People with opinions are getting rather worked up about one of the shortlisted nominations for the RIBA Stirling Prize. The building in question is the Park Hill estate in Sheffield, a high rise development built in 1961 which was publicly reviled and commonly valued only as a something to shout about, with people either calling for demolition or using it as a prime example of political agendas gone wrong.
That was until the development group Urban Splash saw an opportunity and reinvigorated this residential area which, incidentally, is the largest Listed construction in Europe.
Park Hill estate pre-regeneration
Now it stands as one of the contenders in RIBA’s national prize, last year won by the Stanton Williams’ Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. This year it is up against other designs including Limerick Medical School student accommodation, a Visitor Centre at the Giant’s Causeway, and the bookies’ favourite: Bishop Edward King Chapel, all of which are newly built.
Park Hill makes no pretence of hiding its original structure; essentially what Urban Splash have done is add some blobs of colour to the concrete exterior, slotted in more windows and fixed the lifts (which never worked anyway). The sixties’ Brutalist design remains the predominant view with a gentrified twist and it’s this that is upsetting commentators. It’s made of concrete, it’s a drab block; how could it be beautiful? Awards and appreciation are simply unwarranted!
Detail of Urban Splash’s injection of colour
I want to put forth a defence of Brutalism.
I have spent significant portions of time existing in two Brutalist havens, Plymouth and York University campus. The former, having been razed unrecognisable during the Blitz went through a period of rapid and necessary post-war rebuilding resulting in a city composed mainly of concrete though with a surprising lack of the high rises that sprung up in higher concentrations in similar cities. Reference also PCA, the art college that I attended which was a horrendous mess of vertical lines and pebbledash though it has since been re-clad (apparently it’s Bahuasian, not Brutalist).
Plymouth College of Art before cladding
Plymouth College of Art, in clad glory
York University’s main campus was built around the same time as the original Park Hill estate, completed in 1963. Generously described as a pioneering example of the newly developed prefabricated CLASP system, it is similarly a landscape of odd jutting angles and concrete blocks which is epitomised by the Spaceship (read: Central Hall). Strange that this too has been re-clad, as if adding a smooth white shell will disguise that monstrosity of rational thought and design.
And yet despite all my many disparaging words I am strangely fond of these sights. They say a lot about a specific period of British history and design, and the consequences of social breakdown which we try to redesign away (Park Hill was dilapidated and almost uninhabitable by the 1980s). In the decades following 1939-45, society at large had to find ways of dealing with what had happened, be it the relatively simple task of dealing with destroyed cities, or the vastly more complex need to reanalyse what people in the modern world need to coexist happily. Numerous figures had their own versions of Utopia: Le Corbusier, Aldous Huxley (forget Brave New World, The Island has much more LSD), Howard Macmillan and his “white heat of technology”.
Brutalism was one of the answers to one of the many questions. It’s by no means perfect but it shows resourceful attitudes utilising readily available material to create the large structures needed quickly to house both the people and the powers-that-be.
It’s also endearing idealistic. Not only politically, a topic which has been poured over by social scientists and the like trying to work out how best to give a roof to thousands of people in small inner-city areas, but also aesthetically. Just because the buildings were going up quickly it didn’t mean they had to be a shed. Returning to Central Hall, think about how spectacular that design is in comparison to Heslington Hall’s features dating from the 16th century. The architects wanted to make a statement about what the future held for our institution, one that would not be constrained by the past.
Now transport yourself to Heslington East, hold in your mind an image of the curving departmental buildings and the pods speckling lakes and greenery; architectural elements such as these owe a debt to the designers of the 20th century who rethought the possibilities of design.
Idealism doesn’t stop with the overall silhouette of a building either. You can see it in the details: the concrete reliefs which span the gaps between Derwent and old-Langwith; those incongruous triangular skylights on the same stretch of building which are only visible from certain angles; the spiralling platform around Central Hall and the multiple walkways through blocks which each in turn link interior to exterior, manmade to nature, blurring the lines between concrete and ground.
So maybe next time you’re wandering around campus think about what the buildings show you. York University’s founders didn’t want to be a new Oxbridge, they wanted to reformulate the structures of higher education and the buildings were fundamental to their vision. Most crucially, a mixture of disciplines cohabit the colleges to encourage inter-disciplinary study.
The buildings grew out of a time of idealism borne of tragedy and have served York well. Believe it or not, we’re lucky to spend our time meandering around one of the success stories of post-war design. I just wish they’d stop trying to cover that part of our history up with bloody cladding.
