Britain’s urban design has been a hot topic since architect Lord Rogers chaired a report in 1999 (lead by the Urban Task Force) that concluded British cities were lagging behind those in Holland, Germany and Scandinavia.
Spurred to action, with visions of an urban renaissance dancing in his head, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, set to work on ambitious plans for London to become a world leader in “sustainable urban planning, design and architecture.”
Central to this blueprint for urban triumph is a new architecture and urban design unit, ‘Design for London’, and at its core, the newly created role of Director of Design.
One can only speculate exactly who Livingstone and London officialdom expected would to pur their hand up for the job. In a move that challenges the “architectural establishment”, maverick architect, artist and urban thinker, Will Alsop has applied for the post and is now considered a frontrunner for the ₤100,000 position.
Last month Will Alsop told The Guardian that “there is a huge diversity of architecture which is not being reflected in what we see in London”. To Alsop’s credit are buildings like the Hotel du Deparment in Marseilles, completed in 1994, which attracts a million visitors a year; Toronto’s Sharp Centre for Art and Design, said to have boosted Toronto’s tourism economy and reinvigorated its cultural image; and the Peckham Library and Media Centre, which won the Stirling Prize for the best new building of the year in Britain.
Alsop, a bedfellow of controversy, is widely dubbed Mr. Blobby. The moniker, at once affectionate and derisive, stems from the architect’s playground of bold, colorful and amorphous designs, influenced by ideas from sci-fi, comic books and pop culture. Alsop’s scholarly background was in the 60s at the Pop-influenced Architectural Association where he
was widely involved in a group called Archigram, whose mantra of “fun, freedom and play”.
Alsop calls himself an “untypical architect” who dislikes rules with a passion, and prefers a more creatively unbridled approach to building design. His predisposition to an aesthetic of “value and delight”, throws him headfirst into a battle of wills with a range of bureaucrats – from the likes of local authority planners to management consultants and accountants.
Besides the Peckham Library in London, Alsop’s trademark designs appear in the Ben Pimlott building for the Fine Art department at Goldsmiths College and the School of Medicine and Dentistry for Queen Mary College. Despite Alsop’s genius for transforming shabby and poor districts into a highlight, London-based architecture and design critic, Hugh Pearman is wary of the architect’s audacity. He cites Alsop’s giant teddy bear design and Marge Simpson’s blue beehive hairdo as examples. These designs featured in Alsop’s Supercity exhibition in Manchester last year. Another architecture critic, Rowan Moore of The Evening Standard, agrees: “The danger for Will would be if it becomes all personality, all individuality or all artistic gesture – if he lost that tension between imagination and reality.”
In his pursuit for originality, Alsop has endured administrative several setbacks. In 2004, plans for his design for a waterfront building for Liverpool were scrapped because of skyrocketing costs and public dissent. Earlier this year, his practice was bought out by a larger firm, the multinational SMC Group.
Nevertheless, despite his criticism that Alsop is better off working on more “humdrum” buildings, rather than a “non-specific icon-kind-of-thing”, Pearman applauds Alsop’s care in attention to the environments surrounding his structures.
Supporters of Alsop hope that he will win the position. Other contenders are Lord Rogers of Riverside, Chair of the ‘Design for London’ advisory board, and his deputy design adviser, Ricky Burdett. For Alsop, none of them have the risk-taking nouse.
If Alsop does represent a “shift in generation”, as he has publicly stated, where will this leave Londoner’s and their city’s urban design? Suggests Jonathan Glancey in The Guardian, London is “too big, too miasmic for its ‘design’” to be under the power of one, let alone a small group. Londoners need “a disciplined, imaginative, expert, independent and transparent advisory planning authority” without the personal design agendas who will stand up to the “bully-boy bodies” – including the Mayor of London’s office, the Greater London of Authority group and Transport for London who will be making the appointment for the new ‘tsar’.
Should Alsop be in that ‘blob’? Only time will tell.
