"Public Bad, Private Good?"

The Anatomy of a disaster describes problems with a British "leisure center."

Late Victorian and Edwardian pools such as Haggerston and Whitechapel, closed for the greater glory of the failed Clissold leisure centre,

photeo David Levene in The Guradian

were designed in the main by local authority architects. Thoughtfully built, they served local communities for a century, giving few problems along the way while offering genuinely democratic places to meet, wash and exercise. And all without hype. But Hackney, like all too many borough councils, lost its dedicated architect's department. Local authority architects, often men and women of keen intelligence and local knowledge, tended to go the way of council housing in the 1970s: down the plughole. Most had long gone by the time the lottery popped up with its promise of prodigious funds for bright new buildings.

Besides the issues of "cutting edge" architecture, which this blog has long ago deemed a witless criterion, the article sets forth an interesting conservative agenda, with which I am in some sympathy, or is it a liberal agenda, with which I am also in sympathy?

Comments

[Brian Miller]

Well, if its "Conservative" it certainly isn't Thatcherite :).

[reuben]

I'm coming to this conversation a bit late, but in some ways the Clissord Leisure Centre fiasco is somewhat Thatcherite, in the sense that it's the product of believing that the private sector can always do a better job than the government. As the article points out, council architecture departments were completely disbanded,so who in Hackney was supposed to be able to judge whether or not this was a good building or not.

On a more personal note, though I'm American, this building is only a few minutes walk from my current home, and was going to be my fitness centre. I took the tour and everything - then they closed it down before I could save up.

Quite amusing to be halfway round the world (well, almost) and see a post written by someone in my home country about something currently within throwing distance. Too bad it's for all the wrong reasons.