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| Frédéric Druot, on Tour Bois-le-Prêtre at RIBA © London Intelligence 2017 |
By Paul Coleman
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“Never
demolish,” admonishes Frédéric Druot. “It’s stupid to demolish. Demolition
never speaks about the people who live inside.”
Renovators lionise architect Frédéric Druot
as a king of ‘retrofit’ – the rescue and reuse of public housing.
But developers tend to prefer to demolish
such public housing, denigrating it as obsolete and outmoded. Hence, the
demolishers dismiss and even demonise Druot.
Never
demolish
Druot looks a little refurbished himself,
smartly but not sharply garbed, casually clad in a sports jacket and jeans. Speaking
in zippy-zappy clipped vowel English, Druot peppers his drole speech with wry
irony. He charms a 500-strong audience gathered inside the imposing central
London HQ of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
“It is incredible, I know, but in France,
people actually live in buildings,” quips Druot with a Gallic shrug.
Cue generous applause from the assembled
architects. Not a soul seeks to dismantle Druot’s ‘never demolish’ central
tenet during the Q&A session that follows his speech. Such reluctance seems
surprising - given that a corporate array of architects, developers and
politicians are collaborating to demolish more public housing in London than in
any other city on Earth.
Tour
Bois-le-Prêtre
Druot enlightens his RIBA audience about Tour Bois-le-Prêtre, a wholly
refurbished 1960s public housing complex in Paris that stands in stark contrast
to London council tenants and leaseholders who live in a forest of London
council estates now threatened with, or actually undergoing, developer-led
demolition and redevelopment. The transformation by refurbishment story of Tour Bois-le-Prêtre, a 16-storey
block in the 17th arrondissement
of outskirts Paris, enshrines Druot’s ‘never demolish’ mantra.
Back in the 1960s, the fashionable idea of
‘streets in the sky’, inspired by Le Corbusier, seduces Raymond Lopez, Tour
Bois-le-Prêtre’s original architect. Lopez designs 96 apartments inside a
50-metre high tower. But, for a variety of reasons, including political
indifference, Tour Bois-le-Prêtre residents endure their estate’s later decay
and neglect during the late 1970s and 80s.
Coloured panels promise to rescue residents
from this decay in the 1990s, altering the block’s original façade in order to
improve insulation. But the panels – and the installation of smaller windows -
severely reduce natural light entering each apartment. Residents say they begin
to feel claustrophobic.
"The little boy and girl could not see out of the window," says Druot.
Inside out
Tour Bois-le-Prêtre again deteriorates
further in the late 1990s, falling below 21st century building
standards. Residents desperately need the block to undergo repair and
modernisation. Some Parisians movers and shakers even call for the entire block
to be demolished - a similar knee-jerk reaction similar to that acted upon by
many London urban planners and politicians dithering over the deteriorating
physical fabric of the city’s council estates.
But, in 2005, Paris Habitat, the Paris Office
for Public Housing, decides to run an architectural competition to renovate
Tour Bois-le-Prêtre - on condition that any renovation must not exceed the
building’s existing footprint. Frédéric Druot, Anne Lacaton and Jean Philippe
Vassal’s winning proposal hinges on, what Druot calls, “working from the inside
out”. The idea of ‘inside out’ is to give residents the improvements they crave
- more space, greater natural light, better ventilation and grander views of
Paris.
Druot, Lacaton and Vassal’s renovation
removes the façade of each apartment and bolts on self-supporting glass-clad
balconies. Akin to a conservatory, each ‘winter garden’, measuring 7.5 by 3
metres, gives residents in every apartment a welcome flood of natural light.
These ‘bolt-ons’ increase space and warmth and reduce energy costs. The glazed
balconies offer residents spectacularly enhanced views of Paris.
The ground floor is also renovated and two
new lifts fitted. Even better, another four apartments are added to the
original 96 - but without changing Tour Bois-le-Prêtre’s original structure.
Existing
residents
The fact that this refurbishment finally
costs just €11.2 million generates much comment in France, especially as Tour
Bois-le-Prêtre’s demolition and redevelopment would have cost, at least, an
estimated €20m.
These cost savings also raise the eyebrows of
RIBA’s architectural crowd - and ought to actively interest London councillors
and planners. But what really engages people in France is just how closely
Druot, Lacaton and Vassal work with Tour Bois-le-Prêtre’s existing residents.
Residents stay in the tower block during the refurbishment instead of being
temporarily rehoused elsewhere, thanks to the use of prefabricated new
elements.
After the renovation completes, life returns
to normal, even to the extent that some residents still complain about
maintenance issues and security worries. Of course, renovation does not solve
persistent problems of poverty and anti-social behaviour in the surrounding
neighbourhood. The refurbishment also seems to have taken an inordinately long
time to come to fruition; even refurbishment seems it must suffer from the warp
that is ‘Housing Time’.
Even so, the overall result is that Druot and
colleagues design and deliver a stunning transformation of Tour Bois-le-Prêtre,
a building some thought irreparable and condemned by others as ripe for
demolition. As Druot explains to his RIBA audience, social housing tenants now
enjoy nigh new homes delivered by an innovative ‘inside out’ renovation that
“put existing residents first”.
Alternative
There’s another measure of the quality of the
Druot-Lacaton-Vassal renovation. If a block looking like the made-over Tour
Bois-le-Prêtre came on to London’s housing market, up-market real estate
agents, speculative overseas property investors and ‘ultra high net worth
individuals’ would be all over it like a profit-seeking rash.
But, more importantly, Tour Bois-le-Prêtre
also offers potential as a refurbishment
model, an alternative for a plethora of London council estates now facing
‘regeneration’ via costly and socially destructive demolition and redevelopment
schemes.
Council estates where tenants and
leaseholders still call for refurbishment include Robin Hood Gardens, West
Hendon, Grahame Park, Cressingham Gardens, Central Hill, Knight’s Walk, West
Kensington and Gibbs Green, Northwold, and King’s Crescent. According
to housing activists, those estates represent just the more visible swathes of
a forest of some 100 London council estates facing a developer-led demolition
and redevelopment model of ‘regeneration’. Many, like the Aylesbury Estate in Southwark, look set to be demolished and
replaced with a predominant element of private luxury housing, similar to Woodberry Down in Hackney.
Heygate to Haringey
Others could go the way of the Heygate Estate where developer Lend
Lease has demolished over 1,200 council homes, a ‘regeneration’ commanded and
sanctioned by New Labour politicians at the helm of Southwark Council. Less
than 80 ‘social rent’ homes are being built as a paltry and token replacement
for the seismic local loss of public housing at the Heygate.
Many of the Heygate’s 3,000 displaced and
dispossessed residents have been dispersed to other parts of Southwark and across
London – and some are compelled to live in other parts of the country. International
property investors, especially from South Asia, are widely reported to have enjoyed
a two-year head start over domestic buyers to buy the new luxury replacement
homes. Southwark Council’s New Labour-styled leadership stands accused of
selling off public land and selling out local residents’ homes so global
developer Lend Lease can make profits from international investors. Local
people talk of a ‘revolving door’ between people working for Southwark Council
and Lend Lease.
Southwark Council leader Peter John describes
the fate of the Heygate as ‘regeneration’. Many Southwark residents call it an
act of class war, a clear form of ‘social cleansing’.
As for Lend Lease, it now looks to drive a
similar regeneration vehicle towards council estates in north London, like Broadwater Farm. Lend Lease hopes to
seal a wide-ranging ‘regeneration’ deal with another clan of New Labour-styled
politicians in the north London borough of Haringey, sometime soon after the
General Election.
Tour
Bois-le-Robin Hood
Hence, In this highly politicised 2017 moment
- post-Brexit and at the height of a fiercely fought General Election campaign
- few of these London council estates look likely to be rescued from the
developer-led demolition and redevelopment approach to regeneration that
dominates London in the 21st century.
These multi-million, and in some cases,
multi-billion pound ‘regeneration’ schemes, some hauling themselves through 20
years of phased demolition and construction, threaten existing residents –
mainly working Londoners on average and lower incomes - with dispossession of
their homes and displacement from their neighbourhoods.
For instance, elected politicians at the
London Borough of Tower Hamlets have granted residential developer and housing
association Swan Housing consent to demolish 214 homes at Robin Hood Gardens, an estate completed in 1972 and a prime example
of Utopian-style Brutalist housing. Many residents actually want redevelopment
but also want to be allowed to return as secure council tenants, rather than as
fixed-term housing association tenants on a new development with a vastly
increased density of households and a reduced proportion of subsidised ‘social
rented’ homes for people in their income bracket.
Refurbished
Swan says the overall scheme will see 1,575
homes built over a ten-year phased construction programme. The redevelopment
will include 700 ‘affordable homes’ of which 80% will be for ‘social rent’,
roughly equivalent in price to a council rent. But tenants worry that these
‘social rents’ might rise to unaffordable levels on the back of fixed and
insecure tenancies. The exact price and type of ‘affordable homes’ to be
provided also remains shrouded in mystery – fuelling further antipathy to the
Orwellian London ‘affordable housing’ concept where many such homes are
unaffordable to Londoners on average and lower incomes.
By some accounts, the defeat of a campaign to
save Robin Hood Gardens is all over bar the shouting. An attempt to protect
Robin Hood Gardens by securing its listed status failed. Richard Rogers,
architect of the Pompidou arts centre in Paris, the controversial One Hyde
Park, and London Heathrow Terminal 5 – and not renowned as a staunch advocate
of council housing - believes that Robin Hood Gardens is of “outstanding
architectural quality” that offers “generously sized flats that could be
refurbished”.
Automatically
Refurbishment, therefore, seems ‘old
chapeau’, despite Druot’s ‘never demolish’ refrain - and for some London council estates refurbishment
might not always be the best option. But London council estate residents should be given refurbishment options if there is a chance they could succeed - and residents should automatically be given the chance to have their say on refurbishment versus demolition options through estate-wide ballots, a natural exercise and extension of local democracy.
As Druot
says: “If you don’t believe me, take a look at Tour Bois-le-Prêtre. The little boy and girl can now see out of the window."
For more information:
Tour Bois-le-Prêtre
© Paul
Coleman, London Intelligence, May 2017
