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No-one’s denying that the recent opening of Scotland’s first Housing Expo near Inverness has been mired in chaos – least of all the backers, Highland Council and the Highland Housing Alliance, a group bringing together five local housing associations.

Credit crunched, frozen solid over the winter and working to a protean brief, the event has opened with most of the 50+ houses unfinished, some barely started and much of the site looking like a builders yard. It’s all fairly shambolic, too much of the workmanship is shoddy and the whole affair sits comfortably in the Scottish Construction Projects Hall of Fame : a junior partner to the Scottish Parliament and the Edinburgh Trams Project.

Having said all that, the positive side far outweighs the failings, many of which were beyond control. There are some well designed houses, slotting into Cadell2’s rightly ambitious master plan. Skye based Rural Design have placed a vernacular scottish highland cottage on top of a confident and contemporary larger structure, blessed with local materials and a welcoming layout. It’s an act of immaculate balance – which is just as well in the circumstances.

Malcolm Fraser’s detached and semis sit side by side, offering a neat frontage to the street, unpretentious detailing and a rare moment of unity on the Expo site. Above all, they’re ‘house’ shaped and offer a glimpse of how aspirants might slip from soulless volume builder coop to distinctive, dignified living in one easy step.

There are also some stinkers, but with the exception of Richard Murphy’s bannister detailing (which merits a special mention), let’s not dwell on those.

Neil Sutherland and myself co-presented a session at the Expo attended by numerous RIAS delegates. Johnny Cadell explained the master plan’s effort to create a distinct ‘place’, then some of the Expo architects described their houses. The two of us then moved on to the issue of how architecture might contribute more broadly to the kind of places and lifestyles we want to encourage.

What are these places and lifestyles? We already have a guide in the Scottish Government’s National Outcomes – a 15 point template for a more civilised, cultured and healthy society. These Outcomes inform Community Planning Partnerships in local authority areas, where public agencies (Council, health, police, fire etc) co-operate with SNH, SEPA and others on service provision. The Single Outcome Agreement arising from this process in turn informs the Development Plan.

This prodigious effort to focus local public sector activity on national aims is laudable. It does beg one question – what role does the private sector have in fulfilling broader objectives? Actually two questions – how many of us know or are even aware of our National Outcomes?

In seeking a more considered approach from the development industry in delivering architecture and places, we need to actively promote and apply the grander civic objectives which sit behind policy. Why shouldn’t we demand that private development contributes more directly to a more civilised society? The ‘right to develop’ took prominence in the Thatcher era, when ‘society’ was seen as the enemy of unbridled capitalism. Look where that got us.

Perched above the National Objectives, the Scottish Government’s over riding (and again entirely laudable) aim is to achieve sustainable economic growth. That’s subtly different to a ‘right to develop’. What we need is a right to develop the right kind of development.

The Housing Expo is a focus for this debate. What kind of houses can we build? Can we recapture local identity and understand the factors that are shaping our contemporary Scottish and regional vernacular? Can we reconnect architecture with people, place, culture and society? I don’t have all the answers and neither does the Expo. But in merely raising these questions, it achieves success. We should learn from the current experience and do it all again sometime soon.

“There are three classes of people: those who see; those who see when they are shown; those who do not see.” Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519).

Richard Heggie

Scotland’s rich urban tradition is still abundantly evident in our towns and cities. Unfortunately, most of our best places are now the jam inside a sprawling suburban doughnut. This is confirmed by two new studies published jointly by Strathclyde University and Architecture + Design Scotland (‘A+DS – Scotland’s national champion for good architecture, design and planning’).

‘An Comann’ compares 50 towns over a 150 year period, judging success against debatable socio-economic criteria. Are high house prices a true guide to successful townscape and function? Is high employment amongst residents of commuter towns a plus? Don’t they all jump in private cars, taking the prospect of fully developed local services with them, as they funnel into our cities?

‘Under the Microscope‘ zooms in on 20 of these towns, assessing block and plot size over the same period. Again, there’s some suspect analysis. Is it any surprise small towns have fewer flats than our tenemented cities? Does low public transport use really point to poor services, or is it inevitable given higher car ownership and pedestrian trips in small towns?

These studies provide useful base information and a starting point for more rigorous research but their conclusions are not unexpected :

– Our towns have expanded rapidly since the mid 20th Century;
– The suburban housing cul-de-sac has become the dominant typology;
– Much new development lacks a sense of place and is poorly related to the settlement core.

How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Inevitably it’s a complex story. Ironically, it coincided with the emergence of the modern planning system, post WWII – zoning policy, roads standards, open space ratios, low density development, car dominated approaches, out of town retail, standard house types, design and build……

So, if our planning and development system helped create this mess, can it now clean it up? These two reports are another small step forward but we need to turn up the heat. The Scottish Government issued guidance on Design Statements as far back as 2003 and from August last year they have been mandatory for major applications. That doesn’t stop developers submitting inept box-ticking documents. A current example on the eastern edge of Forres springs to mind.

A sound design policy is worthless unless it’s fully implemented. Let’s see Council Planning Departments raise the bar and force design averse developers to jump higher – it’s no longer an optional add on but a basic requirement. Let’s see the Scottish Government calling Councils to task where policy is inadequately applied (word has it this is beginning to happen). And let’s see more developers promoting good design as a selling point.

The urban heritage in our towns is now well protected by Listed Buildings and Conservation Area controls and planning policies. Why shouldn’t we apply the same degree of care to new development? I‘d vote tactically to keep out pastiche and I support the use of ‘historicism‘ as an insult. However, is it really beyond our capability to embrace local context and past success, yet design something functional, attractive and contemporary? I’m off to check……

According to an urban legend, John F Kennedy made an embarrassing grammatical error in his famous 1963 speech by saying “Ich bin ein Berliner,” referring to himself not as a citizen of Berlin, but as a popular local jammy doughnut, the Berliner. Although incorrect, the legend has been repeated by reputable media including the BBC, The Guardian, MSNBC, CNN, Time magazine and The New York Times.
Richard Heggie