Can high quality architecture be common?
Pulling specifically from Harbraken: "What is common cannot be special, but it can be of high quality." Which made me stop and think- when was the last time I saw a high quality, relatively affordable piece of architecture in person? Although I believe in the sentiment that quality does not always have a linear relationship with budget, it seems too often that quality is the first aspect to be cut. Sure for one thing, the more money saved on "quality" gets put back into square footage, appliances, maybe a room with nicer finishes. But this made me want to find specific cases of quality in architecture that was meant to be affordable.
Quality is also a super subjective term so what I consider a high level of quality may not be yours, but just for the sake of the question:
I love reading and studying these kind of "ground up" city developments (not the crazy ones around Dubai) but in England, Europe and the Americas. One that stood out to me was Poundbury - a type of sister town to Dorchester - which was completely imagined and constructed in the last 50 years by Leon Krier with the help and funding of King Charles. In the 60s through the 90s in the UK, there were plenty of "high quality" stone row homes that were demolished to make way for modernist social housing blocks - and King Charles wanted to preserve the urban feel of the UK he remembered as a kid by advocating cities to be built with quality and craft in mind. He founded a school for architectural craft in the UK and Poundbury has some really exquisite architecture for being the 21st century and trying to be an affordable suburb. (Now home prices are much higher)
Another example is Le Plessis-Robinson in France - a similar development where politicians and architects wanted to combat the modernist social housing blocks with higher quality buildings...
So I guess the question I'm left with, and I'm curious to hear any opinions, is: how do we make quality the source of value again and not simply square footage or location or etc? Can technology help ?
Le Plessis Robinson:
I think about this a lot, It's really unfortunate that even low-quality housing is going for much more than its worth these days, the only solution I can see is if we as a society stop treating housing like a commodity to be bought and sold. Developers and house "flippers" have completely devalued the industry in favor of quick turnover and fast cash.
ReplyDeleteOne architect that has examined this is Sarah Susanka. She has an interesting book covering the topic and her belief is that people should have smaller, thoughtfully designed spaces as opposed to cheaper buildings with more square footage. I always find myself referencing that same philosophy in my projects. I think you would enjoy her book Jon! It’s called “The Not so Big House”
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