Oxford Street Pedestrianisation: Easy Answers to Complex Questions

The pedestrianisation of Oxford Street is the wrong answer to the right question: Why is the high street suffering?

It is the wrong answer because it is a grandiose scheme that will be detrimental to the residential neighbourhoods surrounding Oxford Street. It means that in order to make shopping perceivedly better for those who visit Oxford Street sparingly, life will be made miserable for those who live there. This is because the buses and taxis will not just disappear, but will be relocated to the narrow, quiet residential streets of Fitzrovia, Marylebone and Mayfair.

Emptying the West End of people who call it home is further degrading London from a vibrant and exciting world city into a glorified shopping centre of tourist theme park or a hollowed shell. This process has been gathering pace in the last 20 years. This proposal will further signal to many Londoners that the city is not for them.

Some people will argue the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street would be good for retail and commercial workplace; however, they ignore that we cannot silo typologies or think strategically of them in isolation. This is not how cities work. The strategic depopulation of Central London will push people further away and lengthen their commuting time, which means it will add more friction and chip away at the resurgence of the commercial workplace, which has only just started to recover post Covid. This is not to mention that so many people, especially the elderly, do not take the underground and rely on buses to reach the shops of Oxford Street. This scheme will make Oxford Street a no-go zone for them, so how will retail benefit exactly?

Seeking facile answers is refusing to address the complexity of the problem: Retail is not suffering mainly because of the lack of pedetrianisation nor is workplace mainly suffering because of working from home. It is because the world is evolving and we are too lazy to question what retail, workplace and homes mean -  rather what leisure, work and domesticity look like in a changing world.

Future generations will look back at the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street with the same deprecating eyes with which we look back at those ill-fated car-centric schemes of the 1960s that have done irreparable damage to urban centres. Reductive proposals like gratuitous pedestrinaisation (and gratuitous vehicularisation before it) do little to remedy problems, worse, they create more of them - especially when they are so often scant on the detail.

Design is not a Solution

Architectural design is not a “solution”.

Whilst design does encompass an element of problem solving, to reduce the whole process to a “solution” diminishes architecture into a clinical, utilitarian discipline rather than a vehicle of exciting opportunities. Loads of opportunities. To define architecture as a design solution also carries a whiff of quasi-religious orthodoxy, which assumes that there is one absolute truth, a "right" answer.

Do fashion designers talk of design solutions? If fashion design is a solution, we’d all wear animal skins and hemp bags.

Do filmmakers talk of design solutions? If cinema is a design solution, we’d all be watching the same film. Actually, cinema wouldn’t exist because what is the problem that cinema solves?

Do chefs talk of design solutions? If cooking is a design solution, we’d all be eating raw ingredients.

And if architecture is a design solution, the office would be a tent with a desk and WIFI, the home would be a shed with a bed and a toilet, schools would be trees under which classes can congregate. And all these spaces would look the same.

Language matters. It affects behaviour, and the words we use to express things influence how we approach them, not vice versa. This is evident in how the trite, formulaic structures to design pitches, design-and-access statements, RIBA stage reports and property marketing have led to a trite, formulaic approach in designing architecture that is looking increasingly generic.

So in architecture and property development, as in fashion and in film and in tech, differentiation is a business imperative, because to be generic in a competitive market is tantamount to business suicide.

Those constraints architects face are not problems to solve, but catalysts of imagination and innovation. They nudge designers out of the familiar, out of the comfort zone and out of the pre-conceived ideas. They usher in the new and the enthralling. Unpredictability is perhaps the designer's best friend.

Discipline vs Profession

Unpopular opinion.

Things will not get better for architects, unless architects do some soul searching to understand the real role that their profession plays in today’s economy and value creation. Economic value that is, not the esoteric, philosophical “value” many in the profession pontificate about.

So unless architects reimagine the current professional model, nothing will change when it comes to fees or the work culture. We cannot expect to get different results from repeating the same process.

Those disillusioned with the status quo either jump ship to thrive in other related professions, or try to disrupt the professional model by tapping into the endless opportunities of the discipline.

It’s discipline vs profession, and so far the profession has beaten the discipline into submission. We are vehemently encouraged to give up all the assets that we were taught at school as some sort of “cut your hair and get a job” adage. How’s that worked out so far?

Brickwashing

In London, planners like to pretend that the 1960s never took place, and that modernist architecture from the time is a drunken tryst that everyone should forget about. Swinging London? Carnaby Street? The Chelsea Drugstore? No. Planners would have none of it. It’s Downton Abbey and BBC period adaptations of Jane Austen (Bridgerton for those trying to pass as edgy or cool).

In the last 15 years, there has been a diligent effort by planners and architects to homogenise our cities to resemble an idealised past that never was. Under the planners’ tutelage, a concerted campaign to exorcise what they have condemned as heretical has erased mostly modernist architecture that dates from the 1950s-1970s to be replaced by indistinguishable new developments that are almost always clad in brick (slips):

This architectural, nay cultural, campaign can be described as brickwashing. Brickwashing, in essence, entails cladding any new building with brick to confer upon it a veneer of respectability. Brickwashing means that a building can be sterile, austere and spartan, as long as the building is clad in brick. Brickwashing means that a building can contribute nothing of value to urban space and city life, yet be deemed laudable by the planners. Brickwashing means that a building can be even out of scale, vandalising the city’s skyline, as long as its brickness makes it contextual, venerable, and level-headed. Brickwashing has become the last resort for specious reading of context and lazy design. Brickwashing is the “get out of jail free” card and the joker card and all the clichés in between. In fact, brickwashing is the ultimate cliché in architecture and urban design.

With brickwashing, it feels like the planners took far too seriously the tagline of the cosmetic brand Rimmel London: “Get the London look” - as if Rimmel only sold one type of lipstick with 2 or 3 colours.

Brick, however, is not the actual problem. It’s weaponising brick in style wars and conformist conservatism espoused by planners and the values they represent. Brickwashing feels like an attempt to expunge from public consciousness styles and trends that dared to be different, that dared to be nonconformist, that dared to be playful, that dared to embrace the spirit of the age, that dared to reinterpret context and culture outside the confines of literalism, that dared to be the essence of cities like London and dared to be the hallmark of post-war optimism in cities like Birmingham.

But forget the style wars. What makes brickwashing so insidious is that it is often an unlikely bedfellow with greenwashing - brick is seen as an environmentally-friendly building material. Worse even, brickwashing is a facilitator of greenwashing because it is an almost always guaranteed way to get planners to agree to needlessly tear down perfectly sound and perfectly adaptable buildings, throwing all the mantras about the building industry’s detrimental impact on environmental catastrophe under the wrecking ball. Literally.

Creativity on the Dancefloor: Sequels, Architecture, Saltburn.

Everyone’s talking about Emerald Fennell’s superb Saltburn, and I’m one of them.

The film is serves as the perfect case study to illustrate the concepts of creativity and talent. People erroneously think of creativity as the conjuring of innovation out of thin air to create not only what has never been created before, but also to create something that is delightful and positive; however, the uniqueness and unprecedented nature of innovation is a myth:

Fennell’s Saltburn at face value is a mish mash of so many recognisable films: Pasolini’s Teorema (1968), Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) and Saul Dibb’s 2006 screen adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty. Emerald Fennell consciously commandeers all those known works of drama, and produces something incredibly unique, incredibly fresh, incredibly irreverent, incredibly sexy rather than a pastiche or a period drama with Bloc Party as would have easily been the case with someone else. Saltburn is not a film without precedent, without provenance, without cultural affiliations, but no creative feat ever is.

Creating what has never been created before in vacuum is a logical impossibility. The creator belongs to a shared human experience and is influenced by context. Creativity is the ability to stake a claim in a landscape of accumulated cultural experiences, by drawing inspiration from so many precedents to create something unique, albeit with a long lineage and also a sense of familiarity. Creativity is the spark that owns the otherwise derivative and stamps it with innovation.

But this is half the story: Creativity is so often underpinned by talent. Talent is the confidence to produce something that is refined by flirting with what would otherwise be vulgar and tawdry. It’s about the ability to be so understated even with a gaudy birth. It is the ability to cobble together so many ingredients that would almost certainly give one food poising but end up with a Michelin-star dish. It’s the ability to court kitsch and still come out on top. One can be creative without necessarily being talented, but talent is the spark that elevates creativity to the stuff of legends.

Film does it. Music does it. Architecture does it. I think of the intense curiosity of OMA’s architecture which designs buildings and spaces that are so interesting, yet that could easily be a dog’s dinner in other hands. Only with OMA, not only do these buildings work, but they succeed. Unfortunately, so much architecture is beaten senseless into diffident conformity by a toxic work culture and a seriously flawed development landscape that yearns for creativity yet only pays heed to the underwhelming, a development landscape that relies on a USP to thrive but that has been domesticated to accept the generic and the derivative. Far too many architects play it safe, and they mistake aesthetic conservatism for good taste and faithful reproduction as good practice.

But this would be akin to sequels in the film industry. Sequels are made to capitalise on the success of the original production, but regurgitate the same formula to try to curry favour with viewers, especially those who loved the original, but more often than not, sequels are flops. Architecture is a world of failing sequels, increasingly failing to capture consumers. Perhaps the property development world is waiting for an Emerald Fennell-type designer to capitalise on the success and iconic recognition of trailblazing architecture, yet own this fact to produce something so distinctive, so disruptive as to deliver shock to the status quo of property development.

Naked victory dances are optional.

A Dictionary of Received Property Marketing Jargon

Are developers getting their money’s worth with the marketing that is being pumped out to promote and let their developments? Building branding and marketing literature are essential components in promoting developments in real estate to achieve lettings or sales but are they really being used to their full potential?

What makes this rather odd is that the landscape of marketing and PR in London is on a different planet in terms of innovation, ingenuity and engagement. In a league of Ogilvy, Saatchi and Saatchi and Leo Burnett, why does property marketing come across as cutting-edge as a soap advert painted on a brick wall in 1890? Oh, but there’s a website with punchy graphics so that levels the field.

Bland brochures with the same regurgitated format of location photos and restaurants, a lazy rehash of the tube map, dated CGIs as sexy as dad jokes and floorplans.

And then there’s the jargon, which sounds more like Gustave Flaubert’s Dictionnaire des idées reçues with such language being ubiquitous in almost all property marketing literature:

Stunning New Development - said every marketing brochure about the same cookie-cutter, brick slip shoebox that looks like every other new-build development since 2010. Planners and architects have done a sterling job of turning London into an austere Soviet-style city albeit with copious amounts of brick (slips). Marketers have done a commensurate job of labelling such built form “stunning”.

Exciting Retail Opportunity - Am I missing something for not getting excited about a shell-and-core retail unit? I guess “exciting retail opportunity” is the soulmate of “active frontage” that architects wax lyrical about. The universe of retail is indeed very exciting but how is this captured here?

Sense of arrival - To yawnsville perhaps. You’d think they’re describing Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) making an entrance to his own theme tune by Francis Monkman in The Long Good Friday, or Susie Bannion (Jessica Harper) arriving at the school/witches coven in Dario Argento’s Susperia. But alas, they’re talking about an uninspiring reception space.

Encouraging Wellbeing - Cyclist facilities and operable windows, which are quite common staples in office design, are described as unique and consciously designed to promote wellbeing. A new addition making the rounds is “encouraging people to take stairs” - which is a fantastic design move; however, this description is being gratuitously applied to spaces where the stairs are tucked away and value-engineered in sad enclosed shafts, not spaces where stairs are features and prominent.

Beautifully tailored spaces - delivered in new offices by an avalanche of white plasterboard, off-the-shelf fire doors with vision panels, lazily cobbled together patterns meant to be a feature wall or art or whatever; winding corridors and almost unlivable layouts in housing.

The endemic ennui created by the architectural profession has been contagious, and if architecture is so insipid, then what can brand consultants and marketers do? Lazy words seem befitting for lazy designs. This is only one facet of the problem. The other facet is that the process of building “design” and building “marketing and PR” are siloed and not integrated. Architects as lead designers should be liaising with agents and marketing professionals to work hand-in-glove to strategise and develop architectural designs and produce desirable spaces where branding is pivotal in the design process .

Architecture and property development are screaming for a paradigm shift: Developers, architects and marketers need to view real estate development as a commodity and the users as consumers.

Watch that space.

(This disclaimer informs readers that the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this blog belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author's employer, organisation, committee or other group or individual.)

Fake Designer Handbags: Designing Buildings in London Today

What if there were another way of designing buildings?

Currently, most architectural output follows the same process: Developers ask agents (not architects) for guidance on aesthetics and style for the developers’ speculative schemes, so the agents observe popular market trends and counsel developers to copy what’s already being done relatively successfully. The architects receive the creative brief, then negotiate policy and codes and pretend to know more about construction than the construction specialists: the contractors, whom architects are desperate to be employed by (or novated to). Then comes the marketing (and branding if one is lucky) so websites and brochures with punchy graphics are produced. The marketing literature (especially for commercial buildings) almost always follows the same structure: pictures of nice restaurants in the area, punchy graphics to rehash the ordinance survey map of London and a reboot of the tube map, then visuals of the spaces with awkwardly curated people reveling in the “sense of arrival”, followed by floorplans, and finally lofty claims about opening windows and having cyclist showers as if this were the epitome of ingenuity or even science fiction.

This process has stymied innovation and creativity in the production of space and cities since, among many other reasons, copying successful trends means that these trends are overused and already on the way out, so the developers are getting lazy and tawdry copies of other developers’ buildings not much different from counterfeit designer handbags sold in dark alleys and off car boots.

All this may be just about fine in booming economy or in a predictable market, but the mere whiff of an economic downturn or unforeseen circumstances, this model flounders. Housing may be fine for now (although who knows with the nascent mortgage crisis) but one only needs to look at office buildings and commercial stock to realise that the commercial sector is in serious peril. Ditto for retail - signs promising “exciting retail opportunity” notwithstanding.

So, what if there were another way of designing buildings? Of branding buildings? Of marketing buildings?

I believe there is another way, an alternative professional model for architecture, and it all starts with reframing the discipline:

Space is a Commodity. Design is a Service. The occupier is a consumer.

(This disclaimer informs readers that the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this blog belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author's employer, organisation, committee or other group or individual.)

Signal(ing) Failure

Architecture, both as a profession and subsequently a discipline, suffers from a serious communication problem which leads to architecture punching well below its weight. The message architecture sends out to the public at large is confused, and the value it brings to human life is hushed, esoteric even. Architectural signaling epitomises the crisis of the profession.

The profession signals to people that architects are a crossbreed of anguished artists and rational builders. But are they really? Architecture may be both a service (design) and a product (building), but not in equal measure or worse, design is not subservient to building as is widely promulgated by the current professional model. I argue that architectural design in essence is a service that adds value to property in simple economic terms. This is why developers engage architects, not to build rational, efficient structures but to create exciting places and spaces that can be marketed to and sold/let to people as such. The best metric to measure how lucrative good design is the financial premium “architect-designed” properties fetch on the market compared to mass-produced edifices. Good design makes life delightful, and this is harnessed by the market whether in property or in advertising or in fashion or in tech.

But when the architectural profession is oblivious to its latent potential or even ashamed by it, the confused signaling it sends out to society makes it very difficult for people to appreciate the merit of architects or even whether architects are relevant, a fact that is exacerbated by the strides in technological advances contractors have made in construction as well as AI with platforms like MidJourney. Focusing inordinately on construction like the profession has done in the last 40 years hasn’t helped, nor has the virtue-signalling that aims to carve out a niche for architects by guilting and shaming people into it.

In fact, by framing the discipline of architecture in such reductive terms of practicality and sanctimony, a whole generation of architects has egregiously under-performed and written itself off to irrelevance. How useful has our contribution been to the future of the workplace? What change have we effected in housing and domestic typologies? What can we say about how seismic changes in society and behaviour have influenced space and cities? We are always catching up rather than leading because we have delegated the role we had the best training to perform to others like planners and estate agents. Planners and agents are the go-to authorities on cities and space, not architects, and although the role planners and agents play is incredibly positive, it is almost always retrospective and emulative of what has already been done not of what the future looks like. Much like in advertising, Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland argues that market research is pointless to innovation because it looks to the past for clues. Innovation lies not in giving people what they want but to find something that they will want or to exploit a gap in the market. Are the homes and schools and workplaces that are being designed innovating and mirroring developments in society or are they simply regurgitating more of the same old spaces and places?

It is perhaps high time architects took back control of their discipline and capitalised on its strength to research, observe, analyse and innovate. Architects need to reclaim their rightful role as an authority on space and cities but to do so, perhaps they can start by addressing the signaling of their profession to the public at large.