Can we sustain sky neighbourhoods?

Last week I had the chance to hear first-hand about plans for Skyhouse from David Marks and Julia Barfield , architects behind the London Eye (pictured), at a small meeting at the Work Foundation. We started by discussing how far developing an online community could help build social connections in the mixed-tenure tall buildings (NOT tower blocks, please) that they are proposing in London. We ended up talking about the characteristics of livable neighbourhoods and what lessons we may have learned over the past 40 years.... social technology in the round.

The idea behind Skyhouse is that cities need high-quality, high-density development providing homes for both better-off and essential workers in places that provide health clubs, shops, gardens and the other essentials of living. They aim to do this within buildings as tall as city offices, complete with wind turbines for energy generation. Greenwich Peninsula was a favoured location when David Marks talked to the Guardian. You can see the scale in this article and this launch news report.

Marks and Barfield say that "tall residential buildings have traditionally been perceived in the UK to be tower blocks in grotty, run-down, sometimes dangerous council estates which do not pass the test of time. In the rush to meet the housing needs of the sixties and early seventies, quantity took precedence over quality and society made mistakes; people from only one socio-economic group moved into these new estates, often not by choice, and the follow-through in maintenance and management was inadequate."

They add that "Skyhouse is not another form of tower block. Skyhouse is a 21st century building concept based on the principles of high quality design and construction, clever use of space, and a major emphasis on ensuring the building and environment is one where people want (as opposed to have) to live."

The meeting was organised by Will Davies and the iSociety team, and among others they had invited Kevin Harris from the Community Development Foundation. Kevin has been a key figure in community uses of technology since the early 90s, but now has a brief to examine how neighbourhoods do - or don't - work in detail. "Moving backward" he said without meaning it for a moment. Since I used to write about housing and planning many years ago it was easy to broaden the discussion from Skyhouses to sky neighbourhoods, and neighbourhoods in general.

Without breeching any meeting confidences I think it is fair to say there was general agreement that a Skyhouse - or any large building - should be designed in relation to its neighbours, and those living there would want connections inside and out. Those connections would be most successfully achieved through a mix of face-to-face and other means. There would need to be excellent management and maintenance, and care to avoid allocation policies in the social (that is, cheaper) housing that led families with children ending up in unsuitable accommodation because they had no choice. For once a social software discussion took us into the realities of city living.

I found David and Julia persuasive. If anyone can fly a Skyhouse they can, with the iconic London Eye such a success on London's skyline. My suggestion was to run a workshop with professionals and potential residents to play through some of the livability issues and lessons from previous high-density developments (OK, I'm pushing the sort of simulations that I do with urban designer and games designer Drew Mackie. More here on a new blog I've just started).

Serendipity is a wonderful knowledge manager, and I was listening by chance yesterday to BBC Radio 3 Nightwaves which started off with a discussion of a new Design Museum exhibition about the work of Peter and Alison Smithson. They were, said announcer Paul Allen, architects and philosophers of the age of brutalism of the 1950s and 60s, and this was a chance to examine their legacy of 'streets in the sky and the concept of House of the Future'.

There was an archive recording of Peter Smithson talking about their Blackwall Robin Hood Gardens estate as a new Georgian terrace. You can see it a couple of year ago here, against the backcloth of Canary Wharf. Paul Barker provided a close-up audio commentary which painted a pretty depressing picture of what it is like now. You can listen here on the Monday link, for a few days anyway.

I don't for a moment think that Marks and Barfield are falling into the same trap... they seemed very aware of the need to look at social, economic and environmental aspects of design. Skyhouse could be an exciting enough idea to get us all looking back over the past 40 years to find out just what did and didn't work and why, as well as forward to what we need this century. I live just across the road from the brutalist 1960/70s Barbican, and flats there are still selling well. See The Guardian's recent reappraisal. (though on reflection, that was mean to be mixed tenure and probably only works now because residents can afford the £5000 or so annual service charges...)
Update
More here about 'gaming' Skyhouse design
Presentation at Emerging Technologies conference