Failure to properly understand context lowers standards, says Clerkenwell Close architect
Amin Taha has delivered a withering assessment of the architectural understanding demonstrated by the newest waves of local authority planning officers – dubbing the profession historically “illiterate”.
The Groupwork boss, who this summer won a long-running battle with Islington council over his double RIBA Award-winning 15 Clerkenwell Close home and practice office, said the prevailing culture in planning departments risked further lowering built environment standards.
塔哈在由建筑设计出版社Assemble Media Group组织的活动上发表了有关façades和建筑背景的讲话，该活动还邀请了埃里克·派瑞和斯特林奖得主大卫·米哈日本vs塞内加尔比分伊尔作为主讲人，他明确表示，他指的不是2013年获得同意的Clerkenwell Close的审批过程。
He said that while context was an important consideration for any new building, he was concerned that decisions over whether a building was appropriate in context were applied by “people who – dare I say it – are mostly illiterate in the history of architecture”.
“Clerkenwell [Close] became controversial but the case officers we had at the time were old-school case officers who were trained in planning and had some architectural history,” he said.
“They retired and were replaced – some time after we got through and built it – by others who had literally no understanding of architectural history or architectural technology.
“We were working on another project where we said: ‘OK, fine, you want it in brick, we can provide it in brick; we can do a self-supporting façade not a Georgian façade or a Victorian façade, which is actually the superstructure. Would you like us to do a flat arch, which looks like a soldier course to you?’”
Taha said the case officer had replied that they just wanted “those bricks that go straight across”.
The architect said he responded by asking how the planning officer thought bricks that just went straight across were supported.
“They said: ‘I don’t know and I don’t care but I like the way that they look’,” Taha explained.
他说，没有建筑历史基础的建筑文化是由人们决定的，这是一种令人不安的恶性循环的风险。
“If we’re feeding that, if that becomes our built environment, that becomes what we’re telling everybody else is our architectural culture,” he said.
“You wouldn’t do that in any other discipline. You wouldn’t do that in the arts. You wouldn’t do that in medicine or the sciences – have the unqualified push the progress to further ignorance, as it were.”
A key element of Taha’s dispute with Islington over 15 Clerkenwell Close centred on the extent to which the built-out structure matched the approved plans.
But the architect said working with case officers on the project in its early stages had been a constructive experience.
“Our immediate neighbours for metres in either direction are entirely post-war – steel or concrete frame with a stretcher bond hung from every floor,” he said.
“我们说，‘我们为什么要遵循这种背景?这是无知的背景。
“With our case officer, who was fully supportive, we said that there was a deeper context, which is, ‘how do you build’, and if we’re going for a material, if the material is either brick or stone, then let’s talk about how you build in either of those.”
Taha said the result was that the context became relevant in terms of something deeper than an immediate visual appearance that was “essentially only paper thin and pretending to be something that never was”.
Although aplanning inspector overruled Islington council’s order在8月拆除15 Clerkenwell Close，并确认建筑的石头façade不需要用砖代替，Taha被指示研究通过粗糙光滑的石头区域使建筑的façade更统一的可行性。
Other conditions included building out office floors immediately rather than waiting for them to be occupied, lowering a solar chimney and pruning trees.
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