Cenobium Web

CENOBIUM

SELF

CONTENTS Introduction

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Commodifying the Commons

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Drawing List

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Cenobium

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INTRODUCTION A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society does not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food. At nature’s mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him…

If the guests get up and make room for him, other intruders immediately appear demanding the same favour… The order and harmony of the feast is disturbed, the plenty that before reigned is changed into scarcity; and the happiness of the guests is destroyed by the spectacle of misery and dependence in every part of the hall, and by the clamorous importunity of those who are justly enraged at not finding the provision which they had been taught to expect.1 Malthus

The Malthusian problem presupposes a fundamental scarcity in the world. There is simply not enough, it says, for everyone to be seated at nature’s feast. Further, it argues there never will be enough: the resources of the planet are finite, and no matter how fast we innovate, our rapacious desire for more will always outpace our capacity for sustaining the species.

In reality, there is no shortage — if anything, neoliberal globalisation has only made us all the more aware of how plentiful and beautiful is the earth. The problem is not one of scarcity; it is simply how we have decided to distribute our resources amongst ourselves. At the core of the last half-century is a simple but profound evil: that it is right that some of us have more. From banker’s bonuses to the corrupt spirit propping up the corpse of our democracies, certain amongst us have justified their place at the table by claiming they could not solve the seating arrangement on an empty stomach. The generation of my parents gorged themselves. They did not think to save even scraps for their children, who they cast from the banquet altogether.

But now, finding the world already possessed, and the feast almost over, it is time to focus our rage and exact our just demands. We will not tolerate their miserly charity (of peonage and perpetual debt).

It only remains to determine how to unseat these capitalist Caligulas, and wrest from their hands the cornucopia that is rightly ours.

The term cenobium is a monastic word for a community of individuals. Each preserves their uniqueness and rhythm of life, while nonetheless uniting in solidarity to enact and defend their common beliefs. This is exactly the ambition of this project: to give space and form to the liturgy of resistance.

To do this, Cenobium attempts to articulate the fundamental principles of ownership and its relationship to architecture by carefully studying the origins of capitalist property exchange, which in Britain dates to the mid-16th to late-17th centuries (see Commodifying the Commons). A wealth of new material, largely made accessible by recent advances in digital archiving,

demonstrates how the financial and juridical strategies of parcelisation found their form in cadastral standardisation and architectural modularisation. The history of the London terrace house presented here makes explicit the ruthlessness of raw capital at work: its relentless transformation of the city into an engine for generating value, and the impact this process exerts on both urban form and the structure of domestic life.

Cenobium upends this history. Where capital has sought to speed up, increase in density and cheapen construction, this project uses a powerful financial algorithm to reconfigure the conditions of debt into the very long-term.2 In this case, to make large spaces in the centre of London affordable for low-paid and/or precarious workers (the so-called “99%”), the term of the debt was a century. This effectively removes the housing from the marketplace (since it can no longer be easily traded), although this brings with it problems of both durability and adaptability of the structure. In effect, the single house is a bundle of infrastructural nodes, a services conduit made from brass-plated steel.

At the urban scale the project pursues a strategy of disenclosure — striving to blur property boundaries, remove physical barriers, deconstruct the hierarchy of the street and weaken the numeration of citizens. But most importantly, Cenobium proposes a housing typology against individuation and ownership. This is manifest in the architecture itself as well as its conditions of occupation. Firstly, it inverts the logic of the terrace house, replacing its massive party walls with extremely thin sonic partitions. A central core supports steel beams and a composite floor system that dissolves the slab, while structurally independent facades and circulation permit reconfiguration through time to move from single units to communal spaces.

The individual’s dwelling (the cell, to follow the monastic reference) consists of two spaces divided by the core, into which is fitted every necessary piece of furniture and amenity (kitchen, sleeping surface, bathroom, storage, desk, and so on).

The absence of furniture, far from being a limitation, is a form of liberation. This relation promotes use over ownership, as well as facilitating the precarious classes insatiable desire for mobility. It also releases the individual and the community from the social conditioning and power relations that the nature and arrangement of furniture reinforces.

Cenobium is by no means a comprehensive work, situated in the third year of a broader ten-year plan. However, it is a clear statement of moral and architectural intent: we must take hold of the tools of neoliberalism precisely in order to overturn them.

We must slowly (and secretly) poison the guests at the table. We must feed them such sweets that their teeth rot.

1.Malthus, R. An Essay on the Principle of Population, (Cambridge University Press: 1992), p.249.

2. For further explanation of this process, see “Derivative Architecture” in Fulcrum’s Real Estates: Life Without Debt, (Bedford Press: 2014).

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Fig 1: “Red Lyon Square” from London Described (1710)

by Sutton Nicholls.

COMMODIFYING THE COMMONS: Capitalist Urban Space and the Invention of Housing, London 1630-1688 There is a half-century discrepancy between what architectural historians describe as the first London ‘square’ and when the word itself actually appears in the English language. Starting with John Summerson1, and taken up by others2, the conventional argument is that since the square is defined as an ‘open space in a town surrounded by housing,’3 and the oldest example that matches that description is Covent Garden, dating from 1630, ipso facto Covent Garden is the first square. However, as any etymological dictionary will tell you, the use of ‘square’ in this sense does not predate the 1680s. At least for contemporaries, any understanding of these spaces as ‘squares’ was not possible.

The ambiguity is not helped by situations like that at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which is named as London’s second oldest square and dated at 1640 – even though legal records show that the larger of the two fields had houses built on all sides as early as 1613.4 How can it be that some of the finest examples of London squares predate the existence of the word, as with St. James’ Square (1662), Leicester Square (1670s) and Soho Square (1681)? On investigation, there is no evidence that any space was named as a square before 1682, nor any suggestion that the examples above were known as squares before the 1690s – in fact, they are explicitly referred to as ‘Fields’ in all documents and maps before that time.

The significance of the discrepancy is greater than simply correcting an anachronism. Rather, it suggests two processes at work: an ambiguity about the juridical category of open space in the city; and a confusion about what constituted housing (as opposed to something understood as houses, which we know were present). As I will argue, the square was only conceivable at the moment when the struggle to commodify the city was already complete – when what remained of the Teutonic commons was finally enclosed, and the vestiges of high-medieval society had been incorporated into modern capitalist modes of production.

While this indeterminacy about familiar architectural terminology can seem strange today, it is wholly indicative of the correlation between the emergence of capitalism in Europe and the development of a technical language to describe urban space.

Before the 14th century there is no conception of the street, the plan or the façade, all of which precipitate from the rise of the city as a financial strategy – that is, as a colossal mechanism for generating profit. This process only stabilised at the beginning of the 18th century, which (not coincidentally) corresponds with the invention of standardised, mass-produced and cadastrally rationalised housing in England.

This invention, which properly begins in the mid-1600s, was only made possible by a chain of events that originate at Covent Garden – an origin whose logic is totally unrelated to

any arguments put forward by Summerson. In fact, it was this project that set the precedent for enclosing the commons through the creation of publicly accessible, but privately owned space. It also marks the oldest example of housing in Britain, and the first ever attempt to coherently structure the plan of a house with a view to being replicated (for the purposes of this work, it is best to understand housing as precisely this model of reproducible templates, or typologies, for construction).

Significantly, there was not yet any real notion of urban infrastructure at Covent Garden, which was crucial for the commercialisation and authoritarian control of the city. This would emerge after the Great Fire of 1666, when the impossibility of implementing grand urban forms led to a concentration on the design of individual houses through a strict building code.

The side effects of this scale of intervention also did much to reform London’s class structure from feudal to capitalist.

By the 1680s the success of new forms of bureaucracy had forced housing into hierarchical mechanisms of corporate management and state surveillance. Meanwhile, new methods of construction produced the first speculative projects: houses designed to produce highly specific subjectivities (while not designed for any one type of inhabitant in particular). The brief but bitter legal battle to gate Red Lion Square demonstrates the final elimination of the commons by juridical category. At first, the square therefore became an uncomfortable reminder of the war against public space and the transformation of the citizen into the anonymous metropolitan. Developers went to great lengths to change public opinion on this point, and by the 18th century the square was perceived as a philanthropic gesture by enlightened landowners in the interest of the common good. In reality, the square was the most efficient way to exploit building codes’ limitations on the construct of expensive houses. The private square, with its homogenous housing dependent on central infrastructure, was therefore integral to the maximisation of profit.

§2 Covent Garden, 1630 The political condition of Britain in 1629 was extremely unstable.

Charles I – already struggling with religious conflict resulting from his father’s unification of Scotland, Wales and England – compounded the crisis by reacting to an attempted coup with the dissolution of Parliament. Aware of his weakening rule, which was especially pronounced in the City of London, Charles embarked on an ambitious building programme to develop a processional route between Westminster and St. Paul’s cathedral.

As an urban strategy, it bears close resembles to that of his late father-in-law, Henri IV of France, whose architectural projects for Paris aimed to reinforce royal authority in the city through the creation of a new urban typology. The centrepiece to Henri’s scheme was the Place Royale, a large quadrangle carved out

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influence material France indirectly. This was an attempt to not from the dense urban fabric and surrounded by colonnades. just control the architecture of monuments, as with Place Royale, Functionally, the Place was always conceived as a commercial but what was termed the architecture d’accompagnement. project – combining shops to promote French silks at ground Henri commissioned the book, Maniere de bien bastir pour level with exclusive housing above. Spatially, it enlarged upon toutes sortes de personnes from Pierre Le Muet, a young but the semi-public courtyards of Paris’ aristocratic townhouses, ambitious Parisian architect (Fig 2). First published in 1623, it or hôtels particuliers. While technically these courtyards was written in a simple style designed to be easy to read, and were private spaces, situated at the centre of U-shaped accompanied by drawings of plain, simple facades at different buildings and closed by a wall or large gates on the fourth scales. Its reliance on Serlio’s sixth book, which was circulating side, in reality their doors were often left open and they were in manuscript form at that time, is well documented. Bien Bastir accessible by the public. Indeed, tracing the French etymology ultimately adds little to Serlio’s models of regimented façades. of hôtel indicates that even the noblemen who owned these Significantly, while Le Muet’s plans are townhouses were treated as occasional designed after a fashion, inasmuch as they guests, ‘strangers’ in the building, and not are ruled within a system of proportional permanent residents, which contributed to geometric divisions that would develop into their semi-public status. The deployment the Ecole de Beaux-Arts poché, they could of the hôtel courtyard at such a scale was not be described as typologies (since both unprecedented, but clearly intended to individually, and as a system, they lack create a certain type of public sphere – one coherence). There is no common placement tightly controlled by the king. of stairs, for example, nor is there any Architecturally, the Place Royale standardised arrangement of rooms with was conceived as an urban room, with particular functions – except beyond a rationalised and unified façades on all sides. general tendency to place a courtyard in The concentration on order through the the centre of the house. Though never made elevation is contrasted by the total lack of explicit, the lack of external windows and control over the plan – beyond the paperthe narrow depth of the plans indicates that thin masonry gargantuan houses sprawled they are imagined for an urban context. across long, narrow plots without any formal After an unpopular reign lasting two organisation or structure. However, control decades, Henri’s efforts to end France’s through the plan was never the intention – at holy wars led to his assassination by a its commencement in 1605 there did not yet Catholic fanatic – a fate not so far from exist any figure capable of developing such Charles’ own, in which his struggle to a large scheme. Accordingly, as a totality maintain absolute rule over a similar period it was constructed in a piecemeal fashion of time precipitated three civil wars and led susceptible to the whim and desire of each to his own untimely death at the hands of owner. Politically, the Place was a success, revolutionaries. although initially citizens didn’t know how Henri’s daughter, (and Charles’ wife) to occupy the space (it remained an empty Henrietta, was known as something of field for several decades, used as the a political machinator – perhaps not scene for urban war games, civic parades surprising given her mother was a Medici. and firework displays). Regional authorities Fig 2: Page 15 from Le Muet’s Bien Bastir; Charles had never seen the Place Royale elevated the capital into the template for internal arrangement of a modest (urban) house. (nor had his architect, Inigo Jones) and the entire kingdom, subsequently imitating he would never meet Good King Henri (who the Place Royale and magnifying its spatial was killed fifteen years earlier). Nonetheless, the similarities dominance. To his credit, Henri invented the public sphere. in monarchic approach are remarkable, and it is highly likely However, he simultaneously restricted its possibilities to royally Henrietta played some role in the scheme – either for Covent sanctioned behaviour.

Garden specifically, or the concept of the building programme This efficiency of means was also evident in Henri’s other more generally. Summerson’s5 opinion is that the design for great project, a building pattern book aimed at the middle and lower classes. Knowing he lacked the financial resources or the Covent Garden was a bastardisation of the Place Royale with political power to control the construction of the common home, Leghorn’s Piazza d’Arme, which Jones’ own journals indicate Henri realised that by transforming a new style of royal design he visited in 1614 as he passed Florence on his way to meet into a fashion, and therefore a popular aspiration, he could Scamozzi in Venice. The use of this relatively obscure piazza

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as a precedent makes more sense when one considers it was a it today, nor was there therefore any such thing as mass Medici project overseen by Henrietta’s uncle from 1594-1602 housing. Previously, aristocratic landowners had staked out under the architects Buontalenti and then Pieroni. street widths then granted leases to multitudes of builders.

By the beginning of 1630 Charles’ position was financially poor These builders invested their own capital to construct houses, and politically weak: having dissolved parliament, the king found which after a certain period reverted to the property of the himself unable to raise monies to fund his activities, and had landowner. The small tradesman thus carried all the short-term resorted to resurrecting several archaic taxes (some of which risk, while long-term profits returned to the nobility. The result hadn’t been practised in centuries). This made him extremely was a mishmash of disorderly architectural styles, volumes and unpopular. Apparently unaware of this, in July of 1630 Charles materials, but the financial mechanism allowed for a rapid and reissued Queen Elizabeth I’s 1580 Proclamation Against New effective form of emergent urbanism. Charles’ manipulation of 6 Buildings and Inmates . At the time of its original issue it had this condition, like Henri’s, was straightforward: he could not sought to address the problems of illegal construction and afford to build a grand piazza himself, but by insisting on Jones’ unhygienic overcrowding in the City. Its central policies were involvement he could force the implementation of a design – at the imposition of a 3-mile green belt outside the City walls, the the very least for a unified piazza – and then let Bedford and compulsory relocation to the countryside of anyone who had his builders to do the financial lifting work. arrived in London within the last seven years, and the resolution From its origins as a convent (Fig 3), through the passage of that only one family should occupy each house or tenement. the Reformation to its private enclosure, the dawn of the 16th Londoners had flatly ignored the proclamation, and the explosive century saw Covent Garden operating as allotments farmed by growth of the City had continued. Charles locals. The ‘garden’, roughly rectangular increased pressure for single-family in plan, was completely inaccessible to the occupation, and added to the document public, bounded as it was by a high brick the condition that all new buildings had to wall. On the southern side of the estate, apply for royal consent or face being pulled abutting the Strand, stood Bedford House – the grand seat of the Russell family, Earls down (designed to help him raise monies). of Bedford.

In the preceding decade the 4th Earl of Although Jones certainly gave the plan Bedford had made a number of applications for Covent Garden, his involvement in its to develop his land at Long Acre, but had execution was probably minimal. The brief always been denied permission. Arrested as a young man for disseminating anti-royalist called for ‘houses and buildings fitt for the literature, the Earl suffered from a poor habitacons of Gentlemen and men of ability,’9 reputation with the royal courts. But by and to this end Jones laid out a monumental late 1630 Charles realised that Bedford’s square, modelled closely on the Place Royale. application to develop Covent Garden Where it differed from the Parisian model, could become key to his architectural however, was in the inclusion of a church Fig 3: Covent Garden shortly after its transferral programme, as it adjoined the processional along the western boundary, the precedent to the 3rd Earl of Bedford; from Civitas Londinium route along the Strand. Charles accepted for which was the Medici’s remodelling of by Ralph Agas, 1605.

Bedford’s application on two conditions: Piazza d’Arme in Leghorn. The Earl, who that Inigo Jones would produce plans for saw the costs of his plans spiralling out 7 the king to personally approve and inspect and that Bedford of control, insisted on a restraint in ornamentation wherever pay £2000 (~£300,000 in today’s money) for a building license possible, asking Jones to design the church as nothing more – an extortionate sum, even considering Bedford’s previous complex than a barn. Jones misinterpreted this frugality as disloyalty. asceticism, in line with the prevalent puritan mood of the time.

Apparently under some duress, Bedford agreed. Charles had For this reason, he employed the Tuscan style throughout, with found a solution that satisfied both his acute shortage of cash brute columns, poor, plain materials and extensive rustication and his intense desire to stabilise his political position through to suggest more the country villa than an urban square. It is building. The cost of applying for building permits excluded all highly significant that the first example of housing in Britain – but the very wealthy, who also happened to be those holding the an entire piazza of 16 conjoined houses – was executed in the Palladian classical manner, for it set the tone of all housing to largest plots of land around the City. However, since there did follow until the Second World War. not yet exist a figure or entity capable of executing construction No square had ever been planned in Britain, which made it at large scales – the most ambitious ‘builder-architects’ had 8 a profoundly foreign typology for Londoners to apprehend – never attempted more than one or two houses at a go – there the impact on the British psyche must have been terrific. One was no conception of ‘developing’ land as we would understand

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can only imagine that Covent Garden produced a reaction in the market, which use it retained almost to this day, long after Jones’ population of the day akin to our current experience of Canary cosmopolitan aristocrats had upped and left for more salubrious suburbs.’11 (Fig 6 & 7). For this and some other reasons noted Wharf – the reverence and terror of highly regulated space ruled by an undemocratic authority, impeccably ordered and below, the City later fined the Earl considerably.12 The final point surrounded by the domineering architecture of a pitiless elite. The about Covent Garden concerns the state of common utilities in contribution of Covent Garden to London in spatial terms is just 1630’s London, which can only be described as post-feudal but that: the invention of publicly open, but privately controlled space, pre-modern. There were only two services required by the City, where indeterminacy of ownership is used to impose alternate provision of potable water and disposal of sewage. Before the and absolute behavioural rules. The enclosed qualities of Place 13th century practically everyone found the source of the former Royale were further magnified at Covent Garden as the site had and the destination of the latter was the same: the river Thames. retained its high brick wall, punctured by only two gates. Whereas But as the population began to increase more steadily in the the largely abandoned fields around London at that time were 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, the shallow wells below houses recognisably part of the commons, Covent Garden had come about encountered polluted groundwater, and the natural drainage of through commercial activity exploiting the Earl’s heritage. This the cobbled streets became inadequate to transport away the made it an ambiguous type of space, a royal public sphere as sheer volume of refuse. In 1236 work began on the Great Conduit, copied from Henri. a wooden pipe that ran from the spring at Tyburn to a cistern at Since there was not yet Cheapside (near St. Paul’s). anyone like a ‘developer’ to There was no charge for oversee standardisation of using the cisterns, which multiple buildings, the Earl dispensed water by taps or was forced to construct cocks – the idea of placing three houses along the a monetary value on the eastern boundary of the provision of water (let alone square, which the other the metric of paying by builders were then instructed volume) doesn’t seem to have to imitate. These are the only occurred to the monastic preparatory drawings to and aristocratic authorities survive of the colonnade, but that paid for it to be built. By they demonstrate modernity 1600 there were 12 conduits in thinking that is quite in total, the longest of which unique: unlike Place Royale, ran for over a mile. or any other similar design, We can be very certain of the façade is not just a the conditions of London’s veneer – rather, the logic of water supply in the year of the façade has been carried 1630 because of a petition through into the depth of brought to the House of Fig 4: War games and celebrations.

Place de Vosges by Claude Chastillon, 1612. the entire plan. Ordered and Commons by the water modularised, even if there are porters’ union who made not yet clear functions for the rooms, their arrangement suggests detailed complaints about the use of cisterns, namely: that systematised patterns of occupation across the houses. It is commercial interests like brewers and cooks were taking more curious to note that the façade formula upon which all subsequent water than could be effectively replenished; and, that the general terrace houses are based comes from Jones’ reinterpretation flow of water coming to the cisterns had decreased, either because 10 at Covent Garden of a stable by Serlio , which he adapted into of rotted casements or because of covert piping to private homes (what was called a ‘quill’).13 A few solutions were tried, such as repeatable elements.

The first residents of the square, all aristocrats, moved in appointing guardians of the conduits to charge certain types of during the summer of 1631. It is hard to know what Jones thought users, but this only led to extremely violent brawls between the would happen in the square. One contemporary drawing depicts it water carriers over what scarce water remained, and the basic as a royal park, another shows it used for fireworks, as with the problem of the quills continued. Only two commercial sources existed Place Royale (Fig 4 & 5). ‘But Bedford had the last laugh. Eager at the time of Covent Garden’s conception: a privately operated to make his new development as profitable as possible, he decided water wheel under London Bridge, which opened in 1580, and an to put Jones’ precious square to better use than simply for the ambitious aqueduct called the New River, completed in 1613. The perambulation of its residents. He let it as a fruit and vegetable former pumped 130,000 gallons of river water each hour to the

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water was illicitly tapped by many householders. The petition was carried to Leadenhall conduit; the latter travelled more than 25 miles from Whitehall on 2 March 1631 by a committee… [claiming] the City’s supply had Hertfordshire. It only reached capacity in the 19th century, and it been ‘taken away by diverse persons inhabiting in or neare the Comon Garden’ continues to be used by Thames Water to this day, providing water and that the recent building over the pipes and conduits made maintenance of an exceptional purity. The City was the primary customer of the difficult and expensive, ‘some of the parties dwelling in these howses denying water wheel and New River, which meant access to water was free to permitt the Citty officers and workemen to enter into their houses to for most citizens and considered a sort of common good. search for and amend such defects as are in these Pipes’.18 The disposal of sewage was not as advanced, although the piteously inadequate sewers of the Roman era had begun to The Earl was blamed as the cause of this theft, attributed to his be systematically enlarged and repaired under Henry VIII, who 14 stunning lack of forethought – for there must have been more than enacted a Bill of Sewers in 1531. This divided responsibility 2,000 people now living in Covent Garden where a few years before for the sewers into eight administrative zones, each managed were only small farms. He was fined in 1632 by the City for £6,000 independently. There was therefore no coherent, citywide (about £1m in today’s money) and threatened with the demolition network as such. For the most part, the sewers were no more of his square if he didn’t sort out water and waste management sophisticated than brick tunnels buried beneath the largest on site. Luckily for the Earl, King Charles was politically invested streets that ran towards the Thames, fed by the open gutters of in the square, and the next the smaller streets as they year empowered him to bring had been for centuries. It is water from Soho along Long impossible to know either the Acre and thus to each of the extent or precise location houses. of all of the channels of Resolving the drainage this era; there were no proved more costly and time maps, and no attempt at a consuming: comprehensive study was made until 1870 (even then Brick sewers were to be built the authors admitted that along the forefronts of each the 540 miles documented plot, below the level of the house could only be about half 15 cellars, 4 feet in height, 2½ feet the network). In 1650, the in breadth at the shoulders and 1 estimate is that there were foot 3 inches wide at the bottom. at least 360 brick sewers, They were to be so contrived that most of them no more than 3 they carried away the surface foot in either height or width 16 water and were to slope into the and of a very poor quality. main sewer, the construction ‘The bricks,’ writes Peter of which was to be the Earl’s Ackroyd, ‘were said to be responsibility.19 as rotten as gingerbread; Fig 5: Fireworks to mark William III’s victory over James II, from A perfect description of you could have scooped 17 the firework in Covent Garden by Bernard Lens, 1690.

The Earl’s main sewer them out with a spoon.’ was complete by 1634 and Discharging ‘night-soil’ ran under Covent Garden to meet the common sewer at the (shit) into the sewers was forbidden until 1815, and each house Strand and thence past St. James’ Palace to the Thames. (or in poorer areas, street) was supposed to have its own What this brief history of the provision of public utilities cesspit (this contributing to the contamination of groundwater demonstrates is the utter lack of consideration given to the considerably). Given the extreme attention devoted to the plan practicalities of city planning by those responsible for laying of the square and the façades of its church and houses, it is out Covent Garden. Not since Roman times had anyone in Britain really surprising how little the Earl, Charles or Jones considered conceived and executed a suburb of this size, and the architect’s the amenities at Covent Garden. presumption that the organic evolution of city services would When building began, suffice was unwise. What came to be understood from this exercise was that city planning necessitated the design of infrastructure, contractors were required to leave undisturbed any conduit heads or pipes not only housing and façades. By the end of the century this they found on their sites, but there is no evidence of any payment by the Earl revelation would produce the ideology of the city-as-system – a of Bedford for the City’s supply. Indeed, to judge from a petition from the system that in order to be built had to be made profitable.

Mayor and citizens of London to the Privy Council, it is clear that the City’s

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Fig 6: Covent Garden, as intended by Jones as public realm.

Unknown French painter, c.1640. Private collection.

Fig 7: Covent Garden, used by Bedford as a commercial space.

Balthazar Nebot, 1737. Tate collection.

Fig 8: Detail of Covent Garden from Bird’s Eye of Western London by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1660.

Fig 9: Detail of Place Royale from Map of Paris by Turgot, 1734.

§3: The Invention of Housing, 1630-82 Under feudalism land had essentially no market price. This is because, in the capitalist sense, it was not fungible. It could not be easily sold, it could only be traded with the noble or religious classes, and it had no short-term value (being extremely dependent on agricultural, and thus seasonal and climatic, cycles). It was an asset, for sure, but one that could not be exchanged rapidly, and therefore could not be used as a tool for speculation. The profitability of land under these conditions was further limited because of the sporadic availability of coinage amongst all classes during the 16th and 17th centuries.20 It was therefore not easy to extract surplus value from tenants – except by raising taxes, and these were usually paid as percentages of the land’s produce, or with labour (that is, not in bullion, but primary goods and man-hours).

Economic instability in rural areas, coupled with new opportunities tied to colonial expansion and trade, drove huge numbers of people from the countryside to London from the mid1500s onwards. The general process that allowed the modern metropolis to emerge involved the transformation of urban real estate into fungible assets (resulting from changes to land laws, usage and systems of governance) and the reconfiguration of the citizen in consumerist terms (which facilitated new forms of economic and productive utilisation). These developments were not intended to address the management of need per se – there was not yet a conception of supply and demand in marketplaces – but rather they came about as a new enterprising class recognised that a supply-driven shortage of housing could become an extremely profitable condition if the right tools could be found to exploit it: The development process relied on the skills of a variety people: building speculators

who

understood

the

market

and

could

raise

finance;

businessmen prepared to become part of a syndicate of investors; managers who could organise the operation; lawyers who could draw up contracts and understood how to manipulate the labyrinth of 17th century property legislation; and scriveners who could provide finance and arrange transfers of money between parties and to employees.21

From the outset of the Civil War until the end of the century, the balance of investment shifted to a nascent business community of self-made men. The source of this finance, accordingly, was from non-agricultural sources – mostly from international trade

by Londoners – and was unconnected with the land in question to be developed. As the many fine country estates of the 17th century attest, aristocrats still understood themselves as part of a feudal hierarchy that had already become economically obsolete. It would take a hundred years for aristocrats with large land holdings in the city, like the Earl of Southampton, to understand this and become mobilised into the capitalist model

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– which is why all the great noble estates (like Bloomsbury) date from the 1740s onwards. The period 1647-1720 and later is typified, not by aristocratic development, but by small-scale (and then progressively larger scale) private developments – conducted by increasingly powerful professionals, foremost amongst them Nicholas Barbon.

Historians often treat the typological housing programme that appeared after the Great Fire of 1666 as being somehow equally mysterious and spontaneous as the fire itself. In actuality, there is plenty of evidence that the underlying conditions for this modernisation were being prepared as early as 1625, when Charles I issued his first proclamation to control construction. We’ve already discussed his 1630 edict. Under the Commonwealth, similar building codes continued the attempt to regulate appearance, materiality and improve hygiene and safety.

The role of these codes in modernising the city is evidenced by striking similarities between housing typologies constructed after the Rebuilding Act of 1666/7 and the only surviving example of pre-Fire housing: a row of four small terraces at 5255 Newington Green. The dearth of material evidence probably explains the dearth of literature on early 17th century domestic architecture in London. However, the Newington Green housing clearly proves that the process of modernisation was well underway before the Fire, and that the conflagration probably only accelerated, rather than significantly altered, the course of developments.

Since their construction in 1658 the Newington Green terraces (Fig 12 & 13) have undergone several waves of renovation: at least a century ago all the ground floors were converted into shops, and the lots slightly enlarged; eight years ago these shops were restored into something approximating their original forms, although it is hard to say how accurately; two of the gabled eaves have been rebuilt completely; and number 53 has had another floor added, breaking the symmetry of the composition. Internally at least, they retain much of their original design: two-rooms per floor either side of a double chimneycore, central staircase and internal light well. They have no basements, no internal running water or any other connections that imply dependence on urban infrastructure or services.

They are, however, excellent evidence of the transition from the royalist project of Covent Garden to the capitalist development at Red Lion Square.

Stylistically they replicate Covent Garden in miniature – the same rhythm of simple Tuscan half-pilasters across the façade, the use of the classical orders to proportion floor heights and openings, the location of the main living spaces on the first floor, etc. Given that they were completed under the Protectorate (the decade of British republic) Charles’ insistence that classicism reinforce royal power would seem to have been greatly diminished.

From these small houses, probably occupied by the lower-middle class and at the fringes of the city, we can know that classicism – or some abstracted version of it – had been so popularised

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Fig 10: Top. Elevation of Covent Garden ‘Piazzas,’ architect Inigo Jones, 1630.

Fig 11: Clockwise from middle left; first, second, third and fourth floor plans.

2 4

3 1

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Fig 12: Photograph 52-55 Newington Green, built in 1658.

Fig 13: Ground plan and elevation. 16½ft frontages. First floor has sitting room and large bedroom, second and third floors are bedrooms. No basement.

1: front parlour, 2: back parlour, 3: shared lightwell, 4: common passage.

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that its elitist connection no longer existed. That said, although there is not yet any strong sense of generic design in the plan, there is definitely an attempt to construct a functional logic: for example, the two-room floors with scullery/kitchen below and front parlour/back parlour above does not feature in any of the drawings for Covent Garden, but become extremely prominent at all classes in post-1666 building. The maximisation of site occupation, efficiency of compact design (as with the shared light wells and common passage servicing all houses at once), all hint at the pragmatic reformation of housing.

The Great Fire lasted five days in September 1666 and destroyed 80% of the City’s buildings, and all of its infrastructure: Old St. Paul’s, then the largest cathedral in Europe, collapsed entirely; the water wheel was engulfed when London Bridge caught flame; wooden conduit pipes and much of the wood-lined sewers were split or burned. For months the City was uninhabitable, still smoking, and so complete was the ruination that basement and sewer fires were still being put out almost a year later.22 This event marks a turning point in the urban development of London.

It is the fulcrum of British modernity and the moment when urban dwellers are finally incorporated into not just capitalist modes of production, but capitalist modes of social reproduction through building codes. This is the only time in British history when the architect has (in collaboration with juridical authority and a wholly new type of governance) conspired to design the structure of the city in order to prescribe its form of society, its subject and its economy.

In the days immediately after the fire a select committee was set up to produce ‘Acts for Rebuilding the Citty of London.’ It was comprised of six men, three selected by the king and three selected by the City. Amongst the king’s men the most important was Christopher Wren, and for the City were Robert Hooke and Matthew Hale. Both Hooke and Wren were fellows of the Royal Society, and when Hooke wasn’t debating violently with Isaac Newton (his nemesis) he was promoting his new methods of accurate territorial measurement. For this, Hooke was made Surveyor General to the City and Wren’s chief assistant. He famously recorded the extent of the fire damage and staked out every boundary within the walls in just two weeks, an almost superhuman task. Hooke is named as ‘the man most responsible for the shape of modern London immediately after the fire’23 for his work on cadastral standardisation: in other words, the reformulation and homogenisation of plot dimensions. Using the archaic naval length of a ‘chain,’ he devised a system that both maximised the density of construction on a site and made it possible for all buildings, whatever sort, to conform to a universal measurement system. The chain was selected because of its versatility, a kind of transitional cog capable of negotiating the scale of the territory and the scale of the brick: for long distances there were exactly 80 chains to the mile; for area, 10 chains in length and one in width equated to exactly one acre; for the most efficient frontages there were 4 rods to the chain, and

into the hands of public trustees, to receive equivalents under a new plan. one rod (16 ½ feet) was the length of exactly 22 bricks, or that It was shewn that by an equal distribution of ground into buildings, leaving of the typical 16ft roof timber plus legal party wall thickness. out church-yards, gardens, &c. which were to be removed out of the town, This system suggested 40 houses, or their equivalent in ground there would have been sufficient room both for the augmentation of the rent, per acre. Initially Hooke had a hard time enforcing his streets; disposition of the churches, halls, and all public buildings; and measurements, though familiarity eventually bred compliance. to have given every proprietor full satisfaction. Prejudice however, which Writing in the 1980s, Eiler Rasmussen notes: ‘one chain equates seldom fails to adhere to what is familiar to it, prevailed in this critical to the length of four house-frontages anywhere in East 24 moment; the citizens would have their old city again; all therefore that London even today… not two percent are larger.’ Crucially, remained, was to give it whatever amendments its former irregularities the standardisation prefigures mass development by making might comply with.25 it possible for a surveyor to take a pole measuring one rod – which were plentiful in the docks – and calculate immediately The (broadly republican) citizens of London perceived the how many houses a landowner could build, and what profit he reallocation of land and the plans for a highly structured could expect. The implications for the modularisation of territory arrangement of urban space as an attempt to oppress them. in this manner at the scale of the building are immense, and I Perhaps Charles’ architectural programme still resonated with will return to them at length. It is also important to note that the people – in any case, they were aware that the proposed Hooke, who later practised as an architect, is also probably ‘alteration of foundations’ would have drastically reinforced responsible for the plans of the housing typologies produced the authority that governed by the Rebuilding Acts: the the City. Evidently this was functional arrangement in perceived as unacceptable. plan would have been key To the great irritation to determining average plot of Wren, Hale upheld the sizes. Meanwhile, attention refusal of land reallocation to the small-scale detail of as democratically valid, the mundane is not at all forcing Wren to devise typical of Wren’s Christian another means of executing monumentalism. an ordered London. This For Matthew Hale it only is the power dynamic that needs to be known that produced the 1666/7 he was the pre-eminent Rebuilding Acts. judge in London at the time In summary of the Acts of the fire, and had been themselves, the important previously one of the city’s points are as follows most famous barristers – he (beginning with the brutal defeated William Newton’s threat that anyone caught (no relation to Isaac) plans Fig 14: Christopher Wren’s plan for rebuilding London, 1666. tampering with an official to build over Lincoln’s Inn boundary stake was to be fined £10 and ‘publickly whipped until Fields in 1640 and allegedly prepared the defence of Charles 26 they… Bee bloudy’) Architecturally, there was to be only one I at his state trial. Hale was widely regarded as incorruptible, façade and only one plan for the entire city, with a uniform impartial and supremely just in his decisions. The Rebuilding design of roof, adapted to four scales: ‘there shall be onely Acts of 1666/7 were primarily intended to reshape London intra fower sortes of Buildings and noe more, and that all manner of muros, to transform the capital into a hybrid of Rome and Paris.

Houses soe to be erected shall be of one of those.’ The choice The proposals of Christopher Wren (Fig 14) and John Evelyn are of which category to build on a site was not left to the resident, explicit inasmuch, and describe a city ordered along boulevards but was to be decided in relation to their social status and the radiating from ‘piazzas’. Before 1666 was ended, a special location of the house, viz: the ‘third sort’ were for the poorest court was convened under Hale to resolve boundary disputes, classes, and would occupy alleys; the ‘second sort’ for the lower assess the extent of what was lost (as reported by Hooke), and or middle classes would front minor streets or lanes; the ‘first grant the Corporation of London greater powers to enlarge the sort’ would front high and principal streets and were intended streets. But as John Noorthouck observed: for the upper middle or professional classes. The ‘fourth sort’ of house was to be ‘the largest sort of Mansion houses for One only objection occurred, but this was considered as insurmountable: Noble Citizens or other persons of extraordinary quality.’ 27 the obstinate aversion of the inhabitants to alter their old foundations; The heights of all the floors for each sort of house were though it was proposed for them to give up their properties, for a time,

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1674: Cleveland House (St. James’ Square)

1680: 14 Buckingham Street

1670: Crane Court

1682: Hoxton Street Fig 15: The four sorts of house prescribed by the 1666/7 Rebuilding Acts, as realised about the city from 1670-1682.

1732

1724

1714

1711 Fig 16: Four sorts of house at the beginning of the 18th century. Note the introduction of indoor toilets throughout, and coal cellars for all classes.

specified, as were the materials; brick was to be used throughout (even the type of brick and design of vaults, arches and ornament was prescribed), and party walls and window design (the recessing of sills against fire) were all listed as to be unambiguous. Houses fronting high streets had to have balconies below each window on at least the first floor, of at least 4ft in width and constructed only in iron. Certain trades, those producing foul odours or of a dangerous nature, were banished from the City to areas deemed appropriate (the first attempt to zone London).

Even more fascinating than this architectural rigidity are the administrative reforms, like the amalgamation of parishes to centralise power in a new corporate authority.

This authority, headed by the Mayor of London, was also granted new rights over the infrastructure of the City, which, while seeming to make it more public, in effect privatised all common aspects of services, and rendered natural resources commercial. The old conduits (such that survived) were to be destroyed by the Mayor’s office, and a tax placed on every house for their replacement. This new network, managed by the City, meant houses would now be billed for their water.

The wheel under the Bridge was to be rebuilt, but the water pumped from it was now to be paid for by volume, and by the citizens who directly benefited from it (and not the City as before). Old sewers were to be cut up or otherwise rendered unusable, while a new matrix would be built on top of them – again, funded by taxing the citizen for access and use, and managed by a central metropolitan authority under the Corporation’s rule.

These Acts represent a seminal reconfiguration, standardisation and homogenisation of the material of the city – buildings and infrastructure – and the total restructuring of the household, its social position and powers, and the relations of its residents to the city authority. I have elsewhere described this process as that of individuation:28 in order to be rendered profitable, capitalist governance invents more and more specific means of naming and calling out units of production. This begins with the identification of the house by its street and number, its connection to the material and immaterial réseaux of administration and consumption (the fire service, police, post, as well as water, sewage, gas, electricity and telephone). It then continues to perpetually split whatever the atomic unit of the day might be, in order to further exploit the profitable potential of the household: the invention, in the 19th century, of women and children as fringe demographics that can be advertised to directly, thereby splitting the family; the contemporary process of dominating life through ‘social’ technologies – email, and the media of smart phones – to target and isolate the individual, and so on.

Whereas the Proclamations of Charles I can be thought of as rule-based documents (setting out general principles) the

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Building Acts of 1666/7 and later are what might be called the first codes (systematic city-building instructions). These Acts reflect (and precipitate) the birth of the panoptic authority obsessed with isolation, hygiene, fire and nuisance… and then profit. The Acts are the first regulation of a capitalist built environment, and demonstrate the collection of fragmented interests into one easily surveilled whole. In British history, whenever the success of common activities threatens capitalist profit, governance has first amalgamated the activities and then auctioned them off – the Welfare State, which emerges from the philanthropic pursuits of the 19th century, is a prime example. Thatcher was only able to privatise the Welfare State because the state itself had amalgamated the 19th century charities into a commoditised whole. I am suggesting here that monolithic sources of urban control are, if not outright unethical, then at least philosophically problematic.

I am also suggesting that the instinct to self-preservation by the bureaucratic state will always precipitate attempts to dominate its citizens, unless (often violent) resistance is present. There is an obvious parallel with the contemporary climate of non-democracy, and the shocking injustices executed by the state in the name of the people (as with ‘austerity’ driving the current social cleansing of Camden council29).

The subsequent Rebuilding Acts add little to what has been articulated, except by explaining in more detail new elements to be controlled: the addition of gutters and downpipes (167030); the beautification of public buildings and their separation from houses (1670); several further intentions to widen roads (1670,72,74); the manner in which houses pre-dating 1668 must be retrofitted (1670). Two interesting amendments are made with regards to ownership and use: the first being the strengthening of landowners hold over tenants (no leases were to exceed 60 years); the second being an increase in the responsibility of the household to urban maintenance (making it law for residents to sweep the street before their homes, for example).

Generally, the strength of the city as an authority increased throughout the second half of the century. This activity of regulation and incorporation in the built environment should not be viewed in isolation: the formation of a professional navy, under the diarist and exceptional bureaucrat Samuel Pepys, was well under way. Many of the navy’s methods were subsequently applied to medicine (for the formalisation of the medical profession and the creation of a new type of ‘hospital’), education, asylums and – most relevantly here – the creation of a very well organised and powerful fire service. Within 20 years, about the time of Red Lion Square’s planning, the City Corporation had been transformed from an entity unable to successfully enforce its own laws to a mighty authority that penetrated every aspect of the citizen’s life and every corner of his home.

§4: Red Lion Square, 1682-88 Nicholas Barbon was born in 1640 and came from an unconventional background. His father, a leather-seller and fanatic preacher, had been involved in the failed parliaments of the Commonwealth era (and was generally regarded as somewhat unhinged). Nicholas cultivated his father’s intensely anti-monarchist sentiment, which he directed at all forms of Restoration authority – both civil and royal – as his frequent appearances in court testify. Contemporaries describe him as preferring to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. If his narrow escapes from the vast number of legal suits that pursued him are anything to go by – any one of which would have bankrupted or imprisoned a less intelligent man – he neither begged nor asked; he took what he wanted and refused to apologise.

Barbon was undoubtedly a brilliant intellectual – in addition to a fellowship at the Royal College of Physicians (he trained as a doctor in Holland), he was an extremely well regarded political economist and philosopher. His primary focus, however, was firmly on financial schemes, thus his treatises never matched the clarity of thought of his sometime friend and rival John Locke (even if Barbon’s articulation of supply/demand in markets, or his theory of fiat money, were literally centuries ahead of their time). Barbon is further credited with the invention of fire insurance. His company, the Phoenix Assurance Company, insured 5,650 homes between 1686-92, charging brick houses at 2.5 percent of their construction cost per annum, and charging wood houses five percent. To arrive at these figures, Barbon pioneered the use of actuarial statistics.

The key to understanding Barbon is to remember he was, and perceived himself to be, an outsider. He had no interest in becoming respectable, and he despised the establishment. Once described as the most ruthless and flamboyant businessman in London, his flair for fashion is really not a trivial point. It highlights the effects of an increasingly diverse mercantile and productive economy during this period, and the ever-expanding range of material goods available to an ever-wider sector of the population. It was impossible, at the time around the Great Fire, to imagine a businessman styling himself as a mock lord in a rural province. But with material wealth in the city there came an early version of Durkheim’s anomie: moral uncertainty, social competition and economic mobility were all propelled by a kind of emulative consumption, as noble and business classes came to grapple for power. Arguably, Barbon was London’s first dandy – although he assumed this role consciously, and precisely to stir controversy amongst nobility.

It

is interesting to consider the gap between economic speculators, such

as Barbon, who welcomed the freedom that new markets brought, and the majority of people who found such an activity profoundly disturbing to their entire moral, social and political understanding of the world.31

The disturbance did not just pertain to upheavals in the provision of commodities, but extended to the traditional notions of spatiality and land use in the city – and, perhaps more importantly, beyond the urban built environment and into what might be called the urban landscape. That is to say, the city did not end at the limit of its streets and buildings – the open fields surrounding the city were integral to its functioning. Throughout the medieval period, the majority of the land surrounding London belonged to powerful monastic orders. Indeed, in 1500, it is estimated that a third of the city’s population were either monks or nuns. As was customary under this model, large swathes of pasture fell under the juridical status of the commons, which meant that citizens of London had right of pasture and grazing, to forage, to free passage over the land, and to generally profit from the territory in a number of ways. The fields were used as sites of recreation, food production, industry (like brick making) festivities or military training. Crucially, these laws of commons ‘in gross’ were inalienable, which meant transferral of the land from one owner to another did not annul the rights of the commoners.

After the dissolution of the monasteries during the Reformation, Henry VIII had granted many of the confiscated church properties around London to nobles (such as the Earls of Bedford, Leicester and St. Albans) who wasted no time in enclosing their estates to prevent encroachment. But a good deal of the remaining lands had been transferred to the City itself, as payment on Henry’s war loans. Understandably, the City was keen to recoup some of its losses by selling building permission on these lands. Unfortunately for them, much of this land came with commons in gross. For complex juridical reasons, even in places where the City owned the land outside its walls, it had to rely on local parishes to administer it. The relative weakness of the parish to impose law and order contributed to a kind of anarchic free-trade zone, where labour laws of the Livery Companies and guilds could be flounced, weakening the City’s base of authority. The legal status of enclosures and residences built on ex-church or common land was ambiguous or unknown, and conflict between governance and the people frequently erupted into legal battles, protest and mob riot: the fields were not perceived as wastelands awaiting development, but as valuable locations for the day-to-day life of the city.

These expectations of common access to the fields became disoriented by the new development of housing, which disrupted traditional functions and replaced them with a physical world that could not accommodate previous ways of life. This was the natural consequence of the new form of the commercial city, which grew in response to the demands of the market, rather than in accordance with any preordained scheme. The profound psychological and spatial displacement that resulted from the swallowing up of open areas by new building created a conflicting dynamic in the city both to maintain open space and develop new areas of housing; on the one hand the city demanded growth and

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expansion, and on the other it constantly struggled to gain control and containment. This dichotomy is apparent in the way that the City of London was implementing strict codes for construction while the Crown was simultaneously (and willingly) releasing land for freehold ownership and housing development. The effect was analogous to depressing the brake and accelerator at the same time.

The main difference in housing expansion between Charles I and post-Fire London was the shift from the sale of leasehold by aristocrats (like Bedford at Covent Garden) where houses were built by small-scale builders, to the granting and sale of freehold by nobles and state for wholesale development by speculators. In order for this to happen, sophisticated practises of credit, mortgages and interest were invented – the birth of the capitalist debt economy. Accordingly, late 17th century development was not that of coordinated estate development, as it would be in the 18th century, but of small land holdings.

Speculators exploited how readily aristocrats would part with minor parcels, aristocrats who had totally failed to realise the potential of land speculation. This sluggishness to be mobilised into capitalism cost the nobility a century of profit, and much of their stake in the city.

Barbon’s first projects were often such small plots, frequently fire damaged sites or scraps that the Crown was eager to dispose of – this is true of his very first house near Monument in 1670, as with his Mincing Lane, Artillery Ground and Military Fields estates. In 1674, after some success with speculation, Barbon leveraged credit to buy the crumbling Essex House from its duke’s recent widow.

On hearing this news, the king requested an audience (which Barbon declined) and then suggested Barbon sell Essex House to the duke’s son. Barbon ignored the king, demolished the mansion and built several streets of cheap housing in its place.

Having tripled his investment in 12 months, Barbon prudently (and aggressively) approached the two adjacent properties – Devonshire House and York House – which he acquired, tore down, and once again populated with cheap housing. In this manner, Barbon transformed the Strand from a noble avenue of great Tudor houses into a tight grid of middle-class homes. Remarkably, where Charles had struggled for two decades to impose a Palladian style onto the mansions that adorned his processional route, Barbon used capital and market forces to make a powerful antimonarchist urban statement in just two years. Times had changed; it was a new era.

More significantly, it was in his Strand work that Barbon first hit on the idea of standardisation of both construction elements and house plans. These are really two separate, but interconnected, processes: the latter was the most logical solution to the overly prescriptive Building Acts. The

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former has a more sophisticated provenance: by 1674, the year Barbon came to erect houses at Buckingham and Duke streets, bricks had been modularised already. Timber, by contrast, remained an unpredictable material – since the majority was imported, and the process of this importation and subsequent treatment was not fixed, wood arrived on site in a startling variety of lengths, finishes and thicknesses.

Staircases, in particular, were a time-consuming and finicky element of housing: the turning of handrails was complex, and the dimension of the tread area was often inconsistent.

There is no record of why Barbon came to invest in the standardisation of handrails, although the how is well understood. There already existed standard measurements of certain timber elements (roof beams, joists, perhaps door frames), but what Barbon conceived was the off-site production of prefabricated units in timber. This may have suggested itself to him as soon as he settled on one model plan that he intended to repeat endlessly. In any case, Barbon instructed carpenters on how to partially modularise combinations of stair runners, handrails, banisters and balustrades, which were turned in workshops and then carted to site for quick installation. Almost immediately, Barbon realised that this division of labour lent itself to other components – first in wood, then in other materials: sash windows, doors, wainscot, eaves, gutters, panelling, all forms of timber ornament; then marble and stone fireplaces, paving and filigree ironwork.

Inside the houses, Barbon provided everything for the emerging classes. He standardised even these interiors down to the smallest detail, but had clearly found his market.

The room plan did not deviate from his previous template: each house had three floors and a basement, following the scheme of the First Rebuilding Act 1667.32 These processes begin at least by 1674, possibly earlier.

By the time of Red Lion Square, in 1683, an order was made

by Barbon ‘for sash windows to be brought in sufficient numbers for the houses,’33 indicating that they were manufactured off-site. Off-site production of units does not by any means imply a fordist production process or the mechanisation of manufacture however – this wouldn’t occur until much later. The importance of Barbon’s prefabrication in this context is that it represents the standardisation of architectural elements as products, and has nothing to do with their actual mode of production. As an aside, there is no evidence that other developers working at smaller scales were standardising to the same extent, although very probably they benefited from Barbon’s insistence on homogeneity. Possibly they worked from similar patterns of their own, though certainly less completely than Barbon: ‘As he developed his role he learnt that his houses should contain all the latest innovations and utilities that any house buyer might want: the interiors were wainscoted and

painted, all the fireplaces had painted chimneys, firestone There were two other consequential juridical battles and marble hearths, and were set with “galley tiles.” At the fought over the site, the first of which centred around a rear of the house was a kitchen and lardery, the former violent episode on the 10th of June 1684. The lawyers of fitted with a buttery and supplied by a pump with New Grey’s Inn Field were outraged at Barbon’s lack of authority 34 River water.’ Using this concept of template construction, to enclose the commons and build houses on the site. Their Barbon dominated the market, tweaking and perfecting anger prompted Barbon to rally his party of several hundred the model at St. James’ Square, in Soho, Coventry Field workmen and parade around the boundary of the site hurling and Devonshire Square. From 1675-96 Barbon built (either abuse (and bricks) at Grey’s Inn. The lawyers emerged; a personally, or through sub-contractors) something in the fight ensued; two of Barbon’s ruffians were caught and order of 10,000 houses. The previous record held by one prosecuted with the result that: ‘Barbon built his houses man, and only broken in the 1660s, had been six. Naturally, and let them, though he had to concede the principle of an at a certain moment Barbon began to imagine some form of open central square to appease the Benchers (lawyers).’37 legacy: the jewel in his speculative The second pivotal legal case housing crown. involved the responsibilities of Red Lion Fields lay to the north the developer to provide common of Holborn, below Lamb’s Conduit infrastructure to the site, and close to the junction of although it began as a dispute Theobold’s and Tyburn roads (the about water rights. Somewhat latter now New Oxford Street). slowed by the Grey’s Inn incident, It was so named for the nearby the execution of Red Lion Square Red Lyon Inn, and well known as continued through 1686, with the alleged final burial site for the division of uniform plots the Protector of Britain, Oliver (20ft by 100ft, except where Cromwell, as well as his comrades triangulation prevented it, to Ireton and Bradshaw (apart better accommodate the standard from hearsay, there is evidence Barbon house), the marking of an obelisk did indeed mark the roads and the construction of graves, which was only removed drains. In 1687, Christchurch in the 1790s). As described, the hospital brought complaints that fields of London were generally Barbon had diverted Lamb’s enjoyed as a common good, and Conduit and was depriving the in the case of Red Lion Fields this hospital of water. Barbon’s claim was notably by the lawyers that was that, since no one owned lived at Gray’s Inn. the conduit, no one could own However Barbon had settled the water that came from it. But on Red Lion Fields (Fig 17) as with a twist, he suggested that the location for his grand urban therefore anyone had to the Fig 17: Detail of Red Lion Fields extending to Lamb’s Conduit and High intervention. In 1683 he began to right to take as much as they Holborn, from London Actually Surveyed by William Morgan, 1682. buy up the land, some of which were able, even if that meant a he held as freehold, some as diversion. The sophistry failed to leasehold, and in some areas his exact claim to the land convince the courts, and Barbon was ordered to find new was disputed.35 It appeared that some land Barbon had methods of providing fresh water. On the reason behind this decision, Old and New London observes: ‘Lamb’s Conduit earmarked for development in fact belonged to Trustees for was rebuilt in 1667, from a design by Sir Christopher Wren. the Poor of the Parish of St. Clement Danes. After beginning It was taken down in 1746. Most of the City conduits, it has construction, the Trustees protested to the Crown. In turn, been remarked, were destroyed by the Great Fire in 1666, ‘the Crown tried unsuccessfully to stop Barbon’s scheme and the rest, it is darkly hinted, were swept quietly away at Red Lion Fields (which had already begun), suggesting in order to force the citizens to have the water of the New that the authorities were relatively powerless in controlling 36 River laid on to their houses.’38 Barbon was indeed forced to unlicensed building, especially once it was underway.’

After years of wrangling, in 1687 Barbon was eventually construct a branch of the New River aqueduct to Red Lion forced to pay the Trustees for a lease to the land he had Square. This is important for two reasons: by being the first already built on. development to provide sewage, drainage and fresh water

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(which was not at all common for the time), he accelerated the process of infrastructural dependency on the part of the single house. At the same time, this moment marks a shift in the nature of speculative building, from a model in which the developer is really just a builder, to one in which the developer is merely a provider of infrastructure, a lease manager, a home designer and the master financier.

This structure of financing is crucial to the project at Red Lion Square, in no small part because of Barbon’s invention of a new model: he could not raise the funds for complete construction himself, so he devised a pyramid scheme that could do the lifting work while ensuring the bulk of profits returned to himself. The leasehold model supported a chain of investment from small investors, often women or widowers (who in an era without welfare would be looking for small annuities, the origin of the word income). At Red Lion Square the bulk of the land technically belonged to Trustees for the Poor of the Parish of St. Clement Danes. It was formally let to Barbon in 1687, and he immediately sold the lease to a man called Richard Ingram, an ironmonger.

Barbon and Ingram then jointly drew up building leases for John Price, a bricklayer. Price kept some leases for himself, and sold others to smaller bricklayers and other investors.

Barbon borrowed money from Price, to pay Ingram to construct houses that Barbon owned. On completion they all mortgaged their interests to unrelated third parties, like the Marquis of Halifax, in such a manner that when Barbon, Price and Ingram failed to repay the mortgages several people all laid equal claim to the property. The resolution of precedence in the multiple mortgaging scandal meant that by the time the courts arrived at Barbon’s door he was dead.

Conclusion In 1696 Barbon wrote a sophisticated treatise titled Coining the New Money Lighter, which suggested that the perceived value of money was unconnected with its bullion content.

His proposal that the UK could operate on paper money alone, not backed by a gold standard, wouldn’t be realised for another three centuries. However, his dream of fiat currency might be also understood as semi-autobiographical: Barbon’s spinning wheel of credit was slowing down, and the immense inertia of its debt simply tore him apart. He died two years later, reduced to extreme poverty. His final act, a failed attempt to have Red Lion Square made into its own parish, is mysterious and intriguing.

We should not imagine that the death of Barbon signified the end of the process articulated in this paper, even if his ruthless flamboyance knew no equal. Quite the contrary, if we look only a few years beyond the end of our period we find

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that the dependency of housing on urban infrastructure had advanced rapidly. By the early 18th century the building code was amended to include the provision of coal cellars in all typologies (suggested to be conveniently accessible from the street), the redefinition of sewage to include black water (which created the first indoor bathrooms), and the extension of party walls under the pavement to support a new structure for roads. In cross-section, the typical street now sat above the true ground level, permitting a large brick vault to span between frontages. Not only was capitalist London to be constructed at a new datum, its public territory (the street) was to serve as colossal commodity conduit. This in part explains the speed with which London first constructed subterranean gas, electricity and telephonic networks: from the 1710s onwards, even if the form of commercial technological progress could not be predicted, it was presumed it would be compatible with hierarchical infrastructural networks.

Finally, capital is only capable of producing profit – of which it has an intrinsic compulsion to accumulate – by extracting surplus value from a sphere of potential resources (which constitute an environment). To survive, capitalism has from its origins been forced to perpetually extend this sphere.

In some instances this is achieved by simply augmenting the industriousness of existing resource capitalisation. In others, it is achieved by forcing incommutable entities (which are ipso facto valueless) into new relations of exchange.

The significance of Red Lion Square is therefore not only its role in the refinement of mass-produced and speculative housing – which was in any case already developing independently – but rather in its unconcealed and aggressive transformation of the commons into a commodity. This went beyond previous cases of encroachment, where individuals would construct their own homes (as dwellings, and not financial speculations). By contrast, Barbon imagined and executed a project for the systemic capitalisation of common lands. In short, Red Lion Square signifies the moment at which urban territory has become irreversibly fungible, and the commons have been incorporated into the biopolitics of the ‘public realm’.

Charles’ contribution, while economically divorced from subsequent events, remains a crucial one: not only did he invent the public realm in Britain (albeit a highly controlled one), he also prepared the way for later developments by conceiving of the architectural template as a means of imposing authority and political intention on the city.

The two major projects mentioned in this paper, Covent Garden and Red Lion Square, neatly bookend a historical study of the square as an English urban phenomenon. They also, conveniently, encompass the invention of typological housing and its relationship to the cadastral reformulation of the city as a financial territory.

ENDNOTES 1. John Summerson, Georgian London, (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1988) 16-18.

26. John Raithby, Statutes of the Realm, 603-612.

2. For example: Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, The London Square: Gardens in

27. Ibid.

the Midst of Town (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art,

28. Jack Self, “Darwin Among the Machines” in Architectural Design, July 2013.

2010).

3. Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English

29. Randeep Ramesh, “Camden council plans to move 761 poor families from London,” in The Guardian, 13th Feb 2013: http://www.theguardian.

Language (Amsterdam: Elsevier Scientific Publishing Co), 1971.

4. W. Edward Riley and Sir Laurence Gomme (editors), Survey of London: volume 3: St Giles-in-the-Fields, pt I: Lincoln’s Inn Fields (London, 1912)

com/uk/2013/feb/13/london-council-relocation-benefits-cap, accessed 10th November 2013.

30. John Raithby, Statutes of the Realm, ‘Charles II, 1670: An Additionall,

3-22.

5. John Summerson, Inigo Jones (London: Penguin, 1966), 96.

Act for the rebuilding of the Citty of London, uniteing of Parishes and

6. “Proclamation against NEW BUILDINGS and INMATES, Given at Nonsuch,

rebuilding of the Cathedrall and Parochiall Churches within the said

the 7th day of July, 1580, in the twenty-second year of her Majesty’s

City’, 665-682.

reign” in J.Britton et al, The Beauties of England and Wales (London:

31. McKellar, Birth of Modern London, 31.

Thomas Maiden, 1801) 50.

32. Leo Hollis, The Phoenix: The Men Who Made Modern London (London:

7. R. Malcolm Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition

Hachette, 2011), 1671.

in Early Stuart England (Pennsylvania: Universty of Pennsylvania Press,

33. Public Records Office, (PRO) document C7/210/8.

2011), 128.

34. Hollis, Phoenix, 1648.

8. Edwards Walford, Old and New London: Volume 4 (London, 1878) 113.

35. PRO C9/92/93

9. Summerson, Inigo Jones, 96.

36. McKellar, Modern London, 27.

10. Summerson, Inigo Jones, 80.

37. Jenkins, Landlords to London, 43.

11. Simon Jenkins, Landlords to London: The Story of a Capital and its

38. Walford, Old and New London: Vol 4, 545-553.

Growth, (London: Faber & Faber, 1975), 135.

12. Smuts, Court Culture, 128.

13. Alfred Stanley Foord, Springs, Streams and Spas of London: History and Associations. (New York: Stokes Company, 1911), 202.

14. Public Bills, Purchasers’ Protection to Writs (Scotland) Session 5 February - 27 August 1839, Vol. 5, available online at Google Books: bit. ly/1gxkmdM 15. Henry Mayhew, Voices of the Poor: Selections from the “Morning Chronicle” 1849-50 (London: Routledge, 1971), 53.

16. Peter Ackroyd, London Under (London: Vintage, 2012), 32.

17. Acroyd, London Under, 34.

18. F. H. W. Sheppard, Survey of London: Volume 36: Covent Garden, (London, 1970) 25-34.

19. Sheppard, Survey Vol. 36, 25-34.

20. Successive monarchs, beginning with Elizabeth I, struggled to increase coin production by shifting from hand-hammering to machine-milling. This was only resolved in 1662. A general shortage of coinage, especially small denominations, meant that as late as 1797 many people still relied on feudal debt and barter methods, or used private currencies.

21. Elizabeth McKellar, The Birth of Modern London: The Development and Design of the City, 1660-1720 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 52.

22. Samuel Pepys diary entry for 5th May, 1667.

23. John Raithby, “Charles II, 1666: An Act for rebuilding the Citty of London”, Statutes of the Realm: volume 5: 1628-80 (London:1819), 776.

24. S.E. Rasmussen, London, The Unique City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), 12.

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27

DRAWING LIST 1401.01 Diagram, 1401.02 Diagram, 1401.03 Diagram, 1401.04 Diagram,

London Land Parcel Method Comparison of Housing Structural Idealisation of Housing Core Services

1401.05 Plan and Four Elevations, Core Services 1401.06 Diagram, Core Services 1401.07 Plan and Four Elevations, Core Services 1401.08 Plan, Single Cell 1401.09 Plans, Core Arrangements

1:50 1:50 1:100

1401.10 Plan, 1401.11 Plan, 1401.12 Plan, 1401.13 Plan,

1:100 1:100 1:100 1:100

Typical Typical Typical Typical

Single Occupancy Floor Multiple Occupancy Floor Multiple Occupancy Floor Communal Occupancy Floor

1401.14 Elevation, Front Facade (Typical Situ) 1401.15 Elevation, Front Facade (Block) 1401.16 Elevation, Back Facade (Typical Situ) 1401.17 Elevation, Back Facade (Block) 1401.18 Section, Communal Stairs.

1401.19 Section, Long 1401.20 Plan, Two Acre Block 1401.21 Plan, Two Acre Block (Detail 1/4) 1401.22 Plan, Two Acre Block (Detail 2/4) 1401.23 Plan, Two Acre Block (Detail 3/4) 1401.24 Plan, Two Acre Block (Detail 4/4) 1401.25 Axonometric, Two Acre Block

1:50

1:100 1:100 1:100 1:100 1:100 1:100 1:1000 1:200 1:200 1:200 1:200 1:200

1401.26 Photograph, Study Model 1401.27 Axonometric, 1401.28 Axonometric, 1401.29 Axonometric, 1401.30 Axonometric, 1401.31 Axonometric, 1401.32 Axonometric, 1401.33 Axonometric,

Core Services Core Structure Core Fittings Detail of Fittings Detail of Fittings Detail of Fittings Detail of Fittings

1:100 1:100 1:100 1:100 1:50 1:50 1:50

1401.34 Axonometric, 1401.35 Axonometric, 1401.36 Axonometric, 1401.37 Axonometric, 1401.38 Axonometric, 1401.39 Axonometric, 1401.40 Axonometric, 1401.41 Axonometric, 1401.42 Axonometric, 1401.43 Axonometric, 1401.44 Axonometric, 1401.45 Axonometric, 1401.46 Axonometric, 1401.47 Axonometric, 1401.48 Axonometric,

Basement Services Typical Single Cell Typical Double Cell Post-Dom-ino (Floors) Post-Dom-ino (Facades) Post-Dom-ino (Back) Post-Dom-ino (Phase One) Post-Dom-ino (Zoom One) Post-Dom-ino (Phase Two) Post-Dom-ino (Zoom Two) Post-Dom-ino (Phase Three) Post-Dom-ino (Zoom Three) Back Elevation (Long) Post-Dom-ino (Front) Front Elevation (Long)

1401.49 Plan, Index of Deprivation, London 1401.50 Plan, Kensington & Chelsea 1401.51 Site Plan, Cadogan Square 1401.52 Site Plan, Deprivation, Chelsea 1401.53 Site Plan, Kensal Town 1401.54 Site Plan, Deprivation, Kensal Town 1401.55 Site Plan, Red Lion Square 1401.56 Site Plan, Deprivation, Holborn 1401.57 Axonometric, Cadogan Square 1401.58 Axonometric, Kensal Town 1401.59 Axonometric, Red Lion Square 1401.60 Index of Images 1401.61 Image 1 — Triptych 1401.62 Image 2 — Triptych 1401.63 Image 3 — Triptych 1401.64 Image 4 — Triptych 1401.65 Image 5 — Triptych 1401.66 Image 6 — Triptych 1401.67 Image 7 — Triptych 1401.68 Image 8 — Triptych 1401.69 Image 9 — Triptych

1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3,

Panel Panel Panel Panel Panel Panel Panel Panel Panel

1:50 1:100 1:100 1:200 1:200 1:200 1:200 1:100 1:200 1:100 1:200 1:100 1:200 1:100 1:200

1:180.000 1:50.000 1:10.000 1:10.000 1:10.000 1:10.000 1:10.000 1:10.000 1:1000 1:1000 1:1000

1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3

29

CENOBIUM HOUSING FOR THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT

1401.01 Diagram, London Land Parcel Method The key to Robert Hooke’s rationalisation of London plot sizes after the Great Fire was its system of measurement.

The chain, a maritime unit of about 66 feet (20.12m), allowed for the integration of both the very large and the very small scale: from the standard lengths of timber used by shipbuilders (and which would now form the beams of brick houses) to the easy staking out of an acre, ultimately to the entire territory of the city.

There are 88 chain to the mile, and so complete was the dominance of this unit in reforming the city that even today 90% of London plots conform to it. The chain was also used as an official scale on London maps well into the late 19th century.

No alternative form of property ownership can be possible in London unless the precise qualities of this system are understood.

32

1 acre

1 square chain (66ft / 20.12m)

4 rods per chain (16.5ft / 5.03m)

1 house and its garden

40 plots per acre

80 homes per 2 acre terrace

open block

1401.02 Diagram, Comparison of Housing The terrace house is defined by the conditions of the Gothic lot: long, narrow, and with the minimum street frontage, compressed between party walls.

By contrast, the Cenobium model inverts the structure into a core, from which floors are cantilevered. This simple gesture already makes the dissolution of borders possible, where the party wall becomes non-structural.

34

43m2

43m2

cenobium cell after 2014

row house after 1668

1401.03 Diagram, Structural Idealisation of Housing This inversion has no impact on the overall area of the plot, although it does make the traditional internal divisions of rooms and walls almost impossible. Instead of two rooms per floor, the circulation and services force two spaces.

36

core

party walls

no rooms no walls

two up two down

1401.04 Diagram, Core Services We might begin by flattening the hierarchy of existing human needs: in this core, the most basic ablution and the highest form of intellectual labour are weighted equally.

Given the most reasonable dimensions of a core (based on a combination of structural system and the internal logic of the chain plot), we can begin to arrange and account for the subject’s needs.

38

1401.05 Plan and Four Elevations, Core Services With services occupying a central cavity, the core has four distinct sides and two distinct scales of space. Into these beds, rails, bathrooms and kitchens can be installed and easily removed.

0 1:50

40

2

1401.06 Diagram, Core Services Graphic compositions are reworked into functional space and then vice versa, to arrive at a proportional division of the core.

42

1401.07 Plan and Four Elevations, Core Services Folding panels replace tables, and folding beds replace the foundation of bourgeois stability (the matrimonial bed frame). While everything is provided for, the unthinking rituals of 20th century domesticity are interrupted.

0 1:50

44

2

1401.08 Plan, Single Cell An important goal of the project is to create a domestic condition liberated from the subjugation of debt relations: this necessitates the minimisation of objects that enforce and reinforce existing power relations, namely furniture.

The prospective Cenobium resident requires nothing more than a chair.

0 1:50

46

2

1401.09 Plans, Core Arrangements All existing forms of productive and reproductive labour are integrated within the core, and variations of space generated from their adaptability. This is not the same as “flexibility,� which as a modernist ideal has subsequently been incorporated to neoliberal subjectivity. There is nothing flexible about this architecture, and to succeed it would require some determination and discipline on the part of the inhabitants.

0 1:100

48

4

1401.10 Plan, Typical Single Occupancy Floor From this core we can begin to imagine the occupation of these spaces. At first, each cell (for one or two inhabitants) would remain discretely separated.

0 1:100

50

4

1401.11 Plan, Typical Multiple Occupancy Floor When a cell contains multiple individuals (more than the couple, which can be considered a temporal unit), there are new complexities to consider. Sonic and visual isolation, and the possibility of being alone, are vital. The use of a curtain to partition a small space around the bed is all that is needed. Nonetheless, it would be hard to imagine strangers sharing these spaces, which require a new conception of form of life.

The elimination of furniture extends into the spaces, such that nothing more than the simplest partition is required.

0 1:100

52

4

1401.12 Plan, Typical Multiple Occupancy Floor Separation can be achieved by opposing configurations, and private spaces (such as the bathroom) assigned to individuals. In this respect, the home is both collective and individual.

0 1:100

54

4

1401.13 Plan, Typical Communal Occupancy Floor One can imagine that over time, as the 21st century progresses and existing conceptions of privacy, of class relations and familial units change (and by today’s standards dissolve) the home can adapt. Ultimately the removal of party walls, the ambiguity of the home-asunit (and the calling out of the individual this implies) are reflected in simple partitions and open plans.

0 1:100

56

4

1401.14 Elevation, Front Facade (Typical Situ) The Cenobium house is not a rule-based architecture, but rather a code-based architecture. Building codes, unlike design rules, are not governed by certain principles, but are systematic instructions for making cities.

Starting at the scale of the single block, an emergent urban form takes shape.

0 1:100

58

4

1401.15 Elevation, Front Facade (Block) Through time aggregations of houses transform first the terrace row, and ultimately the very form and mode of life of the city — including its terms of property and power relations.

0 1:100

60

4

1401.16 Elevation, Back Facade (Typical Situ) The British attitude of mine and thine is perhaps best exemplified at the scale of the back garden. Each one with their particular fences, their water features or topiary, and each lawn or garden bed invested with an incredible energy only to render this little plot unmistakably that of its owner.

0 1:100

62

4

1401.17 Elevation, Back Facade (Block) Cenobium as a strategy destroys fences, tears up garden beds and opens the corner of the block to general access.

It weakens the distinction of front and back, of public and private, and makes the city a common territory.

0 1:100

64

4

1401.18 Section, Communal Stairs Circulation contributes to disenclosure as much as the removal of partitions (externally between gardens and internally between cells). At the scale of a single house the stairs operate similarly as a typical terrace, although perpendicular to the structure.

As a multitude, these stairs break the logic of the street. By forcing passage sequentially, multiple houses always require entry through a front door that is not one’s own. The street address no longer corresponds to the place of residence, the enumeration of citizens (for bureaucratic, surveillance or other purposes by the state) is confounded.

0 1:100

66

4

1401.19 Section, Long Proportionally harmonic with the existing fabric, Cenobium nonetheless exaggerates the features of the terrace only in order to transform the city.

0 1:100

68

4

1401.20 Plan, Two Acre Block The block is reimagined as permeable, with rounded, flanking corners. The removal of simple features like the curb can have a profound implication on the occupation of the city and the perception of its ownership.

0 1:1000

70

40

1401.21 Plan, Two Acre Block (Detail 1/4) Plan showing typical arrangement of single and multiple occupancy cells.

0 1:200

72

10

1401.22 Plan, Two Acre Block (Detail 2/4) Plan showing typical arrangement of single and multiple occupancy cells.

0 1:200

74

10

1401.23 Plan, Two Acre Block (Detail 3/4) Plan showing typical arrangement of single and multiple occupancy cells.

0 1:200

76

10

1401.24 Plan, Two Acre Block (Detail 4/4) Plan showing typical arrangement of single and multiple occupancy cells.

0 1:200

78

10

1401.25 Axonometric, Two Acre Block Situation of a typical Cenobium two acre block.

0 1:250

80

10

1401.26 Photograph, Study Model Architects are trained in the dramatic performance of monumentality. The origin of architecture as a display of power is embedded in the ego and impetus of the architect.

The problematic of the Maison Dom-ino, for example, is not so much to do with its structural impossibility, but to do with its overly literal interpretation by architects — it is conceived as a drawing of an object, and not a representation of a logic.

This is not a photograph of a sculpture. It describes the parameters of a system.

82

1401.27 Axonometric, Core Services Barbon’s strategy of building brick arches between houses (raising the street level to a new capitalist datum, as opposed to the actual ground level of the back garden) acknowledged that the production of value in the capitalist city is primarily through provision of infrastructure. The hierarchical, centralised nature of this infrastructure determines the relations of houses as terminal nodes.

Redundancy was planned into these early arches, since it was presumed that future, as yet uninvented, services (means of profit) would be earned the same way.

The core in the Cenobium model is left 50% empty and easily accessible precisely to predict the unpredictable.

0 1:100

84

4

1401.28 Axonometric, Core Structure In contrast to the service conduit, the core is ultra-durable.

Using a sandwich plate-steel technology (Tata’s Bi-Steel) reduces the cross section as opposed to concrete, as well as allowing the entire building to be disassembled and relocated.

Coating the steel in a brass alloy (which is an inert metal) gives it a lifespan estimated by the supervising engineer for this project as in excess of 1000 years.

0 1:100

86

4

1401.29 Axonometric, Core Fittings The sustaining totem of this housing schema.

0 1:100

88

4

1401.30 Axonometric, Detail of Fittings Clockwise from top left: detail of the Bi-Steel dowel and plate system; a cupboard fixture with an extending drawer flat surface (for rest or sleep); kitchenette provision with detail of its wiring and plumbing into the service conduit.

0 1:50

90

2

1401.31 Axonometric, Detail of Fittings Clockwise from top left: folding double bed module with cupboard behind; discrete bathroom module, combining shower and basin unit; kitchen fixtures; folding table (for dining or study).

0 1:50

92

2

1401.32 Axonometric, Detail of Fittings Clockwise from top left: bathroom module; interior arrangement of the bed/desk/storage fixture shown in drawing 29 — the brass doors to the furniture return to reveal a sliding desk and wardrobe; a cupboard or storage fixture.

0 1:50

94

2

1401.33 Axonometric, Detail of Fittings When extended, a retractable cable in the doors allows a curtain to be drawn. This provides privacy, either for labour at the desk or sleep. This two square metre area is all that can be called owned by a resident and it is enough.

0 1:50

96

2

1401.34 Axonometric, Basement Services Detail of access to the service core and detail of the twin tankless boiler installation. No natural gas is used in the buildings, anticipating the energy crises of the 21st century. The redundancy of two boilers in parallel, which provides an on-demand fluctuating supply of hot water, is typical of the approach to service design in the project.

0 1:50

98

2

1401.35 Axonometric, Typical Single Cell The financial mechanism developed means occupation is only by rental, with no debt. The absence of furniture, that is, the always-already nature of the space, does not necessitate ownership of objects. In the words of Negri, without a place to rest it is impossible to revolt.

0 1:100

100

4

1401.36 Axonometric, Typical Double Cell The spatial and political implications of combination are complex: they require negotiation of occupation, unity and solidarity.

0 1:100

102

4

1401.37 Axonometric, Post-Dom-ino (Floors) Corbusier’s Dom-ino, as much as it proposed a functional model for domesticity, was in fact extremely limiting.

The column structure liberated the facade, but made alterations to the slab impossible. The dimensions of the home, and therefore its form of inhabitation, were already fixed.

0 1:200

104

10

1401.38 Axonometric, Post-Dom-ino (Facades) By making the facades structurally independent, in combination with the core and cantilevered floors, circulation is evenly and universally distributed. It permits for a total disconnect between the interior of the architecture and its presentation to the city.

0 1:200

106

10

1401.39 Axonometric, Post-Dom-ino (Back Elevation) Very little of the internal life of the building is displayed to the city. There is a nested design intent, where each scale performs differently, but that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

0 1:200

108

10

1401.40 Axonometric, Post-Dom-ino (Phase One) In the first phase of construction single plots are purchased, amassed and developed. The majority of inhabitants occupy single cells, which over time are combined into larger spaces.

0 1:200

110

10

1401.41 Axonometric, Post-Dom-ino (Zoom One) In the second phase it is not only the wall partitions that dissolve, but the floor plate as well — since there are no slabs, the space may be opened and occupied at will.

0 1:100

112

4

1401.42 Axonometric, Post-Dom-ino (Phase Two) The ambition is to democratise Mies and kill Corbusier — the former, heavily influenced by Saint Augustine, designed monastic (but also solitary) spaces that in their generosity precluded the accumulation of property; the latter, with his atheist mysticism and primal art forms struggled to accept the nihilism of secular humanism.

If the elitist socialism of Mies’ architecture could be made accessible to the masses we would have made some progress. By contrast, the logic of the slab and column that Corbusier promoted only ties us to the past.

0 1:200

114

10

1401.43 Axonometric, Post-Dom-ino (Zoom Two) As the structure dissolves further we might imagine even looser, more communal forms of living. A space without division, or any private property to speak of, would cause undue stress. The possibility of being alone, and the provision of foreseeable needs, are therefore integral to the success of the project.

0 1:100

116

4

1401.44 Axonometric, Post-Dom-ino (Phase Three) In this phase there are no longer any party walls, the block is disintegrated and the division of habitations nonexistent. A city of these blocks is currently unimaginable, but an architecture of this kind must be the general ambition for the 21st century.

0 1:200

118

10

1401.45 Axonometric, Post-Dom-ino (Zoom Three) Detail of typical floor in phase three occupation.

0 1:100

120

4

1401.46 Axonometric, Back Elevation (Long) Unified behind the repeating facade, the urban presence of the housing gives no hint as to its internal arrangement or the conditions of life within. This is an ambition to rival the timelessness of the Georgian terrace, whose facade is preserved when all the patterns of inhabitation have changed.

0 1:200

122

10

1401.47 Axonometric, Post-Dom-ino (Front Elevation) The louvred facade in most cases faces the street, although in conditions where the boundary of front and back are blurred this condition is intentionally reversed.

0 1:200

124

10

1401.48 Axonometric, Front Elevation (Long) Street condition and louvred facade.

0 1:200

126

10

1401.49 Plan, Index of Deprivation, London Since the 1970s the British government has made available data for their studies of multiple deprivation — this figure combines a number of measures, namely income inequality, employment opportunities, health and life expectancy, levels and access to education, skills and training, barriers to housing (and the general standard of housing), crime and living environment.

The geographic unit of measure is called a LSOA (Lower layer Super Output Area), which corresponds approximately to the scale of the terrace row or street.

This data is available as an xml database, which was plotted into a map API to produce the following drawings.

Shockingly, London is the most unequal part of England: it contains almost a third of the most deprived LSOAs, as well as some of the least deprived. This split is broadly east / west, as visible to the right.

0

1000

1:180.000

10th

1st

English Index of Deprivation, 2010 (in Deciles)

128

1401.50 Plan, Borough of Kensington & Chelsea The most unequal borough in the United Kingdom is Kensington and Chelsea, which includes amongst the most deprived areas in the country and the select number of ultra elite. The siting strategy is to use inter-borough development to start the process of equilibration.

In addition to Red Lion Square, chosen for its historical importance (as well as its contemporary ties to secular humanism, anti-monarchist protest and as a meeting place for Marxists), two sites were selected: Kensal Town to the north and Cadogan Square to the south.

0

2000

1:50.000

10th

1st

English Index of Deprivation, 2010 (in Deciles)

130

1401.51 Site Plan, Cadogan Square Proposed square and housing in Chelsea, razing and replacing one of London’s most expensive historic squares.

0 1:10.000

132

500

1401.52 Site Plan, Index of Deprivation, Chelsea The blocks surrounding Cadogan Square are amongst the least deprived in the country. The Index also specifies that these figures are skewed owing to the low number of residents in the borough. 10% is occupied for less than 14 days per year.

0

500

1:10.000

10th

1st

English Index of Deprivation, 2010 (in Deciles)

134

1401.53 Site Plan, Kensal Town Site plan of a proposed square and housing in Kensal Town, in the north of Kensington and Chelsea borough.

0 1:10.000

136

500

1401.54 Site Plan, Index of Deprivation, Kensal Town Kensal Town is amongst the most deprived areas in Britain, sharing the title with the poorer parts of Liverpool.

0

500

1:10.000

10th

1st

English Index of Deprivation, 2010 (in Deciles)

138

1401.55 Site Plan, Red Lion Square Proposed square and housing development at Red Lion Square, in Central London.

0 1:10.000

140

500

1401.56 Site Plan, Index of Deprivation, Holborn Holborn, an area recently rebranded “Midtown� (without any apparent sense beyond marketing), shows a reasonable mix of deprivation. This is somewhat a product of the Index’s inability to distinguish between commercial and residential activities in certain areas, and the low population in this area relative to the overall density is probably distorting the data.

0

500

1:10.000

10th

1st

English Index of Deprivation, 2010 (in Deciles)

142

1401.57 Axonometric, Cadogan Square View of the Chelsea proposal, with a single file of housing and sunken amphitheatre common square.

0 1:1000

144

40

1401.58 Axonometric, Kensal Town View of proposed radial urban housing form, at a higher density and with no level change to the square.

0 1:1000

146

40

1401.59 Axonometric, Red Lion Square View over proposed housing scheme comprising concentric rows and a podium square at a new datum.

0 1:1000

148

40

1401.60 Index of Images Three triptychs depicting various locations and phases of the project.

150

1401.61 Image 1 — Triptych 1, Panel 1 Pictorial representation of the individual’s relationship to space, furniture and the core.

152

1401.62 Image 2 — Triptych 1, Panel 2 Common kitchen. Beyond, the double facade and sequential stairs.

154

1401.63 Image 3 — Triptych 1, Panel 3 Ground floor, looking through the shared sitting room, to the colonnade, square and facing block.

156

1401.64 Image 4 — Triptych 2, Panel 1 Better the honest mess of the disposable high street consumer than stuffy rigidity. Phase one, party wall present.

158

1401.65 Image 5 — Triptych 2, Panel 2 We decreasingly share any common rhythms: less and less do we occupy the same time and space, even if we are together. Immaterial labour is fluid and unpredictable, with no respect for time zone, hour of the day or day of the week.

160

1401.66 Image 6 — Triptych 2, Panel 3 Depiction of a partially communalised space, with a curtain drawn around a study.

162

1401.67 Image 7 — Triptych 3, Panel 1 The freestanding structure effectively creates an internal facade.

164

1401.68 Image 8 — Triptych 3, Panel 2 Bourgeois minimalism gives rise to actual asceticism.

166

1401.69 Image 9 — Triptych 3, Panel 3 Depiction of partition treatment; core detail in foreground.

168