Reflecting on a Society of Bridges
by Steven A. Moore
There is a long and respected history of travel writing that
derives, some say, from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. In these
classical poems there are many stories of brave citizens
going out to experience foreign lands, encountering many
tests of character along the way. One enduring theme in
these stories of exploration is the “homecoming,” the moment
of triumphal return and it is this moment that sets the stage
for the storytelling to come. My own situation is the opposite
of those Greek heroes because the audience for this
reflection is not my fellow Texans to whom I’ve returned, but
the good people of Newcastle and “The North” whom I visited
as an “inspiring internationalist.” And if my job was to “inspire”
during my visit I fear that there has been a second reversal of
the classical tradition because I came away more the inspired
one than the inspirer. The stories I did tell upon my return to
Texas recounted how my bad character was sorely tested by
having to endure good conversation, a beautiful landscape, a
noble history, and very good beer. In this sobering light I
won’t insult you by telling stories about your own place. What
might be helpful, however, will be to offer a few reflections on
five thoughtful conversations in which I participated while in
the North that continue to inspire my own thinking about the
question of regionalism. Looking back, I now recognize that
each conversation turned on our ability to craft distinctions
Figure 1: the bridges that tie
Newcastle and Gateshead
between terms that initially seemed to be synonymous.
In the first conversation I’ll revisit, Newcastlers told me
that they aspire to become a region which we eventually were
able to distinguish from a province. The difference we agreed
upon is that a region is one unique place among peers of a
different sort whereas a province exists only in relation to some
distant point of authority. In the case of the North, London is, of
course, that center of cultural and economic authority.
Regionalism in the sense we proposed in our conversation that
afternoon is both politically and culturally democratic whereas
provincialism is hierarchical. Put another way, this progressive
kind of regionalism is not about discovering tribal purity or the
truth about one’s place-bound essence--that is the trick played
by demigods who claim to know the truth. Rather, progressive
regionalism is about constructing life-enhancing futures. This is,
of course, a very abstract way to talk. To be concrete I’ll
compare the Byker Wall (Figure 2) to Baltic Chambers (Figure 3),
Figure 2: Byker Wall by
Ralph Erskine
an innovative design in its own right and certainly very “English”.
Some will say, of course, that Byker is as much Scandinavian as
English, owing to the design sensibilities of its architect, Ralph
Erskine. In response to this imagined claim I will suggest that this
is exactly what good regionalists do—appropriate those helpful
tools they find in other places. It takes confidence, not deference,
to be a hybrid. Appropriation is not borrowing whole, or copying,
it is the ability to recognize value in an underlying principle and
employing that principle in one’s own context. In our talk we
concluded that Byker contributes to the making of a sustainable
region in the North because it remains an exemplar of conscious
hybridity.
Figure 3: Baltic Chambers
From the second conversation, and a long walk through
Byker estates on a chilly day, I understand that all is
not well there—one of the best buildings (from an
architectural perspective) has been destroyed by
social conditions. In this conversation I heard
people lament those conditions and aspire to a
future in which entrenched class conflict is a thing of
the past. But is this a topic related to architecture?
I’ll insist that it is. Byker’s social problems, I agree,
have little to do with the visual attributes of
Erskine’s design. But, they have everything to do with
Figure 4: Walker Estate
the mammoth scale of that project and the cultural
identity that comes with social homogenization.
What some Newcastlers have already learned from
Byker and other housing estates of its scale is that
concentrating too many people of a single social
group in a single place defeats the very idea of
democracy, of difference. The new housing estate
at Walker, developed by Places for People, is a very
good example of reduced scale and hybrid identity
that will, I trust, demonstrate an attractive alternative
Figure 5: The Millenium Bridge by
Wilkinson Eyre Architects and Engineers
future for housing in the region. In this conversation
we learned to distinguish abstract architectural
qualities from social scale. Our conversation
concluded, however, with an agreement that
Walker too has its problems.
When meeting with a few of Newcastle’s
architects, I heard in the third conversation,
derision for the too conventional “council-style”
housing constructed at Walker. In their view,
reducing the art of architecture to the lowest
Figure 6: The Sage at Gateshead by Sir Norman
Foster & Partners
common denominator of common taste is just what should
not be done if Newcastle wants to reinvent itself, to become
a destination city. The architects’ model for redevelopment
might be Bilbao, home of the much acclaimed museum
designed by the American architect Frank Gehry, or Malmo
with its Turning Torso designed by the Spanish architect
Santiago Calatrava. In this short travelogue there isn’t space
to consider the assets and liabilities of destination
architecture produced by “starchitects”—it must suffice to
say that there is evidence on both sides. I will say, however,
that The Sage by Sir Norman Foster and the Millenium
bridge by Wilkinson Eyre Architects and Engineers are, in my
view, significant assets to the city. What I want to avoid,
however, is painting a picture of the future that is alternately
all “council-style” on the one hand or all “high-style” on the
other. My point is that there is third way to continue the
building of Newcastle.
It was in the fourth conversation that I discovered
confusion over the word “culture.” Or was it, “Culture?” This
Figure 7: Durham Cathedral
distinction, of course, is whether we are referring to the set
of habits, morals, and symbols that frame ordinary life or
the set of highly refined practices like painting and sculpture that we consider extraordinary. The question that emerged from this misunderstanding was where does
architecture fit? In with big “C” or little “c”? For many centuries we have understood
architecture to be one of the fine arts and in retrospect, it makes perfect sense.
Architecture, as distinct from common building, has been conceived and commissioned
by wealthy patrons and it is still the patronage model of architectural production that is
generally taught at universities in both the EU and the US. And without great patronage
would we have such masterpieces as Durham Cathedral? (Figure 7) If however, we
examine what contemporary architects actually do from day to day, there is a very big
gap between the ideal of practice supported by patronage and the reality of practice in
service to contemporary corporate or government clients.
Architects have, it seems, suppressed the idea that our
cultures have changed a tad over the past five hundred
years. Big “C” patronage may still exist to a degree, but our
world is mostly comprised of little “c” buildings. This
distinction offers two choices: We might perpetuate the
patronage model so that a few can at least try satisfy our
Cultural aspirations, or we might simply do away with the
distinction between Architecture and building as no longer
helpful in the project of building a democratic regional
culture that can sustain itself. But to be clear, my partners
Figure 8: Expansion joint at the
pedestrian bridge, Durham
in conversation argued, the latter proposal is not a license to
build badly or crudely—it is an admonition to think about
how the built environment works in the everyday interests of
neighbors. In privileging the ordinary over the extraordinary the mundane becomes art
that is part of everyday life. This distinction is made clear by the simple expansion joint
illustrated in Figure 8 which humbly, yet elegantly solves a problem.
Near the end of my stay in Newcastle a fifth conversation turned to a related
theme, the difference between “looking like nature” and “acting like nature.” The
difference is made clear by imagining a house that looks like a tree—with a dense trunk
and bushy top--and one that acts like a tree—shading the ground, photosynthesizing
light, sequestering carbon, producing oxygen and evapo-transpiring groundwater. A
good example is the beautiful yet common stone wall I stumbled upon in Newcastle
(Figure 9). In both cases the designers were less
concerned with the production of fine art on a plane above
the ordinary needs of society than they were with solving
immediate problems for the community. My point here is not
to demean art but to focus our attention on cultural
practices rather than objects. This is to say that “beauty” is
Figure 9: Common stone wall
not only a visual quality--it also lies in the social and
environmental consequences of the object’s making. Who suffered? Who gained? And
from where did the materials come? These are questions we might ask at the beginning
of any building project. Focusing on the big “C” to exclusion of little “c” too easily
obscures our view of the very real consequences of everyday building. And it is these
little consequences—who gets a job, where do the bricks come from, how was the
timber cut—that builds a life-enhancing regional culture.
Like the Iliad and the Odyssey, this travel reflection has a decidedly non-linear
plot. If there is a plot at all it stands on the shoulders of the five conversations narrated
above. But as for the Greeks the purpose of travel reflection is not to heroize the past
but to look forward—to a region in-the-making. I’m left, then, with five lingering
questions: First; how might the North become a region rather than a province? In
concrete terms this is not to ask what insights and money London can lend, but what
skills and resources do miners and ship builders themselves have with which to build
well? Second; how might class difference contribute to the building of democratic
spaces rather than to building enclaves of homogeneous values? In concrete terms this
is to identify small opportunities for housing infill rather than heroic opportunities for
revolutionary projects. Third; is it possible to avoid the opposition of high-style and
council-style in favor of a third way of building—a way that responds to particular
sources of environmental degradation and the social causes that are their foundation?
Fourth; if high-Culture and low-culture are no longer helpful categories to frame what we
build can the North find a way to focus more attention on the life-enhancing
consequences of building practices rather than focusing only on the distant meaning of
art objects? And finally; how might the things you build act like nature, act in sympathy
with the natural processes that carved the valley over centuries, rather than only refer to
nature through the clever use of signs and symbols?
In sum, these are difficult questions and can only be answered by those of you
who live in this society of bridges.