Interview by Rob Wilson
Congratulations on being selected to represent Britain at next year’s Architecture Biennale in Venice! Your proposal Home Economics focuses on the family home as the “frontline” of British architecture – picking up on Alejandro Aravena’s Biennale theme. Why do you think the home is such an urgent battlefield in architecture?
Thank you! In Britain, as elsewhere, economic ideology has produced an artificial shortage in housing. This crisis is the result of strong beliefs about the role of the State (that it should not build) coupled with perverse regulations and lack of incentives for the private sector to provide sufficient volumes of new homes. The standard of living for British people is falling, while the cost of living is rising, and housing is central to this process.
However, it’s not just a problem of supply. We’re experiencing a paradigmatic societal shift: family structures, gender roles, power relations and class formation, patterns of work and leisure, not to mention mass migration and the end of both the civic realm and domestic privacy. So much is in flux and the way we design homes has fundamentally failed to keep up with the realities of how we live and work today.
You’re proposing to show a series of 1:1 environments to “challenge the status quo and propose new futures for the British home”. Can you explain what you hope to show with these?
The British are conservative when it comes to the home, from how they’re decorated to how they’re built and paid for. We hope to explore different models of finance and tenure, non-traditional furniture and appliances, new formal and functional typologies. The key is not simply to be critical. Architecture exhibits that are critical tend to concentrate on raising awareness about a condition, but rarely make a proposition for an alternative. That positive vision is very important to us.
You’re planning to collaborate with a team of architects, artists, designers and developers on this, which reminds me of the collaborative teams behind the “This is Tomorrow” exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1956. We often look back to the post-war period and see it as a time of great experimentation in the way we lived. Do you think it is possible to be as radical in thinking about housing now as it was then?
It’s not only possible, but already happening. It’s just not as obvious because it’s not on such a large scale of production, but radicality and innovation are still strong. It’s also important to view this in context. Those full-scale projects of the 1950s themselves drew inspiration from earlier: the 1920s Werkbund expos and housing projects like the Weißenhofsiedlung and pavilions and installations like those by Mies or Bruno Taut… which in turn drew on older models, dating back to Gottfried Semper’s “primitive hut” installation at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London. So there is a long heritage of this kind of immersive proposition as a tool for experimentation and seduction, reinterpreted in each era. Home Economics is certainly not nostalgic, it aims to be first of all propositional.
Shumi Bose is a writer, editor, and teacher based in London. She is senior lecturer for contextual studies in architecture at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and assistant lecturer at the Architectural Association. She is co-founder of the REAL foundation and co-editor of the Real Review, to be launched in 2016. She has held editorial positions at the Architect's Journal, Blueprint, Strelka Press and Afterall, and has contributed to publications such as TANK, Volume, and PIN-UP. In 2012, Bose was one of three curatorial collaborators working with David Chipperfield for Common Ground, the main exhibition at the 13th International Exhibition of Architecture at the Venice Biennale. Recent publications include Real Estates (with Fulcrum, Bedford Press, 2014), Places for Strangers (with mæ architects, Park Books, 2014), and Models Ruins Power 1 (Kommode Verlag, 2014).
real.foundation
Jack Self is an architect and writer based in London. He is co-founder of the REAL foundation and co-editor of the Real Review, to be launched in 2016. His has been a contributor to Architectural Design, The Guardian, New Philosopher, 032c and Dezeen, amongst other publications., while his book Real Estates: Life Without Debt (Bedford Press 2014), now in its second printing. He is contributing editor at the Architectural Review, and was previously associate editor at Strelka Press (2012-13). Jack also founded Fulcrum, a free weekly based at the Architectural Association. As a designer he has previously worked for amongst others Ateliers Jean Nouvel in Paris and London (2008-09). His current clients and partners include developers and housing trusts, as well as academic and public institutions like the Victoria & Albert Museum (2015).
real.foundation
Finn Williams is an architect-turned-planner based in London. Williams worked for Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam and General Public Agency before setting up Common Office, an independent practice working with planning, politics, and the public. His writing has been published in journals and magazines including mono.kultur, Hunch, and Volume. Williams teaches ADS2 at the RCA with David Knight and Charles Holland, is External Supervisor for Spatial Practices at Central St Martins, and Specialist Urban Design Advisor to the Bartlett School of Architecture MArch Thesis programme. Among other roles Williams is vice-chair of the Tower Hamlets Design Review Panel. In 2014 he founded NOVUS, a thinktank for public sector planning. Finn is currently working on a new social enterprise to embed talented young designers within local authorities.
commonoffice.co.uk
Do you think that architects need to be more proactive and propositional again in suggesting ways for how we live? Have we perhaps been living with a reaction to the perceived failure of many of the “big” solutions proposed for housing in the post-war period and the demonising of the modernist architect?
If the Starchitects have achieved anything, it is that the public now trusts architects to design large scale, mass housing again. That’s one positive to be taken from projects like Ole Scheeren’s Interlace, or the redevelopment of London’s Battersea Power Station. If the failures of the Welfare State in 1980s Britain were sometimes attributed to brutal, unsympathetic and dogmatic architects, that stereotype has waned. Architects are perceived as innovative and thoughtful designers. There is, however, a rising awareness that the systems that architects operate within are no longer fit for purpose. I
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