Local code planning for the vernacular

Local Code: Planning for the Vernacular

L oretta B osence

Acknowledgments With thanks to: Staff at the Cornish Studies Library, Redruth for photographs and information on Gwennap Pit; Jenny Lockwood, Administrator at Gwennap Pit, for giving her time for an interview and for information booklets; Laura Hilton at Clifton Suspension Bridge Visitor Centre and Sarah Tyler at Bristol City Council for information on Clifton Downs and Common Bye-laws; staff at Dean Heritage Centre for advice on Monument Pit; Sam Bates for photographs and information on Beaks Shaw bike jumps; Ruth Wallis, Farm Manager for Sutton Hall Estates for a copy of bike jump licence, help with contacting bikers and permission to visit Beaks Shaw.

Picture credits All photographs by Loretta Bosence unless otherwise mentioned.

Peter Macleod: Page 3 Same Bates: Page 8 John McConico: Page 26 Hallie Busta: Page 37 (top) Cristobal Palma: Page 37 (bottom) Marti Franch: Page 38 Cornish Studies Library: Page 48 Š 2017 Loretta Bosence MLA Landscape Archietcture University of Greenwich

Contents

Introduction - Why the vernacular matters.

2 Gwennap Pit 5 Beaks Shaw Bike Jumps 6 Monument Colliery and the Free Mines 10 Clifton Rock Slide 14 A misunderstanding. 20 Planning and the vernacular 24 What can Landscape Architects do to make space for the vernacular?

Design Code. 30 A Design Code for vernacular placemaking – Precedents.

33 What could a Design Code for vernacular placemaking look like?

39 Conclusion – A call to arms!

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Dew pond, South Downs, constructed with puddled clay and chalk.

1 Some of our most treasured, least assuming landscapes were shaped by the everyday intentions and actions of ordinary people. Vernacular placemaking, requires an engagement with the stuff of the land, it’s process and human relationships. Increasingly we live our lives at one remove from reality and a conscious connection with the materiality of the landscape helps to literally bring us to our senses. Yet, design of our environment has been delegated by default, or rather as a result of a concerted campaign against the commons, to those with funds, power and vested interests in the constrained use of public space.

The planning system has a part to play in this collusion against the people, as do Landscape Architects. The job of the landscape architect can be extended to allow for situations where they do not design, but write Design Code for vernacular placemaking – to enable non-designer citizens to ‘own’, influence and physically change the places they live. This code, consisting of a set of prescriptions, could embrace the everyday actions and narratives of ordinary people and acknowledge the specificity of every landscape. This essay will examine four landscapes shaped by vernacular practices, the conditions that brought them about and the regulations that restrict them now. By searching for their commonalities and looking at new design precedents, I will try to determine what form a new kind of Design Code for vernacular placemaking could take.

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Introduction - Why the vernacular matters.

“For me the emphasis on the immaculate, the unblemished and the eradication of process has displaced the sensuality of failure with the anesthesia of success.” (Barlow, 1998) There is a rising crisis in our global societies characterized by a disconnection from the land, its form, fabric and processes, and consequently a disconnection between people.

“Faith has been superseded by reason in a world now governed primarily by the logic of modern technology and global economics. Heidegger refers to the resulting human condition as a “loss of nearness” or a loss of intimacy between humans and the environment as well as between people and their communities.” (1991, Corner) I would like to argue that the appropriation of land, engagement with its materiality and its gradual transformation by ordinary citizens, according to their needs and culture, could provide at least a partial antidote to this loss. The vernacular in all its forms - architecture, language, or landscape – can provide agency over space and culture for a great many people who are underserved by the ruling classes. It also provides a means of survival and progression to indigenous people all over the world, especially where resources are scarce.

We are most familiar with the term ‘vernacular’ as it is applied to architecture.

In his Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, Paul Oliver presents a well-balanced description of vernacular buildings: “Related to their environment contexts and available resources…utilizing traditional technologies...built to meet specific needs, accommodating the values, economies and ways of living of the cultures that produced them.” (Oliver, 1997) There is an inherent contradiction in the term vernacular ‘architecture’, a clash between the adaptive amateur and professional authority. J.B.Jackson argues that there can also be such a thing as ‘vernacular landscape’ and I agree with him. However, I think there is also an inherent contradiction in the use of the word ‘landscape’ in this instance, which would suggest a scenic or iconic view of the land, composed and appreciated from afar. The perception of a place from within is very different from this alienating gaze:

3 “The composition of their landscape is much more integrated and inclusive of the diurnal course of life’s events – with birth, death, festival, tragedy – all the occurrences that lock together human time and place. For the insider there is no clear separation of self from scene, subject from object.” (Cosgrove, 1984)

Diamond Jubilee Bonfire Crowborough, Sussex, 1897

4 These struggles and achievements, as they manifest themselves spatially through spontaneous actions and everyday routines, played out on the land, are often missing from our understanding of the vernacular. Therefore I would like to propose an alternative to ‘vernacular landscape’, that of ‘vernacular placemaking’. This phrase implies a more active engagement with the stuff of the land, its cycles and connective human relationships. This is the true value of the vernacular for our anesthetised and frustrated societies.

I would like to outline now what I think is most valuable about vernacular placemaking for the future of public space. To do this I will introduce some examples of places that have been shaped by vernacular practices and that demonstrate some of these important attributes. In a later chapter I will look at the conditions that gave rise to these places and those that may restrict them now.

5 Gwennap Pit When John Wesley ‘discovered’ Gwennap Pit in 1762, it was little more than a sunken dip in the isolated road from Redruth to the mining district of Gwennap in Cornwall, probably used occasionally for cock-fighting. With steep banks to either side, it was a natural amphitheatre, believed to have formed when mine workings collapsed deep below the road. It was also the natural choice of location for the itinerant preacher’s outdoor sermon, when he sought shelter for his congregation on the windswept ridge. He came back to the place seventeen times and preached to crowds of thousands of people. In 1806, after his death, local miners set to the task of building a more formal Non-Conformist Methodist preaching place in the pit in tribute to Wesley. Over the course of a winter the mine workings were made good, terraces were dug by hand, the granite that lay all about was cut into setts to retain the walls and two large stones were laid on end to form an open air pulpit. The perfectly circular terraces and turf seats are testament to the miners’ intuitive skills and the religious culture of community, simplicity and equality.

6 Beaks Shaw Bike Jumps On a quiet Sussex lane, hidden behind a high tree lined bank, is a BMX bikers self-built heaven. A complex trail of huge dirt jumps, berms, ramps, wedges and chicanes winds between coppiced hazel and chestnut, over an acre of woodland.

It was built by hand over a period of twenty years by successive generations of local teenage boys on land belonging to a large farming estate. They worked without permission, or help, moving and shaping hundreds of tonnes of heavy clay with spades, shovels and wheelbarrows. Scores of ramps, some over six feet high, send young bikers soaring through the trees on summer evenings and weekends. The site remained a closely guarded secret for ten years, until it was discovered by the estate gamekeeper. Impressed by the sheer scale and self-discipline of the boys’ efforts, the farm manager eventually drew up a licence for the free use of the woods.

This page: Winter at Beaks Shaw - Borrowed tarpaulin fends off erosion of clay ramps Overleaf: Sam Bates airborne at Beaks Shaw

10 Monument Colliery and the Free Mines If a man is born within the Hundred of St.Briavel, Gloucestershire, is over 21 years old and has worked for a year and a day underground, he has the right to become a Free Miner of the Forest of Dean. He may lease a ‘gale’ (a known section of coal seam) for a nominal fee and begin excavating his own mine amongst the trees. He has Commoner’s rights too and can cut timber to form the props and ‘roads’ of the mine. Monument Pit is a drift mine, in an isolated part of the forest at Bixslade, and follows a narrow seam of coal horizontally 200 yards into the hillside. The colliery was opened in 1980 and was worked for the next twenty years by one man (it’s now worked by three men part-time) with picks, shovels and basic machinery. Trolley tracks disappear into two shaft entrances - one a round metal door and the other the trailer from an articulated lorry. The spoil from the mine is banked up around the pit. A haphazard group of structures, to sort the coal and house tools, has been put together out of salvaged parts and scrap metal. The coal is bagged and sold for use in local homes.

This page: An HGV box trailer buried deep in the hillside forms one of the mine shaft entrances at Monument Pit Overleaf: Monument Pit, deep in the forest at Bixslade

14 Clifton Rock Slide On the vertiginous slopes of the Avon Gorge, overlooking Bristol City and the Clifton Suspension Bridge, is a lesser-known attraction. It goes by many names – The Slippery Rocks; The Slidey Rock; The Slider; The Clifton Rock Slide – depending on who you talk to and how old they are. Beneath the observatory, behind some half-hearted iron railings, is a natural rock face, sitting at forty-five degrees, a stones throw away from the cliff edge. A narrow strip down the centre of the hard limestone slab has been worn to a perfect shine over scores, if not hundreds, of years, by the bottoms of thousands of children, tourists, drunken students and playful adults. Locals believe it has been used for hundreds of years, since the days when commoners would take their families up onto Clifton Downs with their sheep.

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18 All of the places above have become treasured local landmarks, some even protected in law, despite their humble beginnings. This is largely because they sit so comfortably in their surroundings and within the cultures that made them.

Genius loci, sympathy with the authentic spirit of a place, is crucial to the contemporary understanding of good landscape design. This is a quality that is intrinsic to vernacular placemaking. Narratives of culture, geology and ecology are naturally embodied in a place when it is shaped using its own materials, by its own occupants.

Vernacular placemaking is also characterized by a frugal, resourceful approach and an incremental pace, which places value in non-monetary actions and relations. I asked an assistant at the Dean Heritage Centre about the lorry trailer I’d seen put to use as a shaft entrance at Monument Pit. He said that “Miners make do with whatever they can get hold of. Always have” and that many of the parts for the mines had come from the Welsh pits when they closed down. I was told that it was common to make use of old truck parts in the forest. “Just last week” there had been a sit down protest to protect a bridge at Steam Mills that had been made by locals using an old truck chassis in the 1960’s. The council had threatened the bridge with closure, but had temporarily backed down after residents had made their feelings known.

Vernacular placemaking uses whatever local materials or skills can be gleaned and salvaged, remembered or invented - that need not be traditional. The skills and processes involved use the most efficient means, developed through trial and error over time.

The teenagers at Beaks Shaw had no money to spend on the jumps. They borrowed shovels and barrows, took old tarps (to cover the jumps in wet weather) from building sites and cut timber from the shaw for reinforcement. They kept their tools in a tarpaulin shelter, hidden under branches. They experimented and learnt how to build from friends who worked on similar trails of their own, exchanging labour when they could. Most started at fourteen, their building skills progressing as their abilities on the bikes developed with age. The topography and geology of the site is perfect for building jumps. The heavy clay is easily compacted and moulded into shape and dries hard in the summer. Speed is picked up as the bikes head down the slope through the trees and water drains off into the stream below.

Above all vernacular placemaking empowers ordinary people to influence the evolution of public and private space, through their everyday actions and intentions. It allows whole communities the opportunity to enter into an ‘engaged

19 material consciousness’ (Sennett, 2008) with the landscape that surrounds them.

In the Forest of Dean there are only 150 registered Free Miners left and only a handful of them are still working the coal. Very few people still exercise their commoner’s rights. Yet their continued engagement with the land is symbolic for the larger population and is seen as crucial to the identity of the Foresters.

In Clifton the rock slide is described as ‘a local institution’ and the use of it a citizens right of passage. At Beaks Shaw, for young people to be able to test their nerve and to physically change the ground beneath their feet is an enormous privilege, one that is becoming rarer and rarer. In Gwennap the huge crowds and the efforts to which people would go to reach the pit (many walked miles across the rough landscape in their Sunday best to be there) are testament to their sense of ownership over the place that they helped to build.

“As late as 1871 there were a number of men, in their seventies, living in the district, who well remembered carrying stones in their pinafores to help in the building of the pit”.

(Shaw, 1992) Tools and a barrow stashed under branches and an old tarp at Beaks Shaw

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A misunderstanding.

I have set out what I consider to be a valuable and productive understanding of vernacular placemaking, however this thinking is not shared by all those who work in and have influence over the built environment.

“But it’s happening, here and in scores of other estates around the country, new messages are being uttered in the vernacular but, as far as I am aware, no one is devoting much attention to finding out what they mean.” (Oliver, 1984) When serious study of vernacular ‘architecture’ began in the 1950’s, it was acknowledged that there was value in understanding the materials and methods of builders, ordinary craftsmen and lay people. Conventional descriptions of ‘non-pedigreed architecture’ (Rudofsky) were established and used terms such as: custom; tradition; craftsmanship; indigenous materials and sympathy with the landscape. Diverse examples of vernacular buildings were catalogued in books and exhibitions by order and type: doorways; roofs and walls; farms; cave dwellings; arcades.

Despite the intervening years and a deeper understanding of the motives and forces at work behind these constructions, the “aesthetic view of…structures as vernacular typologies, sitting scenically in a landscape” (Sheridan, 2012) prevails in the popular imagination and some of the cultural institutions that shape our landscapes and built environment. At the root of this may be a romantic clinging to the past, a reaction to rapid industrialization and globalization. The work of late 19th century artists and architects of the Arts and Crafts Movements “expressed the fear that local traditions would be swept away by standardization” and demonstrated a fascination with ‘local ways’ and ‘doing’ (Richardson, 2001). The misunderstanding is to equate the vernacular exclusively with the past, which at its worst leads to fetishisation and banal pastiche of an imagined history.

“Such visually driven, historicist perception of the vernacular is fundamentally flawed. It stems from a misinterpretation of the real nature of vernacular architecture and leads to an imposition of standards which owe little to, indeed may be diametrically opposed to, the reality of the vernacular tradition.” (Edge, 2001) The involvement of ordinary people in the incremental shaping of places and things, through their everyday actions and intentions, has become so rare that we no longer consider it part of our present. These vernacular practices are so unfamiliar to us that we mistake their evidence for heritage alone. As vividly

21 demonstrated in the previous case studies, the reality is that the vernacular is part of a dynamic continuous present, with an unbreakable connection to the past via daily, lived experiences and actions. “Tradition, then, is a process of active regeneration and transformation of know-how and practices within a contemporary local context, that does not exist on its own or apart from the people who transmit it.� (Vellinga, 2006)

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Planning and the vernacular “I suspect no landscape, vernacular or otherwise, can be comprehended unless we perceive it as an organization of space; unless we ask ourselves who owns or uses the spaces, how they are created and how they change. Often it is the legal aspect of the landscape that gives us the clearest insight.” (Jackson, 1984) Where is the vernacular in planning policy?

There are many national and regional policy guidelines, development plans, regulations and conventions that effect, measure and restrict vernacular and non-vernacular practices in cities and rural landscapes. The term ‘vernacular’ however is largely absent from national and local planning policy. If it is ever mentioned explicitly it is only with vague reference to ‘high quality design’ and in terms of ‘respect for local building styles and character’. When planning speaks in such ambiguous terms, it can be influential, but conveniently unaccountable. ‘Presumption in favour of sustainable development’ (DCLG, 2012) – house building and economic growth – dominates the National Planning Policy Framework and by extension all Local and Neighbourhood Plans. This bias towards commercial property development and professionalism of delivery, runs counter to the frugal and resourceful approach of the vernacular, which places value on non-monetary actions and relations. It could be said that planning and the vernacular run on parallel ideological tracks. As discussed earlier, the prevailing surface interpretation of vernacular buildings and landscapes leads to a ‘planning paradox’ when planners attempt (but fail) to encourage and preserve traditional built form: “The paradox, which is demonstrated to be at least partially instigated and perpetuated by much of the literature on vernacular local architecture, emanates from a flawed implicit definition, in the minds of many planners, of the nature of vernacular built forms.” (Edge, 2001) As primary legislation, the Localism Act (2011) should have the potential to open doors to local vernacular practices. As is stated in the governments’ Plain English Guide to the act: “We think that power should be exercised at the lowest practical level - close to the people who are affected by decisions, rather than distant from them.” However, as many critics have pointed out, the promise of devolution of power is rarely borne out. The act is effectively disarmed and hugely restricted by its lowly position in the planning hierarchy, lack of guidance to volunteers and communities, and lack of control over spending (King, 2011). Parish Councils and Neighbourhood Forums, tasked with putting the Localism Act into

25 policy form, are voluntary groups and often lack the time, finances and skills required to create anything but a defensive plan, geared towards established development models.

Landscape Character Assessments are the most common means by which Landscape Architects engage with planning policy. LCA’s provide “a robust, auditable and transparent baseline… (That) identify and explain the unique combination of elements and features (characteristics) that make landscapes distinctive” (NE, 2014).

They may be the only legitimate vehicle for asserting the significance and value of vernacular place making, (at a local scale) and recording it in order to protect it. However, the assessments often fall all too easily into the trap of conservation of scenic attributes over and above potential visually chaotic living practices, despite their remit: “To be a framework for helping to incorporate the rich heritage of landscape diversity into present day decisions, not as a process that seeks to prevent activities” (NE, 2014). Stakeholders are encouraged to participate in Field Surveys, to contribute their perceptions of the landscape and local knowledge of place names. They are not acknowledged as active place makers, but as sensory receivers of an already formed landscape. Crucially, any recommendations, or ‘making judgements’, by the landscape architects, that could include vernacular practices, must be made in separate documents and be limited to guidance easy for developers and decision makers to ignore.

The only place that ordinary people have ever had any opportunity to shape their environment, besides that permitted within their private property, is on the commons. All common land has an owner, but people who live within or adjacent to the common have protected rights to the resources of the land for prescribed uses. The commons are valuable in that they provide public access to open space for recreation, thanks to the Countryside and Rights of Way Act (2001), and they are protected from destructive change to unusually rich wildlife habitats. However the ‘rights of common’, which are particular to each site, are universally limiting in their arcane nature, rarely exercised and therefore lost through lack of use. For example, how many contemporary households would find the need to exercise their rights to graze one goat; to take bracken for fodder; or to Turbary – digging peat for fuel?

There is a long history of conflict between the commoners and the crown in the Forest of Dean. Rights of common, as in almost all cases around the country, were hard won. Squatters, and ‘cabiners’ had been encroaching onto the common, ingeniously thieving land for centuries (Deakin, 2007)

26 “One view…of commoning is that actually it needs to be done in order to then be legitimized. Common rights, in the first place, were not granted in advance.” (BinghamHall, 2015) Unplanned villages and homes sprang up across the ‘forest waste’, eventually conceded to freehold in the nineteenth century. At the same time the traditional privileges of the Free Miners were encoded in law. However, despite these protections, the out-dated requirements of this legislation, combined with new regulation, now threaten the very existence of Free Mining. The maternity unit of the local hospital has been closed in recent years, making it nearly impossible to be ‘Born in the Hundred of St.Briavels’ as the law dictates. New applicants must have worked ‘for a year and a day underground’ as apprentices. The mines are required to be checked daily by a qualified inspector when an apprentice is working, which requires insurances and training that the miners can not afford.

Vernacular ways of living and working are almost always at odds with the prevailing planning wisdom of the day. This is because regulation and legislation are the natural tools with which the dominant class exercise their powers and Miners Richard Daniels and Ray Ashly emerge from Monument Colliery

27 galvanize their status, ideology and wealth. The public, for the sake of what they perceive to be an organised and civilised society, accepts the excuses of concerns for health and safety, public liability, unchecked development, environmental or aesthetic pollution.

“In urban planning, the threat of experiment has seemed terrible to the authorities, and one reason why innovation is usually buried under a mountain of rules; authority wants to insure that nothing sticks out or offends. The logic of integration is to diminish in value things that don’t fit in.” (Sennett, 2016) The value of the vernacular is that it offers an alternative to the dominant ideology, to people within subcultures that have different social and cultural priorities.The miners at Gwennap were among the first Non-Conformist Methodists and were ministered to by itinerant and lay preachers. The building of the pit was a form of religious rebellion (Dray, 2008), as well as Cornish separatism - a will for change manifested in the landscape. Now Methodism is on the wane, the tin mines are nearly all closed. Thanks to these past cultures and practices Gwennap falls within the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site. As such it is subject to protections and management plans that prevent the very kind of activity that could create a place like Gwennap Pit again, for those in the present. Ironically, the justification offered here is authenticity: “More use of Article 4 designations should be made to protect the character of the mining landscape in the WHS by removing some permitted development rights, so that the cumulative effect of multiple small scale changes do not result in the gradual loss of authenticity” (Cornwall Council, 2012) Willful objectification and romanticization of the vernacular, as is so common, denies the fundamental precondition for the majority of vernacular constructions – that of powerlessness in the face of rigid authority. It is this that gives rise to the ingenious, persistent responses to seemingly immutable forces, “a reluctant…unending patient adjustment to circumstances” (Jackson, 1984). The ephemerality and mobility of the vernacular is a necessary adaptation by landless people to the permanent physical and cultural enclosures of a self-serving establishment.

So what can be done? How can landscape architects who choose to enable vernacular practices negotiate and intervene in the planning process? In the following chapter I will look at an alternative, more potent possibility for landscape architects to engage with the planning process and enable vernacular placemaking, that of Design Code.

Clifton Rock Slide does not conform to European Standard EN1176 ‘Playground Equipment - Slides’

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What can Landscape Architects do to make space for the vernacular?

Design Code.

“By engaging with the rule book, it is possible to open up untold avenues of creativity, subversion and opportunity.” (Williams, 2009) If planning as it stands offers little recourse, or worse is a barrier, to a community or individuals who wish to shape their own environment, what can they do? Design Code could potentially allow a landscape architect employed as a placemaker in the public realm to make space for vernacular practices, in collaboration with local people.

Within the hierarchy of the wider planning framework, a designer can write Design Code, a set of prescriptions, that is more materially and operationally specific than mere guidelines. Any landscape scheme can be monitored against and held accountable to this code, at a range of scales. Most commonly Design Code is used at a strategic level where residential areas or large landscaped areas are being considered. Local authorities see it as a way to ensure that developers deliver consistently well-designed homes and public spaces. Developers use it to ensure an expedient planning process (Cabe, 2005) Design Code is not a new idea. In the past it took the form of ‘pattern books’ that recommended ideal proportions and qualities for architecture. In its modern form the scope has been extended to include whole urban areas and the built environment within them, including green spaces. Design Codes are primarily considered to be technical documents that give specific instructions for dimensions, form, spatial arrangement, materials and management operations for a particular site. Codes are often layered, with specifications for development at ever decreasing scales within the same document – ranging from character areas, to building types and open space, down to materials and street level details – often informed by key design principles. When Design Code is consistent with the wider planning framework it can be adopted as a Supplementary Planning Document, so has the potential to effect broader change than other methods open to landscape architects. “(Design coding) is significant because it can be more than just another part of the planning/design toolkit – it can change the nature of the planning process itself.” (Rouse, 2003).

Design Code is active rather than passive and more effective than a baseline landscape character assessment, with its toothless recommendations. Code can

31 specify the spatial dimensions and qualities of future development, not in order to remain ‘in-keeping’ with existing urban or landscape character, but to allow new social and cultural intentions and needs of diverse future residents to manifest themselves in the landscape.

Vernacular architecture has been recognised as a contradiction in terms (Richardson), the paradox of ‘architcture without architects’ (Rudofsky). It would seem at first that a strategic and prescriptive Design Code could not accommodate the immediacy and flexibility of vernacular practises. Critics of Design Code say that it can stifle creativity and diversity rather than support it. Poundbury in Dorset is a case in point for this argument. It is famous for its Design Code, which has been used to impose a range of vernacular ‘styles’ on a new town with fairly hideous results. I found Poundbury to be disquieting, with an aura of self-satisfaction and a transparently superficial interpretation of vernacular. The narratives of community embodied in true vernacular building are missing from the vision of a single architect and consequently the town feels soulless.

New old houses under construction, Poundbury, Dorset

32 If Design Code imposed as terminal masterplan can be a straight jacket to developers, builders and citizens alike, perhaps it would be better if there were no regulations at all? This was the position taken by the group of architects behind the notional ‘Non-Plan: An experiment in freedom’, published in 1969: “NonPlan was essentially a very humble idea: that it is very difficult to decide what is best for other people.” (Barker, 2000). The group proposed that large segments of the English countryside would be stripped of planning constraints and left to evolve according to the will of the public. The controversial proposal led directly to the temporary creation of ‘Enterprise Zones’ in the 1980’s (resurrected in amended form by the Conservatives in 2012) where planning restrictions were lifted in depressed areas (Barker, 2000). In the brief period the zones existed, developers seized on their opportunity and built ‘One Canada Square’, the skyscraper at Canary Wharf in London’s Docklands. The initiative was widely criticized for displacing local jobs. The pitfall of this blanket lifting of regulation is that it is open to exploitation by wealthy private interests and may only serve to further increase the divide between those with and without power. Nor did it lead to great design innovation. William H. Whyte reminds us that: “Lack of guidelines does not give builders and architects more freedom. It reinforces convention.” (Whyte, 1980) Vernacular could be seen as being in direct opposition to ‘design’, especially if we consider the traditional view of design as a top-down methodology and deny the skills and intentionality of the amateur proponent of the vernacular.

However, the nature of design is changing, perhaps in response to the same forces that vernacular continues to respond to. It has broadened its horizons to incorporate experimental and incremental ‘action research’, open-ended processes and the contribution of multiple authors. I will now look at the work of architects and (notably rare) landscape designers who have pushed the boundaries of design, code, policy and regulation. They have created spaces that can be appropriated for exceptional creativity and freedom for lay designers and builders, by prescription.

33 A Design Code for vernacular placemaking – Precedents.

Free Terrain.Urbanist Michael Sorkin sets out his vision for a future city using only building regulations, in his utopian manifesto Local Code (the title of which I borrowed for this essay). He begins with a Bill of Rights and set of Principles, then proceeds with his eccentric construction code: “Each Hab (home) shall offer suitable accommodation for outdoor sleeping”…“No two party walls shall be alike”…“Every Hab (home) will have a View of the moon”. His work demonstrates how something as dry and unpromising as building specification can be transformed into an agent for creative intervention in life and space: “This code is written in the belief that meanings inhere in forms, and that the settings for social life can aid its fulfilment. Acknowledging the gravity of permanence and the oppressions of extent, it seeks, in its limits, not to restrain associations but to free them.”(Sorkin, 1993) He demonstrates that Design Code can be a tool for local particularity, in the right hands, without tying itself in knots of over-regulation. A most useful concept introduced in the code is that of the ‘Free Terrain’, a less restricted version of our commons and more carefully controlled vision than ‘Non-Plan’, which Sorkin states should comprise 1% of the inhabited areas of the city: “[IV-23.1] The Free Terrains are Areas in which all longevity regulations shall be superceded by a single requirement: no structure shall stand, either in whole or in part, for a period longer than twelve months.

[IV-23.6] Free Terrains are not to be municipally improved.

[IV-23.12] Other than those cited above, no other restrictions shall apply to construction in the Free Terrains.”

The inclusion of the caveat stipulating temporary structures is crucial to prevent permanent exploitation by self-interested developers. Another way to create space for ordinary citizens to create and construct within, is to make plots available in smaller proportions with a few key regulations.

Overleaf: The bike jumps at Beaks Shaw, hidden and difficult to access through the trees, belong to the boys.

36 Self-Build.There are several notable recent projects that enable self-build, within the constraints of a larger masterplan, among them Iquique by Elemental in Chile and the plan for Almere in the Netherlands by OMA. Elemental are necessarily more prescriptive in their approach, where they provide a half built house for residents to infill for themselves, when time, labour and funds allow.

This is a clever design response to the problem of house building for the poor in a time of economic crisis. A beneficial side effect however, is that it also preserves the culture of autonomy and self-reliance for the incoming squatter community. There are construction rules to abide by, to ensure the homes are safe and that streets are legible and useful for all, but they still allow for individual ownership of design. In Almere, residents are given 10 rules that must be adhered to, but beyond this there is total freedom to build as people wish.

Ratio of land use types, or building to green space are stipulated, along with use of sustainable energy. Builders are responsible for providing site infrastructure, including the roadway adjoining their plot. It concludes with: “Rule 10: Public investments afterwards - Only after activation of “bottom-up” projects in the area municipality could some necessary public investments start.” (RRAAM 2012) This is a fantastic endorsement of the ability of citizens to determine the needs and shape of the city through their own incremental actions.

Left: Before and after occupation at Iquique, Chile

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“Asserting the value of incomplete form is a political act architects should perform in the public realm. This means asserting not only the beauty of unfinished objects but also their practicality. Buildings left incomplete, partially unprogrammed are structures which can truly be sustainable in time.� (Sennett, 2016)

38 Landscape in progress. In the peri-urban landscape around Girona, Estudi Marti Franch is putting the theory of incomplete form to the test. The studio began work on the self-initiated project out of a desire to create a sustainable and evolving ‘action plan’ for the neglected edgelands, in a time of economic downturn. They have rethought the conventional top down masterplan and opted instead for an approach that allows new ‘operators and players’ to develop an incrementally evolving management plan and slowly but surely co-create the landscape. It is a form of applied research, or as Franch says: “inventing a project as we go”. Municipal landscape staff, managers, politicians, designers and citizens work together and become co-designers and managers. “a project where guerrilla tactics, close knowledge of the site and how it operates, opportunism and immediate action are merged with the far-off vision, that is both relational and strategic.” (Franch, 2016) Their collective contribution to seasonal interventions economically scattered around the landscape creates a ‘narrative aesthetic’. Their hard work is a sign to citizens that the landscape is thought of, cared about, a work in progress worth exploring and treasuring.

Municipal landscape staff ‘inventing as they go’ in Girona, Spain

39 Experimental Campus.In 1973 Christopher Alexander and his collaborators were invited by the University of Oregon to design a process that would allow 15,000 students and 3,300 university staff to co-design new development on their campus. Their approach was based on six key principles that were intended to counter the totalizing effect of the conventional masterplan. The principles of Organic order and Piecemeal Growth allowed “the whole to emerge gradually from local acts.”, with a budget distributed so construction was “weighed overwhelmingly towards small projects.” They introduced democracy and accountability to the design process via the Principle of Patterns, which were “communally adopted planning principles” informed by local knowledge and needs, that could be reassessed and amended within a cycle of ‘annual diagnosis’. ‘Global’ ideas and principles of this “timeless way of building” (Alexander, 1975) were intended to be replicated in other locations and countries, adapted to the particularities of each place using ‘local’ detailed specification. The experiment in Oregon is as close as you could come to a working precedent for Design Code that could enable vernacular placemaking.

Students did determine the design of campus buildings at the time, but their efforts were later undermined by the University who constructed a new complex without stakeholder input. The buildings were gifted by a donor and the campus has become known as ‘the University of Nike’ (Bishop, 2013). A reminder, if any were needed, that Vernacular placemaking, like commoning, is something that needs to be continuously engaged in and fought for, however well regulated it is.

What could a Design Code for vernacular placemaking look like?

The case study sites in Gwennap, Beaks Shaw, Clifton and the Forest of Dean are very particular in their locations and cultural conditions, differing from one another widely. However they also have many things in common. By considering these commonalities and the lessons learned from the design precedents above, I have identified three areas that could be crucial for a vernacular placemaking Design Code.

Free Terrain – the concept introduced by Sorkin in Local Code, and exemplified in recent self-build masterplans, a space with: very few rules; freedom of access for all; freedom to build as one chooses; liability accepted by users; protection by agreement or licence; an understanding that if unused it will revert to the original owners. Design Code should facilitate this Free Terrain.

42 Social Contract – Vernacular placemakers are motivated by a wide variety of factors – religious, social, sporting, basic survival and shelter, a love of place or a way of life – all of which are non-monetary values. They rely on: strong social ties between family, friends, and community; working together and helping one another; a good trusting relationship between landowner and tenant; passing down skills between generations; an agreement (formal or informal) of rules between stakeholders. Design Code should enable and strengthen these relationships.

Local Co-Designed Code – For each particular place there should be a spatial and technical Design Code, informed by local knowledge, skills and aspirations. ‘Global’ principles to apply to local sites could also include: use of local materials and skills; respect for and best use of existing site conditions; incremental building and design; building by hand; low budget interventions; local actors contribute to Design Code for site; close proximity of site to intended users; Code is regularly reviewed and revised.

Design Code is young and little tested so far, but clearly offers an opportunity for creativity to Landscape Architects and the chance to enable vernacular placemaking for the sake of good design and better places for people. It can be adopted into the planning framework as a formal document and has the potential to exert real influence locally and more widely. Design Code could allow for true ownership and evolution of places by citizens, whilst satisfying requirements of establishments for an organised and safe public realm. In the right hands, spatial and technical specifications can achieve exciting, equitable and positive social and cultural results.

“We strongly believe that the field of (urban) design should not simply adhere to these standards as some neutrally existing context but should actively engage in discussing them in order to make them subject to design as well.” (Lehnerer, 2016)

This page: Free Miners in the Forest of Dean are joining forces to form a co-operative, with umberella insurances and training, to save their way of life.

Overleaf: Bikers at Beaks Shaw have devised their own informal code of conduct and now have a written licence agreement with the landowners.

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Conclusion – A call to arms!

“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) Vernacular placemaking is a way of life, where ordinary citizens shape the places they live and work, through their everyday actions and intentions. Money rarely changes hands, often out of necessity, but also because the vernacular efficiently makes use of resources that are freely available nearby. The narratives of peoples’ triumphs, accidents, failures, acts of kindness, labours, joys and all the banal days in-between are writ large and small on the landscape, if we can see beyond the ‘scene’. An ‘engaged material consciousness’ (Sennet, 2008) invoked by such actions can help us to feel connected to the land and one another. Ordinary people are quietly empowered by their ability to influence the shape of their surroundings, to own the places they live even if they do not hold deeds to property.

Despite popular, mistaken historicist associations, vernacular placemaking is a current and dynamic process. Heritage is maintained through daily, lived experiences and habitual actions that are in a dialogue with the past, but constantly evolving and transforming with present conditions. The tendency to romanticize and aestheticize vernacular places and inventions conceals the underlying forces that make them necessary and the subordination and frustrations of their creators.

Planning in the UK does not currently enable vernacular placemaking and increasingly inhibits and restricts it. The values embodied in it are not shared by the ideology that creates legislation and regulation. The Localism Act (2011) represents a token move towards power devolved to citizens, but is under resourced and so far, ineffective. The commons are a wonderful resource for the public at large, but their full productive and creative potential is no longer reached for local communities, due to out-of-date ‘rights of common’. Landscape Character Assessments are the conventional vehicle for Landscape Architects to engage with vernacular places, but can tend towards a perceptual interpretation of the landscape. Whilst providing a valuable baseline from which decision makers can act, they are essentially passive in terms of planning.

Counter-intuitively, ‘non-plan’ leaves public space open to neo-liberal exploitation, and consequently more enclosure and less freedom. So we must ‘engage with the rulebook’ (Williams, 2009) and make it our own. Despite concerns

47 that Design Code can stifle creativity and diversity, in the right hands it can be a “channel for urban invention” (Sorkin, 3). We must keep in mind that: “Ultimately, a code can only be as good as those who write it and those who implement it” (CABE, 2005). There are new design precedents that demonstrate the value of and heartily embrace ‘incomplete form’, incremental construction, co-design and self-build. These examples show that design has evolved from its traditional top-down model and need no longer be at odds with vernacular practices.

Spatial and social commonalities between case study sites and changing design attitudes show the way forward for a Design Code that could enable future vernacular placemaking. This could include three crucial elements: Free Terrain – accessible, protected space for all to use as they choose within loose constraints; A Social Contract – agreements and democratic processes that foster trust, co-operation, sharing and exchange between generations and diverse cultures; and Local Co-Designed Code – Locally specific technical Design Code created, regularly reviewed and reinvented by its community of users, that makes the best use of site conditions, materials and skills.

What I am proposing is a reassessment and reinvention of Design Code itself, something new with an open-ended future. It could offer a toolkit for co-design and collaboration, which capitalizes both on the expertise of professionals and the local wisdom of citizens. Vernacular placemaking expresses an alternative way of life, for people from diverse cultures, who often find themselves at odds with the establishment. As Landscape Architects we must question our position of privilege and embrace the options we have to instigate change. Design Code as a methodology is still evolving and warrants greater professional interest. It may be the best, most immediate means by which Landscape Architects and Citizens can work together, to make space for vernacular practice and create dynamic places that are sustainable and relevant for all. We have the chance to set precedents, to incorporate the ideals of ‘others’ into equitable public space, to challenge the status quo and, at the very least, “limbo dance under the radar of regulations” (Williams, 2009).

A full house at Gwennap Pit, 1957, demonstrates successful vernacular placemaking.

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