The Wow Factor Meets the Bow Wow Factor

When the British government proposed banning traditionally designed new country houses, I wrote about UK Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's Wow Factor and CNU President John Norquist's Bow Wow Factor. Now another of the unusual juxtapositions I talked about in the post has come up in the UK: the government may ban the construction of new Traditional buildings and tear down old Modernist ones.

This is because the President of the Royal Institute of British Architects has proposed a radical change to Britain’s powerful regulations for preserving historic buildings. Arguing that cities and towns across Europe have been badly disfigured by individual Modernist buildings "that are universally disliked," he is calling for regulations to identify and demolish the worst (like London's Barbican, seen here). The story is in today's New York Times:

LONDON - Many countries routinely shield historic buildings from the scourge of philistine developers by listing them as part of their national heritage. But in Britain, where three grades of protection of buildings already exist, a fourth, more radical, category has been proposed: Grade X, to be attributed to buildings that deserve to be torn down.

Surprisingly, perhaps, the idea is being promoted by an architect, George Ferguson, the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects. It is also highly topical. Coming at a time when big-name architects are enjoying more power and prestige than in decades, his initiative reflects a healthy recognition that what looks great today may be considered an eyesore tomorrow.

His immediate concern, though, is what yesterday spawned. The main culprit is postwar Modernism, a style rooted in the purist idealism of the Bauhaus movement, but distorted by the rush to rebuild and expand European cities through the 1970's. The concrete office and housing blocks that sprouted up in European cities and towns eased demographic pressure, were quick to build and, in their day, seemed modern. Today, most look ugly.

These are the kinds of buildings Mr. Ferguson would like to slap with an X rating.

"I want the government to introduce grants for destruction," he wrote recently in The Evening Standard of London. "How often has a bad piece of architecture marred a beautiful view?" And in a telephone conversation from Nîmes while touring ancient French cities, he added, "In every town there are three or four buildings that are universally disliked."

Of course, some postwar buildings are routinely razed on the peripheries of British and other European cities, but they are usually housing projects that have become vertical ghettos and are destroyed for social reasons. Mr. Ferguson's point is that quality of life is also affected by the aesthetics of one's surroundings: visual harmony can be comforting; a modern block in a medieval or even Victorian neighborhood can be jarring.

And here architects, along with urban planners and developers, have a unique responsibility. If you don't like a movie, you can walk out; if you don't like a song, you can change radio stations; if you dislike a painting, you can even turn it to the wall. But alone among artists, architects can impose their aesthetics on the public. And the public rarely has a say.

True, there are structures like the Eiffel Tower, which at first seemed shocking and in time became icons. But even in Paris, a city that happily escaped wartime bombing and chaotic postwar rebuilding, the 1970's permitted construction of the 56-floor Tour Montparnasse, a banal monstrosity that towers over the Left Bank and has been detested since the day it was planned. And Dominique Perrault's French National Library, completed in 1996, is hardly more loved.

Brussels too has suffered badly, with tens of thousands of European Union bureaucrats squeezed into the soulless concrete boxes that line desolate avenues. London, at least, is beginning to acknowledge its grim postwar legacy, in particular the high-rises of the oppressive Barbican Center.

Yet more imaginative new skyscrapers must still stand alongside architectural abominations. So is it realistic to talk of tearing them down? Mr. Ferguson argues that a Grade X listing could release fiscal incentives to demolish ugly buildings and discourage developers from trying to rescue them with superficial face-lifts. He also says such a policy would bring political rewards. Yet unless a developer prizes the land on which a Grade X building stands, the cost of razing it could be prohibitive.

What makes Mr. Ferguson's proposal timely is that it also offers food for thought to cities, above all in Asia, that are engaged in wild construction booms, accompanied at times by the destruction of traditional neighborhoods. The skyline of the future is being drawn now. So will skyscrapers heralded today deserve an X rating tomorrow? Will today's daring designs look dated tomorrow?

Certainly, a generation of architects with remarkable panache has emerged since the demise of post-Modernism and its kitsch embellishments of concrete blocks. They are involved in designing skyscrapers, bridges and airports as well as museums and opera houses. And far more than their postwar predecessors, they seem eager to make sculptural statements with their works. They consider themselves artists and are treated as celebrities.

For many, the idea of adapting their designs to an existing urban environment is to surrender to traditionalism. Instead, in such cases as Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain and the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, architecture can actually transform a neighborhood. In the same way as, say, Frank Lloyd Wright's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, these structures become landmarks. Liked or disliked, they cannot be ignored.

This also worries Mr. Ferguson.

"I have been speaking out against landmark-ism," he said from Nîmes while admiring the Carré d'Art, a contemporary art museum designed by Norman Foster and situated beside a Roman monument. "I think we are being seduced by architectural photographs and architecture magazines. I believe in making places. Urban design and master planning, including scale, are more important than architecture. That's why I am studying places."

Clearly, the old has an advantage over the new. People are drawn to the historic centers of Rome, Prague, Budapest and Barcelona and even more to the medieval towns of Provence or Tuscany because these places have evolved slowly. Prince Charles of Britain has gone further: to demonstrate that the old can be re-invented, he is sponsoring construction of a new traditional-style English village in Dorset. He has been mocked, but the residents are apparently content.

Large historic cities, though, face different challenges. They must grow and renew themselves if they are to avoid resembling theme parks. But they should be wary of obliterating their pasts. How this balance is achieved depends principally on the vision of urban planners, yet in the end what the public lives with is architecture. And architects, Mr. Ferguson believes, cannot escape responsibility.

"Undoubtedly we are getting better," he said, addressing members of his institute earlier this year, "and I see so much to celebrate and take every opportunity to do so. But there is far too much so-called architecture that I find deeply depressing, and too much of it, albeit a small minority, involves members of our profession."

Still, to the old refrain that "architects cannot bury their mistakes," Mr. Ferguson's Grade X rating offers an enticing alternative.

Copyright 2004 the New York Times Company.