The UK government has resolved to put beauty first to create better homes. Shame no one can agree on what that means

...  If only housebuilders would make their product more visually appealing, the thinking goes, then opposition to them would fade away, more homes would be built, prices would drop and we would all live happily ever after. The simple solution, Malthouse says, is “putting beauty at the heart of our housing and communities policy”. ....

Pretty brutal … Pimlico School before it was demolished.
Pretty brutal … Pimlico School before it was demolished. © Alamy

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It’s easy to dismiss the endeavour as a distraction from the real issues at stake, such as developers’ monopolies on land or the absence of a mass council house-building programme. But might there be something in it? John Hayes, the Conservative MP who called the parliamentary debate, might have had a point when he said: “Whereas people once anticipated development with joy, they now very often look on it with despair.” Ed Vaizey put it more succinctly: “The quality of building is shockingly bad.”

There is more to housing quality than beauty alone, but if there is indeed a gulf between what developers are building and what people want, then it makes sense to look at how this might be bridged. Are architects out of touch with popular taste? Is there an obsession with new development being “in keeping” at the expense of it being good? And is a planning system even capable of regulating beauty?

These questions will be tackled in a forthcoming series of public debates at Central Saint Martins art college in London, intended to raise the level of discussion beyond the realms of parliamentary platitudes. The chair of the Building Better, Building Beautiful commission, Sir Roger Scruton, will thrash it out with housebuilders, modern architects will debate with traditionalists, while planners will wrangle with developers and campaigners.

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