Headspace by Paul Keedwell

Author:Paul Keedwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MBI
Published: 2017-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

Building a community

The British architect Eric Lyons strongly believed that privacy was given too much importance in the modern world when compared to the need for the kind of casual social contact that builds a community. Of course, it was not always like this. The petit bourgeois preoccupation with privacy had barely existed in the West until the Victorian era.

Lyons argued that homes which insist on absolute privacy become a jail for their inhabitants. They are isolating. He pointed to the absurdity of the suburban detached home, with its illusion of exclusivity. He made medium-density urban housing for the city, which sometimes erred on the side of exposing people too much, but the best examples of his work achieved a workable compromise: the need to see out was in balance with the need for refuge. His designs allowed residents to hide away when they wanted. Choice is the key to successful housing – having the option for social contact built in to the housing design, but without obligation. We should be able to opt out of being a matey neighbour, but opt in to more gregarious activities when we want. We should not have to choose ‘once and for all’ if we want one or the other at the point of choosing a home.

The suburban family homes built from the 1940s onwards provide the illusion of total privacy – of no one living next door for miles, when in fact the neighbours are just a few feet away. This type of home offers no choice for opting in. If we are going to build houses next to each other in towns and cities, we might as well design them in groups, to give us the option of casual contact. In 1930s Germany, Bruno Taut in conjunction with the chief city planner devised a new breed of Siedlungen (housing estates). The distinct aim was to breed social interaction between residents. A fine example and one that later received UNESCO heritage-listing is the Hufeisensiedlung (Horseshoe Estate) in Neukölln, in south Berlin. The blocks of flats were a maximum of six storeys high and faced into a green courtyard containing a careful mixture of private space (near the buildings) and central communal space. The mini communities that they fostered provided enough individuality while still being social.

Some architects have gone a step further, providing large common areas for eating and working. However, it can be argued that the most successful examples of community building within the city are those that have been built or adapted by the occupants: communities like Christiania, Walters Way, Quinta Monroy and Fish Island. And this leads us to the concepts of ownership and sense of place.

In the case of Walters Way, what was once social housing has become private, and many of the self-builders have moved on, but the strong sense of community lives on in cultural memory. Children play together in the street, residents collaborate on more eco-friendly ways of living. In 2015 some residents were interviewed for a short film for the Architecture Association.

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