at the roles of each as a device of confining intent. Through this it is possible to consider the role of Rites of Passage

1 Lovelace, R. (1919), The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900, Oxford: Clarendon. [p.17] 2 Van Gennep, A. (1960), Rites de Passage, London and Bristol: Routledge [p.17] 3 Turner, V. (1964), Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage, US. Open Court Publishing Co. [p.47] 4 Warner, L. (1959), The Living and the Dead: A Study of the Symbolic Life of Americans, Yale. Yale University Press. [p.303] 21 the transitional rite at each scale of development - the prisoner’s cell, the estate- dweller’s block, and the suburbanite’s sprawl. Further, these scales enable a study of the liminal phase’s role in individual reformation (the cell), collective territorial definition (the estate), and societal revolution (the sprawl).

The study begins by establishing the parameters of confinement in a typology defined by the pursuit of absolute control, HMYOI Aylesbury. These parameters are then tested against the abject confinement of the decaying Aylesbury Estate before re-application to a situation of implied confinement, the idyll of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.

‘The determining of alongside depends, in every case, on the recognition of a formal region: a limit, line or area of contact that generally accompanies, frames or perhaps generates, in itself, contrasting elements; or perhaps links them together, giving them continuity’ 1 Rites of Passage

1 Bru, J. (2003), Alongside, Spain: Editorial Gustavo Gili. [p.54] 22 23 Fig. 10 The Wall HMYOI Aylesbury The Institution:

HMYOI Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire an inebriates centrean inebriates before becoming agirl’s borstalinthe1930s. further With surrounding communities. specialised asawomen’s Itsubsequently and prison totheirrelease intothe prior back as adetentioncriminals centre local for gaol in1847–serving oftheBuckinghamshirecounty were aspart constructed ofAylesbury within thewalls YoungElements oftheblocks Institution Offenders it withhorror’ itbecauseregard be they would hanged, they murder thousands abstain of hundreds from committed men, they ‘Some thatif becausefear probably, murder they abstain from 2 1 toa moremoving hospitableprison, tohome. orone closer takehostages tonegotiate useviolenceandeven asleverage often and prisoners to bullying.vulnerable required theprotection Segregationisoften for ofinmates, rivalries,to geographical withyouths citiesbecoming from isolated and northern gangs dominate intheprison, whenitcomes clear withitsproximity toLondon a national remit; therefore come they from over theUK. all Despitethis, London areOffenders thosefrom nolonger solely nearby communities –theinstitution has gangs, it’s robbery armed don’t shoplifting, for ‘You get putinAylesbury it’s murder, it’s rape, it’s paedophilia, it’s cells.demographic intheUKsingleanddualoccupancy in1989.offenders specific housesthelargest Itcurrently population ofthis very houselong-term 1960sbefore beingdesignatedto only young intheearly offenders wings addedpopulation astheprison grew, itwasconverted tohouseyoung male Fitzjames Stephens, Fitzjames J. (1979), Nelson, A. (2012), ITV News review of Her Majesty’s of Newsreview documentary,ITV Aylesbury Prison: 1 A Theory of Criminal Justice A Criminal of Theory

– crimes’ The mosthorrendous , Press. US: University Oxford [p.189] ITV Productions.ITV 2 25 Suspended Sentence Fig. 12 The Walls HMYOI Aylesbury Fig. 11 The Blocks HMYOI Aylesbury inmates from widersociety. for set intheoutlineofbriefs This modelisechoed andaroutineof reformationeducation –theinstilling andseparationof a deterrent exercise physical –withrestrictive regimes –andasatool ofgruelling gaol andborstalmodelsemployedThe original on thesite were intendedasboth innit, that’s itgoes how innit. That’s it how goes’ putyou they down, before innit.down Igotta onyou, putinthework you if die, you die don’t get wiped out. ain’t Sothey going to you comeand smack up, soyou gotta them smack you’re‘When inthemomentandyou’re fightingbruv, you’re fighting tosurvive, so you asp?nameofprison=hmyoi_aylesbury [Accessed 15.06.13] asp?nameofprison=hmyoi_aylesbury 4 3 Mail. Daily 2 1 is,prisons to occursbetween the transfer adult ages of21and22, although official InstitutionOffenders intendsto focussed remain on reform. Thequestion posed is21yearsheld intheprison old. anopen-endedsentence ofthistype, serving currently buttheoldestprisoner reintegration. of HMYOI thewalls Aylesbury,Within one infive inmatesis would notbereleased withoutconsiderablemeasures toensure theirsuccessful protection tore-offend -seenasasafeguard toensurelikely thatviolentcriminals In 2012, ofJusticeintroducedforpublic sentences indeterminate The Ministry afternoon match onSkySports’ don’t‘I sittingincells watching theSunday [wantto] inthiscountry seeprisoners that people enjoy being in.’ being ‘ were atmediareportage thatsuggested Justice hitback prisoners for ofState Secretary prisons. ofcontemporary the construction Grayling, Inlate2012Chris thecurrent Grayling, C. (2012), Wright, J. (2012), Inside Times,(2013) Johnson, D. (2012), routinely handedprivileges’ War to Hard bethrough earned Privileges Work Minister onHoliday for calls CampJailPerks asPrisons andGood Behaviour Her Majesty’s Aylesbury Prison: Prison Shouldbe Prison Tougher Grayling Criminals, Chris for Warns, JusticeSecretary HMYOI Aylesbury Prison andRegime Information Prison HMYOI Aylesbury 3 , Productions. ITV 4 As such, theregime withinAylesbury Young 2 saying that ‘ saying , Available at: http://www.insidetime.org/info-regimes2. 1 prison isnotmeanttoprison be a place The Telegraph. , 27 Suspended Sentence when do they stop being young offenders, and how can a suitable indeterminate period be measured against one that is fit for the crimeas well as one to sufficiently enable the individual to no longer pose a threat to society? And what is the effect on the prisoner and his attitude to personal reform, when faced with serving an indeterminate period of confinement?

Long-term serving prisoner and infamously difficult to manage inmate, Ben Gunn, was imprisoned at the age of 14 for a period of 30 years, and reflects on the period of time he served, suggesting that ‘being a good prisoner does not make you a good citizen.’ 1 It is perhaps the case that excessive separation from the outside world can have a negative impact on realistic opportunities for reform, especially for young offenders. Suspended Sentence

1 Gunn, B. (2010), Ben’s Prison Blog: Lifer on the Loose, Available at: http://prisonerben.blogspot.co.uk/ [Accessed 15.09.13] 28 Fig. 14 The Gatehouse 2013HMYOI Aylesbury Fig. 13 The Gatehouse 1845HMYOI Aylesbury In Can History be a Design Guide for Prisons, Thomas A Markus presents spatial maps of prisons as ‘pure tree, diluted tree, closed net, open net and hamlet’ 1 formats, dependent on the limitations applied to the movements of prisoners around their confining institution. The ideologies represented by these spatial diagrams is evident with an understanding of internal power relations in the case of each prison brief.

Aylesbury Young Offenders Institution represents apure tree prison, drawing on the traditional nineteenth century prison. The ‘entrance is through a secure gate, a series of outer courts, control buildings and inhabitant spaces. […] Communal buildings are entered from a cloister-like internal space, one of which leads to a deeper space which in turn leads to communal day hall that will have prison staff on duty when it is in use. It is from here that the cells open. They are on the tips of branches at the deepest point of the spatial structure. Communication between them is not possible directly, but only through the root of the branches – a space shared by prisoners and staff and hence always under surveillance’ 2­

The level of control at the outermost threshold of Aylesbury Young Offenders Institution – the gatehouse - is the highest of any part of the prison and the fact that inhabitants and visitors to the prison share this entrance sequence creates a degree of solidarity between them. As they enter the institution, the extent to which they become disconnected from the outside world is the same, as is the very strict regime of surveillance and control applied. In the same way that the wings of each block are described as branching from a point of surveillance, the allowance for movement of inhabitant and visitor is compared to the rings of a tree. Increased Indeterminate Confines

1 Markus, T. (1994), Can History be a Guide to the Design of Prisons? from Architecture of Incarceration, London. Academy Editions. [p.17] 30 Fig. 17 Typical Wing HMYOI Aylesbury Fig. 16 Urban Form HMYOI Aylesbury Fig. 15 Pure Branch Prison Models depth into the confines of the prison represents inverted levels of power, as they become further disconnected with the outer territories, and their freedom.

‘I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky’ 1

Within contemporary prison policy, separation from wider society is key, but a degree of hierarchy between structures remains elemental, from the cell, to the wing, to the block. Peter Wayne suggests, however, that ‘such organisations are rigid, predictable and work by control of all interactions at each level as well as between levels. They leave little room for chance events or encounter choice, crossing of hierarchical thresholds, or change.’ 2 As the opportunity for individual change and reform is often a principle aim of holding a prisoner in an institution such as this, the level of control applied to both environments and interactions should be further considered.

‘The Gordian knot of the poor laws not cut but untied – all by a simple idea in architecture’ 3

Through an examination of the tools of an architecture fundamentally defined by the pursuit of control– exemplified by the ‘all-seeing’Panopticon Prison, conceived by Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century – the evolution of prisons as an architectural typology demonstrates and enables investigations of parallels with wider societies’ grapples with regulation and with the parameters of control. Indeterminate Confines

1 Wilde, O. (1897), Prison Writings, London: Book Jungle. [p.5] 1 Wayne, P. (1994), The Landlocked Fleet from Architecture of Incarceration, London. Academy Editions. [p.22] 3 Bentham, J. (2001), The Works of Jeremy Bentham, London: Adamant. [p. 41] 32 Fig. 19 The Tower The Panopticon Fig. 18 In the Cell The Panopticon Jeremy Bentham considered the most complete notion of surveillance and application of it as an architectural proposal:

‘The building circular - A cage, glazed - a glass lantern about the Size of Ranelagh - The prisoners in their cells, occupying the circumference - The officers in the centre. By blinds and other contrivances, the inspectors concealed from the observation of the prisoners: hence the sentiment of a sort of omnipresence - The whole circuit reviewable with little, or if necessary without any, change of place. One station in the inspection part affording the most perfect view of every cell’ 1

As described, and in the truest model of the panopticon, the observed does not know whether or not they are observed – the point from which they are watched cannot be seen from their perspective. As such it is the threat of surveillance and the ‘state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power’ 2 to the observer.

‘In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions- to enclose to deprive of light and to hide - it preserves on the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap’ 3

With closed circuit television cameras prevalent in all inhabited spaces within the walls, Aylesbury Young Offenders Institution continues to thrive on a method of constant surveillance, fuelling the sense that offenders cannot be trusted to take Indeterminate Confines

1 Bentham, J. (1798), Proposal for a New and Less Expensive mode of Employing and Reforming Convicts, London: Adamant. [p.195] 2 Foucault, M. (1991), Discipline and Punish, London: Penguin. [p.201] 3 Bentham, J. (1798), Proposal for a New and Less Expensive mode of Employing and Reforming Convicts, London: Adamant. [p.200] 34 responsibility for their actions, even within the confines of the prison. Privileges may be granted in response to good behaviour, but do not alter the level of surveillance and personal invasion each prisoner is subjected to. It is a constant, and privacy is entirely negated. As such the weight and extent of their inhibited freedom does not alter throughout their period of detention, regardless of the status of their reformative transition.

‘The prison buildings which emerged in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century were designed in accordance with a philosophy that is now redundant. Stemming from the optimistic spirit of The Enlightenment and filtered through the ideas of figures as Hanway, Beccaria, Eden, Howard and Bentham, separate or solitary confinement of the prisoner in his cell […] was devised to effect punishment and prevent moral contamination, but also to act as a form of therapy, inducing reflection and repentance’1

Aylesbury Young Offenders Institution is made up seven wings, with the three primary wings radiating from a central point of surveillance. As well as theories of surveillance and the panopticon, theories of separation have become prevalent influences in the design of prisons, including HMYOI Aylesbury. The suggestion that in not only separating the offender from society, but also from other offenders is drawn from the suggestion that, like a medical ailment or contagion, criminal intent may pass from prisoner to prisoner by proximity. Over half of the young offenders are held in these radiating wings, with remaining accommodation wings dedicated to poor copers, those undertaking sex offender treatment, and those preparing for resettlement outside of the prison. As such, there exists an implied progression from wing to wing as the prisoner becomes closer to the point of Indeterminate Confines

1 Spens, I. (2000), A Simple Idea in Architecture from Architecture of Incarceration, London. Academy Editions. [p.17] 35 Fig. 21 London Fig. 20 Panopticon Plan Millbank Prison eventual release. This echoes ritual rites of passage, and any distinctions that can be established between each liminal zone, as the transition is made, become key in establishing a permanent change in the rehabilitated individual.

During an unannounced inspection in April 2013, many new inmates stated that they were scared prior to arrival at Aylesbury Young Offenders Institution,1 this fear having been fuelled further by those detaining them at other institutions and by the ITV documentary that filmed inside the institution in early 2013.2 It would seem that prisoners held at other institutions have as little concept of the inner workings of HMYOI Aylesbury as members of the public outside of the system.

‘The average time out of cell on weekdays was around 7.5 hours a day for fully employed prisoners [...] and 2.5 hours for those who did not work. Association was cancelled too frequently and we found an average of a third of the population locked up during the working day’ 1

A problematic friction lies between a desire to separate, whilst preventing dissociation and alienation. To allow inmates to mix could be seen as enabling a criminal breeding ground, yet enforcing separation assumes a lack of trust. Ultimately all detained offenders must take responsibility for re-association upon their release, and this must be practiced in advance of this.

‘Behind the disciplinary mechanism can be read the haunting memory of contagions, of the plague, of rebellions, crimes, vagabondage, desertions, people who appear and disappear, live and die in disorder’ 3 Indeterminate Confines

1 Hardwick, N, (2013), Report on an unannounced inspection of HMYOI Aylesbury, London: Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons. [p.5] 2 Ibid. [p.14] 3 Foucault, M. (1991), Discipline and Punish, London: Penguin. [p.198] 37 The concept of crime is, in its human construction, of an evolving and subjective nature. It is only within a governed society that attempts are made to make it objective and definitive under laws and a criminal justice system.

‘For a population used to a criminal justice system characterized by routine detention of suspects, disregard for legal niceties, long sentences and a ban on public criticism, these developments (the exposure of the bad new) understandably produced images of a system verging on chaos or collapse’ 1

Socially, we too find ourselves in a liminal phase, between retributive and reformative urges. But has the demographic been narrowed so extensively in the best interests of those housed, and in the best interests of their rehabilitation, or has it been done for the purposes of easier management of prisoners and cost-cutting?

‘The heaviness of the old houses of security, with their fortress-like architecture, could be repled by the simple, economic geometry of a house of certainty’ 2

And cost-cutting, it would seem, is a an increasingly pressing matter. With government cuts putting pressure on all departments to reduce public spending, the Ministry of Justice is no exception. As recently as September 2013, the media reports that ‘Wormwood Scrubs, the west London prison, is on a knife-edge [...] with an alarming 50% growth in the use of force or restraining measures to control prisoners in an increasingly violent, gang-dominated jail.’ 3 With the considerable variation in expenditure across the prison system, with some prison places costing £108’000 per year and others as little as £26’000, 4 the focus has become on reducing the cost per Hanging in the Balance

1 Maris Los (2002), A Suitable Amount of Crime, London: Routledge. [p.63] 2 Foucault, M. (1991), Discipline and Punish, London: Penguin. [p.202] 3 Travis, A. (2013), Wormwood Scrubs Prison on Knife Edge because of Staff Cuts, Guardian. 4 ­­ Lockyer, K. (2013), Future Prisons: A Radical Plan to Reform the Prison Estate, London: Policy Exchange. [p.5] 38 place rather than the number of places, as was previously the aim with Kenneth Clark’s proposed 50% reduction in sentence tariffs on receipt of a guilty plea.1 Although, through this, considerable savings would be made on court expenditure and prison costs, the proposal short-sightedly does not consider the best interests of either the offender or the victims of crime.

‘Mackay: There are only two rules in this prison: 1 - do not write on the walls. 2 - You obey all the rules.’ 2

Without having had contact with those held within its confines, the general public has a limited understand of Her Majesty’s Prison Service. This is proliferated by the consumption of a red-top newspaper led understanding that prison represents a ‘holiday camp.’ 3 Despite the long-passed abolition of , media propagation of the spectacle of punishment remains. The extreme of this is illustrated in the fictional but frighteningly recognisableWhite Bear Justice Park instalment of Charlie Brooker’s , where the accomplice to the murder of a young girl is subjected to daily torture, repeated ad infinitumand broadcast to the world via the entertained theme-park-goers’ mobile phone-filmed footage. The general public become voyeurs and transmitters of the torture of a criminal for the purposes of their appeasement. This prophetic allusion to real-life witch hunts, often led by red-top newspapers, where a trial by media often takes place is a disconcerting reflection of the state of the criminal justice system.

It would seem that there is still the desire for prisons to serve to punish – in the interest of those who are wronged by the criminals, where this now extends to Hanging in the Balance

1 Clarke, K. (2011), 50pc Discount in Jail Term for Rapists who Enter Early Guilty Plea, The Telegraph. 2 La Frenais, I. (1975), Season 2, Episode 1: Just Desserts from Porridge, BBC. 3 Kinsella, B. (2011), Ex-EastEnders Star whose Brother was Stabbed to Death Brands Young Offenders’ Institutions Holiday Camps, Daily Mail. 39 Fig. 23 Aerial Diagrams HM Prison Estate Fig. 22 Aerial Diagrams HM Prison Estate wider society as they become engaged with the crime via media perpetration and court room twitter-feeds. Further, there remains a very human desire to reform – in the interest of the criminal wrongdoer, and in the interest of maintaining a safer society. As such, how does the prison typology best respond to these evolving needs alongside a growing population and budget cuts? It would seem that excessive definition and crystallisation of the typology alongside ongoing distillation of the demographic held is not constructive in serving to rehabilitate offenders. Further, the repeating of the same typology cultivates a creative stasis and a general lack of motivation to improve the model. It could be deemed that prisons should not be so detached and confined from the communities and the wider society that they serve in order that judgements are not made via the media, but via a true understanding of their workings and their aims.

‘These dwellings are indestructible so long as the social form of which they are a symbol endures’ 1

As with other confining and politically confined typologies, prisons have become constructs solely of the architectural diagram - Their basic principle becomes evident even when viewed in satellite aerial photos. Values held by the contemporary society about the purpose of the prison, whether to punish, deter, heal or mend the wrong-doing inmates is directly and manifestly reflected in the architectural principles of prisons built within the defining era.

But, if prisons are a direct and physical result of our ideals regarding punishment and reform – and if they are assumed to be unsuccessful so long as statistics Hanging in the Balance

1 Genet, J. (1949), The Thief ’s Journal, Paris: Olympia Press. [p.38] 41 demonstrate that ‘26.8% of those released from custody re-offend within a year’ 1 how are principles best re-examined to inform a more successful architectural approach? Government moves suggest the answer to issues with the current system is a super prison that will house 3’000 offenders, almost double the current largest prison population, as currently held at HM Prison , on a single greenfield in North Wales, whilst disposing of existing stock, now deemed unsuitable to deal with the challenges of the future.

‘It is often urged upon the Prison Department that the only thing to do with the Victorian inheritance is to pull it down’ 2

Although the construction of new prisons answers issues relating to the economic stability offered in detaining and accommodating 600 more offenders in the prison system each week,3 it does little to reassess the true objectives and desirable outcomes so as to inform a new diagram or design typology. It is clear that, at present, the stance taken in the construction of new prisons and the demolition of Victorian prisons - Dartmoor, Wakefield and Parkhurst initially - demonstrates that we hang in the balance, or in a societal liminal between corporal punishment and rehabilitation as a punitive measure, and that the evolution of the prison typology will continue to suffer so long as we grapple with the ideals of the criminal justice system. Hanging in the Balance

1 Ministry of Justice. (2011), Proven Reoffending: April 2010 to March 2011, Available at: http://www.justice.gov.uk [Accessed 06.07.13] 2 Fairweather, L. (1979), Prison Architecture, Oxford: Architectural Press. [p.21] 3 Travis, A. (2013), Privatising Probation Service will put Public at Risk, Officials tell Grayling, Guardian. 42 43 Fig. 24 Defensible Space The Aylesbury Estate The Estate:

The Aylesbury Estate, Elephant & Castle ‘Better a broken promise than none at all’ 1

Designed by architect Hans P Trenton, construction on the 285’000 square metre plot of land - roughly the size of Canary Wharf - now occupied by the infamous Aylesbury Estate began in 1963 and was intended to house some of London’s poorest families in a mixture of high - and low - rise apartment blocks connected by airborne walkways and deck access. The considerable feat of building the Aylesbury took more than a decade, and the final block wasn’t finished until 1977. As Miles Glendenning and Stefan Muthesius note in their book Tower Block, councillors in places like Southwark saw themselves as housing crusaders, ‘determined to give their people new homes, as many and as fast as possible.’ 1 The construction of the Aylesbury in 1963 was seen as an opportunity to house 10’000 residents – aiming to match the population, at that time, of its namesake in Buckinghamshire. This represented an admirable vision and was hailed as a part of the wider utopian objective of creating the greatest density of social housing in Europe. Although the councillors were determined to push forward with the development of the 50 utopian housing blocks, the construction of this new housing typology was equally mourned as a loss of community - as is evident from the considerable number of original Elephant and Castle residents featured in the 1972 documentary We Was All One.

‘A giant liner without any funnels’ 2

At the start of the 1930s, through his work The Minimum Dwelling, Karel Teige examined the International Congress of Modern Architects’ plan to create Promised Utopia Promised

1 Twain, M. (1927), More Maxims of Mark, New York. Johnson. [p.10] 2 Glendenning, M. and Muthesius, S. (1994), Tower Block: Modern Public Housing in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, US: Yale University Press. [p.224] 3 Christie, A. (1940), The Isokon Building,Available at: http://www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/archive/f190603_3.htm [Accessed 21.07.13] 45 Fig. 27 Construction The Aylesbury Estate Fig. 26 Lost Community Elephant and Castle Fig. 25 Social Crusaders The Aylesbury Estate comfortable and livable standardised dwellings for Europe’s working masses. Teige’s ideals were proposed as a solution to the housing crisis that had begun to span Europe, and would be applicable to all contexts. Teige suggested this was not a question of ‘simply reducing the number and size of rooms, or simplifying mechanical services and other amenities’ but proposed a requirement for ‘a reorganisation of the floor plan and opting for less expensive mechanical equipment and furniture.’ 1 Although based on an admirable vision, this left little consideration for the inhabitants of these limited and limiting spaces.

Drawing on these ideals and only a year after The Minimum Dwellingwas published, The Isokon Building in Hampstead, designed by architect Wells Coates, was built as an experiment in communal living and minimum space standards. Flats were equipped with small kitchens but predominantly relied on a centrally- located communal kitchen. A communal laundry was also available to residents, encouraging them to extend their residential territories beyond the limiting space they inhabited as individuals into collective space. At the time the concept was revolutionary, and the building was reviled for a period after it’s construction. Jonathan Glancey has since described it as ‘an experiment in collective housing designed for left-wing intellectuals’ 2 As social ideals shifts, The Isokon Building became fashionable, housing Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Agatha Christie among others.

Despite the best intentions, and further to his developments and understanding of the reduction in space standards for housing, Teige suggested that: ‘the most profits can be made on the worst and smallest apartments, because their construction Promised Utopia Promised

1 Teige, K. (1932), The Minimum Dwelling, Massachusetts: The MIT Press [p.238] 2 Glancey J. (2000), Before the Fall, London: 3 Teige, K. (1932), The Minimum Dwelling, Massachusetts: The MIT Press [p.234] 47 Fig. 29 The Isokon Building Hampstead Fig. 28 Flat Layout The Minimum Dwelling costs can be kept to a minimum and because they provide a primitive level of comfort compared with larger apartments’ 3 and as such, the minimum dwelling became a desirable model for developers to exploit. Alongside this The Parker Morris Committee drew the Homes for Today and Tomorrow report in 1961, a prominent report reflecting on housing space standards in the UK’s stock of social housing. The report concluded that as living standards rose, the quality of social housing provided by the government should be required to increase in parallel. Echoing Teige’s principles, the committee recommended space standards based on standard furniture dimensions and anthropometric activity zones around these. Between 1967 and 1969 the Parker Morris Space Standards became mandatory for all new social housing. This was good news for social housing constructed after this date, but as construction of The Aylesbury Estate had begun by 1963, it was not forced to comply with the standards and regulations set out.

Despite this, space standards at the Aylesbury Estate are considered generous in comparison with those constructed under more recent regulation. The early 1980s saw the Parker Morris Standards thrown out, with growing concerns of the cost of building new social housing, and wider public spending, and it could be argued that the standard of house-building has suffered as a direct result of this.

‘I am in no doubt that some existing tenants value the generous space standards that some of the existing flats provide and that the extensive glazing which is a feature of most of the flats provides a light and airy living space. However, there are fundamental shortcomings in the urban form which is characterised by monolithic blocks of flats of up to 14 storeys accessed largely by elevated walkways’ 1 Promised Utopia Promised

1 Juniper, B (2009), Report on the Examination of the Aylesbury Area Action Plan to the Council of the London Borough of Southwark, London: Southwark Council 49 It would seem it is the extended thresholds and the collective space that is accused of causing problems. As Oscar Newman notes in his writings on defensible space around dwellings, ‘As one moves to denser and denser agglomerations - to row houses, walk-up flats and high-rise apartments - opportunities for individual and collective efforts at defining territory become increasingly difficult.’1 Where territorial definitions are unclear, responsibility for any space beyond the threshold of the home is relegated to public authorities, and it is likely to fall into disrepair as a result. The relationship between the individual and the collective has been too poorly considered, leaving a void which is physically represented by under-maintained walkways and dark and uninviting stairwells. It could be argued that as this no- man’s land becomes extended further by these necessary means of access on the Aylesbury Estate, but the lack of territorial definition exacerbates disconnection, creating discord between public domains and the private domestic realm. The confining nature of the elevated walkways clearly presents an issue, in situations of dense inhabitation:

‘I remember growing up and seeing grey, very narrow walkways which are sort of prone to conflict. You can only walk past the same person so many times without someone saying ‘Who are you?’ or ‘What’s all this about?’ There were very grubby lifts where people would urinate. Those high-rises, when you wake up in the morning, they don’t inspire you - you don’t feel the need to want to get out of there’ 1

Surveillance is considered key, in environments where communities will look out for each other. A sense of passive surveillance is encouraged on the Aylesbury Estate, with walkways and flats overlooking all communal areas. As such, when Home Truths Home

1 Tinie Tempah. (2012), An Interview on the BBC News, BBC. 2 Ballard, J.G. (1975), High Rise, New York: Liveright. [p.108] 50 Fig. 32 Walkway 2013 The Aylesbury Estate Fig. 31 Stairwell 2013 The Aylesbury Estate Fig. 30 Walkway 1972 The Aylesbury Estate a resident was shot in the communal garden between the blocks of the estate on Boxing Day 2007, disappointment was expressed that the body lay undiscovered for more than 24 hours. Despite the sense of constant surveillance, it seemed no one was watching and no one being was monitored, and that this perhaps posed more of a threat to their safety. No one was looking out for anyone. With closed-circuit television cameras at each corner, passively monitoring goings on, there is a sense of anticipated crime, but the cameras will do little to intervene when it occurs. This is literal surveillance, as the cameras watch, from above.

‘Crushed by the pressure of all the people above him, by the thousands of individual lives, each with its pent up time and space’ 1

Whether the crime is the result of the architecture itself, or the gheottoisation of those below the poverty line, in desperate need such that they turn to crime to support themselves, is up for question. Crime statists show that in one month alone in 2012, ‘1,500 offences were committed within a one-mile radius of the Aylesbury, including 218 violent crimes, 217 robberies, 81 drug-related incidents and 359 anti- social behaviour cases’ 2 and yet, the Aylesbury Estate in isolation experiences 45% lower recorded crime levels than in Southwark as whole. 3

The Aylesbury Estate has become the third most deprived ward in Southwark, which itself is the eighth most deprived borough in England. Poverty has come to represent a lack of social freedom which extends to a lack of choice about an individual’s defining environment - their home. When freedom is denied to so many, in such high density, as is the case on The Aylesbury Estate, the situation is Home Truths Home

1 Ballard, J.G. (1975), High Rise, New York: Liveright. [p.108] 2 Wynne-Jones, R. (2013), Residents on Europe’s Largest Estate say it isn’t Hell, it’s Home, London: The Mirror 3 Creation (2013), Crime Statistics, Available at: http://www.creationtrust.org/facts-and-figures [Accessed 18.08.13] 52 exacerbated by a neglected collective environment. The area is now considered to be in the bottom category on the ACORN classification for inner city adversity, signifying an area of extremely high social disadvantage. And the stigma associated with social housing remains with its inhabitants long beyond their occupation of the blocks.

‘You believe yourself to be proud of having overcome the limitation of your environment - literally, of having escaped a kind of prison - and yet you know that in some ways you will never escape’ 1

Further, despite Metropolitan Police crime mapping showing comparatively low rates of violent crime in and around the Aylesbury Estate, there are higher levels of personal robbery than in any of the surrounding areas. 2 This supports the notion that the Aylesbury Estate represents an island of poverty sinking beneath a flooding influx of prosperity in the wider context of South London, taking with it its inhabitants. In the face of the struggling Aylesbury Estate and the social issues that prevail, it is questionable whether the rich and poor can coexist in the confines of an ever densifying metropolis without the conception of fractious divides.

‘D.I. Frampton - It’s not Northern Ireland Harry Harry Brown - No it’s not. Those people were fighting for something; for a cause. To them out there, this is just entertainment’ 3 Home Truths Home

1 Hanley, L. (2012), Estates: An Intimate History, London: Granta Books. [p.5] 2 Metropolitan Police (2013), Metropolitan Police Map, Available at: http://maps.met.police.uk/ [Accessed 10.07.13] 3 Barber. D (2009) Harry Brown. Marv Films. 53 In 1997 Tony Blair chose to direct his first speech as Prime Minister to the residents of the Aylesbury Estate, but actually to the wider world, with the Aylesbury Estate as a vehicle for his message:

‘I have chosen this housing estate to deliver my first speech as Prime Minister for a very simple reason. For 18 years, the poorest people in our country have been forgotten by government. They have been left out of growing prosperity, told that they were not needed, ignored by the Government except for the purpose of blaming them. I want that to change. There will be no forgotten people in the Britain I want to build ‘ 1

In From Reformism to Resignation and Remedialism? Labour’s Trajectory Through British Politics, Mark Wickham Jones in part studies New Labour’s successes and the electoral recovery that built to the climactic moment at which this speech was made, questioning whether it was achieved through ‘the abandonment of any remaining social democratic ideological commitments.’ 1 Blair describes the inhabitants on the estate as forgotten and invisible, but if this was truly the case, it would surely not have represented a poignant platform for his inaugural speech. It could be suggested that he exploited the Aylesbury Estate as it represented a contentious blight on New Labour’s political landscape. If social and class issues were rife, yet the monolithic physical representation of these remained in existence, how could the populace believe that the new government were serious about change for the better?

If Tony Blair was acting as social crusader, there were few creative crusaders bringing to life the physical manifestations of his promises. Five years later, Real Estate[s]

1 Blair, T. (1997), Speech from the Aylesbury Estate, London. 2 Wickham Jones, M. (2003), From Reformism to Resignation and Remedialism? Labour’s Trajectory Through British Politicsfrom Journal of Policy History, Cambridge. Cambridge University Journals. [p.27] 54 Fig. 35 Demolition The Aylesbury Estate Fig. 34 Tony Blair The Aylesbury Estate Fig. 33 Construction The Aylesbury Estate despite the establishment of the New Deals for Communities (NDC), intended to facilitate improved lives for those on the Aylesbury Estate specifically, little had happened.

‘Connor - You need sortin’ out, you do Mia - So you keep saying, but you’re nothing to me. So why should I care what you think?’

1

The estate had begun to fall into a state of disrepair and deprivation in the 1980s when original tenants had been forced to move by changes in the allocation of housing, but it took until 2002 for the government to respond. It was that year that the decision was taken that rather than refurbish the existing housing stock at a projected cost of £350m, a redevelopment strategy would be proposed to demolish and re-build, despite this presenting a cost of £2.4 billion. 2

In his Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain Owen Hatherley questions the intentions of this type of development, ‘where the desperate 70s class-neutral language of revitalisation, recycling, renaissance and especially regeneration was revived in the 2000s - a language as deliberately anodyne as it is ideological and mendacious; an environmentally friendly cover for class cleansing in the urban landscape.’ 3 In 2011 Neil Smith reflected on this further, suggesting that regeneration was always a gentrification strategy and that this was clear from from Blair’s 1997 launch of New Labour’s regeneration policy from the by-then-stigmatised Aylesbury Estate. 4 Real Estate[s]

1 Arnold, A. (2009), Fish Tank, BBC Films. 1 Cooper, K. (2005), Estate Faces Destruction to Escape Renovation Costs from Inside Housing, Available at: http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/ estate-faces-destruction-to-escape-renovation-costs/1446744.article [Accessed 11.07.13] 2 Hatherley, O. (2011), Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, London: Verso Books. [p. 157] 3 Smith, N. (1996), The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City, London and New York: Routledge. [p.32] 56 Fig. 38 Media Image The Aylesbury Estate Fig. 37 Media Image The Aylesbury Estate Fig. 36 Media Image The Aylesbury Estate

That 76%1 of the existing tenants voted against the stock transfer of the estate from Southwark Council ownership to housing association tenure suggests that the NDC did not have the best interests of the residents at heart. The Aylesbury Estate represented to Blair and New Labour , in their urban renaissance, a ‘symbolic and ideological role as a signifier of a spatially concentrated, dysfunctional underclass.’ 2

As Zoe Morrison suggests in a paper examining methods of gentrification, powerful language is at work in persuading the general public to agree with government plans of action, that juxtaposes the behaviours of those in such localities with mainstream society and contrasting us and them’ 3, thus giving us someone other than the government to blame for society’s failings.

‘It matters little that the discourses of demonisation that have mushroomed about them often have only tenuous connection to the reality of everyday life in them’ 4

The role of the media in the discursive misrepresentation of the estate is clear when examining, with these precursive warnings of bias, excerpts from The Daily Mail in 2005:

‘To walk around the sprawling landscape of the Aylesbury estate is like visiting hell’s waiting room’ 5 Real Estate[s] 1 Lindsay, M. (2003), Supplementary Memorandum by Defend Council Housing, London: Parliament Publications. 2 Lees, L. (2013), The Urban Injustices of New Labour’s New Urban Renewal, London: King’s College London. [p.4] 3 Morrison, Z. (2003), Cultural Justice and Addressing Social Exclusion: A Case Study of a Single Regeneration Budget Project in Blackbird Leys, Oxford, Oxford: Policy Press. [p.144] 4 Wacquant, L. (2008), Urban Outcasts.: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality, Malden: Polity Press. [p.2011] 5 Osborne, H. (2013), Tony Blair’s ‘Forgotten People’ Still Living on Crime-Riddled Aylesbury Estate - 16 Years after Promise of Help, Available at: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/420365/20130103/tony-blair-aylesbury-estate-south-london-crime.htm [Accessed 18.08.13] 58 and The Times in 2008:

‘The infamous Aylesbury Estate has had a bloody recent history. It was here, last Boxing Day, that a 20-year-old Nigerian-born asylum-seeker was shot dead after being chased through the estate. His body lay undiscovered for 26 hours in a communal garden. Here, too, in late 2005 an 18-year-old pastor’s daughter was pulled from a car and stabbed repeatedly by a teenage Angolan immigrant for failing to show him respect’ 4

Denigration by the media of the inhabiting communities represented an advantage for the NDC in that mainstream society would consider their ‘paternalistic treatment’ 1 justified regardless of the outcome of any resident consultation. The estate had become a notorious haven for crime and this legitimated plans to demolish it. This was perpetuated by the filming of the Channel Four ident in 2007, which served to further alienate both residents and outsiders:

‘To be quite honest I don’t like the media, they make the Aylesbury out to be a lot worse than it is. Everything is violence, crime and uncontrollable youth. They come and scatter washing and rubbish all over the place. How Channel 4 got away with what they did to the Aylesbury I don’t know. It makes me cringe. That’s not how we live’2

It could be argued that the intentions of the social engineering aimed at the Aylesbury Estate - of providing ‘mixed communities to overcome problems associated with area of deprivation’ 3 - are much the same as those associated with the original Real Estate[s]

4 Fletcher, M. (2008), Demolition of the Aylesbury Estate: A New Dawn for Hell’s Waiting Room? London: The Times 1 Lees, L. (2013), The Urban Injustices of New Labour’s New Urban Renewal, London: King’s College London. [p.5] 2 Bartlett, J (2012), Views on the Aylesbury, London: The Guardian 3 Noblet, P. (2010), Aylesbury Area Action Plan, London: Southwark Council 59 Fig. 41 Channel 4 Ident The Aylesbury Estate Fig. 40 Harry Brown The Aylesbury Estate Fig. 39 Top Boy The Aylesbury Estate slum clearances in London that brought about the birth of the Aylesbury Estate. The issue for inhabitants is that the reprovision will not match the existing housing, and new properties will house ‘rich residents who did not live there before.’ 1

‘The people I know are decent, you just never hear about us’2 Real Estate[s]

1 Lees, L. (2013), The Urban Injustices of New Labour’s New Urban Renewal, London: King’s College London. [p.5] 2 Wynne-Jones, R. (2013), Residents on Europe’s Largest Estate say it isn’t Hell, it’s Home, London: The Mirror. 61 62 Fig. 42 Neighbourhood Surveillance Aylesbury The Idyll:

Aylesbury, County Town of Buckinghamshire In The Freedoms of Suburbia Paul Barker states that ‘You can’t nail cities down: they are as elusive as a professional escapologist.’ 1 It is in part undeniable that it was through the ideals of Edge City movement, or Non-Plan, that London grew suburbs, and in turn its suburbs grew suburbs. The dense over population of London’s centre created the need for the pressure-abating sprawl that enabled slum clearance with the aim of improving quality of life for those who moved out. Whilst considering the causes of this low-rise-defined expansion as it began, it is important to take a stance on whether it remains beneficial to its contemporary inhabitants, situated – as they are - in the hinterland between metropolitan and rural ideals? In The City in History, American urbanist Lewis Mumford wrote that:

‘The suburban movement from the centre carries no hope of promise of life at a higher level. Just as our expanding technological universe pushes our daily existence ever further from its human centre, so the expanding urban universe carries its separate fragments ever farther from the city, leaving the individuals more dissociated, lonely and helpless than he probably ever was’ 2

But are people lonely and dissociated in suburbia? And do they become yet more so in the suburbs of London’s suburbs? It could be suggested that the dissociation becomes factored by each further fracture from the metropolis. Taking Aylesbury as London’s suburb, built up around the extending metropolitan line as it branched North West in the 1860s and originally coined a part of Metro-land in the early 1900s 3 and taking its suburban sprawl as the secondary suburb, I attempt to measure the so-called dissociation and helplessness – potentially through confinement to their environs – of the inhabitants of these territories. Suburbs of Suburbia

1 Barker, P. (2009), The Freedoms of Suburbia, London: Frances Lincoln. [p.15] 2 Mumford. L. (1961), The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects, London: Harcourt Brace International. [p.328] 3 Metropolitan Railway Country Estates Limited. (1915), Metroland. 64 Fig. 45 Expansion Aylesbury 1990s Fig. 44 Expansion Aylesbury 1960s Fig. 43 Expansion Aylesbury 1900s ‘Cosy homes for cosy heroes. Twenty five minutes from Baker Street and a Pension at the end of the line [...] Made it what it is now, a bourgeois dormitory’ 1

By all accounts, Aylesbury is an unremarkable place. Geographically, It lies 77 miles from the West coast, 82 miles from the East coast, and 40 miles from the centre of London, taken as the South end of Trafalgar Square. Apart from a brief cameo in A Clockwork Orange - it seems Aylesbury’s biggest performance has been as the setting for the first ever recorded tornado in the UK. According to local news the tornado started in nearby Wendover before moving onto Halton, ‘managing to lift

2 a few aircrafts off the drome. In Aston Clinton cattle sheds had been lifted to the trees.’ As the setting for an urban study, it provides – by the very nature of its mediocrity – a representation of many places like it in the UK. With more than three quarters of Britons deigning to live in places like it, 3 it is impossible to ignore their significance in shaping our domestic lives. We can no longer overlook the draw of the tidy house in suburbia.

‘In labour-saving homes, with care Their wives frizz out peroxide hair And dry it in synthetic air And paint their nails. Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough To get it ready for the plough. The cabbages are coming now; The earth exhales’4 Suburbs of Suburbia

1 Barnes, J. (1980), Metroland, London: Random House. [p.38] 2 Uncredited. (1950), First Tornado, Aylesbury: Bucks Herald. 3 WWF. (2006), One Planet Living in the Suburbs Report, WWF Publications. 4 Betjeman, J. (1937), Slough from John Betjeman Collected Poems, London: John Murray. [p.20] 66 Though a rapid burst of growth during the industrial revolution, Aylesbury’s population increased by almost 70% between 1801 and 1841, 1 but was still contained by the historic boundaries of what was once an iron age hill fort and a strong hold of ancient Britons. Accommodating the increasing population caused over-crowding at the centre of the small town, and the pressure on its outdated boundaries grew. The yielding of this boundary through the extension of the high street in the 1820s could be seen as the start of something far more significant. As housing demand grew exponentially, both in London and in its immediate satellite towns, industrial development also moved into Aylesbury, with sizeable work forces following. The impetus for expansion of the town again increased.

‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’ 2­

A further drive for expansion and house-building came with the post-World War I Homes for Heroes campaign, particularly to the south of the centre on the Southcourt Estate. The estate doubled in the 1920s, and again in the 1930s, enabling slum clearance from the densely inhabited centre of Aylesbury. Post WWII, the New Towns Movement created the context for further construction, again with the predominant aim of easing pressure on London. Funding for this, from London, saw the birth of the Bedgrove Estate in 1959, quickly gaining and losing the title of largest housing estate in the country. 3 Expansion outwards caused the newly constructed housing estates to engulf several bordering villages and hamlets, with Aylesbury becoming a further and further sprawling and homogenous mass. Suburbs of Suburbia

1 Ward, M. (2005), The Economic Development of a County Town during the Industrial Revolution: Aylesbury, 1700 - c.1850, Cambridge: Downing College Press. [p.41] 2 Yeats, W. B. (1919), The Second Comingfrom The Collected Poems of W.B.Yeats, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics. [p.158] 3 Bucks Herald. (2002), Memory Lane Aylesbury: Into The Seventies, Derby: Breedon Books. [p.44] 67 Fig. 47 Metropolitan Line Aylesbury Fig. 46 Homes in Metroland Aylesbury ‘Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many’ 1

Having grown from a population of 28’000 in 1960s to over 58,000 in 2011 following further migration from London to ease pressure, these days, Aylesbury has become an almost-commuter town, with the journey time just beyond the ‘maximum acceptable daily commute time of one hour each way.’ 2 The boundaries of London as an urban sprawl can no longer be defined by the M25, as was stated in 1968 by the ‘Greater London Boundary’ 3. Its reaches now stray further out, along the fissures created by rail and road, and into the countryside. This new suburban stock represents an extension of London, and its borders continue to push further.

‘There is much to learn from architecture before it became an expert’s art. The untutored buildings in space and time – the protagonists of this show – demonstrate an admirable talent for fitting their buildings into the natural surroundings instead of trying to conquer nature, as we do’ 4 Suburbs of Suburbia

1 Eliot, T S. (1962), Unreal City from The Waste Land, London: Faber and Faber. [p.62] 2 Locrating. (2013), Commuter Maps and Statistics, Available at: http://www.locrating.com/CommutingMap.aspx [Accessed 18.09.13] 3 The Greater London Kent and Surrey Order (1968),The Greater London Boundary, Available at: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/ commons/1968/ dec/17/greater-london-kent-and-surrey-order [Accessed 20.09.13] 4 Rudofsky, B. (1987), Architecture Without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture, US: University of New Mexico Press. [p.10] 69 ‘The suburb is a kind of scum churning against the walls of the city. It constitutes one of the greatest evils of the century’ 1

For Le Corbusier, the high density city – in the form of medium and high rise blocks – would enable the integration of expansive park land, embedding light, air and greenery into the city. His vehement objection to the Garden City model was grounded in his opposition to the hours of commuting which sprawling low densities imposed. But the high rise is vehemently objected to by many suburban types, preferring to be sold the more easily digested mock-Tudor semi, with associated lifestyle aspirations.

‘All innovations were heralded by notes, and all withdrawals and adjustments thus proclaimed. Experienced guests were aware that to take the smallest step in an original or unusual direction would be to provoke a sharp note within twenty-four hours at the outside, and they had therefore, for the most part, abandoned originality’ 2

The cause of expansion in the suburbs, and in Aylesbury’s suburbs in particular, remains clear. An expanding and steadily urbanising population creates a demand for housing. It is in light of this type of outward expansion however, or ‘density inside out’ 3 that I question why this type of development was deemed most suitable for Aylesbury, and why it continues to prevail across the UK as the most prevalently applied solution to an unquenchable need for new homes.

‘There was something depressing, Deidre felt, in a place that had grown up within living memory, She would have liked to live in the heart of London or deep in the country’ 4 London’s City Limits London’s

1 Le Corbusier (1933), Speech to the International Congress on Modern Architecture, Athens. 2 Hamilton, P. (2006), Slaves of Solitude, London: Constable. [p.7] 3 As coined by Jacobs, J. M. (2007), An Inter-Disciplinary Conference, The University of Edinburgh. 4 Pym, B. (1955), Less Than Angels, London. Virago. [p.142] 70 The immediacy of this type of development and the urgency with which it was carried out is an influential factor but I question whether the period of time between the arrival of the demand and the delivery of homes may have enabled an opportunity to change the nature of housing for the better, rather than allow standards to deteriorate. Ian Nairn passionately disagrees with the mindless sprawl that began to dominate development in the mid-1950s, describing it as the ‘creeping mildew that already circumscribes all of our towns’ 1 and­ coining it ‘subtopia’ - a portmanteau of utopia, as it was sold to the masses, and suburb, as it was in actuality. He objected to its sameness and its lack of any distinct character, and reflected that it could only have a negative impact on those who inhabited it.

‘The doom of an England reduced to universal Subtopia, a mean and middle state, neither town nor country, an even spread of abandoned aerodromes and fake rusticity, wire fences, traffic roundabouts, gratuitous notice-boards, car-parks and Things in Fields’2

But, considering its proliferation and success as a technique of providing housing of a palatable density to the masses - and outside of the ivory tower of the architectural profession - perhaps this is what society wants? And, as such, we may be destined to live out our domestic lives in identically matched, low-rise suburban sprawl.

‘There’s something sinister about all these identical silent homes, when you look at them like this. The less you see happening on the outside, the more certain you are that strange things are going on inside. The sun comes out. The sun goes in’3 London’s City Limits London’s

1 Nairn, I. (1955), Outrage, London: The Architectural Press. [p.364] 2 Ibid. [p.368] 3 Frayn, M (2002), Spies, London: Faber and Faber. [p.68] 71 Fig. 49 1950s Expansion Aylesbury Fig. 48 Overfurnishing Outrage ‘The equation that produces Subtopia out of a good idea is always the same: the mass application of misunderstood principles’ 1

From the outset, suburbia represented a state of mind as much as an architectural proposition. Its offer was a better quality of life more suitable for the family unit, where the emphasis was on home and garden , wife and children. The Grossmiths’ The Diary of a Nobodydescribes this desire, through Mr Pooter, of Upper Holloway: ‘After my work in the City, I like to be at home. What’s the good of a home, if you are never in it? Home, Sweet Home, that’s my motto ... there is always something to be done: a tin-tack here, a venetian blind to put straight, a fan to nail up, or part of a carpet to nail down.’ 2 Suburbia’s aim was to enable people to spend time maintaining their domestic environs with the associated sense of pride and ownership that would encourage them to do so.

‘Nina looked down and saw inclined at an odd angle an horizon of straggling red suburbs; arterial roads dotted with little cars; a disused canal; some distant hills sown with bungalows; wireless masts and overhead power cables; men and women were indiscernible except as tiny spots; they were marrying and shopping and making money and having children. The scene lurched and tilted as the aeroplane struck a current of air. I think I am going to be sick, said Nina’ 3

In Aylesbury, exemplary of other towns of its size in the UK, the low-rise housing estate prevails as a sprawl that has engulfed, beyond recognition, the boundaries of the existing historic centres. This type of masterplan began to be introduced to the town in the late 1950s, with the construction of the previously discussed Bedgrove NeGated Development NeGated

1 Nairn, I. (1955), Outrage, London: The Architectural Press. [p.371] 2 Grossmith, G. and Grossmith, W. (1888), The Diary of a Nobody, London: Wordsworth Editions [p.31] 3 Waugh, E. (1930), Vile Bodies, London: Penguin Classics [p.168] 73 Estate to house 9’000 residents. More recently, the construction of 1’900 homes in Fairford Leys saw the application of a design code from the very start of the process, drawing inspiration from a medieval city wall concept as conceived by John Simpson, and with mediaeval gate towers marking its entrance. It became one of the first developments of this type in the UK, the only other being Prince Charles and Leon Krier’s much debated Poundbury scheme in Dorchester.

‘All houses are dwellings; but all dwellings are not houses. To dwell is to make one’s abode to live in, or at, or on, or about a place’ 1

This type of mass-development allows for little self-definition of the home by the inhabitant. As such, the homogenous housing development presents little consideration for peoples’ lives beyond providing a picket-fenced garden, an identikit mock-tudor frontage and a two-car driveway, satisfying the ideals of neither Jane Jacobs’ Garden City nor Le Corbusier’s ‘light filled’2 vision for The Radiant City.

‘The city has been torn apart and scattered in meaningless fragments across the countryside. What is the point of life in such places? How are people to live in them? Suburban life is a despicable delusion entertained by a society stricken with blindness!’ 3

Have we trapped ourselves in a perpetuating system of providing what has been before, for ease and economy of recycling the same schemes, because we have yet to see its failings? And what is to stop the failing, as witnessed of modernist housing that crumbled, not under social strains but under those of urban decay and poor NeGated Development NeGated

1 Oliver, P. (1987), Dwellings: The Vernacular House Worldwide, London: Phaidon Press. [p102] 2 Fishman, R. (2004), Rethinking Public Housing, US: University of California Press. [p.16] 3 Le Corbusier (1967), Introducing Architectural Theory: Debating a Discipline, London: Routledge [p.279] 74 Fig. 52 ThresholdAylesbury Fig. 51 Detached Terrace Aylesbury Fig. 50 Cul de Sac Aylesbury maintenance, from happening again? J.G. Ballard, having spent much of his life in Shepperton, a suburban town in Surrey, describes the environment as ‘terrifying, because they are the death of the soul’ and expresses concern that ‘this is the prison this

2 planet is being turned into.’ Perhaps it is soul these places lack; representative of a core misunderstanding of how people want to live, by those in control of these defining environments.

So what have we created and – more importantly – how do the inhabitants of suburbia actually feel about its definition of their lives? Semi-detached and detached housing may enable a greater distance from its neighbouring dwelling than the traditional Aylesbury terrace, but is this only out of a desire to be able to scrutinise one’s neighbours, to be able to guard - through spatial separation - one’s castle from one’s untidy neighbour? Further, the panopticon cul de sac enables all residents to survey incoming traffic, to quickly identify invaders of their jointly- claimed and almost tribal territory. Suburban forms are forcedly random in their arrangement, mimicking but over-stylising a traditional hamlet’s organic growth. Closes, Drives and Avenues, weave their way between artificially scattered homes - but never Streets – urban connotations considered a muddying of the idyllic setting.

Residents of the Fairford Leys development must ensure that ‘boundary hedges are kept in good order so as not to impinge on adjoining public areas’ 2 and, should they have any complaints about their neighbours (or their neighbours hedges), they can consult with The Neighbourhood Action Group (NAG) who aim to tackle ‘crime and disorder.’ 3 NeGated Development NeGated

1 Ballard, J G. (1982), Re/Search Interview, San Francisco: Re/Search Publications. 2 John Simpson and Partners (2004), Development Control Guidelines for the Fairford Leys Development, Available at: http://www. coldharbour-pc.gov.uk/ download/FLguidelines.pdf [Accessed 10.06.13] 3Neighbourhood Action Group (2005), Neighbourhood Policy Initiative, Available at: http://www.coldharbour-pc.gov.uk/infopage. asp?infoid=305 [Accessed 10.06.13] 76 Fig. 55 ThresholdFairford Leys Fig. 54 Hampstead Close Fairford Leys Fig. 53 Knightsbridge Place Fairford Leys ‘It’s like a goldfish bowl, one local resident says of Fairford Leys near Aylesbury. Everyone knows your business’ 1

If its environment represents the definition of this breeding ground for confinement, how is suburbia so successfully sold to the masses and why does it continue to perpetuate itself? As architects and professionals who deal with the shaping of these domestic environments, should we allow ourselves to so half- heartedly define the homes, orvital spaces of the masses with so little forethought or sensitivity to evolving ideals.

‘Very English: paraquat parties behind the privet hedges, the pebble-dash prisons that keep the occupants in just as much as they keep the outside world out. English emotional and physical isolation turning ever inwards into psychosis, unnameable perversions in deep closets’ 2 NeGated Development NeGated

1 Harris, J. (2013), Welcome to Toytown: What Life is like in New-Build Britain, The Guardian. 2 Savage, J. (1991), England’s Dreaming, London: Faber and Faber. [p.485] 78 79 Fig. 56 Over the Garden Wall Aylesbury Constrictive Constructs Epilogue ‘A culture that seeks to control its citizens is likely to promote the opposite direction of interaction, away from intimate individuality and identification toward a public and distant detachment’ 1

The three namesakes examined by this study represent three defining typologies which have, and will continue to be, constructed and repeated with too passing a regard for their impact and too little measuring of their societal outcomes. Although this is a natural aspect of a multi-faceted discipline, too often architecture - specifically that built to house wider society - is built to confine, rather than to allow any element of freedom to define one’s dwelling. Taking the estate, and specifically the Aylesbury Estate, as the core typology, represents a high density of housing which is constructed in a short period of time to meet the demands of the population of the here and now, rather than being allowed to grow organically. Alongside this, Fairford Leys, the new development on the outskirts of Aylesbury is, according to residents ‘referred to as a village, but it’s an estate [...} The fact that it was all built at the same time means it’s an estate. Villages evolve, don’t they?’ 2 Perhaps these typologies bear more similarities than might initially be evident. Fairford Leys is a new development, and was built - similarly to The Aylesbury Estate - with the best of intentions for its residents. We have yet to see it successes and failings, and the infinite nature of projected futures of such architectures suggests that this is beyond the capacity of the architect to predict.

‘While utopians cannot make what they imagine, we cannot imagine what we make’ 3 Epilogue

1 Pallasmaa, J. (2005), The Eyes of the Skin, London: John Wiley and Sons. [p.49] 2 Harris, J. (2013), Welcome to Toytown: What Life is like in New-Build Britain, The Guardian. 3 Anders, G. (1981), Anthropology in the Age of Technology, Holland: Uitgeverij Damon. [p38] 81 It is not possible for the successes and failings of an estate - in this case referring to both scenarios - to be measured so soon after construction. There was little foresight to suggest that The Aylesbury Estate would begin to be demolished only 30 years after its completion, especially considering its initial praise for offering an improved quality of life from the destitution of the slums. Its demise began through societal change in the way that housing was allocated in the 1980s; a shift in social housing policy that could not have been anticipated. Perhaps our architectures are not, and cannot be, designed to outlive both the social change and the inevitable exponential demand for comfort and prosperity that will occur over the 50 year life span expected of a housing estate. The repeating of typologies without allowing for the model to evolve and become proactive rather than reactive to social need and expectation perpetuates the perceived failure of these architectures.

‘There’s something about them that makes me brim over with pain, and a sense of wrongness; even the bits that anyone else would think right [...] It’s a feeling of having been consigned, contained, delivered to a place, to serve a sentence that may never end’ 1

The successes of prison estates are far more measurable. With the current prison typology considered to be a device to reform, we measure the extent of the institution’s success by the propensity of those released to re-offend. Across the estate, the demographic varies, and not all prisoners - and in the case of those held at HMYOI Aylesbury in particular - will face parole either for an indeterminate period, or for the remainder of their lives. Although whole-life and indeterminate sentences remain rare, there are currently 6’000 2 offenders serving sentences of this type, and this is a demographic that cannot be ignored. Epilogue

1 Hanley, L. (2007), Estates: An Intimate History, London: Granta Books. [p.6] 2 BBC News. (2012), Indeterminate Sentences Breach Human Rights. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19630617 [Accessed 20.09.13] 82 ‘We have experienced a development from living in monocultures to living in multicultures’­­ 1

As the demographic held in one institution is narrowed, and separation of inmates is seen as the only solution to enable rehabilitation, prisoners become alienated and disconnected with any sense of social hierarchy. Although plans to house 3’000 offenders within each newly proposedsuper prison will reverse the narrowing of the demographic from only those having committed the same type or extent of crime, it is essential that human interaction is considered in the micro-planning of their confining spaces. The sense of amini-society’ ‘ 2 is essential in ensuring that an offender will reintegrate into life outside the confines of the prison. In a similar way to estates inhabited only by the poor, a block within a prison only inhabited by serial and serious offenders is unlikely to yield positive societal outcomes.

‘She heard a couple of frozen people muttering and blundering behind her, and another couple muttering and blundering ahead of her. A solitary firefly-holder came blundering by her. The earth was muffled from the stars; the river and the pretty eighteenth-century bridge were muffled from the people; the people were muffled from each other’2

In Estates Lynsey Hanley speaks of the wall of the mind and it is important to consider that confinement can be both applied and implied, and can have a far more defining effect than that of immediate or temporary constraint. The applied barriers of the prison - the 10m high perimeter walls - are as powerfully confining as the implied territorial definition of the concrete walkway in an estate, or the edge Epilogue

1 Christie, N (2004), A Suitable Amount of Crime, London: Routledge. [p.13] 2 Johnson, D. (2012), Her Majesty’s Prison: Aylesbury, ITV. 3 Hamilton, P. (2006), Slaves of Solitude, London: Constable. [p.3] 83 condition of a front garden in a cul de sac in idyllic Aylesbury. The threshold is key, and can prevent a sense of individual freedom from within, as well as discouraging societal engagement from without. Transitional rites between zones in each of the typologies emphasise the significance of the liminal phase in reformation at all scales - the individual’s rehabilitation in an institution, the typological evolution necessary to align with contemporary need, and the social change required to reshape our expectations and reflect on our successes.

‘Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better’ 1

This dissertation is not conclusive in offering answers to all the questions it raises; it merely represents the beginning of a journey to explore typologies, constructs, language and constraint in the definition of socially-driven architectures, both past and present. Setting out to examine the nature of confinement, I explore the process of defining an environment proactively, in response to the social-now, in the hope that it will outlive its anticipated futures or projected utopias. From this, I hope to draw out a critique and an ideology applicable to my future work.

‘Intention is the key and the process is the product’ 2

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91 Fig. 1 The Abandoned Estate Author. (2013) [Photograph]

Fig. 2 The Old Prison WallHMYOI Aylesbury Author. (2013) [Photograph]

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Fig. 4 The Estate Author. (2013) [Photograph]

Fig. 5 The Idyll Author. (2013) [Photograph]

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Fig. 12 The Walls HMYOI Aylesbury McGann. P. (2013) [Photograph] Her Majesty’s Prison: Aylesbury, ITV

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92 Fig. 21 Millbank Prison London Brewer, G. (1891) [Photograph] London from Aloft from Strand Magazine,

London: Strand Publications.

Fig. 22 Aerial Diagrams HM Prison Estate Google Earth. (2013) [Aerial Photograph]

Fig. 23 Aerial Diagrams HM Prison Estate Google Earth. (2013) [Aerial Photograph]

Fig. 24 Defensible Space The Aylesbury Estate Author. (2013) [Photograph]

Fig. 25 Social Crusaders The Aylesbury Estate Glendenning, M. (1972) [Photograph] 10’000th Council House from Tower

Block, US: Yale University Press.

Fig. 26 Lost Community Elephant and Castle Southwark Archive. (1972) [Photograph] We Was All One.

Fig. 27 Construction The Aylesbury Estate Uncredited. (1964) [Photograph] Construction of The Aylesbury Estate,

Southwark: John Harvard Library.

Fig. 28 Flat Layout The Minimum Dwelling Teige, K. (1932) [Photograph] Flat Layout from The Minimum Dwelling,

Massachusetts: TheMIT Press.

Fig. 29 The Isokon Building Hampstead Kane, N. (2006) [Photograph] The Isokon Building from Detail Magazine,

London: Architectural Press.

Fig. 30 Walkway in 1972 The Aylesbury Estate Uncredited. (1972) [Photograph] Walkway on The Aylesbury Estate,

Southwark Local History Library.

Fig. 31 Stairwell The Aylesbury Estate Author. (2013) [Photograph]

Fig. 32 Walkway 2013 The Aylesbury Estate Author. (2013) [Photograph]

Fig. 33 Construction The Aylesbury Estate Uncredited. (1972) [Photograph] Construction of The Aylesbury Estate,

Southwark Local History Library.

Fig. 34 Tony Blair The Aylesbury Estate Uncredited. (1997) [Photograph] Tony Blair’s Speech,The Evening Standard.

Fig. 35 Demolition The Aylesbury Estate Twinch, E. (2010) [Photograph] Aylesbury Estate Demolition Begins, Inside

Housing Archive.

Fig. 36 Media Image The Aylesbury Estate Marinolli, M. (2010) Brother, Missenden 69. Image References Image

93 Fig. 37 Media Image The Aylesbury Estate National Pictures. (2013) [Photograph] Police Seek 15-year-old over Murder of

Teenager who was Stabbed, Daily Mail.

Fig. 38 Media Image The Aylesbury Estate Uncredited. (2013) Two Young Men Knifed to Death at the Same Spot just Weeks

Apart. Evening Standard.

Fig. 39 Top Boy The Aylesbury Estate Bennett, R. (2011) [Photograph] Top Boy, Cowboy Films.

Fig. 40 Harry Brown The Aylesbury Estate Barber. D. (2009) [Photograph] Harry Brown, Marv Films.

Fig. 41 Channel 4 Ident The Aylesbury Estate Channel Four. (2005) [Photograph] Channel 4 Ident, Channel Four.

Fig. 42 Neighbourhood Surveillance Aylesbury Author. (2013) [Photograph]

Fig. 43 Expansion Aylesbury 1900s Buckinghamshire Archive. (1900) [Map] Historic Map, County Museum.

Fig. 44 Expansion Aylesbury 1960s Buckinghamshire Archive. (1960) [Map] Historic Map, County Museum.

Fig. 45 Expansion Aylesbury 1990s Buckinghamshire Archive. (1990) [Map] Historic Map, County Museum.

Fig. 46 Homes in Metroland Aylesbury Uncredited. (1933) [Advertisement] Homes in Metroland, London Transport

Museum.

Fig. 47 Metropolitan Line Aylesbury Pickard, M. (1925) [Photograph] Metroland Train Handle, Flickr.

Fig. 48 Overfurnishing Outrage Cullen,G. (1955) [Illustration] Overfurnished Street from Outrage. London: The

Architectural Press. [p.360]

Fig. 49 1950s Expansion Aylesbury Vaughn, K. (1955) [Photograph] High Street from A Century of Aylesbury,

Gloucestershire: TheHistory Press. [p.68]

Fig. 50 Cul de Sac Aylesbury Author. (2013) [Photograph]

Fig. 51 Detached Terrace Aylesbury Author. (2013) [Photograph]

Fig. 52 ThresholdAylesbury Author. (2013) [Photograph]

Fig. 53 Knightsbridge Place Fairford Leys Author. (2013) [Photograph]

Fig. 54 Hampstead Close Fairford Leys Author. (2013) [Photograph]

Fig. 55 ThresholdFairford Leys Author. (2013) [Photograph]

Fig. 56 Over the Garden Wall Aylesbury Author. (2013) [Photograph] Image References Image Fig. 57 Watching from Above HMYOI Aylesbury Author. (2013) [Photograph]

94