Diary: Shoreditch

At the #artskickers2017 awards with #submittolovestudios manager #michellecarlile, who cuts a better Peel than I do a Steed.

Local: Golden Lane Rant2

The Orwellian Golden Lane development plan is a game about to enter its second half, reckons Billy Mann

Campaign poster

The proposed development projects around the estate have triggered in me a number of proverbial sayings and the like. First it was all about trying to fit a quart into a pint pot, now it's the one about doing one thing well rather than lots of things badly.

In the case of the Bernard Morgan House proposals, I am still stupidly baffled as to why the project was not conceived from the start under the title ‘heritage’, the existing building with all that lovely flint and retro tiling retained and its interior modified into contemporary living spaces. The determination to smash it up just seemed like destruction for destruction’s sake, the product of a hubristic mindset on acid that had cruelly infected the decision-making process. I am told the police needed to sell the land for a maximum return (to Taylor Wimpey) because funding from central government has been cut so deeply they could no longer do their jobs properly. All I know for sure is the more I look at that building, the more I will miss it when it's gone.

Over at the Richard Cloudesley site, I am haunted by the memory of an early meeting with the Hawkins\Brown architects in which we were told how the team had completed a ‘zonal analysis’ of the Golden Lane Estate (leisure zone, community zone, recreation zone, etc) and that the Richard Cloudesley project would become an ‘education zone’ extension of the estate. This sounded reasonable, sort of. Here was once the site of a school, so putting a new one in that spot wasn’t such a controversial step. 

Then an elephant walked into the room in the shape of a 14-storey apartment block and my already passionate dislike of that pretentious backslash in the title ‘Hawkins\Brown’ turned into something bordering on hysteria\psycopathy. A school on the Richard Cloudesley site and housing on the Bernard Morgan site would have been a fair, sympathetic and manageable solution – balanced, in keeping, and all that.

But what were are left with instead is a crazed seek-and-destroy masterplan of excess in which playmakers at both the City of London Corporation and Islington Council daily score points off one another in a display of tit-for-tat blundering. This sorry situation has left residents forced to take part in an Orwellian game that was both rigged from the start and is now being reframed at every turn to subdue any meaningful discussion. 

Whether there is a great deal of support outside of the Golden Lane Estate for the residents' campaign is hard to tell. Comments online and recent local election results suggest the game is not over yet. Yes, this estate is a temple of worship for architecture students the world over. Yes, it represents an enlightened vision of society from the past that says intelligent, creative planning and building can transform lives. Yes, it is a totally fab place to live. But does all that count for anything anymore? I would like to think so, but defending it is getting harder every day and requires a huge leap of faith.

My mind goes back to Istanbul, 2005. Liverpool are losing 3-0 at half time in the Champion's League final to a rampant AC Milan. I won’t tell you what happened next. 

 Sign the petition.

Diary: Westminster Attack

Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, was impressive this morning on the radio, the day after an attempted attack on the UK Parliament in which young overseas visitors were mown down on Westminster Bridge by a crazed motorist. The attacker then stabbed a police officer. Khan spoke clearly and with pride and authority on the issue of London being a great city because people here like to celebrate their differences with openness and tolerance. He also talked about being a Muslim and about the British tradition of the citizen police officer and 'policing by consent’.

Diary: Prime Suspect 1973

Watching the TV drama Prime Suspect 1973, it is hard not to imagine some of that inter-police-officer hankypanky going on in Bernard Morgan House in days gone by. Any first-person stories would be welcome.

Posted to goldenlaneestate.org

Film: Personal Shopper

With the (very arty) camera invading every corner of her existence, Kristen Stewart has to act out of her skin. Very compelling and gripping in parts. It was probably trying to say something, but I couldn't work out what it was.

Diary: The French Elections

I used to respect the French, but Monday night! Bordel de merde! Their TV schedulers have clearly been touched by le digit d'insanité. The only thing a Friday night in France needs other than four bottles of red wine and a takeaway is a three-hour political boxing match on the telly.

Local: The Siege of Golden Lane

Two big development projects on the fringes of Golden Lane Estate have got residents pushing back the boundaries. Billy Mann reports

Down your street: the architect's view of life on the edge of Basterfield House

There is a feisty north-south alliance growing on the Golden Lane Estate. The north of the estate is in a frenzy of disgruntlement over the proposed development of the former site of Richard Cloudesley school. The south is similarly irked by what is happening on the site of Bernard Morgan House. This looks like a straight fight over which 'development' project can piss off residents the most, Bowater or Basterfield. But what in other circumstances might be a friendly fight (who has the best window boxes, for example) is actually a case of two teams on the same side. The opposition is somewhere else, somewhere remote.


The former police section house (decommissioned in 2013), Bernard Morgan House, on Golden Lane, is the proposed site of a City of London development to create 'much needed high quality new homes'. The project is to be handled by Taylor Wimpey. After a number of 'consultation’ sessions, activity seemed to stop. Then recently an email from vigilant resident was circulated that purported to expose a crafty manouevre to get the building razed to the ground before the new one had even been approved. The document listed a host of Year 5 homework mistakes in the plan. Whoever penned it didn't know the difference between north, south, east and west, and couldn't spell Bernard ['Benard Morgan House']. The 3 March target date for demolition to start came and went and red faces were said to be seen rustling through the bushes of Fortune Street Park. I never got a reply to the email I sent asking whether the building's vintage decorative tiles might be saved and recycled.

Meanwhile, Up North on the estate, the City of London Corporation and Islington Council have got themselves into a bipolar 'partnership' to renew the area around the former Richard Cloudesley School. With indecent haste, plans emerged from architects Hawkins\Brown, and the blue touchpaper was lit. The proposals showed a primary school, plus separate school hall-cum-kitchen, and a 14-storey block of duel-aspect 'affordable' apartments. To the untrained eye, the plan also appeared to show the theft of part of the service road that runs alongside Basterfield House. That's where the ambulances and fire engines are meant to enter the estate in the event of an emergency. The drawings were very nice, and eventually a scale model appeared that looked like it was made from polystyrene offcuts and a matchbox. 

The revolution starts here: Campaigners' montage of the view from the heart of the estate

It's hard to argue against schools and houses, but the diagrams did look as if too much had been crammed into a fixed space; the proposed tower block was a scary monster that would loom over the entire estate (it didn't even have a funny hat on top, like Great Arthur does); the two-storey detached school hall would not only stare threateningly at the Golden Baggers but its proposed kitchen would soak Basterfield residents with the free perfume of cooking chips. I could carry on, but the rap sheet is far too long. A dedicated working group of People Pissed Off was started. They meet often in a revolutionary huddle and post damaging counter arguments and incriminating evidence on Facebook (see picture). With all this anger floating around, some previously unseen councillors eventually turned up to offer sympathy. The elections are on 23 March.

I wanted to find out who to blame. The architects and contractors are at the frontline of the projects and an easy target. The City of London Corporation has turned avoiding proper consultation into a dark art. Invisibility is the watchword. Transparency has too many syllables. But residents' fears might never have grown to fever pitch had housing and planning officials been more assertive in explaining that, despite what looks like two cans of worms half opened, the management talent is in place, ready to make it work out happily ever after. This, of course, is a fantasy, so what passes for reassurance instead are weak variations of "we hear what you're saying", "we're listening" and "we're taking this all on board". 

The feeling from the north and south sides of the estate that the walls are closing in and Bowater and Basterfield residents especially are about to be squashed into submission by ignorance, stupidity and blindness. As a Basterfield resident and Golden Bagger I wanted to know on whose doorstep I should empty my sack of smelly compost. At one meeting I collared a man from the Corpy and gave him my very best psycho-killer gaze. He spluttered then told me plainly that the buck stopped with them, the City of London Corporation. Islington council, he told me, was merely providing the land and the tenants for the sky scraping tower block. He forced out a spluttered laugh when I told him it would be his head Golden Lane residents would be throwing rotten tomatoes at. He obviously thought I was joking.

Picture: Northern Ireland Elections