BRICK PARK Building a neighbourhood from the ground up
Loretta Bosence
“The property in the soil - that original source of all wealth has become the great problem upon the solution of which depends the future of the working class� Karl Marx, 1869
© 2017 Loretta Bosence MLA Landscape Architecture University of Greenwich
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS With thanks to: Interviewees - Nike Famurewa; Phil Wick; Alex Borrie; Staff at the Howbury Centre and Library; Staff at Slade Green Post Office; John Wilson Traveller Liason and Equine Officer, Peabody Group; Yvonne Mooney, Head of Traveller Education, Bexley Council; Ellie Doney at The Institute of Making, UCL; Dan Bosence, Department of Earth Sciences, Royal Holloway.
CONTENTS
Loss of nearness Edgeland The Hidden Wealth of Slade Green Land Grab Stop! Wait! Brick Park How does it work? Who are the players? What does it look and feel like? What happens when it’s over? Commons-Wealth Building Company Manifesto Afterword References & Picture Credits
8 16 26 38 50 58 64 68 68 79 82 87 92
Shopping in Ikea
LOSS OF NEARNESS
LOSS OF NEARNESS Where did my house come from? How many people laboured to build it and produce everything in it? How did they do it? What is it made from? What journey did those materials take and at what cost? As a largely urban civilization we have become disconnected from the materiality of the things that surround us. For many people, a physical relationship with the land or consciousness of materiality, beyond that of consumer goods, does not exist. Residents often only engage with a home, or a place superficially, from an imaginative distance. Working long and hard to pay for the basics, or an ever-increasing wish list of objects, we must rely on global flows, networks and markets for nearly
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all our needs and wants. We are disenfranchised from the making of our own environment, having only the vaguest idea of how things are made, who makes them, or the origin and means of retrieval of their constituent materials. As a result, a “loss of nearness� (Heidegger, 1971), or intimacy, can arise between us, our communities and the land. The distancing of people from the stuff, the substance of the world, leads all too easily to indifference, to a de-valuing of work, craft and material. How, otherwise, could we so readily dispose of our hard earned things and finite resources - sending them to be anonymously dropped into a hole in the landscape, to be flushed into the seas, or to be burnt for energy? Scrap metal sorting, Crayford Marshes
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“In the modern city industry is treated like a disease. The areas where it exists are assumed to be dirty and derelict…and people forget altogether that the things that surround them in their daily lives – bread, chemicals, cars, oil, gaskets, radios, chairs – are all made in these forbidden zones. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that people treat life as an unreal charade and forget the simplest realities and facts of their existence.” Alexander (1977) Darent Industrial Estate, Crayford Marshes
It makes a kind of economic sense that things are conceived by experts and made by specialist manufacturers. It makes sense that housing and the infrastructure of the landscape are built by teams of practitioners with the experience and equipment to cope with large and complex tasks. Industrial standardization has clear benefits – safety, accountability, quality, compatibility. But, with the removal of the invested individual from the process of making, something important is lost. “The principle source of injustice in our epoch is political approval for the existence of tools that by their very nature restrict to a very few the liberty to use them in an autonomous way.� (Illich, 1973) In seeking a life of convenience, to reduce the burden of work, we have paradoxically become slaves to our consumption and to those who produce our goods, working ever harder to afford them. In the process we have become helpless and dependent, losing sight of the consequences of our choices and control of the places in which we live.
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Girls on Erith Pier with Rainham landfill site behind.
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EDGELAND
View towards Erith and the Thames across Crayford Marshes
EDGELAND This is Slade Green at the very edge of London, near the river Thames, where residential and industrial areas come to an abrupt end on windswept marshland. The last train stop before we reach Kent, an urban island, stranded behind the railway line. The A206 and, to the east, the M25 and the Dartford Bridge form a peripheral ring of churning traffic and distant lights. The residents here are all too aware of the flows of products and waste that are hidden to so many others.
Looking west across the marsh towards Slade Green
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“To observe the city edge is to observe an amphibian. End of trees, beginning of roofs, end of grass, beginning of paving stones, end of ploughed fields, beginning of shops, the end of the beaten track, the beginning of the passions, the end of the murmur of things divine, the beginning of the noise of humankind.� (Hugo, 1862)
Slade Green, Crayford Marshes, and the Thames to the north.
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For hundreds of years Slade Green, neighbouring Erith and the Crayford Marshes have together been a centre of manufacturing, sending goods, harvest produce, munitions, and materials along their busy haulage routes – from their rail depot; on barges along the river Thames; and now on their non-stop humming roads. The hundreds of Victorian excavations for clay and gravel that lined the railway tracks, were quickly filled with thousands of tonnes of London’s refuse. Even now, trucks daily move mountains of rubbish at local landfill sites - a
Darent Industrial Estate with the hills of Rainham landfill site beyond.
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shifting topographical backdrop to the marshes. Scrap yards line the riverbanks and fly-tipped rubbish peppers the ditches and pavements. Hundreds of tonnes of raw and waste material are brought into and taken away from Slade Green and the Crayford Marshes every day old cars, fridges, computers, tyres, scrap wood, soil, rubble, plastic bottles, newspapers, furniture, concrete, tarmac planings. They are stored, stripped apart, sorted, baled, stacked and sent away again.
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The hey-day of industry is over now in Slade Green. Warehouses are merely holding bays for goods on their way from here to there. The wealth passing through the borough does not seem to pass down to its residents. Unemployment is high, incomes low and workers underskilled. Local people say they feel forgotten and neglected by their council, feeling keenly the bite of cuts to public services. “Things have changed a lot, but people just get on with it over here. The trouble is kids can’t get jobs here, even with good qualifications, and there’s nothing to do.” (Slade Green Resident, 2016) Slade Green’s friendly village feel is perceived to be under threat. Entrenched residents feel the area “isn’t what it used to be”, and are suspicious of change, but there are strong diverse communities here that have so far resisted the anonymity of city life. “There’s a real community feel here. When you come out of your gate, everyone, in this part, will say good morning to you, whether they know you or whether they don’t know you and there’s a lot of people around who will just stop and chat.” (Slade Green Resident, 2013) There is a dark side to every ‘edgeland’, but the anarchic activity that this condition allows is also part of the charm of these marshes, whose inhabitants are sometimes a law unto themselves. An atmosphere of tension, of possibility (for better or worse) pervades the marshes, and in the air the ominous far away booming sound of metal on metal, the hiss of the wind in the reeds and the distant hum of traffic. “This little bit is like a sort of magical…well, it’s another world”. (Darent Industrial Estate Tenant, Crayford Marshes, 2016) 24
Kids on quads, Manor Road, north Slade Green
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THE HIDDEN WEALTH OF SLADE GREEN
Building a brick clamp to fire stock bricks, Crayford, 19th century
The HIDDEN WEALTH of SLADE GREEN In the 18th century the land between Erith and Crayford was filled with clay pits, brick kilns and yards. A deep seam of brickearth, perfect for making London’s famous yellow stock bricks, lay beneath and Slade Green supplied the brick for much of the city’s spectacular growth. In previous centuries, here, as it was all over Britain, itinerant, skilled brick makers established temporary yards and kilns. Clay was dug on site and buildings would emerge literally from the ground they were to stand upon. Slade Green was home to a seasonal community of makers and farm labourers, who lived an undoubtedly tough life, but had no trouble making the connection between the land, material, work and their value. They also had a small but significant stake in the unfolding development of the city - the brick walls that made it were “an aggregation of small effects.” (Clifton-Taylor, 1972) Shaping a brick by hand is a simple act that can be mastered by anyone who has the strength and the will. Competition from mechanised brickmakers in Essex and the Midlands, and a diminishing supply of clay, led all local brickyards to close by the 1960’s. The remains of the Crayford Brickearth seam and other valuable River Terrace deposits are now inaccessible, ‘sterilised’ under housing developments, roads and industrial estates. Look at this map. Here are the hidden, inaccessible assets of Slade Green. Yet every time a road is dug up for repair to services and every time foundations are laid for new housing this precious resource is taken away and thrown into landfill. 30
Closed brickyards + pits River Terrace Deposits Crayford Brickearth
Norris’ Brickyard Rutters’ Pit
Norris’ Pit
Furners’ Old Pit Furners’ New Pit Talbots’ Pit
Stonehams’ Pit
Former brick pits in Crayford and Slade Green, with clay extent beneath
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0
Topsoil
3m
Upper Crayford Brickearth
2m
Trail
1m
Roadwork Utilities Trench
1m x 2.5m 0.8m³ excavated clay per linear metre 11 x Roadworks planned in March 2017 Linear metreage unknown
Short-Bored Pile Foundation
300mm Ø x 4.5m 0.88m³ excavated clay per linear metre
Soak Mix Temper Pug/Knead Mould Box
Sand
Throw
Strike
Press Dry
“The size of bricks matters in the message they send.” (Sennet, 2008) 34
The construction industry is a vast and wasteful consumer of resources. 33% of landfill waste comes from the construction and demolition of buildings. Every year in the UK 23,220,000 tonnes of excavated soil (including clays) are sent to landfill from construction sites. 13% of all new products sent to construction sites are sent to landfill without ever being used! Yet, even at our current lacklustre rate of house building, material supplies are running low. The shortfall of bricks in the UK is 1.4 billion a year. English brickmakers cannot keep up with demand - clay and bricks are being needlessly imported from the continent. 320 280
240
200
160
120
80
40
Ho
llan
d&
Distance in miles of Slade Green from contemporary brick makers.
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Be
lgiu
m
In the past waste streams were incorporated into the construction industry out of necessity. No material or journey was wasted. The clamp fired stock bricks made in Slade Green incorporated ‘breeze’, coke remnants, as built-in fuel and an additive known as ‘Spanish soil’. They were sifted in the winter from London’s rubbish which was delivered daily by train to be thrown into the spent clay pits. Firing bricks produces copious volumes of CO2. The value of brick as a building material is more in the accessibility of its process, its durability, its reusability and in its local availability. Despite being a finite resource, clay is still the most readily available mineral all over the world. Brick is just the beginning. There are many more exciting, sustainable uses for clay and earth, with old and alternative technology just waiting to be developed and adopted for modern housing: rammed earth, unfired brick, ‘mud and stud’, waste brick aggregates, clay plasters, extruded hollow ware, cob - to name a few. These processes are rarely put into practice on new builds, with contractors preferring to save time and stick with their usual routine, even if the alternatives are proven to be cheaper. The majority of architects, engineers and developers are loath to take a risk on these non-standard, unpredictable materials. Labour intensive processes are rejected in favour of wasteful use of cheap, imported materials.
Rare projects making use of on-site earthen materials: Assemble Studio using earth & rubble from their site to make sandbag walls, with a rubble-dash render. Francis Kéré designed and crowdfunded a school for his home village using unfired local clay and unskilled labour to keep costs low.
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LAND GRAB
Construction underway at Erith Park 40
LAND GRAB The UK’s housing stock is worth 3.65 times Britain’s GDP and stands at a record £6.79 trillion. The buildings we construct create wealth. Yet we are in the midst of a housing crisis, falling more than 100,000 homes short every year to meet demand and bring prices to ‘affordable’ levels. An increase in demand and low supply has driven up the value of London’s housing to 9 times the average salary. Housing, or rather ‘property’, in London is treated increasingly as an asset for the production of profit, rather than as a universal right of its citizens. Meanwhile, in Slade Green big changes are coming. The London Plan has named it an opportunity and intensification area, part of the Thames Gateway, with plans for 2000 new homes. The area is seen as ‘the last affordable place to live in London’ and housing developers smell money. We can see some of the proposed developments on the map overleaf. Local people watch with interest, but with little hope for a change in their own circumstances. A high percentage of the local population is in social housing, and few can afford to secure a permanent home in their own community.
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The Small Glen
Sold for development Nov 2016
Howbury Park
Roxhill Development Ltd Rail Distribution Depot Planning application in progress
Howbury Lane Statutory allotment land disposed of by council for proposed use as social housing.
Howbury Site
Redrow Homes 372 units Completion 2017
Richmer Road BL Erith Ltd 336 units Autumn 2017
Erith Park
Orbit Homes 587 units 2013-18
“The area has changed a lot, they’re trying to make it more middle class with the new estates.” (Slade Green Resident, 2016)
The new Howbury Estate in the centre of Slade Green
In September 2017 Abbey New Homes will begin construction of ‘Egerton Place’ on Richmer Road, a mix of 1,2,3 & 4 bedroom “beautiful homes, attractively priced”, so they say. Hoardings will go up, fences will line re-directed footpaths, ‘Keep out!’ signs will appear, cranes will pierce the skyline, pseudo-Georgian houses will slowly emerge from the stacks of imported bricks and Indian sandstone. Later, 4 x 4 cars will glide anonymously through empty newly tarmaced streets, carrying aspirational new homeowners to the privacy and solitude of their front doors.
Footpaths are still closed through the estate
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“The current state of London housing is an affront to civilisation. It is going to require creative and determined public action, not blind faith in the market, to change it.� (Moore, 2017)
The former Linpac factory and proposed development site at Richmer Road
STOP! WAIT!
STOP! WAIT! Let us imagine another scenario‌ ...In September 2017, Bexley Council puts plans for Egerton Place on ice. After constant protests from local community and environmental pressure groups, Abbey New Homes withdraws, fearing for their wider reputation. An ad-hoc co-operative of young families, local craftspeople and architects emerges from the protest activity, united by their outrage at the lack of affordable housing and local jobs, frustrated by wasteful construction practices and erosion of community. Seeking affordable homes for themselves and their community they form a temporary building company.
Graffiti in Hackney during the 1970’s housing crisis
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They can see a different kind of future for Slade Green. With the help of the charitable Community Self-Build Agency, a partnership is made between this stakeholder group of local people, now called The Commons-Wealth Building Company, and a local housing association. A self-build development is proposed. Our imagined group begins by asking themselves a series of questions: What material assets do we already have? What skills do we have? How can we take back control of the way our homes are built and designed to better suit us as a community? Aylsebury Estate protest at Architects’ Journal event, 2015
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ERITH PARK
With the help of other local people, the group maps wasted material opportunities in their area and conduct a skills audit.
Orbit Homes, 587 units, 2013-18
RICHMER ROAD
BL Erith Ltd, 336 units Planning application in progress
RATIO, HOWBURY SITE Redrow Homes, 372 units, Completion 2017
CRAYFORD BRICKEARTH
RIVER TERRACE
DEFINITION_Sought after mix of clay, fine-grained sand and chalk perfect for brickmaking EXTENT_2.4m av. thickness seam EXTRACTION_Seasonal hand digging, excavation by machine, pile driver (for construction foundations) USES_London stock bricks, Chimney pots, Ornamentation, Restoration PROCESSES_’Tempering’, washing, settlement, screening, blending admixtures, pug mill processing, shaping, throwing, drying, clamp firing or kiln firing
DEFINITION_Taplow Gra silt, clay and peat. Unpredic EXTENT__5-9m av. thickn EXTRACTION_Seasonal machine, pile driver (for c USES_Rammed earth cons struction aggregates, Hog (Clay deposits) PROCESSES_Washing, set blending admixtures, tread shovelling and tamping of e
DEMOLITION WASTE
LANDFILL
DEFINITION_Mixed inert waste, concrete, brick, glass, tiles EXTENT_Variable, 5 current sites EXTRACTION_Hand or machine demolition. USES_Mixed aggregate for renders, mortars, plasters, landscape in-fill, floors, foundations, Reuse of intact elements PROCESSES_ Collection, Sorting, Crushing, Grading
DEFINITION_Mixed hous dustrial waste. E-waste co cluding gold and silver. EXTENT_ EXTRACTION_’Mining’, waste before landfill, Phyto and Common Reed USES_Gasification, Fuel. Pr PROCESSES_ Collection, metals including gold and s
HOWBURY LANE, ALLOTMENT
Statutory allotment land disposed of by council for proposed use as social housing. No planning application as yet.
THE SMALL GLEN
Rumoured to have been sold for development Nov 2016
HOWBURY PARK
Roxhill Development Ltd, Rail Distribution Depot. Planning application in progress
E DEPOSITS
avel Formation with lenses of ctable consistency. ness seam hand digging, excavation by construction foundations) struction, Earth Blocks, Conggin surfacing, Brickmaking
ttlement, screening, grading, ding, formwork construction, earth lifts or blocks
sehold, commercial and inontaining precious metals in-
Interception of valuable oremediation with Salix sp’s
recious metals Sorting, E-waste, precious silver.
SCRAP METAL & ELV’S
REEDS
DEFINITION_ Ferrous & Non-Ferrous Scrap Metals, End-of-life-vehicles (ELV’s), ‘Car Fluff’ ASR EXTENT_Unknown COLLECTION_Sold on site by individuals, collected locally, waste delivered by manufacturers, dumped illegally in ditches USES_Reuse of car parts, Fabrication of gates, fences, roofs and walls (cladding), Feedstock for steel manufacturing - Rebar, Recyling to non-ferrous raw metals PROCESSES_Fluid removal (ELV’s), Stripping, Sorting, Re-machining, Welding, Baling, Shredding, Refining, Smelting, Extruding, Casting, Cooling
DEFINITION_Common Reed Phragmites australis EXTENT_ x bundles per year per M² EXTRACTION_Cutting in January/February, annual rotation cycle USES_Phytoremediation of toxic metals on landfill sites, Water purification, Thatching, Fuel, Insulation, Cob and rammed earth additive, Bio-based plastics PROCESSES_Harvest of reeds on rotation in habitat conservation management cycle, Scything, Collection of arisings, drying, shredding
USED TYRES
WOOD CHIP & WASTE PAPER
DEFINITION_Waste tyres EXTENT_Variable. 3 used tyre businesses in area. EXTRACTION_Removal from ELV’s, Collection from ditches USES_Reuse in play equipment, Cement additive (granules), wet pour rubber surfaces, loose fill rubber, cladding, landscape in-fill, artificial reefs, potential clay additive for clamp fired bricks PROCESSES_ Collection, debeading, shredding, granulating, melting.
DEFINITION_Waste paper and shredded or chipped waste wood EXTENT_Variable EXTRACTION_Local collection and construction waste USES_Fuel additives for stock brick firing, paper, cellulose based plastic PROCESSES_ Collection, baling, shredding
Group members examine the existing plans for Richmer Road with a local historian and are surprised to find that the site sits on a geological bonanza – the Crayford Brickearth seam.
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They ask themselves: What if we start everything with the landscape? What if we could make a place first, a brickyard, that becomes a public park, that becomes the centre of a community, that builds homes from the ground up? 57
BRICK PARK
BRICK PARK In answer to these questions, Brick Park is born. It is a well-spring for a new neighbourhood, the source of its development, its social centre, its reason for being, where community problems are solved. It is a forum, a laboratory and a workshop - where materials are tested - and an oasis. Housing development begins from the park, the pattern of an active (no longer passive!) neighbourhood evolving from its edges. At Richmer Road, in the first development of its kind for over a century, homes are built using clay dug from their own foundations and an on-site clay pit. Bricks are made and fired on site. River deposits (silty, gravelly earth) and local demolition waste are used for rammed earth construction. Homes emerge from the pit as if evolving from the primordial swamp. No-one questions the provenance of the materials that built these walls – it is plain to see. Innovative and creative use of clay and earth shapes the forms, features and furniture of new homes and the park, and begins to influence the building vernacular of the wider area. Expertise in earthen materials and the building trades are once again part of the everyday social and cultural life of Slade Green. People understand how their homes were built, where the materials that built them came from, who built them. Residents become true stakeholders in the future of their hometown.
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Thames
Crayford Marshes
Slade Green
Brick Park
Commons-Wealth Building Company
Crayford Brickearth
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HOW DOES IT WORK? Let’s start with the clay and the process of getting it. There is a pit cut ten metres down into the seam of Crayford brickearth that stretches beneath the development. The terraced form, gently sloping up to ground level, allows safe public access to the clay. There is a drainage channel running along every level and at the bottom of the pit water sits in a moat, beneath a metal grill, and is pumped out whilst the clay is being worked.
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The pit is zoned to provide accessible public areas and a publicly visible working zone for the Building Company, divided temporarily along the axis of the bridge above. There is a sloped track for mini-diggers and dumpers and steps for the public to traverse the terraces. As the excavated face of the clay pit deepens and migrates around the park, it forms amphitheatres and terraces for working areas and public events. There are covered shelters for drying bricks and storing materials. Bricks are fired traditionally in huge clamps, and in shipping containers, adapted as gas kilns, at ground level. Waste bricks from the firings are used to retain slopes, make seating on the terraces, and to pave the steps and pathways. Mounds of earth, weathering clay and demolition aggregates form a temporary lunar maze on the surface, from which the foundations of the new build begins to emerge. ps ea
cing Fen
ln Ki
ge S ta
Pub lic
Fencing
h oil Sp
Work elt Drying sh
ers
k or W st es cc sa
il h Spo
ck ra
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s eap
Upper Brickearth Corbicula Bed (shells in clay) Lower Brickearth
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+0 -5 -10
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Who works in the brickyard? Self-build members of the Commons-Wealth Building Company work an equal set number of hours per week, making bricks or building houses, in exchange for equity, or low rent, in their future homes. Architectural and construction college students work as part of their training, in partnership with the Building Company. English Heritage funds the training of a small number of specialist brickmaking apprentices. Artists and craftspeople operate small businesses from the park, working the clay at low cost, or in exchange for building products, or for working with the public on creative projects in the pit. Everyone is encouraged to get involved and try out working with clay. Young people especially become architects of the park, increasingly involved in building trades, bringing their ideas and energy to the design, making, events and celebrations that unfold within.
What does it look and feel like? A footbridge strides across the wide expanse of the pit, reconnecting Erith to the ‘island’ of Slade Green and the marshes beyond, via the park and it’s new neighbourhood. A walk to the shops has become an event and an opportunity to watch the earth below being transformed into future homes. The pit has become a theatre of brick and earth, a living tableaux of craft and construction, played out everyday. The pit walls form a many coloured backdrop, layers of geology telling the pre-history of the marsh.
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Brickmakers in 19th century Crayford Students from the National Construction College on nearby Manor Road
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For those who don’t want to get their hands dirty, the industrial spaces and infrastructure of the brickyard allows for multiple temporary and future public uses: drying sheds are appropriated as market stalls and pavillions, kilns as small events spaces – and they are built with this in mind. A stage is built at the bottom of the pit, lighting suspended from the bridge, so that the pit can be transformed into a theatrical amphitheatre on summer evenings. Performances, outdoor cinema, artists workshops and BikeLife events bring the park to life..
Beyond the pit, into the housing development, the path from the footbridge winds around mounds of earth. Coloured sandbags retain the spoil heaps by the path. Steps and viewing platforms, built over the mounds using salvaged wood, give children a birds-eye view over the park and the building works as they progress. Experimental structures and brick clamps are scattered between the temporary earthworks as the Building Company tests its processes and designs, developing its particular language of brick and earth. There is beauty in the craft that emerges from the park - patterned brick bonds, layered rammed earth, hand prints and coloured roof pantilles, bring new housing to life. In a temporary revival of alchemy, experiments with rusted scrap metal, lead to a new vernacular of coloured glazes. Building site paraphernalia, normally designed to repel the public, is subverted and celebrated, decorating walkways and performances. High-vis = high fashion in Slade Green! There is drama on autumn nights when the Anagama climbing kiln, that ascends the eastern terraces of the pit, is put to work. A public celebration of creative achievements when locals can bring their work to be fired, and the kiln spits sparks, flames and wood smoke into the night sky! Pictured left to right, top to bottom: Kéré Architecture Gando school library; Student design and make project, Monash University; Surplus bricks; Rural Urban Framework, Jintai village; River Avon Mud Circles, Richard Long; Hand-made tile cladding, Assemble Studio; Wall made from over-fired clamp bricks, Slade Green; Mud brick houses, Lake Titicaca; gold Kintsukuroi pottery repair; Steps at CASA, Oaxaca; Brickwork screen, New Delhi, Anagram Architects; Iron oxide Wind Paintings, Bob Verschueren; Cast coal dust cladding, Studio Morison; Experimental brick house, Finland, Alvar Aalto; Earthen wall, Atelier Gando, Kéré Architecture
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“All over the world, it seems, a brickyard may offer itself as a halting place, an oasis of warmth, during a walk in the cold evening.� (Woodforde, 1976)
Brick Park, still operational after housing development completion
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE PARK WHEN THE DEVELOPMENT IS FINISHED? The working pit and brickyard will be at the heart of a living public park, which will continue in use long after the surrounding houses are built and inhabited. The brick-making shelters, terraces and amphitheatre will be adopted by the community for events, public meetings, markets and celebrations. Clay will continue to be brought to the site from local roadworks and developments, but if the appetite for production wanes the park will move into a new phase. The pump at the bottom of the pit will be switched off, the lower terraces allowed to flood. Alder, Goat Willow, Reed and Sedge will colonize the wetland. Grassland will be encouraged to take over the upper terraces, between the brick paths and over the undulating remains of the mounds. A nature reserve will emerge, an equal spectacle to the Brick Park. This tranquil place to visit will be a reminder for local people of the past achievements and future potential of their community. Brick Park will always be a place for the senses to be stimulated and for materiality and physicality to come to the fore. A walk around Slade Green and our new housing estate will reveal the creative, sometimes eccentric ways local people have used materials to adapt and improve their homes and community in small ways over the years. It will have been transformed into a true “neighbourhood of production� (Cruz, 2014). As a relatively uncharted and neglected territory, Slade Green was vulnerable to the predations and enclosures of speculative property developers. Brick Park and the formation of the Commons-Wealth Building Company has changed this. It has allowed this unique community to retain its independent ways and use them as a strength, to heal rifts and find common ground, to resist and take back control of their neighbourhood. 79
THE COMMONS-WEALTH BUILDING COMPANY MANIFESTO
THE COMMONS-WEALTH BUILDING COMPANY MANIFESTO Commons •n 1 (treated as singular) land or resources belonging to or affecting the
whole community. 2 (archaic) provisions shared in common. Wealth •n 1 an abundance of valuable possessions or money. 2 an abundance or
profusion of something desirable. Commonwealth •n an independent state or community, especially a democratic
republic. (Oxford English Dictionary)
The Commons-Wealth Building Company, formed in response to a local need, has high ambitions for the future, not only for Slade Green, but also the wider city. Aims of the Commons-Wealth project : • To unlock the material and social riches of a place in order to build affordable homes and community assets, according to the individual and collective requirements of local people. • To use Slade Green as a test case and as an exemplar project that could be replicated in other towns and cities - an alternative model for making neighbourhoods. • To be a gateway project to further community led interventions that repair, retrofit and build new community assets and infrastructure.
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• To enable bottom-up change and resist top-down exploitation by “urban vampires” (Robles-Duran, 2014), encouraging community leaders to initiate change and empower residents. • To bring fractured communities together and empower them in a renewed “engaged material consciousness”(Sennet, 2014) through shared experience, making and shaping the place that they live. • To create new, intrinsically rewarding jobs for young people and the conditions for new small, economically sustainable businesses, based on common resources and revival of dormant skills and industry. • To be pioneers of a circular economy and of spatial justice, intercepting waste materials for the common good. • To enable communities to become experts in the raw and waste materials of their area, developing excellent sustainable building practices, based on innovation, resourcefulness and adaption of traditional craft knowledge to contemporary applications. • To offer meaningful gains for people and a fair exchange for time and labour – in training, financial gain and improvement of the places in which they live. People will get out of the project as much as they invest. • To bring industry back to the physical and cultural heart of neighbourhoods, to create busy, thriving districts and communities who have an intimate awareness of where things come from.
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• To take an alternative approach to risk in construction and industry based on education, mentoring and inclusion. Building sites will continue to be modern, safe places to work, but the barriers between the public and the site will be more transparent, sometimes permeable and often negotiable. • To take a landscape approach to developing cities, building neighbourhoods from the ground up - creating equitable, enriching and vital public space that can be used as a base from which to glean, process, experiment, develop, make and plan. • To enable organic, incremental urbanism and the slow revisions of craft work, in the spirit of the “city as a work of life” (Lefebvre, 1979) – to transform the urban landscape once again into a reflection of the collective narratives, strengths and aspirations of local people.
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AFTERWORD This book tells the fictional story of a community who, against all odds, transforms the nature of urban development in their area, making it their own by turning to their landscape and its resources. It is a shameless work of utopian socialism with a serious question for the landscape design profession at its heart. What role could Landscape Architects take to recognize, nurture and protect the true wealth and value of a place, to ensure that it can be equitably inhabited and ‘owned’ by its residents? The studio brief was to challenge the dominant, top down modes of development and planning, to develop projects that proposed program that would actively build community resilience in anticipation of future large-scale development. Proposals were to include local people as key actors, as well as creating land uses that were to be generative and self-sustaining. Public space would be considered primarily as a process, an experience born from the interaction between specific people and a specific place. In practice Landscape Architects rarely have the opportunity to intervene in the way an area is developed. They are more commonly brought in after the fact to design the external trappings of an already (ill) conceived housing scheme, or to smooth over community relations with program in ‘meanwhile space’. Landscapes and public space are often squeezed between the empty left-over spaces, or forged in spite of surroundings and site conditions. Urban landscapes and parks are generally perceived as a passive backdrop to the built environment, a naturalistic respite to the pressures of city living.
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On the other hand the construction industry finds itself at odds, or more accurately, indifferent to the landscape and has become detached from particularity, materiality and environmental consequence. My project aims to suggest a different approach, where housing development – the factor which most effects Britain’s urban terrain - is assumed to be synonymous with the landscape and the practice of designing it. Where landscape is not the picturesque antidote to the streets and houses, but the source and the potent, informed guiding force in its development. Where local people and communities are considered to be the experts on how their neighbourhood should evolve and are supported in this for the greater good of the city. Where their labour, craft and skills are valued and prioritized over wasteful import of fleetingly fashionable materials. Where the limits of the landscape and community itself curtail unsustainable, rapacious growth and ensure a more equitable future for its residents. “In order for spatial disciplines to be socially relevant again, they have to radically transform into the many roles that the early twentieth-century alliance of public servants performed: coordinating communities; designing economic models; writing and advocating new policy; bending property laws; developing new property models; training inhabitants; defending vulnerable urban dwellers; and co-creating new community management systems before thinking of its physical representation as architecture or an urban scheme.” (Rendón & Robles-Durán, 2017) Landscape architects must take a position, to “re-evaluate our professional agency” (Petrescu, 2017). We can embrace housing development as part of our practice and incorporate and challenge the essential flows and requirements of residential and industrial construction 88
in our designs. We must force the issue and make opportunities to work with (or against) powerful forces that wish to shape the city for their own ends and to defend spatial justice for every citizen. “The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.� Harvey (2008)
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Gwennap Pit, a Methodist preaching amphitheatre in Cornwall, built by miners in 1806 insi
ide the remains of a collapsed pit.
References Alexander, C. (1977) ’42 - Industrial ribbon’. A pattern language. Oxford. Clifton-Taylor, A. (1972) The pattern of English Building. London: Faber & Faber Cruz, T. (2013) How architectural innovations migrate across borders. Ted Global. Video filmed June 2013. Available: https://www. ted.com/talks/teddy_cruz_how_architectural_ innovations_migrate_across_borders David Harvey (2008). ”The Right to the City”. New Left Review Heidegger, M. (1971) Poetry, language, thought. New York: Harper & Row. p.165 Hugo, V. (1862) Les misérables. A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven & Cie Illich, I (2001) Tools for conviviality. Marion Boyars Lefebvre (1979) ‘Space: Social product and use value’. Critical sociology: European perspective. New York: Irvington Publishers p. 293 Marx, Karl (1869) The abolition of landed property. Memorandum for Robert Applegarth. December 3rd, 1869. Available: https:// www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1869/12/03.htm Moore, R. (2017) ‘Big Capital: Who is London for? By Anna 92
Minton – review’ The Guardian. Monday 12/06/17 Available at:https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/12/ big-capital-who-is-london-for-anna-minton-review Petrescu, D. & Trogal, K. (2017) ‘Introduction: The social (re) production of architecture in ‘crisis-riddled’ times’. The social (re) production of architecture: Politics, values and actions in contemporary practice. London: Routledge Rendón, G. & Robles-Durán, M (2017) ‘Social property and the need for a new urban practice’. The social (re)production of architecture: Politics, values and actions in contemporary practice. London: Routledge Robles-Duran (2014) ‘The Haunting presence of urban vampires’. Harvard Design magazine No.37 Sennet, R. (2008) The craftsman. New Haven: Yale University Press Sennet, R. (2012) Together: Rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation. Penguin Books Sennet, R (2016) The public realm. From Richard Sennett’s official website: http://www.richardsennett.com/site/senn/templates/general2.aspx?pageid=16&cc=gb Slade Green Big Local – Moving Forward Together – Community Profile and Big Plan (2013). Slade Green resident (2013) in Slade Green Big Local video – 93
Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f674wsBurGM Slade Green resident & Darent Industrial Estate tenant (2016) Interview with anonymous residents conducted by the author. October - November 2016. Woodforde, J. (1976) Bricks to build a house. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
Bibliography Baker-Brown, D. (2017) The re-use atlas: A designer’s guide towards a circular economy. RIBA Enterprises Ltd. Bieniok, M., Dellenbaugh, M., Kip, M., Müller and A., Schwegmann (2015) Urban commons: Moving beyond state and market. Birkhauser Bolchover, J. & Lin, J. (2014) Rural urban framework: Transforming the Chinese countryside. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH Braungart, M. & McDonough, W. (2009) Cradle to cradle: Re-making the way we make things. Vintage Bullivant, L. and Ermacora, T (2016) Recoded city: Co-creating urban futures. London: Routledge Corner, J. (1991) ‘Three tyrannies of contemporary theory’ from The 94
landscape imagination: Collected essays of James Corner 1990-2010. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. p.77 – 109 Martin, B. & Wood, C. (2015) Earth, Brick & Terracota : Practical building conservation. Part A & B. Historic England. Hoskins, J (2016) Own De Beauvoir! John Hoskins (publisher) Kollewe, J. (2017) ‘How one council is beating Britain’s Housing crisis’. Guardian Saturday 25 March 2017 07.00 GMT Available: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/mar/25/how-onecouncil-is-beating-britain-housing-crisis-sheffield Accessed: 12/08/17 London Plan March 2016 – Annex 1 - Opportunity and intensification areas https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/the_london_plan_ malp_march_2016_-_annex_1_-_opportunity_intensification_areas. pdf Pallasmaa, J. (2009) The thinking hand: Existential and embodied wisdom in architecture. John Wiley & Sons Slade Green Big Local – Moving Forward Together – Community Profile and Big Plan (2013). Taylor, D. (2013) “No more dig and dump’ Construction Index. http://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/ no-more-dig-and-dump Thomas, E.O. (2001) Slade Green and the Crayford Marshes. Bexley Council 95
Savills (2017) ‘UK homes worth a record £6.8 trillion as private housing wealth exceeds £5 trillion’ 18 January http://www.savills. co.uk/_news/article/72418/213407-0/1/2017/uk-homes-wortha-record-%C2%A36.8-trillion-as-private-housing-wealth-exceeds%C2%A35-trillion, Accessed: 12/08/17 Ough, T. (2016) ‘The state of the housing market in five charts’, The Telegraph. Available: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/ house-prices/the-state-of-the-uk-housing-market-in-five-charts/ Designing Buildings Wiki ‘Sustainability in building design and construction’ https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/ Sustainability_in_building_design_and_construction. Accessed: 12/08/17 Last edited 30 Jun 2017
Picture Credits All photographs and drawings by Loretta Bosence unless otherwise mentioned: P.6 Evan-Amos, Wikimedia Commons P.28 Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre P. 37 Assemble Studio; Kéré Architecture P.52 Chats Palace P.53 Architects’ Journal P.74 (In order of appearance) Kéré Architecture; Rémi Chauvin; unknown source; Rural Urban Framework; Richard Long; Assemble Studio; Jenny Organ; Wikimedia Commons; Christoper Herot; Anagram Architects; Bob Verschueren; Studio Morison; Wikiarquitectura.com; Kéré Architecture P.90 Cornish Studies Library, Redruth