THIS MELANCHOLY KIND OF GREATNESS

THIS MELANCHOLY KIND OF GREATNESS:

Edmund Burke’s concept of the Sublime in the architecture of the post-war mass housing in Britain.

Elena V. Fadeeva | Individual Research Project | MArch 2013/14

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SYNOPSIS This essay examines the influence of the 18th century concepts of the Sublime to the post-war mass housing architecture in Britain. It draws upon the writing of Edmund Burke, who defined the main aspects of the Sublime in his work – A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

Through a series of personal observations and reflections upon the selected case studies: Park Hill Estate, Hutchesontown C, Trellick Tower, Ronan Point and Barbican Estate, the echoes of the 18th century aesthetic ideas are traced in the appearance and the overall perception of these architectural projects.

Juxtaposing the post-war projects and the aesthetic concepts of the past, the essay forms a research question what could be a reason for creating a Sublime residential building? And what role in the city such a building can play?

Part 1 presents a careful analysis of the idea of the Sublime through the history. It compares the first work, written on this topic on the 1st century AD by Dionysius Longinus with Burke’s contemporaries and followers such as William Hogarth and John Ruskin. Burke’s ideas have received a re-birth in the 20th century with Nikolaus Pevsner’s articles for the AR magazine. It proves the point that the architects in the post-war time have turned again to the aesthetic ideas of the 18th century. Part 2 focuses on the different aspects of the Sublime, defined by Burke, tracing them in case-study projects. Part 3 examines the role of the chosen case-study projects in their cities and the ideas that they carry.

This research work concludes that the usage of such a powerful aesthetic language in the times of the functionalist dictatorship have turned the examined projects in the powerful statements of humanistic ideas. But the utopianism expressed with the Sublime language has turned out to be inconsistent with the idea of the residential housing, turning a house into a ‘liveable monument’.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

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Part I: The concept of the Sublime in History

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1.1 The development of the Sublime idea before the 20th century: Longinus, Burke, Hogarth, Kant, Ruskin 1.2 The development of the Sublime in the 20th century: AR, Nikolaus Pevsner and the Townscape

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Part II: The Sublime in the mass-housing

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Part III: The strange idea of the Sublime house

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Bibliography

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List of figures

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2.1 Succession and Uniformity 2.2 Colour 2.3 Light & Darkness 2.4 Height 2.5 Terror

3.1 Difficulty 3.2 Concrete 3.3 Conclusion – Monument in the City

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22 28 30 32 34 42 44 48

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INTRODUCTION sublime |səˈblīm|

adjective ( sublimer , sublimest )

of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe

1 Anne Massey, The Independent Group: Modernism and Mass Culture in Britain, 1949-59, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 26 2 Nikolaus Pevsner, “Price of the Picturesque Planning”, Architectural Review, 95 (1944), 47-50

The development of the idea of the Sublime was one of the grandest adventures of the 18th century. It fascinated multiple famous artists, critics and architects of the time; such personalities as Edmund Burke, William Hogarth, and John Ruskin were closely related with the discourse about the concepts of the Beautiful and the Sublime.

However, this idea has experienced a second peak of popularity – in the middle of the 20th century, it also captivated architects and critics. The ideas of the 18th century such as the beautiful, the sublime and the picturesque were often mentioned in the 1940-1960-s by the circle of writers, formed around the Architectural Review magazine. Writers and architects were trying to overlap the ideas of the sublime to the surrounding reality, as for example Nikolaus Pevsner in his book Visual Planning and the Picturesque or J.M Richards and John Summerson in their series of articles The Bombed Buildings of Britain: A record of Architectural Casualties: 1940-41.

In the post-war years, architects and urban planners suddenly faced the challenge to lift on a higher level the aesthetic qualities of the typical modernist architectural solutions, used all across the country. The main idea of the high-rise mass housing seemed to be incredibly effective, but the appearance of this architecture and the surrounding free-flowing ‘Corbusian’ space lacked its artistic qualities.[1] The remedy was seen in a new, special approach to the visual planning, the so-called Picturesque Theory, or Townscape. Thus, it was a serious attempt to give a re-birth to the ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful / Picturesque, to give the chance and to look seriously at the ideas of the 18th century in relation to the architecture: “What we really need to do now [...] is to resurrect the true theory of the Picturesque and apply a point of view already existing to a field in which it has not been consciously applied before: the city.”[2] The key word in this quote is ‘consciously’. Most of the mass housing projects built in the 1960-1970-s certainly created a strong impression that the concepts of the Sublime were considered by their creators. The architecture style, which was defined by Kenneth Frampton and Reyner Banham and now is commonly called ‘brutalism’, was obviously influenced by this idea. However, it rather was non-articulated by architects themselves, who rarely talked about the influence of the abstract aesthetic ideas to their designs. Architecture, they’ve created, was more often articulated by the concepts of necessity and efficiency.

Generally speaking, the Sublime in architecture is less commonly associat-

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ed with the residential housing. Cathedrals, monuments, fortifications may be sublime, but not the houses. However, once the reader, familiar with Burke’s texts finds himself at the entrance to the Trellick Tower, inside the Barbican complex, or looking at the pictures of Hutchesontown C, the quotes from The Philosophical Enquiry suddenly can start appearing in his consciousness.

This kind of architecture cannot leave anyone indifferent: it astonishes, suppresses, terrifies, amazes. “Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is any sort of terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion, which the mind is capable of feeling.”[3] These buildings are sublime by their essence: high-rise, covered with rough concrete. Their appearance, their structure – all the evidence suggests that this could not happen by chance, not following the will of the architect.

No, that’s for sure, architects knew exactly what they were doing; they just didn’t articulate it. If that’s the case, lots of questions arise: which were the reasons to create such architecture? Were they only led by the social conditions of the post war period, or it was caused by the crisis in the modernist thought and the attempts to escape from it, addressing to the aesthetics of the 18th century (which, in turn, was addressed to the aesthetics of antiquity).

In this essay, I would like to choose the main key projects of the time and trace in their appearance, internal structure and their overall perception the ideas revealed in Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry Into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. The task to build a home is for an architect poetic and prosaic at the same time. After the war, Britain, like many other countries experienced the housing shortage. In this work I want to try to understand the motives of the architects who have decided to implement such a strange idea – to build Sublime mass housing.

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3 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry Into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

[1757] (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 36

PART I: THE CONCEPT OF THE SUBLIME IN HISTORY 1.1 The development of the Sublime idea before the 20th century: Longinus, Burke, Hogarth, Kant, Ruskin.

4 Dionysius Longinus.

On Sublimity [tr. 1674] (London: Forgotten Books, 2005), 23 5 Ibid, 14

One of the main sources in my work is Edmund Burke’s book: A Philosophical Enquiry Into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Written in 1757, it is very remarkable for its artistic language and the deep level of meticulousness in the attempts of understanding the aspects of the Sublime and the Beautiful.

The author examines in deep details the sources, producing the strongest feelings and emotions. Speaking of pain and pleasure, of smoothness, of horror, Burke at the same time describes physical spaces and objects in an incredibly poetical way. Perhaps this maniacal carefulness, coupled with masochistic sensuality served in the end for the popularity of this work for the next generations of thinkers.

For Burke, the origin of the sublime lies mostly in ‘pain and danger’ as they are one of the most striking emotions. This thought itself is quite authentic. It differs from the ideas of the Greek thinker Dionysius Longinus whose work On Sublimity (or Peri Huspos), written in the 1st century AD, is considered the first scholarly book devoted to the concept of the Sublime. Longinus, unlike Burke argues that the Sublime uses to appear from the five sources and can be brought to life with the language: “The sublime is a certain eminence or perfection of language, and that the greatest writers, both in verse and prose, have by this alone obtained their prize of glory, and filled all time with their renown”.[4] The author defines five sources of the Sublime, through which it can be brought to a real world: through the boldness and the grandeur of thoughts; the raising of passions to their highest degree ‘spirited treatment of passions’; the skilful application of both feeling and language in writing – the proper choice of words, metaphors and others ornaments of diction; through the use of grateful expression and through a dignified and grand composition of sentences.[5] Consequently, according to author, the sublime can be created by raising thought and language at an unusually high level that the result would push the reader out of his comfort zone.

Longinus’ book has been translated into French in 1674, and it has been quite frequently referenced as an academic source by the later researchers – like Immanuel Kant did in his work Observations of the Beautiful and Sublime, written in 1764. Unlike Burke and continuing Longinus’ tradition, Kant thought that the origin of the sublime lied in the questions that consciousness, feelings and mind cannot comprehend. The sublime, by Kant, appears in a situation when imagination fails to picture the incomprehensible. Burke in his

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Philosophical Enquiry argues that the sublime is a feeling that occurs inside a person in contact with the object of terror or pain. According to Kant sublime comes not from the feeling of terror or pain, but from an inability for the mind to understand the reason of terror or pain, which results in a feeling of delight brought on by the transcendence of reason. In his work, Critique of Judgment, Kant describes the sublime as: “In what we usually call sublime in nature there is <...> an utter lack of anything leading to particular objective principles <...> the theory of the sublime [is thus] a mere appendix to our aesthetic judging of the purposiveness of nature.” [6] Another work – The Analysis of Beauty, dedicated to the idea of the Sublime have been written four years earlier than Philosophical Enquiry: in 1753. Its author William Hogarth was actually much closer to Burke’s ideas than to Longinus. He also was reflecting on the physical world, its forms, spaces and phenomena as the source of the Sublime and Beautiful. However, the most important difference between these two works essentially was that Burke shifted the public’s attention from the concept of the Beautiful to the one of the Sublime, from ‘social love to power and pain’.[7] The relationship between these two works was quite close: Burke generally acknowledged the consonance of some of Hogarth’s ideas with their own. On the one hand “It gives me no small pleasure to find that I can strengthen my theory in this point, by the opinion of the very ingenious Mr. Hogarth, whose idea of the line of beauty I take in general to be extremely just.”[8] On the other, the most of the Enquiry is essentially debating Hogarth’s notions of the Beautiful and the Sublime. For example Burke noticed on the rigidity of Hogarth’s theory: “But the idea of variation, without attending so accurately to the manner of the variation, has led him to consider angular figures as beautiful; these figures, it is true, vary greatly, yet they vary in a sudden and broken manner, and I do not find any natural object which is angular, and in the same time beautiful.”[9] Burke reflects in his work to the concept of the Beautiful, but does not give it as much attention as to the idea of the Sublime. The reason for this is that the origin of the Sublime by Burke lies mostly in pain, as it is one of the most striking emotions. The beautiful is obviously delightful, but it is caused by the pleasure. Pleasure in turn cannot be forced upon us, while pain can. Pleasure, as he puts it, has to be ‘stolen’, whereas pain is stronger, in his view, because it can be imposed; which implies that the greater strength is always beyond us.

According to Burke, the Sublime is the basic human reaction to an object of Terror, a thing that produces a horror, which is “the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling”[10], therefore the sublime exists in the objects which can deliver pain (or in the objects associated with that). This idea is interesting in the context of my essay: ‘objects that can produce the feeling of the potential pain’ may be addressed to the discourse, which appeared in the late 1960-s and flourished in the 1980s. It demonized the architecture of brutalism, prescribing to it several hazards in socio-criminal situation, in the structure and the construction quality and so on. Sometimes these dangers were just imaginary, phantom limb pains. But sometimes quite coherent precedents, such as the Ronan Point, have carried them.

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6 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judjement, [1790] (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 100 7 William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, [1753] (New haven, London: Yale University Press, 1997), xlvii 8 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry Into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. [1757] (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), xv 9 Ibid 10 Ibid, 30

11 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry Into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

[1757] (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 30 12 Ibid, 69 13 William Gilpin, Three Essays: on Picturesque Beauty, on Picturesque Travel and on Sketching Landscape: to which added a poem, on landscape painting.

(London: R. Blamire in the Strand, 1794), 7

Nevertheless, the Sublime could never be the pain itself; it was just the reflection, the reminder about pain and danger. Thus the sublime delight is formed from the thrilling feeling of the comprehension of the dangerous moment on the one hand, but on the other – from the experiencing yourself at a considerable distance from it. This combination of the terror, pain and pleasure is represented in the art of Tragedy – the action in itself carries no danger or pain, but it envisages it in some way; the delight is produced when ‘the idea of pain and danger’ is staged, thus giving the necessary distance to the viewer, giving him a possibility to feel safe and enjoy his excitement. It is interesting to note that when Burke talks about this impact of the pain he assumes it as rather positive, in a sense, the delightful pain: “For my part I am rather inclined to imagine that pain and pleasure in their most simple manner of affecting, are each of a positive nature, and by no means necessarily dependent on each other for their existence”.[11] In his Enquiry Burke defines a number of aspects inherent in the objects of the Sublime. This is for example the terror, which I’ve already mentioned, as well as spatial characteristics such as: vastness, infinity, succession & uniformity, magnitude. “Hardly anything can strike the mind with its greatness, which does not make some sort of approach towards infinity: which nothing can do while we are able to perceive its bounds.”[12] Obscurity is also an important aspect of the sublime. ‘Knowing’ is defined as the setting of limits, and the ‘Sublime’ as the impossibility of knowledge. So certain kinds of absence, what Burke calls privation, are Sublime – vacuity, darkness, solitude, silence – all of which contain the unpredictable, the possibility of loosing one’s way. Darkness of the tower block corridors is often described by people living there. The reader, familiar with the post-war architectural history, who opens Burke’s texts, can immediately draw parallels between these aspects of the sublime and the loudest Brutalist projects – the repetitiveness of the Park Hill, the vastness of the Robin Hood gardens and the greatness of the Cromwell tower in the Barbican.

If I will make an attempt to generalize the formula Edmund Burke tries to create in his book, I can define that the Sublime object is one of domination; it is beyond doubt or criticism. Bulls are sublime, oxen are not. Wolves are sublime, dogs are not. Humor and cheerfulness – the ludicrous, the ridiculous, the burlesque – are the enemy of the sublime. Brutalism, hence is a synonym of the Sublime.

Despite the fact that the work of Edmund Burke is in my opinion one of the most interesting and poetic works of the 18th century, shaping the sublime, as I have said before many of his contemporaries have been also interested in this concept. For example William Gilpin, who was also famous for his religious texts, wrote in his 1792 Three Essays: on Picturesque Beauty, on Picturesque Travel and on Sketching Landscape: to which added a poem, on landscape painting. Despite the small discrepancies in general, Gilpin rather agrees with the Burke’s position. He couldn’t agree the statement that in the connection of the beautiful and the sublime ‘the effect in good measure is destroyed in both’ [13], but he accepted the qualities that Burke attached to each type of experience.

John Ruskin much later, in 1856-1860 took Burke’s work as the starting point

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of his reflections in the series of volumes of Modern Painters. Despite criticism Burke positions, which sometimes occurred in the works of Ruskin, he generally described the Philosophical Enquiry “as deserving most careful and reverent reading”.[14] Hence, Burke’s Enquiry stayed one of the most influential and quoted works dedicated to concept of the Sublime.

However, it seems to me that this has happened not only because of graceful language or the sophistication of the text structure. The very idea of the book is striking by its boldness. Since the beginning of time artists were reflecting on the question: why different objects are perceived in the similar way, why some objects evoke the awe and trepidation, and others – pleasure and joy. Throughout the whole architecture history architects imitate or challenge with, but always interact with the forms of antiquity. Burke in his book makes an attempt, if not to invent the universal principle, the law on which the beauty or majesty is formed; but he tries at least to classify and to display the patterns in aspects causing the most intense emotions. The structure of the book, the pedantry of the Parts subdivision resembles the structure of one of the most influential books in the history of philosophy of the 20th century – Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Of course it was written much later than Philosohical Enquiry, during the First World War and it was published in 1921. Similarity lies in fact that in that treatise, the author attempted to identify the boundaries of the expression of thought in the very structure of the language. In other words – it was an attempt to express the work of the human thought in seven points with a number of provisions to them. Edmund Burke in the five Parts of his book delicately, but at the same time boldly explores and compares the two phenomena that can produce the most powerful effect on human emotions. This completely tantalised attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible causes the infinite admiration.

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14 John Ruskin, Modern Painters, vol. III, [1856] (New York: John Wiley, 1863), 109

1.2 The development of the Sublime in the 20th century: AR, Nikolaus Pevsner and the Townscape.

15 Gordon Cullen, Townscape (London: Architectural press, 1961) 16 Thomas Sharp, Oxford Replanned, (London: The Architectural Press, 1948), 36 17 J.M. Richards, Memoirs of an Unjust Fella, (London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1980), 241 18 Elizabeth Manwaring, Italian landscape in the eighteenth century England: a study chiefly on the influence of Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa on English taste, 1700-1800, (Oxford U.P., Oxford, 1925) 19 Nikolaus Pevsner, Visual Planning and the Picturesque, (Los-Angeles: Getty Research Publications, 2010), 179 20 John R. Gold, The Practice of Modernism: Modern Architects and Urban Transformation, 1954-1972, (London: Routledge, 2007)

After the big discussion in the 18th century, that the concepts of the Sublime and Beautiful caused, they have been forgotten for some time and received a real re-birth only in the middle of the 20th century. During 1940-1960-s the debate around aesthetic concepts formed by Burke, Ruskin, Gilpin and others restarted again, materializing in the concept of Townscape. Townscape as a term was born, or rather was used first in the Architectural Review magazine in 1948.[15] The term was made by an analogy with the term landscape, which in the 17th century was used to describe an art of Improving of land: “We after all are Improvers of cities” – wrote Thomas Sharp in his book.[16] The most active members of the Architectural Review team: James Maude Richards, John Betjeman, John Piper and also the artist Paul Nash initiated the AR’s strong interest in the preservation of historic buildings; and they also were tracing its relation with modernist architecture. It became one of the underlying issues that shaped Townscape. The 1950-1960-s were the years of active publications, of discussions, suggestions and objections on a new way to approach to the city: of the Visual Planning. The movement was both reactionary and modernist by its nature; it was called subsequently ‘The Functional Tradition’ and the ‘Counter-Attack’. In his memoirs J.M. Richards, who served as the AR editor from 1937 to 1971 recalled that: “The adaption of the English Picturesque tradition to urban instead of garden landscapes [was] a principle that architectural Review has been advocating since Hastings and Pevsner had campaigned about it during my war-time absence between 1942 and 1946.”[17] The very notion of Townscape was inseparably connected with the concept of the landscape. And if we will think about the landscape – it is primarily associated with paintings.[18] Nikolaus Pevsner in his book Visual Planning and the Picturesque describes the logical and linguistic ties as follows: “A landscape painting is a piece of land seen through the artist’s eye. He sees not only individual objects but the whole together under the aspect of its aesthetic values, or he may use objects not in reality together and compose them in such a way as to arrive at an aesthetically valuable whole. The same applies to townscape. Townscape is the whole of urban scenery [...] made especially so as to create an aesthetically valuable whole.”[19] Townscape was both a hard philosophical concept and a practical art of shaping the physical and cultural landscape, significant for the whole architectural community. It could be practiced by anyone who had a personal interest in the town planning or in architecture in general. Its roots were traced in the idea of the Picturesque, closely connected in its turn with the ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Being an aesthetic concept, the Picturesque at the same time embedded in a range of cultural practices.[20] Picturesque in its essence was different from both beautiful and of sublime objects; thus it was something quite ordinary, habitual. Nikolaus Pevsner in his notes made an attempt to define and locate the aspects of Picturesque. According to him, there were some basic ‘principles’, which could produce the Picturesque, such as: intricacy, surprise, impropriety, variety, contrast, piquancy, incongruity,

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21 Nikolaus Pevsner, Visual Planning and the Picturesque, (Los-Angeles: Getty Research Publications, 2010), 22 22 Christopher Hussey, The Picturesque: Studies in a Point of View (London: Frank Cass, 1927) 23 Nikolaus Pevsner, Visual Planning and the Picturesque, (Los-Angeles: Getty Research Publications, 2010), 17 24 “The Concise Townscape arrived among a number of books critiquing modern architecture in the name of community life and traditional forms, and at the beginnings of postmodernism in architecture” Nikolaus Pevsner, Visual Planning and the Picturesque, (Los-Angeles: Getty Research Publications, 2010), 14 25 Irenee Scalbert, “Parallel of Life and Art”, Daedalus 75 (2000), 52-65 26 J.M. Richards and John Summerson. The Bombed Buildings of Britain: A record of Architectural Causalities: 1940-41 (Cheam, England: Architectural, 1942) 27 Delivered on 3 May 1946, the title of Pevsner’s talks was “Reflections on Ruins’

roughness, sudden variation and irregularity.[21] This approach is obviously very similar to the Burke’s way of studying of the Sublime. The observation becomes even more compelling if we will take into account the fact that Pevsner chose as his main source Christopher Hussey’s work The Picturesque: Studies in a Point of View, written in 1927, which, in its turn addressed very often to the ideas of William Gilpin and William Hogarth.[22] However the reception of the Townscape and ideas of the Visual Planning by the general public was not always unambiguous. Pevsner’s publications have been often criticized, especially in the recent years, for his protectionist attitude toward modernism and one-sided perception of architectural history.

Of course for Cullen, Pevsner, Hastings and other AR team members ideas outlined in the Townscape were absolutely modernist. On the other hand: the sources used in the work have been mostly the classic texts of the 18th century.

Besides, we can say that the Townscape itself criticizes modern architecture, modern way of the city planning: “Modern architecture is let down by its planning consequences in an excessive and exclusive idealism that provides no way for modern and historic buildings to be together.”[23] The ideas of the Visual Planning call have the strong contact with the aesthetic ideals of the Edmund Burke’s epoch and the works of such painters as Camille Lorrain. So we can say with the confidence that in fact Townscape was very conservative, and even anti-modern phenomenon. Then of course there is the question why, what caused such a dramatic turn, a change of course from the uncompromising efforts forward to the modernist ideals, to the thoughtful, even postmodern[24] references to a classic British tradition.

Was this step caused by the pressing crisis of modernism?[25] Whether it was catalysed by the war? As with the reasons, which pushed the architects to contact with the sublime concept it is impossible to find a single cause or a definite answer. However, it is safe to say that the Townscape have became some sort of impulse, Bickford fuse, in the minds of the whole community, which forced architects to rethink the theoretical and aesthetic heritage of the past.

Regardless of how it was perceived by the general public the concept of the Townscape played a huge role in the after-war recovery process of the cities of Britain. The Townscape has been a hard philosophical concept and a campaign, a guide to action, a manual for the destroyed urban landscapes.

During the wartime Richards and Summerson wrote a series of articles for the AR, describing destroyed buildings and complexes. A certain aesthetic delight – ‘of the strange beauty of destruction’ can be traced in these reports.[26] Nikolaus Pevsner also talked about the aesthetics of ruins in the series of his performances on the BBC.[27] Hugh Casson, in his article “Art by Accident: The Aesthetics of Camouflage”, for AR also addressed the aesthetics of ruins and the general attitude towards their recovery. The discussions held in the post-war years in the circle around AR raised questions about the ways of restoration of the buildings, destroyed by bombing. It gave birth to such an assumption that you can save destroyed church in ruins, as the war memorial.[28] Architect Hugh Casson, in his article for the book Bombed Churches as War Memorials

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(1945) submitted few proposals, examples of the ruin as the spiritual filling of the Picturesque landscape. For him it was important to “<...> these tangible remnants not be destroyed in the enthusiasm of post-war rebuilding <...> to protect and preserve their ‘beauty of strangeness”.[29] This ruin-loving gaze, admiration for the ruins, for their strangeness – what is that if not the echoes of the romantic ideas of the 18th century? Ruins are sublime by definition, embodying the melancholy of loss, they are out of their time, they hit by their infinity, their grandeur. Ruin – is the perfect monument, sublime, overwhelming, it recalls the beauty and the majesty of the things lost, embodies the errors of the past: “<...> the ruins of Palmyra were for Voloney, a terrible warning about human ambition and hubris.”[30] Considering the influence of the Townscape concept and of the other publications in the AR on the architectural community in the 1940-1960-s, we can assume quite naturally that the aesthetic ideas of the 18th century were in the air at that time. Buildings, which I analyse in my essay, were built by the Pevsner’s contemporaries, many of them were created after the war. Architects have absorbed the concept of picturesque, they were shocked by the horrors of war, they have seen the buildings in ruins. These observations seem to be very convincing confirmation of my hypothesis that the ‘brutalist’ architecture was inspired by the ideas of the Sublime.

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28 “Save Us Our Ruins”, AR 95 (1944): 13-14.

Later republished as an independent volume: Bombed Churches as War Memorials (London: Architectural, 1945) 29 Hugh Casson, “Ruins for Remembrance” in Bombed Churches as War Memorials (London: Architectural, 1945), 19, 22 30 Brian Dillon. Ruin Lust: Artists Fascination with Ruins, from Turner to the Present Day, (London: Tate Press, 2014), 7

PART II: THE SUBLIME IN THE MASS-HOUSING

1 The term can be found in the Oxford Dictionnary: brutalism |ˈbro͞otlˌizəm| – a style of architecture or art characterized by a deliberate plainness, crudity, or violence of imagery. The term was first applied to functionalist buildings from the 1950s till the mid 1970s that made much use of concrete in starkly massive blocks. DERIVATIVES – brutalist. This term became very popular after the Reyner Banham’s publication The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? In which he defined and outlined the group of architects and their artistic approaches.

2 Kenneth Frampton, Modern architecture: A critical history, (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007)

In this essay I’m analysing a group of case-study buildings, which generally can be described, or grouped under the label of ‘brutalist’[1] architecture.

Obviously, such an attempt to unify and generalize the events occurring in a certain period of time in a particular field of art is fraught with danger to simplify things too much. Architectural projects that I want to think about in this work are very different from each other. But the common thing for all of them is that they were built in the period from the 1960-s to the mid-1970s. They are those high-rise towers such as the sculpted Shakespeare, Cromwell and Lauderdale towers of the Barbican estate or Ernö Goldfinger’s sister Trellick and Balfron towers, and Ronan Point; the famous and dramatic slab-block from Glasgow – Hutchesontown C. It’s also impossible to ignore this stretched, undulating, uniform structure of the Park Hill estate complex in Sheffield.

Such a choice of the case studies of different calibres is not accidental. I chose buildings in very different cities, built by very different architects and with very different destinies for the purity of my experiment, to identify in the most convincing aspects of the sublime articulated by Burke, and, which is even more important, the reasons why these aspects were used. However, all these projects are linked by belonging to something like common noosphere, to a subconscious development vector, which was subordinate to the architecture of the 1960-1970-s.[2] Those projects have lots of common things in their appearance, it becomes very clear if we will imagine for a second all those buildings in one place, or will show the slides with their photos to somebody (probably non-architect).

We can go further: for example – combine all these buildings into an abstract collective one. The resulting product would be something like a very general aggregative image, the essence of that kind of architecture, I’m writing about.

A similar exercise can be useful to achieve a certain level of abstraction in terms of perceiving the appearance of the building; the resulting essences can highlight important aspects of the collective appearance, which I would analyse by overlapping with the concept of the sublime. Edmund Burke in his Philosophical Enquiry, which I was writing about in the previous chapters, defines a certain set of the aspects or qualities outlining the Sublime objects.

In this work I want to try playing a mix & match game: to juxtapose the main aspects of the projects I’m writing about with Burke’s theories.

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2.1 Succession and Uniformity

3 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry Into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

[1757] (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 68

4 John Grindrod, Concretopia: A Journey Around Rebuilding of Postwar Britain (Brecon: Old Street Publishing Ltd, 2013), 167 5 Jack Lynn, Sheffield, (New York: Orion Press, 1984), 58

I want to start with the notions of Succession and Uniformity. When Edmund Burke describes this aspect of the sublime he writes about rotundas and Greek temples as the perfect examples. Repetitiveness in those objects meets the main laws of the perspective distortion: the identical parts of the building repeat and dissolve in the infinity, as it seems to the human eye. Such progression is striking and touching feelings; it creates a sense of the artificial infinite object, therefore an eye and the mind have no rest in it. In the case of the rotunda is even clearer. Due to its round shape the rotunda has no borders of its own, it has no end: “<…> turn which way you will, the same object still seems to continue, and the imagination has no rest.”[3] According to Burke the ancient temples, which have generally these oblong forms, with the rows on uniform columns on the each side also can serve as the great illustration for the notions of the succession and uniformity.

If we continue to analyse the issue of the rotunda – a sort of its mirror image, or rather to say, a replica of its negative space is actually a circular colonnade or ‘internal’ rotunda under the crossing of the cathedral. In this case, a replica of the negative space of the side galleries in the Greek temple is the internal gallery overlooking the courtyard, often found in the Italian architecture. The organization principle, and thus the perception of space in both cases are about the same: the viewer passes through a long corridor, in which the light passes only on one side, punctuated by the rhythm of the repetitive columns. These galleries seem to end up in some infinite point; and they perfectly show the work of the Uniformity as one of the aspects creating the Sublime in architecture.

But if we will excuse from the medieval Italian architecture and will return to the 20th century, we still, surprisingly, would be able to find the very structurally similar galleries in the stretched mass-housing estate projects. The main idea of the Park Hill residential estate was the streets in the sky – those famous endless galleries. The architects: Ivor Smith and Jack Lynn had this idea to keep the roof level on the same height throughout the length of the whole complex. The Park Hill estate is placed on a very sloped site, which makes it not only a dominating object in the landscape, ‘a castle overlooking Sheffield city centre’[4], but also gives a great possibility for architectural experiments. But before considering some particular aspects of the Park Hill design I think it’s important to look at the history of the whole complex.

As it was the case with many similar projects in the post-war period, the site was occupied by more than 800 houses, which were in poor condition and could be classified as slums. However, the prevailing local community was considered healthy: “Despite its sanitary shortcomings these old streets had fostered a community life that was essentially healthy.”[5] Therefore it was decided to destroy the housing, which was unsuitable for comfortable life, and to create a large apartment complex for approximately 1,000 apartments, which would give the possibility to rehouse the locals from the old Park Hill. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, the construction site, as well as the entire city was notable for its relief.

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Sheffield’s city architect Lewis Womersley recalled the day when he moved the city in 1952: “I climbed to the top of the roof of the library and looked down at the skyline and it seemed to me that it was a very, very exciting city; the topography excited me tremendously.”[6] The project of the new Park Hill was an ambitious task and to some extent in the case of successful implementation was to be something like an advert for the benefits of the redevelopment. Therefore Lewis Womesley searched for really bright and talented young professionals as the role of executors of this project. He found them among recent graduates of the Architectural Association in London, from the group of incredibly famous at that time Peter Smithson.

Smith and Lynn were like many architects of their time, the big fans of the Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation project in Marseille. The trip to that building was almost mandatory for anyone who has decided to design a housing project. To some extent, it was a cult building at that time because of the methods used by the French architect in his design such as: bottle-rack system with the apartments slotted in in the same way as wine bottles; the use of the raw concrete ‘béton brut’; and the long ‘internal streets’ – corridors, inspired by the cruise liner layout. That’s why there is no surprise that all those methods, in their modified form, appear in the Park Hill project. The famous ‘bottle-rack system’ was upgraded and included not only flats but also public activities such as: grocery and hardware shops, offices, newsagents, post offices, takeaways and pubs. According to of the former Park Hill caretaker – Grenville Squires: “You could live for a weeks without leaving Park Hill”[7] Everything in this project impressed by its scale. Having Le Corbusier’s trends as a base, the young architects developed the project, which was destined to become ‘the largest development of its kind in Western Europe.’[8] If in the case with the Unité, internal streets were just dark and gloomy corridors, in the Park Hill they were transformed into the open galleries, starting from the ground level and remaining on the same level regardless of the topography changes.

Due to this design solution and the decision to maintain the same height throughout the branching complex, the unit height over one corridor / ‘street in the sky’ could be increased from four to thirteen floors.

It was important for the architects that residents, entering the building from the ground level to the top of the hill, could move forward, staying on the same level, despite the fact that the floors beneath him grew on the lower slopes. Thus tenants could avoid using the stairs and the elevator. However, even more important, was to create a space that was an analogue of the streets between the houses in the old Park Hill. In the point where the ‘streets in the sky’ were connecting with the top of the hill, there was an intimate inner area where kids could play as they did before on the old terrace playgrounds. In long corridors/ galleries elderly residents could go for a walk, and housewives could have a chat with their neighbours: “Each level has been provided with a sort of street in mid-air, with front door opening onto it”.[9] These galleries-streets are so structurally similar to the Italian Renaissance architecture, were literally composed of the uniform repetitive elements. They have been some sort of the harmonious juxtaposition of various rhythms:

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6 Geoffrey Moorhouse, The Other England (London: Penguin, 1964), 158

7 John Grindrod, Concretopia: A Journey Around Rebuilding of Postwar Britain (Brecon: Old Street Publishing Ltd, 2013), 175 8 Ibid, 171 9 Ibid, 173

the doors, the pillars, the lighting elements. The idea to keep the street at one level can be explained not only by the desire to maintain the level of the roof in one plane but also by the non articulated desire to preserve the fascinating perspective of the repetitive elements dissolving away.

These galleries with the infinite repetitive elements, these quotes from the Greek temples, chewed by the industrial revolution, are an excellent illustration of Sublime in the post-war housing estates.

10 The song lyrics by Dubstar, Not so manic now (27.12.1995)

11 The Times, 15.09.1961, p.19

“Because I’ve been up here for a while I’m starting to feel the monotony of the tower block” [10] Repetitiveness and Uniformity can be traced all over the appearance of the estate. The external facade grid, asymmetrical rhythm of windows alternating with the rhythm of the floors – is just another blatant incarnation of Burke’s uniformity. Generally speaking, the facades of all the post-war brutalist complexes have been created with the idea of rhythm as complexity of different topics. Architects can’t avoid repetitiveness with the ‘bottle-rack’ structure, but they can also achieve great artistic effects with this monotony. To understand it better we can do the following exercise: we can try to read the repetition of identical elements of the facade as a rhythm, in this case it can be perceived as a polyphonic melody. This polyphony, complexity is another quality, which, according to Burke, is inherent to the Sublime objects.

For example, in the Park Hill facade we can read the following rhythm: two different elements are followed by a third that is their combination. In music, such a sequence is called tritone – this interval is known in music theory as a product of melodic and harmonic dissonance. It makes a strange and sinister effect, and for these qualities in the Middle Ages it was called ‘diabolus in musica’ and the composers were trying to avoid using it.

But that was a small digression from the main Sublime aesthetic path. If we will return to the main topic – the aspects of the Sublime in the Park Hill Estate, we can say that despite the fact that Uniformity was one of them, it was not the only one. The colour scheme used in the complex was also mentioned multiple times by journalists and the public. Despite the huge success – The Park Hill project became an important place of pilgrimage for architects, as well as the project of Unité was before – the Park Hill estate was often described as sombre or overwhelming: “Some of the architectural details and finishes are, it is true, on the grim side.”[11] 2.2 Colours

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12 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry Into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

[1757] (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 75

13 Lucy Townsend, “Stirling prize: Park Hill Phase 1, BBC News Magazine, 16.09.2013, accessed June 25 2014, http://www.bbc. co.uk/news/magazine-24054185 14 Owen Hatherley, “Regeneration? What’s happening in Sheffield’s Park Hill is class cleansing, The Guardian, 28.09.2011, accessed June 25 2014, http:// www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2011/ sep/28/sheffield-parkhill-class-cleansing 15 Lucy Townsend, “Stirling prize: Park Hill Phase 1, BBC News Magazine, 16.09.2013, accessed June 25 2014, http://www.bbc. co.uk/news/magazine-24054185

The subtle colours of the brickwork, chosen by Smyth and Lynn slightly changed every three levels, to define part of the building, served with one ‘street in the sky’ gallery. Colour palette varied from greyish-beiges to the light-browns. These colours evoke in memory Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry chapter ‘Colour considered as productive of the Sublime’. In this chapter the author insists that ‘in buildings, when the highest degree of the sublime is intended’ colour can not be cheerful and joyful such as white or green or ‘nor yellow, nor blue, nor of a pale red, nor violet, nor spotted’. To have the greater, Sublime effect Burke recommends using ‘sad and fuscous colours, as black, or brown, or deep purple, and the like.’[12] Interestingly, the issue with the colours became the main symbol of the Park Hill redevelopment project in 2013. The property developer Urban Splash commissioned this project to the two teams of architects and urban designers: Hawkins/Brown and Studio Egret West. Park Hill estate was listed in 1998: the decision caused series of debates, but the original project’s architectural qualities as well as its location saved building from demolition. The former caretaker of the building, who I have quoted before, Grenville Squires described Park Hill as “Elderly lady who just wants to wash her face and put on a new frock.” [13] In this redevelopment the project architects have taken a series of radical steps, aiming to breathe the new life into the complex, the life which starting price would be £90,000 per apartment.[14] First of all they have cleared the entire building to its concrete grid structure and increased the apartments size by cutting space from galleries – streets in the sky. Another important step towards the revival of the estate was to replace the elements in the window openings to the ‘simple glazing and brightly coloured panels’. Colours used in the new project: red, green, orange, yellow – were very bright and joyful, they almost shout that the sombre days for Park Hill are over. Christophe Erget, one of the architects, working on a project said: “When I first saw the building, it was extremely daunting. We had to humanise it.” [15] The photo with these cheerful panels is almost always used as a head picture in all the articles dedicated to the ‘new’ Park Hill. This story perfectly illustrates the case with the notion of the Sublime overlapped with the idea of housing. Fifty years after the project has been opened for the public, the public decorated it to make it ‘less gloomy’. Sublime colours were associated with crime and decline, bright and joyful – with the new prosperous life. Edmund Burke in his book uses the expression, which I took for the title of my essay: ‘this melancholy kind of greatness’. In Park Hill tenants and architects squeezed Melancholy and Sublimity of the complex. This makes me think again about the issue that I’ve introduced in the beginning of my essay: the tension between the attractiveness of the Sublime ideas and their incompatibility with the idea of a house.

2.3 Light & Darkness

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16 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry Into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

[1757] (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 75 17 Ibid, 53

Light and Darkness, according to Burke, were two other important aspects producing the Sublime. The darkness is Sublime by itself, it is scary, it has great effect on passions. The effect of the Light may vary: the soft, gentle morning light can’t be Sublime, but the baffling light of the sun, which ‘immediately exerts on the eye, as it overpowers the sense’ – is a great, Sublime idea. Since it is very difficult achieve anything brighter that daylight indoors; this effect of the sharp, blinding, confusing light in architecture can only occur in the case of a sharp transition from dark and gloomy to the bright and airy space. This method was used since ancient times, especially in the architecture of temples and cathedrals.

For example it was used in the ancient Temple of Fortuna Primigenia at Preaneste (Palestrina). The archaic temple appeared to be on that site since the 2nd century BC. Temple complex was very remarkable for its immense triangular-shaped walkaways/ramps leading to the sanctuary. The pilgrim could feel the Sublime effect after he entered the complex at the foot of the hill and selected one of the huge twin ramps. The walkaways were closed in a huge dark and gloomy pyramidal structure. During the time spent there, pilgrim’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, but in the end he entered into a huge open terrace. All his senses were literally shocked by what he saw: he found himself in the huge space, bathed in Mediterranean sunlight; the steps started from the terrace led to a majestic temple overlooking the picturesque valley, situated at the hillside. Precisely this type of contrast was described by Burke in his Philosophical Enquiry: “A quick transition from light to darkness, or from darkness to light, has yet a greater effect.”[16] This technique was also used in residential architecture – in a period that I’m describing in my essay. Most of the so-called ‘brutalist’ projects have been created under the influence of the modernist theoretical ideas of segregation between pedestrians and vehicles. Pedestrian paths in the mass housing projects built in the 1960-1970s were often raised above the ground level or laid in underpasses. For example, one of the main entrances to the Barbican estate (which I would like to describe more comprehensively in the next chapter) passes through an underground passage, which, in turn, comes out to the open space of the bridge, hanging over the freeway. Pedestrian experiences this contrast, when he passes from the enclosed, dark and relatively quiet space to the spacious openness of the bridge walkaway, full of noisy sounds.

This is definitely a Sublime experience, it causes Astonishment, which is by Burke “<…> that state of soul, in which all its motions are suspended.”[17] The pedestrian, the spectator, who have not yet entered the Barbican Estate, is already excited with the sharp contrast of spaces – with this technique the architect can distract the spectator from his everyday thoughts, exacerbate his feelings, adjust to the perception of surrounding architecture.

However, I think this effect of the contrast of light and darkness is even more visible on the example of Basil Spence’s Hutchesontown C project, built in Glasgow in 1965. This project was famous for its dramatic design and its dramatic destiny. As the Park Hill project, Hutchesontown C was sup-

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posed to become a modern answer to the problem of the affordable housing shortage. In the early 1960-s the area Gorballs in Glasgow had a colourful and fearsome reputation and was widely known as one of the worst slums in the city. After the Second World War, Glasgow Corporation Housing Committee have launched the strategy for the city redevelopment, dividing the city in 29 Comprehensive Design Areas. Hutchesontown-Gorballs CDA was split in the areas A, B, C, and D, Hutchesontown-Polmadie (E) and Laurieston-Gorballs. However, the most famous of all these redevelopment projects was Hutchesontown C or Queen Elizabeth Square blocks. Architect Basil Spence like many others of his time was deeply inspired by the design of Unité d’Habitation in Marseille. His project consisted of two multi-storeys 20 floors in height, slab blocks, raised above the ground on pillars, similar to those that were used by Le Corbusier in Marseille.

The ground conditions on the building site were not easy: the soil was waterlogged and required extensive piling for every building higher than four storeys.[18] Therefore in the end the architect had to rethink the original idea with the single pillar in the middle of block and replace it with more complex and stable structures, which have been subsequently compared by journalists to the buttresses in the cathedral or to the structures, supporting ships in docks.

“Basil’s original idea was to support each of these ten ‘towers’, which are about 40 feet square, on one leg in the centre, and cantilever the tower out from that one leg.

This however pointed out by the engineers at Arup – would need a floor slab about six feet thick, so that was dropped in favour of [twin legs in] a shaped form.”[19] Lifting his building above the ground, Basil Spence thus created a dramatic contrast between the light and airy space surrounding the blocks and the dark and dramatic space underneath them. Hutchesontown C project is mentioned in the architectural guide The Buildings of Scotland published in 1990: “<...> powerful in silhouette ... elevation and detail but brutal as an environment, with dark and dramatic spaces between the strongly-curving concrete pylons at the level of the square.”[20] However, the sculptured pylons, invented by Spence, are frequently mentioned in the press, but the interiors of the building are often forgotten.

But there still is the possibility to trace the properties of light and space on the photos remained.

Hutchesontown C project was famous for its long dark corridors, which were inspired by Le Corbusier, and his ocean liner-look-like Unité. This monotony of the corridors was periodically interrupted by the stairwells, which on the contrary were very bright due to the large windows. For the fire safety reasons the stairs are supposed to have natural light, but Basil Spence gave to this regulation an aesthetic effect: dark corridors, intersected with the light gleams are obviously another example of the contrast of Light and Darkness, as the cause of the Sublime in architecture.

Basil Spence’s building for Gorballs was incredibly remarkable and popular for its time. John Grindrod in his book Concretopia publishes an interview with Eddie McGonnell, former Gorballs resident. He shares his experience of living in the different tower-blocks in Hutchesontown, but with the greatest delight he speaks specifically about Basil Spence’s project: “It was like a flying

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18 Basil Spence. Buildings and projects. ed. by Campbell, L.; Glendinning, M.; Thomas, J. RIBA publishing, 2012, p. 217 19 Miles Glendinning, Rebuilding Scotland: The Postwar Vision, 1945-75, (East Lothian: Tuckwell Press Ltd, 1997), 100 20 Elizabeth Williamson, Anne Riches and Malcolm Higgs, The Buildings of Scotland, (London: Penguin, 1990), 519

21 John Grindrod, Concretopia: A Journey Around Rebuilding of Postwar Britain (Brecon: Old Street Publishing Ltd, 2013), 165 22 Ibid, 158

saucer taking you to Mars. It was life on Mars, that’s the way they seemed.”[21] Locals loved the spacious terraces, ‘the hanging gardens of Babylon’. Spence’s idea was to recreate the atmosphere the intimate atmosphere of the old terraces. The idea was similar to the ‘streets in the sky’ in Park Hill which I have already described. The terrace in the Huchesontown C blocks was shared between the four flats. Eddie McGonnell describes in his interview that the terrace was one of his favourite places: “I used to take a couch out there – a settee – and have a party, have fun with the radio on. Way up, up in the sky.” [22]

2.4 Height

23 Dave Hewitt, “Peripheral Vision: dwelling in and on the Gorballs flats”, Corridor (Glasgow: CCA Publications, 2001), 4 24 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry Into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

[1757] (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 66 25 Quote from film: Trellick Tower, BBC Building Sites, Series 3, 1991 26 Quote from film: Capturing Space, London Film School, Erik Bostedt, 2011 27 James Dunnet, Erno Goldfinger: Selected works, (London: AA Files, 1996)

The height of the ‘brutalist’ tower blocks excited, impressed its residents.

Dave Hewitt in his article Peripheral Vision: dwelling in and on the Gorbals flats describes one of his favourite aspects of Spence’s project – height and the views of Highland Panorama: “One of the best aspects <...> came with the wonderful, if somewhat aloof, view from the higher levels. In the daylight, the view north from this height was stunning. The Campsies occupied the middle ground, while beyond and to the left came the first Highland bens <...>.” [23] Height, or Vastness and Magnitude in dimensions – is another group of the Burke’s aspects of the Sublime: “Greatness of dimension, is a powerful cause of the sublime.” This greatness of dimensions can be traced for sure in the tower blocks, such as the famous Trellick Tower by Ernö Goldfinger. Burke in his Philosophical Enquiry suggests that “a perpendicular [vertical] plane is potentially more likely to cause the Sublime, than the horizontal one.”[24] The tower block is Sublime in its height. Its silhouette stands out in the skyline, its height mesmerises pedestrians passing by, and its residents often describe their experience similar to ‘being on the top of the mountain.’[25] Lee Boland, in her interview for the Capturing Space movie reveals the first day she moved in the Trellick Tower in 1972: “I got out of the car, stood on the pavement, looked up to the tower, clutching my daughter in my hand and I said “Wow, what a great building! I love the height of this building.”’[26] Trellick tower was the younger twin sister of Goldfinger’s first, Balfron Tower. These projects were almost identical, except that the later Trellick Tower was four floors higher.

Both projects were commissioned by the Greater London Council to Ernö Goldfinger in the 1960-s. The first, Balfron Tower, was perceived mostly positively by the public; therefore the architect thought this project would be repeated in other places in London. To experience his design of first hand, to correct any problems that may arise in that type of tower in his future designs Ernö Goldfinger spent some time in a flat on the twenty-fifth floor of the twenty-seven floor Balfron Tower in Poplar.[27] Unfortunately Goldfinger’s heyday was very short and, due to the circumstances, which I will think about later on, London authorities built just two towers of that type.

The design of both towers was starkly aggressive and provocative. Unusual dynamic form was created by the fact that the architect separated residential cluster from the loud services. Elevator and garbage shafts were relegated to

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28 Quote from film: Trellick Tower, BBC Building Sites, Series 3, 1991 29 Ibid

a separate narrow service structure, crowned by the boiler room. It was connected to the residential part with the galleries, passing on the every third floor. But again, in this technique, not only the functional, but also an aesthetic idea can be seen. The architect Sand Helsel describes her experience of getting in her flat in Trellick Tower: “It was definitely very dramatic. At one point you were enclosed in the staleness steel box in a concrete shaft and in the next moment you virtually exploded to the natural light of the corridors and bridges.”[28] This effect, which Sand speaks about, is that contrast of the Light and Darkness, which I’ve already described.

But if we will return to the aspect of Height or Vastness forming the Sublime, that would be the things the locals mentioned in almost every interview, published or screened. In terms of the Trellick Tower people usually mentioned the spaciousness of the flats and the feeling of the height, of being on the top of the mountain. Sand Helsel praises the intimacy, proximity to the life in the Trellick Tower. Demonstrating the spectacular view from her balcony, she tells that she feels the intensity of the street life, feeling safe at the same time: “And again, that view. We are in the 21st floor now, the scale becomes more intimate. But unlike the ground-level house there is no need for curtains: they can’t see you.”[29] However, despite some people enjoying the height of the high-rise, for others this type of building became the embodiment of their deepest fears.

2.5 Terror

30 Daily Express, 17.05.1968, 4 31 John Grindrod, Concretopia: A Journey Around Rebuilding of Postwar Britain (Brecon: Old Street Publishing Ltd, 2013), 333 32 Ibid

The turning point in the perception of the high-rise is closely linked to the tragic events occurred in 1968 in East London. Early in the morning of the 16th of May, the explosion of a domestic gas line occurred in the Tower Block named Ronan Point, which resulted the collapse of a whole wing of the building.

The explosion took place at 5:50 AM on the eighteenth floor of the building.

Ivy Hodge wanted to make her morning cup of tea and when she lit the hob her kitchen exploded. George Arthur, who worked as night watchman saw the tragedy from his hut, located 15 yards away from Ronan Point: “I heard cracking and banging and I saw concrete flying around. I ran like hell. <...> A whole wing of the building came down like a pack of cards.”[30] The building has been constructed using a Larsen Nielsen’s large-panel system factory-made pre-cast bolted together on the site.[31] This system has been developed in Denmark in 1948; it was insanely popular and has been used for 20 years in 12 different countries, including Britain, where in general 6,000 houses have been built using this system. Architects and builders, who used this solution, considered it a very effective invention, finally able to solve the problems of the housing shortage. On the day of the explosion in Ronan Point, Harry Ronan, the local councillor, in whose honour the building was named said in an interview for The Times: “He [Thomas North, the architect of Ronan Point], like me, had been saying that the blocks were our answer.”[32] The panels were really impressive in dimensions: about six inches thick,

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33 Lynsey Hanley, Estates, (London: Granta, 2007), 109 34 Pearl Jephcott, Homes in High Flats: Some of the human problems involved in multi-storey housing, (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1971), 3 35 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry Into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, [1757] (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 53 36 Ibid 37 Ernö Goldfinger, The Times, 08.08.1968, 2

eight feet high and nine feet wide. The building was 22 floors high. The designers Larsen and Nielsen personally came from Denmark, to approve the draft. They approved the project, despite the fact that it proposed to construct a building 16 floors higher than the original system allowed. The significant benefit of the use of the pre-fabricated panels was the speed of erection of the building. Builders worked in teams of 10-12 people, and their payment depended on the speed of their work. Each panel was secured just with two bolts, which were not covered, therefore started to rust relatively quickly. The joints between the panels had to be fixed with the mortar or cement, but instead they were just stuffed with newspaper or left open. Lynsey Hanley describes in her book Estates, that sometimes architects tested the size of the gaps between the floor and wall panels by dropping coins and pieces of paper through them – they ironically compared with the slot machine. [33] The explosion occurred just two months after the construction works in the Ronan Point were completed. The fact that this tragedy happened early in the morning saved the lives of many residents of the building – many of them still stayed in their bedrooms, in that part of the building that survived. Nevertheless, four people were killed in this tragic accident. Certainly, it was not the only problem with the Larsen Nielsen’s system, which led to such incident.

And despite the fact that this case with the tower block was unique, it still became a turning point in the whole post-war mass-housing perception. The subconscious national fear, which was already in the air, crystallised in Ronan Point.

This project was very different from other projects I’ve described, it was not artistic in the sense as Hutchesontown C or Trellick Tower were artistic, it was not that Sublime in this appearance. But after the explosion occurred, it became some sort of tragically known icon, embodying the ills of ‘modern architecture’, possible dangers of the ‘living up, up, up’[34] and hazards of urbanization. In the end, it embodied Terror, which according to Burke was related closely to the Sublime: “Whatever therefore is terrible, with regard to sight, is sublime too.”[35] Therefore Ronan Point was not sublime in its appearance, but sublime in its perception.

Fear has become another touch to the Sublime portrait of the brutalist mass housing, which ultimately affected to a large extent the perception of all the projects I’m writing about. “No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear,”[36] – Edmund Burke wrote in his book.

This passion has become a strange mechanism, a driving force powerful enough, that it could motivate the government to cut down the scheme of subsidising the building of high-rise flats, launched in 1956. This decision was extremely disappointing for many architects who sincerely believed in the ideas of humanism of the high-rises. Ernö Goldfinger in his interview for The Times said: “I’m appalled. It is a ridiculous attitude that will put us back 30 years.”[37]

However, the process could not be reversed. The image of the ‘brutalist high-rise’ in the mass media was closely related to such key words as ‘terror’ and ‘horror’. Every incident connected with crime, murder or other alienating

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and dehumanising aspects of life in the mass housing, and especially in the high-rise blocks built in the 1960-1960-s was exaggerated and repeated multiple times.

Soon it became a sinister image emerging in movies and literature. Ernö Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower have been baptised ‘The Tower of Terror’, and projects such as Hutchesontown C and Park Hill got nicknames same as the names of the world-famous prisons – Alcatraz and San Quentin. “A 26-year-old mother plunged to the ground from the eleventh floor of a Birmingham tower block holding her two-year-old son, because her skyscraper flat was a prison.”[38] – stories like this often appeared in the newspapers.

The novel High-Rise by James Graham Ballard was released in 1975 and became an example of the ‘Sublime Terror’ in mass housing and the negative reception of the tower block. The book begins with the phrase: “Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.”[39] The book describes, in a very misanthropic way the changes that may occur in the human nature while living in a high-rise block.

In the tower block interiors people turned into violent and aggressive creatures incredibly quickly, and in the end they are obsessed with the simplest and basest instincts: food, sex and violence. Though the author of the book did not mention any particular building, but an attentive reader, if he or she would be attentive enough, can find some traits of the Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower, Spence’s Hutchesontown C, or of the Barbican Estate and other projects that I have dedicated this essay in this book.

According to Ballard the atmosphere of the high-rise pushed people to the warpath, prompting in them the primitive ferocity and aggression: “Would he soon be the last person alive in the high-rise? He thought of himself in this enormous building, free to roam its floors and concrete galleries, to climb its silent elevator shafts, to sit by himself in turn on every one of its thousand balconies.”[40] Ballard, in his book essentially creates an abstract and thrilling character, which itself produces the Sublime – the Tower Block. Putting the heroes of his book on the path of struggle for survival, Ballard litertally quoted Burke’s Section VI from the Philosophical Enquiry, Of the passions which belong to Self-Preservation: “Most of ideas which are capable of making a powerful impression on the mind <... > may be reduced very nearly to these two heads, self-preservation and society.”[41] The novel High Rise can certainly be described with these two words: self-preservation and society.

Ballard’s novel was one of the nails in the coffin of the tower-block idea.

But the speed with which a positive image of this typology in the architecture has changed to the dramatically negative, and the Sublime causing delight became synonymous with horror makes me think that this happened for some more deep reasons.

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38 Newcastle Journal, 09.09.1977, 7 39 James Graham Ballard, High-Rise. [1975] (London: Harper Perennial, 2006), 7 40 Ibid, 153 41 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry Into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, [1757] (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 35

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PART III: THE STRANGE IDEA OF THE SUBLIME HOUSE

1 John Grindrod, Concretopia: A Journey Around Rebuilding of Postwar Britain (Brecon: Old Street Publishing Ltd, 2013), 167

The Sublime image of the high-rise has become very important for the history of post-war architecture. It was a powerful idea, which has changed the way of thinking about housing. Its expressive form, its height, which I mentioned earlier, made it an important emphasis in the city skyline. The memorable silhouette of Trellick Tower dominates and fits in perspective Golbourne road in London. Park Hill overlooks Sheffield ‘like a castle or a medieval walled city.’[1] Carved, tapering upwards towers of the Barbican estate rise above the City of London, resembling the pointed towers of the Sagrada Familia the skyline of Barcelona.

3.1 Difficulty

2 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry Into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, [1757] (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 71

The tower block had the same level of importance for the modern cities, as the cathedral in the medieval times. In the cathedrals often there was no single architect, because it was so difficult and elaborate, that their creation took centuries. The presence of the cathedral was ideologically very important for the city; therefore people spent all their time and money to build one. The fact of having the cathedral displayed the city on the absolutely different level; it brought prosperity and blessing to all the citizens. Therefore local authorities tried to find the most skilful masters, but in the same time they provided them with an absolute artistic freedom.

This is especially obvious in the Gothic cathedrals. The building process of the Milan Duomo took more than 700 years, being launched in the thirteenth century it was completed only in the mid-twentieth century. Another very famous cathedral, which I’ve mentioned before – Sagarda Familia in Barcelona, was started in 1882 and its construction has not yet been completed.

This cathedral is especially famous for the extraordinary attention to the details and the carefulness or difficulty of the craftwork in facades and interiors.

Burke mentions that this difficulty is another aspect of the Sublime: “Another source of greatness if difficulty. When any work seems to have required immense force and labour to erect it, the idea is grand.”[2] In work on the Barbican Estate Complex, whose construction began in 1965, the architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon also paid great attention to the design details. The project was part of a plan to rebuild London after the Second World War. Unlike projects that I’ve described earlier, this project was not created as social housing, the architects were not strapped for cash – for its construction in general they have been spent £ 156 million.

Such generosity on the part of city authorities again recalls the metaphor of

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the cathedral in the Middle Ages: the city also spared no money to build such an important symbolic objects like cathedrals. This financial freedom gave to the architects an opportunity to fully realise their passion to the aesthetic experiments.

The Barbican complex includes all the aspects of the Sublime, which I spoke earlier: the repetitive, uniform elements, sharp contrasts of light and dark spaces and remarkable height – three apartment towers: Cromwell, Shakespeare and Lauderdale as the time of their construction were the highest tower blocks in the Western Europe. Besides Barbican estate is one of the most egregious and the brightest examples of the difficulty as the aspect of the Sublime by Burke.

External surfaces of the buildings were finished by hand – pick-hammered.

It hardly fit in the head, but at a time when one group of the architects used prefabricated elements and other benefits of modern industry to accelerate the construction process, others – processed each panel of a huge complex manually, like the medieval masters.

Architect John Honer, who worked on the Barbican Estate project, recalled series of experiments with different finishes of concrete at the Barbican. They began with the use ‘of an ordinary gravel aggregate with the concrete’; then they moved to a series of exercises with hand-finished surfaces: “We began to tickle the surface with this pick or bush hammer, to give a kind of rugged feel.”[3] But that was not enough; besides the river gravel was not very amenable to this kind of treatment. Moreover, in the river gravel there were the iron par-

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3 John Grindrod, Concretopia: A Journey Around Rebuilding of Postwar Britain (Brecon: Old Street Publishing Ltd, 2013), 417

4 Adrian Forty, Concrete and Culture: a material history, (London: Reaktion, 2012) 5 Quote from the lecture

by Adrian Fourty: Is Concrete Modern?, 24 October, 2013, CCA Study Center, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Quebec 6 W. Boesinger, Le Corbusier: Oeuvre Complete 1946-1952, (Paris: Foundation Le Corbusier, 1996), 49 7 John Grindrod, Concretopia: A Journey Around Rebuilding of Postwar Britain (Brecon: Old Street Publishing Ltd, 2013), 439

ticles that might oxidise and cause rust staining. It was finally decided to use granite gravel, whose quality was more suitable for the needs of the project.

The use of such an expensive and eternal material as filler for concrete perfectly illustrates the attitude of the architects to the project – endless and selfless desire of a medieval Mason to build an eternal monument.

3.2 Concrete Obsession with the concrete as a basic material was the thing that links all the architects that I’m writing about in this essay. The usage of this material is often considered as one of the characteristic qualities of the architecture that I’ve already mentioned as ‘brutalist’. [4] Reinforced concrete or béton brut was an iconic material for the modernist architecture. It was pioneered by Auguste Perret, who was followed by Le Corbusier – he used this material in all his iconic projects. The architects loved the raw concrete for its texture, for its artistic qualities. But then I think that the Sublime aspect of this material was not less important. It was an archaic material. In his lecture for CCA Adrian Fourty quotes Le Corbusier’s description of the concrete: “A play between crudity and finesse, between precision and accident”[5] and adds that the number of contradictory qualities can be supplemented with the game ‘between modern and archaic’.[6] John Grindrod in the final chapter of his book Concretopia agrees with this idea of the archaism of the raw concrete. He makes an argument that the concrete is created from the most ancient materials: sand and rock. Thus, when we see it used in the construction of structures in the 20th century, it allows us to hear ‘echoes of some of our most ancient building traditions – castles, catacombs, cathedrals, monasteries, walled cities, watch towers’.[7] These structures, in turn, embody the Sublime in architecture. Castles are Sublime; the ruins of castles are also Sublime.

Concrete is the material, which interacts with nature. It can age, with the time passing; it can cover with moss and the watermarks as with natural stone.

In this honesty I can see the ability of concrete to become a Sublime ruin, an artificial modernist ruin.

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45

46

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3.3 Conclusion – the Monument in the City

8 Nicholas Bullock, Building the Post-War World, (London: Routledge, 2002), 37

9 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Literary Essays, (New-York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1921), 4 [On German Architecture, 1773]

The aspects of the Sublime that I’ve analysed in the course of this essay can be traced in all the case-study projects that I’ve chosen. I’ve tried to pick very different buildings to prove my point, that the idea of the Sublime was some kind of common vector, which united architects designing mass housing in the 1960-1970-s.

From the previous chapters and the background of the architectural epoch I’m writing about it may be concluded that the architects had a strong interest to the aesthetic ideas of the 18th century, but still were experiencing the shocking aftertaste of the war experience. It is very visible on the example of the Pevsner’s Townscape series of article on the one hand, and the passion with the ‘strangeness of the ruin’ in the AR circle, on the other.

The time period that I’m describing was still a time of the ascetic dictatorship of functionalism. Even the Townscape concept, which was based on the romantic ideas of the past and was glorifying the poetic and picturesque aspects of the space, has been demonstrated with very pragmatic and realistic arguments.

This explains why there was no evidence of direct quotations from the architects, which I have described in this essay, speaking about the Sublime aesthetics in their design. Aesthetics at that time commonly had much less significance than usefulness.[8] But the architecture as every art can’t be created without conveying some aesthetic message, and the architects that I’ve been writing about certainly did that, even if they did that unconsciously.

However, after the analysis that I have carried out in this work, comparing aspects of Burke with the features of my case-studies projects it seems clear that the idea of the Sublime was very significant and even crucial for the post-war mass housing, as it was rooted so deeply in the British aesthetic discourse.

However, there still stands a question, which I’ve challenged myself in the very beginning: what things may occur in the architect’s mind that may motivate him to build a Sublime house? Which message would he want to convey with such a building?

Earlier in this text, I was writing about the cathedral in the medieval cities.

The cathedral was the most important building in the city. It showed the basic ideological vectors around which the community life was built: its religious, theological orientation. The cathedral certainly was Sublime; it was overwhelming with its details, its size, its massiveness. Spires of medieval cathedrals dug into the urban sky. Goethe in his History of German Art compares the Strasbourg cathedral to a work of Nature: “The few has it been granted to create such mighty ideas in their minds, complete, gigantic, and consistently beautiful down to the last detail, like trees of God.”[9] The cathedral was a Sublime manifesto of a Christian idea.

Architects of the 1960-1970-s tried to create Sublime buildings, to enhance the dramatic effect on their perception. Their exterior was similar to the medieval cathedrals: the complexity of small repetitive elements, endless perspective views and the use of the raw concrete so attuned to the natural stone

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increased this similarity. All the buildings that I’ve described conveyed a significant imprint in the city skyline; their expressive forms could be compared to the graphic silhouettes of the medieval cathedrals.

Indeed, the buildings that I’m describing in this essay in the same way as the cathedrals in the medieval times were built with the desire to create a monument in the city. These architectural projects were the epitome of all the modern and advanced things that were happening in the society. They praised the evolution in technology, the advantages of urbanization, and all the architectural achievements that were supposed to make the lives of ordinary people easier and better. Such architecture was supposed to become a symbol of the society leading with the principles of the pure reason and humanism.

However, the aspects of the Sublime, which the architects used to create the striking effect in their designs has played with many buildings belonging to the period I am describing a cruel joke. Burke in his book Philosophical Enquiry specifies that the ideas of the Sublime (mostly relied with the ideas of pain and danger) can only be delightful, when they are perceived from a secure distance.

For example the volcanic eruption is Sublime, if you are watching it from the TV screen, or at least from a safe distance. If the source of the danger is too close, it ceases to be a delightful and becomes ‘simply terrible.’[10] After the tragedy, which happened in the morning of 16th of May 1968 the image of the brutalist Sublime post-war housing was compromised forever.

The explosion turned the delightful Sublime into the real fear. The house has to be secure and even the slightest doubt in its security may cause a person to forget about all the aesthetic and other positive properties of architecture.

High-rise embodies a deeply humanistic idea. Sand Helsel underlined it very precisely memorising her experience of life in Trellick Tower: “From here, at one of the poppet balconies I can appropriate a bit of the city. And here, as an individual, I know I’m part of something much larger. I can celebrate the massive humanity, even in concrete.”[11] The buildings that I’m describing in my essay are the monuments for humanity, for the ideas of the social equality. These ideas were quite radical for Britain in the 1970-s. That fact explains the impressively active critique of the idea of the mass-housing projects and especially of the high-rise tower blocks, and their further decline. The projects which I’ve wrote about: the Trellick Tower, Hutchesontown C, Barbican Estate, Park Hill and Ronan Point were loud explosions for their time, praising socialist ideas each in its own way.

There, ideas became unclaimed within ideological discourse quite quickly after the war, and the buildings that revealed them were rather destroyed or adapted to the new ideas and needs.

That architecture was not a shelter, but it was a Sublime experiment. It was a cathedral for the post-war cities, showing the importance of the society, and the role of individual in the society. The monument for the ‘unfulfilled future’ filled with enthusiasm: free, aggressive and bold in the same time. It was a monument to live into, which turned out to be a weird idea.

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10 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry Into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, [1757] (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 36 11 Quote from film: Trellick Tower, BBC Building Sites, Series 3, 1991

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

Caspar David Friedrich. The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818) Trellick Tower, London

Red Road Flats, Glasgow Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City

Caspar David Friedrich. The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818)

Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Corn Harvest (August) 1565 Park Hill, Sheffield

Pieter Bruegel (school of). The Parable of the Blind.

Trellick Tower, London

Edmund Burke

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Fig. 7

Fig. 8

Fig. 9

Fig. 10

Fig. 11

Fig. 12

Immanuel Kant

The Sublime before the 20th century Claude Lorrain. Landscape with Apollo and Mercury (1660)

J.M.W. Turner. Tintern Abbey (1795)

Jean Charles Pradinel, after FĂŠlix Philippoteaux.

Chateaubriand and Pauline de Beaumont in the Ruin of the Colosseum.

The Sublime in the mass housing

Repetitiveness, Park Hill, Sheffield S. Ambrogio, Milan

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Fig. 13

Fig. 14

Fig. 15

Fig. 16

Fig. 17

Fig. 18

Repetitiveness, Park Hill, Sheffield S. Ambrogio, Milan

Streets in the sky Santa Maria presso San Satiro (1482-86)

Repetitiveness Not so manic now

Streets in the sky - rythms Tritone

Park Hill, Sheffield

Park Hill, Sheffield New frock

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Fig. 19

Fig. 20

Fig. 21

Fig. 22

Fig. 23

Fig. 24

Park Hill, Sheffield

Le Corbusier, Telle ast la coupe dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;une maison Hutchesontown C, Glasgow

Barbican Estate, London Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia, Palestrina

Huhechesontown C, Glasgow

16.05.1968

Ronan Point

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Fig. 25

Fig. 26

Fig. 27

Fig. 28

Fig. 29

Fig. 30

Ronan Point

Red Road Flats, Glasgow

High-Rise Trellick Tower, London

That Melancholy Kind of Sadness

The Temple

Sagrada Familia, Barcelona Barbican Estate, London

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Fig. 31

Fig. 32

Fig. 33

Fig. 34

Fig. 35

Fig. 36

The breathtaking Barbican

A room with a view

Concrete

Barbican Estate, London

Barbican Estate, London

The Ruin

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Fig. 37

Fig. 38

Fig. 39

Fig. 40

Trellick Tower, London

Hutchesontown C, Glasgow Hardly a garden

Park Hill, Sheffield Claude Lorrain. Landscape with Apollo and Mercury (1660)

The Cathedral Sagrada Familia, Barcelona Park Hill, Sheffield

Fig. 41

Hutchesontown C, Glasgow Live up, up, up

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