Simon Jenkins is a polymath, able to reflect in an informed and lucid way on subjects as diverse as publishing and Weblogging, the steam engine and car culture, crime and government, broadcasting and architecture.
The latter was the subject of his after breakfast speech-let at Smiths of Smithfield, close to the London Architecture Biennale HQ. Jenkins believes that architects' egos drive them to create big, standalone 'point' buildings, and as many as possible as, of course, architects think their work is beautiful. They are supported and encouraged by planners, particularly if they can design formats with high commercial return, and supported by local and national government. Jenkins's historic bete noir is Richard Seifert, and on the government side George Brown, who allowed Conrad Hilton build on Hyde Park. Today's bete noirs are Rogers and Foster, with Ken Livingstone (advised by Rogers) wielding his princely writ from his South Bank palace -- but with his eye on a Manhattan skyline as his mayoral legacy.
Jenkins argues that the ability to build big has changed the nature of the city, from one in which buildings (other than churches) could only be seen from the street to one in which they are visible across the city. He particularly objects to point buildings, which speckle and despoil the view of the city. 'If you must build big then cluster these buildings', he argues. His other objection to big buildings is their poor relationship to the street and to human scale. He cites Centrepoint and Victoria's Stag Place in evidence, and notes that in most cities residents and tourists are attracted to the low-rise and older quarters. Fort Worth and even New York are cited in evidence. 'People don't relate to glass towers'. Paris and Rome have deliberately resisted big buildings in their centres and forced them to the periphery. (In Paris the Tour Montparnasse is an exception.)
But he is not against density. He notes that Victorian terraces are the acme of dense housing, and wouldn't object to London's mews being pulled down to increase housing density.
He observes that the arguments around big buildings had moved towards the idea of clustering, but that consensus had been lost, and now London planning is dictated on from the GLA building and Whitehall. Hence the need to polarise the issues and fight every instance of poor planning, from Covent Garden to Leadenhall Market and beyond.
It is hard not to see Jenkins as overly nostalgic and in love with the past. In response to a request for concrete suggestions about how we would create tomorrow's historic buildings he had little to say, other than that there were many good 'infill' buildings in districts such as Covent Garden that related to the street and to human scale.
Nor is he really able to explain the dynamics he so eloquently illustrates, other than to note the impact of building technology. Perhaps part of the problem is the poverty of rational and problem-solving discussion around city architecture, which focuses on aesthetics and, at best, materials but considers neither urban integration nor the function and internal design of buildings. On the former point Jenkins notes that architectural models present buildings from above (the architect-god's eye view), and on the latter they try to exclude people (a building's 'users') from photographs of the finished work.
There is also a strong case to be made for ambition. While Jenkins notes that dictators love (grand) architecture (see Deyan Sudjic's book 'The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful Shape the World'), it is also a symbol of countries that have a positive and humanistic view of the future, such as post-Revolutionary Russia or the US in the early twentieth century. Perhaps Livingstone fits the (populist) dictator mould, but any country or city that believes in itself, in progress and in the future will create buildings and cities that have scale and impact. The more worrying characteristic of London and the UK in the noughties is how wary we are about making an impact on the environment or doing anything at scale.