London School of Architecture
Ben Breheny June 2017
Architecture against Neoliberalism Neoliberalism, as an economic and ideological concept, is widely employed today when discussing the framework within which much of Western society is seen to operate.1 The term itself is the subject of contention and there is some discussion on its utility in academic discourse.2 It is however, useful in this essay, for exploring some of the particular contemporary conditions of capitalism that have come to bear on architects, architecture and the city. The term is treated as a signifier for the current, particularly resilient and pervasive form of capitalism that affects all facets of contemporary life through complementary economic and political means. A general definition of the neoliberal condition is taken as ‘new political, economic, and social arrangements within society that emphasize market relations, re-tasking the role of the state, and individual responsibility’3. Alongside this, Douglas Spencer’s4 and Srnicek and Williams’5 writing on the subject begin to inform a more specific vector for architectural, city and emancipatory based discussion. The way in which neoliberalism has developed from a fringe idea into the prevailing world-view is well discussed in existing scholarship.6 Here, it is useful to repeat that the ideology came to be disseminated, adopted and 1 The Handbook of Neoliberalism states that neoliberalism ‘is easily one of the most powerful concepts to emerge within the social sciences in the that last two decades’ with the number of scholars writing on the topic labelled ‘astonishing’. Springer, S. Birch, K. and MacLeavy, J. (eds.) (2016) p.1 2 ibid. p. 7 3 ibid. p. 2 4 Spencer, D. (2016) 5 Srnicek, N. and Williams, A. (2016) 6 Chapter 3 of Inventing the Future sets out to understand the spread of the idea as a potential tool for widely establishing an opposing position, a new opposing hegemony. 3
accepted over a considerable period of time, with strands of the idea existing as early the 1920s.7 The ideology of neoliberalism can be seen as having a ‘traceable lineage’ from early meetings of the Colloque Walter Lippmann in Paris, through to the establishment of the Mont Pelerin society, to its varied incarnations and employment by the governments of Pinochet in Chile, before eventually Thatcher and Reagan in the West. Today, this disparate and malleable ideology has become fully enmeshed with a typical understanding of the world, and operates through a majority of power structures as the hegemonic world-view; as common-sense. In Britain, many politicians within the major three parties are held in thrall; along with privately owned media outlets and numerous think tanks which continue to disseminate, promote or practice what can be identified as a neoliberal agenda. This has culminated in a society in which, as architect and writer Jack Self posits, the ‘working class has been sedated by consumerism, the bourgeoisie have been seduced into servitude and the student population is consumed by debt.’8 Furthermore, modern financial crises have continually been instrumentalised by neoliberal arrangements to further cement and double-down on its flawed socio-economic model. Most recently, the establishment and financiers who played a major role in the economic crisis of 2008 were allowed to hypocritically circumvent the free market in order to conserve the banks’ power and compound the neoliberal mode of organising society that,
7 Srnicek, N. and Williams, A. (2016) p. 54 8 Self, J. (2014) 4
unsurprisingly, continues to serve their interests.9 In Britain, and throughout much of Europe, this set the stage for the comprehensive introduction of austerity; that is, the ideologically motivated strangling of state spending in order to reduce the government’s budget deficit. Neoliberal governance, integral to and coupled with these cuts to public spending, has contributed to current conditions of inflation, poor wage growth and the increase in income inequality.10 Not to mention a prevailing sense of injustice with the current socio-economic state of Britain. Furthermore, neoliberalism has encouraged the redistribution of previously public property into private hands, often enabling rent extraction for narrow, private benefit. Its ongoing establishment as doxa has fully embedded the competitive growth imperative of capitalism, as it currently operates, which is plainly incompatible with the work required to mitigate climate change, the most severe threat facing humanity. Neoliberalism will not change the world for the better and is mobilised in favour of inequitable and untenable positions for wider society. Not only as a form of capitalism but through its own distinct methods of state manipulation, the extension of market logic to all arenas and its reconfiguration of the way people conceive of themselves and the world as made in the image of neoliberalism itself. It has served an elite, who have seen their wealth grow, at the price of demoting much of society to modern serfdom. 9  According to a 2016 Oxfam report, the richest percentiles of the world globally have seen their wealth grow significantly since the crisis. Available at: http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/an-economy-forthe-1-how-privilege-and-power-in-the-economy-drive-extreme-inequ-592643 [Accessed 15/05/17] 10  Gavin Jackson, How UK incomes are becoming more unequal. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/ fc4a3980-e86f-11e6-967b-c88452263daf [Accessed 15/05/17] 5
Neoliberalism must be resisted, undermined and replaced; a more equitable future must be imagined and secured. An overturning of neoliberal hegemony will require a concerted effort across a number of intellectual fields, not least political, sociological and economic, to say nothing of establishing a new common sense. Where architects and architecture sit in this is open to discussion and must be contested; clearly, the end of neoliberalism will not be achieved primarily through architecture and the specific difficulty of architecture addressing the socio-economic framework in which it is practiced is well discussed11. Whilst accepting this, I believe it should be asked whether architects are only inert tools, manipulated by neoliberalised private capital, without opportunity to upset and challenge the order within which they operate. I believe architecture should be seen, if its social purpose is believed and its definition is suitably inclusive, as an integral academic and practical profession bound and able to subvert the current hegemonic order. Currently, both bodies overseeing the architectural profession, the RIBA and the ARB, point to a wider responsibility as part of a professional code of conduct. The ARB declares the architect should ‘consider the wider impact of [one’s] work’,12 whilst the RIBA propounds that ‘members should respect the beliefs and opinions of other people, recognise social diversity and treat everyone fairly. They should also have a proper concern and due regard for the effect that their work may have on its users and the local community.’13 So, it can be seen that the idea of a far-reaching, socio-political impact is not an inherently radical idea when it is being expounded, if a little limply, 11 See Manfredo Tafuri’s Architecture and Utopia and Lahiji, N. (2016) 12 ARB Code of Conduct (2017) 13 RIBA Code of Professional Conduct (2005), p. 5 6
by the professional bureaucratic institutions of architectural regulation. The radical and more difficult task, is to begin to fully and critically enact these rules of conduct. Ethical and social responsibility is fundamental to our role as citizens and professionals. If architecture can alter the social condition of humanity, positively and negatively, then it follows that there is a responsibility, and crucially scope, for architects to engender change. Design allows for the political to be made manifest, through critical thinking that results in spatial action. The action will not be perfect, but it can begin to affect positive change. So, if architects have a duty to deliver on an ethical promise, it is worth considering the specific tactics which architects can employ effectively and successfully. Can architecture signal the beginning of changes through subversive practice, or does the end of delivering a ‘useful’ or ‘ethical’ project justify the tainted means of the capitalistic, speculative system through which the project must pass? Beyond this, are architects not only duty bound but well-trained in a certain mode of thinking that allows them to play a critical role in the imagining of transformative new futures? This section of the essay explores some of the characteristics and notions of neoliberalism which can be engaged and subverted through various levels of architectural agency and design tactics, in order of scale. As a precursor, the difficulty of acting within the system and not being co-opted and instrumentalised by it, even when acting to subvert it, should be well recognised.14 14 Self, J. (2014) 7
The naturally concrete and complex nature of typical architectural practice potentially creates a dichotomy. The level of resource and organisation currently involved in producing a building almost ensures engagement with instruments of the neoliberal order that one is attempting to resist. Accepting this and operating pragmatically requires that an architect treads a careful line. Liza Fior, co-founder of muf Architecture, touched on one attitude to this at Design Directions, a lecture series held at the Design Museum in 2017. muf will take on ‘toxic’ jobs in order to deliver a positive and conscientious result; but also make an internal critique, with a persistent awareness of where the project falls between ‘contribution, compromise [and] complicity’. Some might argue that the initial act of engaging with the current system, and developers central to it, represents complicity, however, it is a truism that very little is built in cities without agents of the private, capitalist system being in some way involved. Before taking this pragmatism for granted there might be opportunity, at a smaller scale, for architects to reconnect with some of the strategies of the Letterist and Situationist International’s acts of ‘Détournement’15. Particularly now, in our age of almost unlimited, ‘free’ dissemination of digitally reproduced images. Architects are positioned with understanding not just of imagery and iconography but also of crucial and potentially intricate political conditions relating to the built environment. As politically engaged agents for change, architects could work to begin to undermine and re-appropriate
15 See Asger Jorn and Guy Debord’s Fin de Copenhague, Mémoires, and Debord’s On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Period of Time 8
Examples of Détournement from Asger Jorn and Guy Debord’s Fin de Copenhague
neoliberal slogans, advertising and ephemera; using irony, satire and humour as effective persuasive tools against the prevailing ideology. One critical area these images might begin to address could be the housing crisis. The inequity of the neoliberal system is clearly extant in the problem of housing in London and other major cities around the world. Specifically, there is a lack of genuinely affordable housing and a reluctance to provide supply side solutions at the scale and urgency of the problem. Market led house building arrangements are not producing housing at anywhere near the required rate. Furthermore, the government’s right to buy policy, among other issues related to land ownership, pricing and the profitability of land-banking, are compounding the problem. Beyond satirical imagery and common-sense shifting memes, knowledge of specific architectural levers have been mobilised in theory by Jack Self, who has been seeking ways to address the proportion of people’s debt tied up in housing and the modern obsession of ownership which is becoming increasingly out of reach and contributes to the system of inequality.16 In an article for the Lithuanian Architecture Foundation magazine, ALF, Self explores a new model of debt that alleviates the high repayment rates associated with ‘owning’ property through mortgage, and begins to propose structural (cheap, large scale construction) and material longevity (bronze cores able to last a hundred years) to complement and contribute to the overarching discussion of procurement mechanics.17 16 Regarding land and home ownership and its positive and negative contributions to development, including how it is currently cementing inequality see Ryan-Collins, J., Lloyd, T. & Macfarlane, L. (2017) 17 Self, J. (2014) 10
Another contravening, and direct, approach to the neoliberal consensus on housing is the work of Architects for Social Housing (ASH) who actively oppose the demolition and wholesale redevelopment of council owned housing across London through engagement, protest and pro-active design proposition.18 Exponentially increasing land values in London and other major cities have meant properties in the city have increasingly become investment instruments of global capital. This has meant that the land occupied by the remaining, genuinely affordable, social housing schemes left in London offers the potential for huge profit if the existing communities can be removed, the buildings demolished, and the plot redeveloped as housing for the private market. ASH represent a radical architectural standpoint that attempts to turn the logic and rhetoric of the developers in on itself, and uncover the ulterior motives of those investing the capital. If the money is there to invest and if it is possible to invest it in well-planned, overbuilding, infill and refurbishment of existing estates, whilst also providing market units, their question is simple: why this is not being done? ASH, and many of the communities they work with, hypothesise that it is due to the developer or housing association’s desire for social cleansing in order to pave the way for maximising profit. ASH’s work is radical in its refusal to accept new building, and the requisite demolition, as the most effective use of investment when it will often mean the wholesale relocation and fragmentation of existing communities with, in practice, little chance of the communities being able to return under fair 18  See: https://architectsforsocialhousing.wordpress.com/ 11
terms. The practice clearly employs a different set of value judgements when considering the opportunities of housing sites within the city. They opt out of the prevailing neoliberal development model whilst practicing design and actually listening to people. The French architects Lacaton and Vassal have worked in a similar manner, both with regards to a critical position resulting in not building (but maintaining) and as architects for refurbishment and infill schemes for social housing across France. At Place Léon Aucoc, a small leafy square in Bordeaux, the architects questioned the imposed requirement of ‘embellishment’ stipulated in the brief. From careful observation and talking with the people who lived around the square, they concluded that ‘quality, charm, life exist. The square is already beautiful.’19 This astute undoing of neoliberal development imperatives through questioning and refining the brief, and truly understanding the qualities of an existing place, should be understood as a crucial means of pragmatic resistance. Indeed, their further ideas on ‘luxury in simplicity’, ‘cheap is more’ and working with the ‘minimum’20 to achieve maximum effect allows them to work within neoliberal models whilst seeking a genuine, generous ‘freedom’ for the people that will inhabit their buildings. At the scale of the city, a particularly pertinent example of the way in which neoliberal ideology has shaped London involves the plot of land known as Mount Pleasant, in Clerkenwell, which is currently owned by the now privatised Royal Mail Group (RMG). The privatisation of the Royal Mail has been 19 Lacaton and Vassal project profile. Available at: https://www.lacatonvassal.com/index.php?idp=37# [Accessed 15/05/17] 20 Lacaton, A and Vassal, J-P. (2015) p. 17 12
Lacaton and Vassal’s Place LÊon Aucoc (top) and a social housing project in Mulhouse illustrating constructional generosity
10
ount easant hat Happens Next?
2013 we plan to submit our applications to Islington and Councils. In the meantime you welcome to leave any comments may have with us – please fill in s provided and place them in the x or send them to us via the address below.
You can also visit our website: www.mount-pleasant.org.uk
planning applications are d both Councils will conduct n consultation.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT*
Mount Pleasant CK CAN BE PROVIDED BY:
Our website will be updated throughout the process and our freephone number is staffed during office hours. If you would like to meet to discuss the proposals please get in touch with us using any of the methods above.
Spring 2013 The designs will be reviewed and finalised into planning applications and submitted to the London Boroughs of Camden and Islington. RMG’s planning proposal (centre)
(top) with the alongside the MPA’s scheme, drawing by2013 Francis Terry Summer
illing in the questionnaire
alling Indigo Public Affairs on 800 458 6976
The London Boroughs of Camden and Islington will undertake its own statutory consultation on the applications.
widely criticised for the lack of value it returned for the taxpayer. Central to these complaints has been the omission of £830m worth of property assets 21 from the sale price, of which the Mount Pleasant site is the most significant. So, whilst private investors were able to immediately reap significant return on the IPO shares, the public was largely deprived of the benefits of a remarkably valuable 12-acre site in central London. Land which could have been used to build publicly owned housing in a area with considerable need, has instead been redistributed for primarily private, shareholder gains. The RMG moved quickly to appoint a collection of respected architectural practices to deliver a proposal to planning. The resulting proposal is architecturally analogous to the majority of major residential development across the capital: made up of wide, perimeter blocks with brick cladding (for contextualism). The resulting scheme has been contentious, drawing the ire of local residents, who formed the Mount Pleasant Association22 (MPA) in order to tackle what they saw as an urbanistic and architectural mis-evaluation of a key, strategic site in central London. Indeed, the association has gone further than protesting what they consider to be a ‘fortress like’ proposal, alienating surrounding buildings and creating sterile, privatised semi-public space. They have produced a counter proposal. In a confounding twist, while the Mayor ‘called in’ the RMG’s scheme to grant it permission after Camden and Islington were unable to reach a decision, the Mount Pleasant Association were granted funding by the GLA through the Community Right to Build programme to produce their alternative proposal. 21 BBC new report. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28250963 [Accessed 15/05/17] 22 See: https://mountpleasantforum.wordpress.com/ 15
In the same way that architectural theorist Douglas Spencer explores how the BMW Central Building in Leipzig, and the CCTV building in Beijing, represent aestheticized manifestations of the underlying neoliberal ideology of ‘managerial paradigms’ and supposed ‘emancipation from stasis and constraint’23 in the flowing, uninterrupted surfaces and overlapping circulation systems, one could begin to apply a similar critical methodology to the two Mount Pleasant proposals. Analysing the meaning generated by the seemingly opposing architectural languages, modernist and neo-classical, has the potential to draw out the complex relationship between top-down regulatory forces and grassroots approaches to development. Yet, whilst the political workings of the MPA represent a resistance to the neoliberal forces of development, there is much to be examined in the involvement of the Create Streets ‘social enterprise’ as representatives of a neoliberal agenda themselves.24 Up at the next scale of urban design, the planned development and growth of cities in the UK is a critical concern. Essential to the capitalist model of growth, regeneration trends have focused on the delivery of residential, office and retail ‘products’ through the speculative injection of large amounts of capital by property developers. These projects have often resulted in the privatisation and homogenisation of diverse areas across cities. Whilst the developers’ lexicon now includes for ‘placemaking’, these are still concepts mobilised in the pursuit of profit for the company. Indeed, the giving over of state assets to developers alongside their efforts to control and securitise
23 Spencer, D. (2016) p. 93 24 Slater, T. The Housing Crisis in Neoliberal Britain: Free Market Think Tanks and the Production of Ignorance in: S. Springer, K. Birch and J. MacLeavy (eds) (2016) pp. 7-9 16
their properties has played a significant part in the diminishing of the truly public realm. As journalist Anna Minton explores in her book ‘Ground Control’, regarding the changing nature of public space in our cities, the capitalist approach to development, based on an urge to loosen the power of planning ‘reveals that when the market is given free rein to make places, the result is not the freedom and vitality that people want’.25 Reiner de Graaf, partner at OMA, similarly notes how the neoliberal governmental policies from the 1980s onwards made modern architectural practice ‘obsolete’ and encouraged ‘the initiative to construct the city [...] to reside increasingly with the private sector.’26 This situation means it is imperative that the fractured and increasingly self-financed local councils who manage planning, and are grappling with the virtual bribery and coercion of increasingly powerful private developers27, bring the people they serve on side to create better, public places in the city, and oppose purely private, financial interest. The British government’s current ideological imperative is to reduce the power of central government, which tends to favour deregulation of business, reduction of taxes and scaling back of public service, whilst calculatedly allowing the blame for consequent deficiencies in social provision to fall on the shoulders of local councils, as can be seen with the devolution of business rate receipts to local authorities. Ruthless funding cuts to essential services at a local level means local councils are forced to bolster their income by any means possible. This includes 25 Minton, A. (2012) p. 186 26 De Graaf, R. (2009) 27 Through negotiation of Section 106, CIL payments and affordable housing provision bartering. 17
keeping business rates at high levels, thereby fostering an environment that favours larger businesses able to operate with stronger margins in areas of lower business rates. The result is a more difficult environment for local businesses within the borough, who do not enjoy such a privilege and must close or relocate away from the high rates of the town centre or high street, thus contributing to increased homogeneity. But, for architecture, this neoliberal push for fragmentation of central government and devolution to the local council level may actually open the possibility for new, local methods of consensus and resistance to inequality. This has happened in the past, as noted by urban theorist Neil Brenner, who remarks that the Greater London Council (GLC) sought a contradictory but co-existing set of principles that could be termed ‘local reregulation’ whilst Thatcher was simultaneously driving ‘national deregulation’.28 Brenner notes that the GLC’s policies were very much at odds with the prevailing neoliberal agenda, promoting ‘labour retraining, [...] creating social goods, and transforming the built environment into a common space’.29 More contemporaneously, there is the question of the role which technology can play in the creation of new networks that enable change and can be leveraged to oppose, and temper, the vagaries of private capital. Under the current technocratic elite, certain online tools and technology have been largely monopolised and used for private gain, but the internet and online networks don’t operate like this by default. There is the opportunity for them to be owned by the people and put into use for public good. In architecture, 28 Brenner, N. Neoliberalisation in: Self, J. and Bose, S. (2015) p. 24 29 ibid. p. 25 18
GLC poster from 1984, pursuing a radical agenda at odds with central government’s national policies
specifically, there is promise that an ‘open-source’ conception might move beyond the rudimentary kit of parts of wikihouse and encourage a sharing of information, expertise and best practice to empower communities to steer and inform architectural development. Simultaneously, there is some critical pushback to this idea of the future of development depending primarily on bottom-up, participatory design. As the writer Justin McGuirk explores in an article for Uncube, ‘there is such a thing as too much of the so-called “bottom-up” impulse we tend to romanticise, and not enough of the “top-down” intervention we tend to vilify’.30 McGuirk points out that the most successful examples of local citizen engagement, including citizens self-building, is most often caused by long-term government neglect. Furthermore, the actual delivery of meaningful, working systems is some way behind the scope of the rhetoric in architecture. That being said, there are a number of examples of democratic online services directly allowing the possibilities of citizen engagement in politics to grow, as recently collated by Nesta31, from LabHacker and eDemocracia in Brazil which allow people to improve governmental bills, to vTaiwan which aims to crowdsource policy ideas. With UK politics and politicians increasingly distrusted, there is perhaps an argument to be made for more local organisation, with a view to re-engaging trust in the democratic system. This could then act as a platform for the reintroduction of representative, centralised infrastructural and architectural decision making. So, any new tools for citizen engagement must enable a more democratic process for urban planning 30 McGuirk, J. (2014) 31 Refer to Simon, J. et al. (2017) Digital Democracy report 20
and development, but should also be used to hold the local authority and government to account for underprovision. Beyond more reactive and granular methods of resisting neoliberalism, it must be stressed that overturning and subverting won’t be enough in isolation of a counter philosophy to replace neoliberalism. Persuading people of new futures should be a key overarching element of any resistance to neoliberalism. This new ideology might draw from socialist and communist values, particularly those that stand in opposition to the capitalist world view, but it should also perhaps be expected to go further in its ability to bring people together and encourage consensus, encouraging ways of collectively organising and establishing values. In the same way that neoliberalism, and the neoliberalisation of the state, operates as a ‘redistributive project’32 which enables the flows of value ‘towards those that have ownership and discretionary control over investment decisions’ we must imagine alternatives. As Brenner notes, we can build on the ‘projective legacy’33 of architecture and its history of envisioning radical new futures. Architects are well poised to employ their skills and understanding of design to imagine comprehensive alternatives that promote a common, public good beyond ‘the fetishisation of local spaces, immediate actions, transient gestures, and particularisms of all kinds.’34
32 Brenner, N. Neoliberalisation in: Self, J. and Bose, S. (2015) p. 20 33 ibid. p. 26 34 Srnicek, N. and Williams, A. (2016) 21
Conclusion While the hegemonic nature of neoliberalism means we find it easier to imagine the end of the world before we can imagine the end of capitalism35, our cities and climate demand that we make the case for an alternative. In the same way Spencer identifies the smothering of critical theory and steadfastly champions its power as a tool to challenge neoliberalism36, Slavoj Zizek, the contemporary philosopher, implores that humanity as a whole takes stock and thinks critically about its existing state and its direction.37 Climate disaster is unfolding and we can either proactively re-organise how our societies operate or we can continue on our current trajectory toward certain crises of further inequity, forced global immigration and catastrophic loss of life and cities.38 Architects are in an position to help to steer the course away from this, if they are able to realise and claim their political agency. So whilst architecture is strongly buffeted by the forces of neoliberalism and its complex power arrangements, the intensity of the political framework in which architects work should serve to remind the profession that it must understand its actions politically too. Perhaps the inherent nature of architecture as a co-ordinating, central profession, with the architect acting as the mediator of the complex relationships of an architectural project, allows them the power to influence as well as serve. Rather than accepting the stripping away of their professional role as a political entity, architects should fully grasp and develop their position and power at the centre of the building contract, wielding both in aid of positive change. 35 36 37 38
Fisher, M. (2009) p. 1 Spencer, D. (2016) pp. 161-163 Zizek, S. (2009) p. 17 See Klein, N. (2015) for 22
The privileged position architects hold in projects engenders a responsibility to be critical, to use their sense of projective imagination and to use their ability to integrate complex and competing spatial demands, in order to achieve an outcome that contributes to the common good. If these values could become enshrined in the regulatory bodies of the profession, or in a new organisational structure, architects could begin to orchestrate change on a wider scale, with fewer concerns about being dropped from a job. It should be acknowledged that architecture as a profession does not operate alone. As Jeremy Till, architect and educator who has writen extensively on contingency, notes ‘we are all mutually reliant—not just in terms of economic exchange, but also in the context of intellectual exchange’39 and the profession concurrently has to accept its ‘fragility in the face of contingent forces’. With this in mind, Till advocates that architects act ‘modestly and partially and politically, making small moves towards a slightly better place rather than large moves towards a reinvented world.’40 As a pragmatic and hopeful position this is clearly a valid starting point, but the urgency of our socio-economic and environmental conditions requires far-reaching, imaginative work: against neoliberalism and towards a new world.
39 Till, J. (2013) p. 166 40 Till, J. (2006) p. 9 23
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