A tale of two cities: Paris proves that you don’t
need skyscrapers to thrive
Rowan Moore
A ban on high-rise buildings contrasts with Britain’s
ever thrusting capital
Sun 11 Jun
2023 09.02 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/feb/01/design.architecture
There’s a
story that sections of the British commentariat have liked to tell for some
time, about the differences between London and Paris. The French capital, it
says, is over-regulated and over-taxed, nice to look at, good for weekend
mini-breaks, but stagnant, frozen, a museum piece. Its British counterpart, in
this reading, is thrusting, dynamic, creative, global, open for business.
The
contrast plays out on their respective skylines. Paris, after a flirtation with
tall buildings that has led to two or three controversial projects scattered
about the edge of its centre, last week reimposed old rules that ban buildings
above 37 metres (121ft). London’s planning continues to be a free-for-all, with
raucous clusters of towers sprouting not only in the City and around Canary
Wharf, but also less-central locations such as Vauxhall, Tottenham and
Lewisham, even in commuter towns outside the city limits, such as Woking.
It would be
easy to dismiss the reintroduced height limits as another example of French municipal
overreach, except that the narrative of dynamic London v sleepy Paris looks
less convincing than it once did – partly thanks to Brexit – given that the
French bourse has overtaken the London Stock Exchange as Europe’s leading
equities market. A number of financial institutions, in relocating to Paris,
have found its insistence on quality of life over growth at all costs
increasingly attractive. In which case London – and other cities such as
Bristol and Liverpool that to various degrees have embraced tall buildings –
would do well to see what they can learn from the French example.
Backers of
skyscrapers, in Paris as elsewhere, say they are exciting, modern, provide
much-needed space for homes and employment, and attract business. “If vertical
buildings can enrich the heart of the capital,” says Jean Nouvel, architect of
the completed Duo twin tower scheme, which is one of the projects that has
prompted the new restrictions, “why deprive ourselves?”
The
question is whether they really do “enrich” cities. To use the word in its most
literal financial sense, they create vehicles for investment that bring money,
often from abroad, to their locations. But their contribution to housing needs
is debatable – as they are expensive to build and their apartments tend to sell
for high prices. And, as shown by the just-announced bankruptcy of Woking
council, which went bust investing in skyscrapers, the returns on tall
buildings can go down as well as up.
Nor are the
zones created at the feet of towers convincing evidence that they enrich cities
socially, spatially or culturally. If you go to the new multistorey districts
in London, you’ll tend to find arid, lifeless places, lacking in specific
character, their residents removed from street life by lifts and lobbies, their
mood set by could-be-anywhere landscape design and by those chains that can pay
the rents for their retail outlets. As for their supposed modernity,
skyscrapers are like air travel: they used to be as glamorous as the jet set,
but now they’re in a Ryanair phase – generic, dull and predictable, a default
option for unimaginative property companies.
They’re
hard to justify on environmental grounds. Tall buildings require more steel and
concrete per square foot for their construction than lower ones, and once built
need lifts and (usually) air conditioning. In theory, they can create population
densities that sustain public transport, though in practice their residents
seem quite keen on using cars. It’s hard to disagree with Émile Meunier, a
councillor for the Greens in Paris, when he says that there’s “no such thing as
an ecological tower”.
For smaller
and historic British cities – Norwich, for example, which has toyed with the
idea of height – the message of Paris is that it’s possible to just say no. For
larger ones it’s more complex. In London and Manchester the skyscraper ship
sailed long ago, so blanket bans don’t make much sense. Paris has long been a
highly managed and centrally directed city, with a more uniform urban fabric as
a result, and big British cities are more chaotic and multifarious, which also
argues against single city-wide rules.
But
boroughs, mayors and national government do have the powers to implement
policies that limit the carbon emissions of building construction, which if
seriously done would by itself reduce the number of new towers. They also – in
theory, but not too often in practice – can require that, when they are
permitted, tall buildings and the spaces around them are designed with quality
and intelligence. Such things naturally cost money, but the principal power of
tall buildings, and the main reason why they get built, is that they unleash
land value, which should mean that there are the resources for doing a good
job.
The London
v Paris comparison can be seen as one of quantity against quality. Whereas in
terms of population and GDP, London has grown more than Paris for most of this
century, and created more jobs, the French capital has made much more
impressive gains in productivity. More wealth is created, in other words, per
citizen. Among the consequences, although Parisian homes are hardly cheap, is a
less acute housing crisis.
Paris is
also striving to make itself into an exceptionally sustainable big city, one
more desirable than it already is, by making its public spaces and river banks
as attractive as possible to pedestrians and cyclists, reducing car use, and
implementing the concept of the “15-minute city”, whereby the essentials of
life are close to your home. Its policy on tall buildings is part of that
bigger picture. The London way – pile them high and sell them not-so-cheap –
cannot, given this competition, continue to take its success for granted.
Rowan Moore is architecture critic of the
Observer
Wed 12 Dec 2001 : Prince dumps on high-rise architects who leave
'turd in every plaza'
Fiachra
Gibbons
Wed 12 Dec
2001 10.57 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2001/dec/12/urbandesign.architecture
Prince
Charles yesterday mounted his favourite hobby horse to launch a stinging attack
on the inflated egos of architects who inflict skyscrapers on our cities.
Tall
buildings are often nothing more than "overblown phallic structures and
depressingly predictable antennae that say more about an architectural ego than
any kind of craftsmanship", the prince told the Building for the 21st
Century conference in London, before quoting the American novelist Tom Wolfe's
quip that they left "turds in every plaza".
With work
just started on Sir Norman Foster's controversial 41-storey "erotic
gherkin" in the City of London, and an inquiry into the even taller Heron
Tower reaching its climax, the prince's intervention in the skyscraper debate
could not have come at a more sensitive time.
"I can
imagine that my presence is about as welcome as a police raid on a
brothel," the Prince of Wales told the gathering of engineers and
architects, who had earlier heard London's mayor Ken Livingstone rage against
what he has termed the "Taliban" of conservationists, like the
prince, who want to turn the clock back. Mr Livingstone, who has described
English Heritage - opponents of dramatic changes to the city's skyline - as
"the greatest risk to London's economy since Adolf Hitler", said the
capital needed 15 new tall buildings over the next decade.
He accused
such conservationists of "feeding on each other's prejudices and wanting
to preserve everything. The city is not a museum".
In an even
more withering rebuke, Mr Livingstone added: "If they themselves had to
compete on the open jobs market they might have a different view." For
London to remain a major world business centre, he said, it would have to allow
a limited number of new tall and landmark buildings in the City and Docklands.
The only
way was up, he insisted, if cities are not to sprawl out of control.
But the
prince was unrepentant, arguing that multi-storey office blocks "had no
manners", ignoring and overpowering older buildings around them.
"New
buildings with their heads in the clouds should keep their feet firmly on the
ground... Skyscrapers are utilitarian and commercial, so-called statement
buildings that are self-referential and fulfil no communal purpose
whatsoever... I fear that so much of the modernist aesthetic is based on the
notion of standing out rather than fitting in," he added.
Comparing
himself to a bottle of HP sauce adding "piquancy to the debate", the
prince said: "Let's have no more of the leftover spaces that so often
masquerade as public amenity - what Tom Wolfe entertainingly described as 'a
turd in every plaza'. "
Fri 1 Feb 2008: Charles does it again: skyscraper boom a rash of
carbuncles, he tells architects
Towers risk vandalising heritage sites across the
country, prince says
Robert
Booth
Fri 1 Feb
2008 01.01 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/feb/01/design.architecture
Prince
Charles locked horns with Lord Rogers and the architects of Britain's
skyscraper boom yesterday, warning that historic cities are at risk of being
wrecked by a "rash" of "carbuncles" in the form of office
and apartment towers.
In a speech
backed by a slide show which highlighted Rogers's proposed 44-storey
"cheese grater" tower next to Lord Foster's so-called
"gherkin" in the City of London, the prince complained that
architects were indulging in a "free for all [that] will leave London and
our other cities with a pockmarked skyline".
The address
to heritage activists, architects and developers at St James's Palace put the
prince on collision course with the Labour peer, who is also the chief
architecture adviser to the London mayor, Ken Livingstone.
Rogers
built Lloyd's of London, one of the most eye-catching towers on the capital's
skyline, and made high-rise living a plank of government urban policy with his
Urban Taskforce report to the Blair government. He has spoken out in favour of
clusters of towers and is constructing tall buildings on the World Trade Centre
site in New York and at Canary Wharf.
The prince
said Bath and Edinburgh were also under threat from such towers and suggested
skyscrapers in London should be confined to Canary Wharf, "rather than
overshadowing Wren's and Hawksmoor's churches". Rogers, who has clashed
with the prince in the past, was on business in Korea yesterday and declined to
comment.
The
prince's comments echoed his famous 1984 speech when he described a planned
extension to the National Gallery as "a monstrous carbuncle" -
shredding confidence in modern architecture - and said the skyscraper boom
would result in "not just one carbuncle on the face of a much-loved
friend, but a positive rash of them that will disfigure precious views and
disinherit future generations of Londoners".
Yesterday
he showed an image of a 160 metre tower by the Uruguayan architect Raphael
Viñoly close to the Tower of London as an example of a scheme that could
"deliberately desecrate" a World Heritage site.
The speech
also represented an attack on Livingstone's liberal policy towards buildings in
the capital where at least a dozen skyscrapers are planned. They include the
64-storey "Helter-Skelter" in the City designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox,
Ian Simpson's 52-storey Jumeirah tower on the South Bank and Renzo Piano's
66-storey Shard of Glass, also known as the London Bridge Tower. Even the
prince's own views are threatened. A pair of proposed towers at Victoria
station could loom over his mother's garden and sprout from behind Buckingham
Palace when seen from outside Clarence House, his London residence.
Leading
architects rebutted the prince's claims and claimed Britain was leading the
world in skyscraper design.
"He's
wrong," said Ken Shuttleworth, lead designer of 30 St Mary Axe, also known
as the Gherkin. "London is not a museum. It has to be renewed for the next
generation, especially as it attempts to become the world's leading city. We
can't leave it as it is in medieval times."
"It's
emotive language," said Sunand Prasad, president of the Royal Institute of
British Architects. "We need to get away from the idea that there is a
plague of towers sweeping across London, because there isn't."
The prince
questioned why society was willing to "vandalise" historic sites.
"Corporate and residential towers are being proposed across London, and
overshadowing World Heritage sites from Edinburgh to Bath," he said.
"For some unaccountable reason we seem to be determined to vandalise these
few remaining sites which retain the kind of human scale and timeless character
that so attract people to them."
The
prince's remarks generated sympathy among some architects who have grown
quietly concerned that tower proposals have spread beyond the square mile to
the traditionally low-rise South Bank and even to suburbs, breaking the
unwritten rule that towers should be built in clusters to limit their impact.
"There
is no great clarity about where we build towers and where we don't," said
Prasad. "What we need is a policy that supports principles like building
towers in clusters and next to major transport interchanges."
The last
time the prince used the carbuncle image, projects were cancelled and planners
ran scared of contemporary design. Now the impact is likely to be less seismic,
predicted Prasad.
"He
now seems to know more of what he is talking about and the general public has
become far more design-savvy, which means people are better placed to judge
what he is saying. I don't think he will get the same reflexive obedience this
time."
Clash of
cultures
Prince
Charles
Construction
began in 1993 of Poundbury, a traditional village on Duchy of Cornwall land. It
was drawn up the Prince's favoured planner, Leon Krier and includes traditional
pubs, greens and a village hall. The Prince's Foundation for Architecture and
Urbanism is planning a new settlement of 1,000 homes on the edge of Newquay,
Cornwall, dubbed Surfbury. It will use renewable energy, rainwater harvesting,
and local and reclaimed materials. The prince commissioned architect Craig
Hamilton to design a six-bedroom mansion in Wales. It is widely expected to be
a "starter palace" for Prince William, with solar panels on the roof
and sheep's wool insulation. It will use recycled bricks.
Richard
Rogers
The Lloyds
of London office tower in the Square Mile made Rogers' name in the UK. It had
its pipes and ducts on the outside and became the best example of the British
"hi-tech" movement. The Millennium Dome, built in 1999, was designed
by Richard Rogers and Partners just as Rogers himself became a powerful member
of the New Labour hierarchy advising John Prescott on urban policy. In 2006 he
won the Stirling prize for the first time for Barajas airport in Madrid. His
practice also designed Terminal 5 at Heathrow which is scheduled to open next
month.
· This
article was amended on Thursday August 14 2008. We mistakenly said that the
architect Raphael Viñoly was Argentinian when, in fact, he is Uruguayan. This
has been corrected.
No comments:
Post a Comment