"In Which It Comes To Our Attention That Many British Architects Are Schmucks"

The UK Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott announced last week that the British government would test urban design codes partly based on the new town of Poundbury built by Prince Charles. This was the latest success for Charles in the fields of architecture and urbanism, which British architects have predictably taken as a challenge. Since his famous carbuncle speech, the British architectural establishment has frequently fought him, sometimes hitting below the belt.

EXCERPT:

How have the British architects dealt with all this? ... When I was in London a few years after the carbuncle speech, I noticed that whenever Prince Charles would make a comment about architecture, there would be an unflattering article about his paramour Camilla the next day on the cover of one of the national British newspapers.

Schmucks.

The English newspaper the Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian, reports that

The deputy prime minister, John Prescott, today launched a project to test controversial design codes inspired by Prince Charles' mock village Poundbury and Florida's model town Seaside, featured in the satirical film the Truman Show.

Why "controversial"? Poundbury is controversial among one group and one group only: architects.

Many British architects have hated Prince Charles ever since the famous event to which they invited him — the Royal Patron of the Royal Institute of British Architects — to innocuously praise their annual award winners while they drank brandy and smoked cigars after dinner. Only to hear their Grand Prize Winner called "a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much–loved and elegant friend."

Much to their dismay, the comment was so popular that the award-winning addition to the National Gallery was stopped. In fact, at a time when Charles's marriage to the much-loved Diana was falling apart and his popularity ratings were at their lowest, over 90% of the British public agreed with him about the carbuncle. While over 60% of the architects disagreed with him. Funny that architects consider themselves socially progressive at the same time they isolate themselves from the public.

Even worse, Charles built a new neighborhood that the public loved just as much, Poundbury. Now it's so popular that Prescott and the British government are using some aspects of it to help them build 270,000 units of new housing, in the hope that it won't be the same old award-winning s**t the architects have been giving them for 50 years.

One of the award-winning favorites, by Would Be Working Class Hero Jim Stirling, was so unpopular it had to be torn down. (Runcorn — click here.) The local housing authority used it to punish its worse tenants.

Prescott himself is a nice working-class lad — the Old Labour face of Blair's New Labour government — who appreciates and promotes many of the Starchitects like Sir Richard Rogers and his former partner Sir Norman Foster. But he also appreciates that it won't be these Starchitects designing the hundreds of thousands of middle-class and working-class houses. Which brings us back to the article about Prescott's plans. Or as Prescott said in another article,

I know that some of our leading architects have criticised [Poundbury], but I also know that it was architects who gave awards to the concrete monstrosities that were built as homes for ordinary people.

How have the British architects dealt with all this? By calling Poundbury "controversial" and having the head of the Royal Institute of British Architects write a book attacking Charles. And by going after him in the press. When I was in London a few years after the carbuncle speech, I noticed that whenever Prince Charles would make a comment about architecture, there would be an unflattering article about his paramour Camilla the next day on the cover of one of the national British newspapers.

Schmucks.