Front doors on the street : how much do we need them?

Urban designers, and now most people in the built environment professions, spend a lot of time talking about ‘front doors on the street’. In fact it is a building block (or phrase) of the South Acton masterplan. But we need to move this conversation on. Isn’t it more about the ‘look and feel’ or brand of the street, than how many front doors you can count? It’s not as though we all leave our doors open to reveal the richness of activity within. We don’t hang out on our doorsteps chatting to our neighbours on a regular basis (although when I did that one day last summer I did feel a bit as though I could be photographed for a ‘Death and Life of Great British Cities’ ebook). Most of the time our front doors are impervious and secretive, in the spirit of Britishness. So perhaps, in some cases, gloriously large and well proportioned windows arranged elegantly along the facade can amount to a nicer street than a row of richly painted front doors, even if they sport the obligatory net curtains? I didn’t think so until I happened to pause in a Hampstead Street in front of this building pictured below. Upon fleeting inspection I recognised it of course as a good old block of flats, with an unapologetic 30m of frontage and One Front Door. Does it look faceless and scary? Nope.

First sketches of what the new South Acton could be like:

The ‘real’ trees shown in the illustration are existing and will be retained. In this area of the estate there are so many great trees, we have created a park to keep them happy (they are currently squashed up against some rather ugly high rise blocks). If everybody agrees, this could the first of many ‘Acton Gardens’ to be discovered by anyone turning off Acton high street, and taking a meander south.

Transformation coming soon to an Estate near you (if you live in W3):

Pop up beach square.

Terra Estrieta - the public space that changes every minute. The tides are the masterplanners, commited to flexibility; space expands as the tide creeps out, leaving this dynamic new public arena with a thin film of water. Behaviour changes responsively - people stand, chat, move across, have a seat, chase, stare into space, facing in any direction. There is no longer a linear relationship, a defined line between sand and sea. There is no front and back, or sides, yet it is a space with immense distinction.

Later in the day, it is gone. This wonderful public space is reclaimed by the sea, and before we know it we are retreating, rescuing soggy towels, and reverting to normal beach behaviour : sitting in a row, facing the ‘front’, at the waves tumble onto the shore victoriously.

What Ron said:

It all started when he said he was a Mod. It was just after the London riots and I was interviewing him as part of the South Acton masterplan  consultation. We were taking about the ‘young people’ and how he used to go down to Brighton with his scooter to chase the Rockers. “We didn’t destroy buildings but had a go at each other”. Ron is 78, single, popular, lives in a sheltered housing scheme called Harleyford Manor. Over a few mouthfuls of chocolate swiss roll I got more than I bargained for. I came away with interesting facts about what elderly people need for a convenient daily life;  I also got a glimpse of a gentle charming man and his story, mostly dark, starting with his mother giving him away in the ’30s.

My questionnaire which had questions like ” Which facilities would you like to see in the new South Acton” was soon covered in scribbles as random stories tumbled out - inspiring, saddening, maddening.  He has never written it all down, how many of us do?  So I suggested that he sits down for 5 minutes a day ( I suspect he likes a little routine) writes down something he remembers and emails it to me. A blog, but not for the world. This is for him. I have a growing  folder of emails, every day I look forward to his posts, mostly more than any other blog I follow.

.

Make your own…

The best consultation model ever. It started as a way to engage residents : how about we get them to make models of their buildings? It turned into a mission. Here is the story, and it was all down to one man called Alastair.

The cutting pattern for each building on Ebury Bridge Estate was created

From computer model to cardboard  

Bringing it all together (the cardboard buildings have magnets inside them to keep them in place on the model base)

And it’s time for some hefty masterplanning at a community event

Anything is possible….

But we always start with the place as it is : unique.

Photography without consent : how to do it

We are in the midst of our ‘Vision’ events at South Acton. My camera was ready, but without signed consent forms from residents, I can’t post the pictures. Maybe these alternatives tell a better story?

The art of seeing

Google’s big eye is a huge help but with it we do more and more skimming and less and less seeing and believing. The days of site visits are dwindling, and while it does wonders for efficiency, I wonder if we are missing age old tricks with our new goggles. 

Photograph or sketch? Which will grab our attention and keep it? Assuming the sketch is a good one. Well -  we have a library of hundreds of photographs of South Acton Estate, and it’s the sketches of some of the exact same scenes that make me look twice, lingeringly, in my busy day. Drawings spread the pleasure of observation - it’s not only the pencil holder who sees, it’s anyone else presented with the sketch, so drawn are they by the attention to detail, the observation in the scribbled notes.

George Shaw, for example, captures our emotions with his eerie semi-realist paintings of the Coventry council estate where he grew up. Pretty they are not, powerful they are, enough for me to desperately want one of his paintings of a tired and desperate Council estate on my wall. 

So what place for this kind of art in an estate regeneration project? In a baseline mapping study, we need technical, empirical, factual material. But with George Shaw magic or not, we have taken the time to sketch our studies of the place. There’s a time for everything, and aid-free seeing will always pay off. It helps having an artist like Luis on your team. This is how he sees South Acton Estate (….with a bit of help from Google for the aerial view):

Charles Hocking House : 96 homes

Charles Hocking House (this is only the half of it)

Blackmore Tower on its way down, peeling away the layers of home

South Acton Estate’s Charles Hocking House is a faceless slab.  Each of the hundred odd front doors strung along the teetering walkways reveals a different take on life. Recently I climbed the stairs to the top (13th) floor with my colleague, Mark. Our mission was to knock on every door and get as many people as possible to fill in our questionnaire about life in South Acton. As we made our way along the walkways we brushed the windblown dust from our clothes – dust from the demolition of Charles Hocking’s erstwhile neighbour : Blackmore Tower.

We sat with a man who had lived there since the building was built – the layers of life made the room seem smaller. We hovered at the entrance to a complete tip of a flat which only spoke of transience. We picked our way over a 2 year old’s toys to perch on a couch and talk to the mum – house proud and despairing.   An elderly woman who rarely leaves her flat loved the idea of a plumbed in washing machine in a shiny new home. But no, no thanks, how could she possibly move all her stuff?  For her ‘home’  is familiarity, the stuff of memories, and if she needs to get up there in  a lift that other people use as a toilet – so be it.   Another resident says – when will it be demolished, not soon enough. I only like it because it’s close to the station.   Another who has spent thousands of pounds on new strip floors and paint and neutral decor to make Sarah Beeny beam invites us to sit upon leather sofas opposite a gleaming flat screen TV– this investment in home means everything, even though they are renting from the council and  know it will all end up in rubble some day not far in the future. 

We finally got to the bottom of the building, fairly pleased to have had 33 conversations and only one door shut firmly in our faces.   Crossing the featureless concrete plaza in front of the building I stopped to speak to a local resident. I asked her if she likes living on South Acton Estate.  Yes, she said. What did she like about it? She looked very puzzled. Thinking there was a language issue, I spoke slowly and asked her if it was perhaps the green space, the strong community, or the proximity to public transport she liked?

No, she said. My turn to look a bit puzzled, but my pen was poised, I was eager to find out a new secret ingredient to South Acton’s future desirability….   I like it because it is my home, she said.

(She didn’t add “silly!!” but her friendly smile said as much).

Every place tells a story

I’ve had this phrase pottering about in my thoughts for years. Wouldn’t it be great if we could truly imagine what a place could be like after 15 years of planned change. We can only guess, in an aspirational way, and as masterplanners we strive to build consensus around ‘visions for the future’ of the places in our projects. This is all well and good for our worthy discussions about ‘what makes great places’. But the real experience of the everyday in that place will have thousands of changing interpretations that come down to the personal stories people attach to it. I am interested in those stories. I could never accurately document them as part of my job as it would always be vastly unrepresentative and selective.

 What makes a place good or bad is embedded in any person’s own experience of it. How many of us never want to go back to a place because we have a negative memory associated with it, and how many times have you heard someone say- I can’t go back, I had such a good time there I don’t want to spoil the memory. Neither makes a case for the physical attributes of the place.

When we start talking about home, it becomes even more about the perceptions and experience of the individual. Ask anyone what home means to them. After all, the word HOME has ME in it.

In the professional world of regeneration of course we use the word ‘home’ whenever we remember to – it sounds so much better than ‘housing’. But who are we to say what home means to a yet unidentified occupant of a house?

 (There is no ME in HOUSE)

I’m reading Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar. In it a 14 year old boy shows his step mother his boarding school bedroom. “The room embarrassed me; you want the people you love to desire your places”. 

Heart is where the home is. Home is where the heart is. No heart is the same as another. Every home tells a thousand stories.