What remains of the buildings of old Stafford is enough to make me angry at what has replaced it. Better an unexceptional house of 1820 than an unexceptional terrace of 1960s shops, in my view. I am familiar with the argument of contemporary architects (for example, in the current Dorset Life magazine) that contemporary buildings should represent contemporary architectural thinking. After all, why build "reproduction" housing after the Poundbury model when post-modern brutality, careless of its surroundings, is readily available? (Poundbury is the model village development pioneered on Duchy of Cornwall land, at the western end of Dorchester, by Prince Charles).
Walking along Stafford High Street this evening I looked up at a stepped timber-framed medieval building and the brutalist construction adjoining it. Then a Georgian house abutted by featureless 1980s Naff. Or an old church with 1960s modernist dross right next door. If this sample of 1960-90s buildings represents contemporary architectural thinking, then I'll settle for the vernacular, the classical and Poundbury pastiche. Architecture represents a design philosophy, which represents a philosophy of living, which represents a value system. What value system gave rise to this hodge-podge of mediocrity, I wonder? Surely not, a value system that privileges the mediocre?
I noticed with interest, once again, that almost all the businesses inside these architectural brutishnesses were financial institutions. I have seen this in many other English city centres: the ugliest buildings are those which provide offices for finance houses - building societies & banks. Richard Rogers - not.
"The mind leads the hands."
