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| The Shard: beacon of the left's skyline | The Shard: beacon of the left's skyline |
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| If you look at the centre of any large British city today, you see a real skyline – a collection of speculative towers, all competing for attention. You can see it in Liverpool, where north of the Liver building several skinny towers of luxury flats crane their necks over the Mersey; you can see it in Leeds, where student-housing skyscrapers dominate the post-industrial city; you can see it in Manchester and Birmingham, where luxury housing towers are dominant in the way that mill chimneys once were. Almost all of the towers you can see in those city centres are recent – products of the last boom; the residential towers of public housing stretching out from the centre are from earlier times. | If you look at the centre of any large British city today, you see a real skyline – a collection of speculative towers, all competing for attention. You can see it in Liverpool, where north of the Liver building several skinny towers of luxury flats crane their necks over the Mersey; you can see it in Leeds, where student-housing skyscrapers dominate the post-industrial city; you can see it in Manchester and Birmingham, where luxury housing towers are dominant in the way that mill chimneys once were. Almost all of the towers you can see in those city centres are recent – products of the last boom; the residential towers of public housing stretching out from the centre are from earlier times. |
| London shows this to its greatest extent. Each new tower is a little icon, named after an everyday object – the Gherkin, the Philishave, soon the Cheese Grater, the Walkie-Talkie and the Quill; and of course the Shard, where a 72-floor viewing gallery has just opened to the public. If the old council towers and office blocks were functional and egalitarian, these are skyscrapers, hierarchical, private and instantly recognisable, half-a-dozen little logos. All of them were given the go-ahead by Labour councils, in the case of London, by the seemingly radical Livingstone mayoralty. Most of these were the kind of buildings that Labour politicians would once have campaigned against. How did this happen? | London shows this to its greatest extent. Each new tower is a little icon, named after an everyday object – the Gherkin, the Philishave, soon the Cheese Grater, the Walkie-Talkie and the Quill; and of course the Shard, where a 72-floor viewing gallery has just opened to the public. If the old council towers and office blocks were functional and egalitarian, these are skyscrapers, hierarchical, private and instantly recognisable, half-a-dozen little logos. All of them were given the go-ahead by Labour councils, in the case of London, by the seemingly radical Livingstone mayoralty. Most of these were the kind of buildings that Labour politicians would once have campaigned against. How did this happen? |
| In 1987, independent local government in Britain effectively died. For several years, leftwing Labour councils had set up power bases, usually with great public support, to do what Labour councils had always done, or at least always liked to think they had done – build public housing, build public facilities, serve the people that elected them. Branded by the tabloids as the "loony left" and disdained by the Labour leadership, they were a varied bunch: the selfconsciously new left of the Greater London council (GLC), with its then-novel sensitivity to issues of gender, race, sexuality and international politics, and its predilection for bad mid-80s pop; the strange Trotskyist-Labourist melange of Liverpool council, which recklessly took the government on directly; and several others, such as Sheffield, Lambeth and Manchester, somewhere in between. | In 1987, independent local government in Britain effectively died. For several years, leftwing Labour councils had set up power bases, usually with great public support, to do what Labour councils had always done, or at least always liked to think they had done – build public housing, build public facilities, serve the people that elected them. Branded by the tabloids as the "loony left" and disdained by the Labour leadership, they were a varied bunch: the selfconsciously new left of the Greater London council (GLC), with its then-novel sensitivity to issues of gender, race, sexuality and international politics, and its predilection for bad mid-80s pop; the strange Trotskyist-Labourist melange of Liverpool council, which recklessly took the government on directly; and several others, such as Sheffield, Lambeth and Manchester, somewhere in between. |
| In 1986, the governing bodies of British urban areas – the metropolitan county councils of Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, South and West Yorkshire, Tyneside, Greater London and Merseyside, created so that cities could be run like the massive, complex entities they are rather than as quasi-medieval independent boroughs – were suddenly abolished. Councils were rate-capped, so they could no longer build or spend like they used to. Defying that, as Liverpool did, meant dismissal from office. Most councils desperately hoped they would be saved by Labour winning the 1987 election. It didn't, of course, and councils suddenly had no raison d'etre. They couldn't really do anything any more. After a few years of flailing around in search of a point, the cleverer ones – Manchester city council, or the GLC's shadow, the Greater London authority (GLA), discovered a new purpose. | In 1986, the governing bodies of British urban areas – the metropolitan county councils of Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, South and West Yorkshire, Tyneside, Greater London and Merseyside, created so that cities could be run like the massive, complex entities they are rather than as quasi-medieval independent boroughs – were suddenly abolished. Councils were rate-capped, so they could no longer build or spend like they used to. Defying that, as Liverpool did, meant dismissal from office. Most councils desperately hoped they would be saved by Labour winning the 1987 election. It didn't, of course, and councils suddenly had no raison d'etre. They couldn't really do anything any more. After a few years of flailing around in search of a point, the cleverer ones – Manchester city council, or the GLC's shadow, the Greater London authority (GLA), discovered a new purpose. |
| It's no exaggeration to say that the new skylines, culminating in the towering glazed spike of Italian architect Renzo Piano's Shard, owe their existence to this moment. They are inadvertent monuments to the routing of municipal socialism in the mid-1980s. It happened under the enthusiastic watch of Ken Livingstone, once leader of the most powerful of the "loony left's" town halls. Livingstone did, after all, start his victory speech after winning the 2000 mayoral election with the words "before I was so rudely interrupted". Twelve years later and out of power, Livingstone still evidently sees the Shard, like the Olympics, as one of his triumphs; as a more apparently inclusive and public-spirited skyscraper than most. | It's no exaggeration to say that the new skylines, culminating in the towering glazed spike of Italian architect Renzo Piano's Shard, owe their existence to this moment. They are inadvertent monuments to the routing of municipal socialism in the mid-1980s. It happened under the enthusiastic watch of Ken Livingstone, once leader of the most powerful of the "loony left's" town halls. Livingstone did, after all, start his victory speech after winning the 2000 mayoral election with the words "before I was so rudely interrupted". Twelve years later and out of power, Livingstone still evidently sees the Shard, like the Olympics, as one of his triumphs; as a more apparently inclusive and public-spirited skyscraper than most. |
| It's strange, given that Livingstone had never previously shown much sign of being a modernist in his architectural tastes. In the early 1980s, the GLC was partisan in a fight over Coin Street, a south London post-industrial site. Developers had proposed a "mixed-use development" designed by Richard Rogers, a young modern architect with socialist sympathies. Rather than the heavily zoned monocultures of previous versions of modernism, Rogers and his developers wanted everything happening at once – flats, cafes, offices, public spaces, designed in a snazzily metallic architectural style, with staggered skylines and emphasising its contrasts and shapes. Livingstone helped get this scheme defeated, in favour of Coin Street Community Builders, which proposed – and built – a scheme of low-rise, low-density, traditionalist stock-brick houses. | It's strange, given that Livingstone had never previously shown much sign of being a modernist in his architectural tastes. In the early 1980s, the GLC was partisan in a fight over Coin Street, a south London post-industrial site. Developers had proposed a "mixed-use development" designed by Richard Rogers, a young modern architect with socialist sympathies. Rather than the heavily zoned monocultures of previous versions of modernism, Rogers and his developers wanted everything happening at once – flats, cafes, offices, public spaces, designed in a snazzily metallic architectural style, with staggered skylines and emphasising its contrasts and shapes. Livingstone helped get this scheme defeated, in favour of Coin Street Community Builders, which proposed – and built – a scheme of low-rise, low-density, traditionalist stock-brick houses. |
| Community architecture was one of the main enthusiasms of the "loony left" councils. Its meaning often shifted, but it generally meant a way of building public housing that was based on close public consultation rather than de-haut-en-bas state provision, on what was called the "human scale" (as if skyscrapers weren't something that only humans could ever conceive), on the "vernacular" (which, in the absence of craft traditions, meant building stuff to blend in with what was there already). It ranged in style from the magnificent, confident Byker estate in Newcastle, with its metropolitan scale and architectural warmth, wit and complexity – to the deeply conservative, low-density, Barratt Homes-like estates built by Liverpool. This was the stuff that set 80s Labour councillors' pulses racing – the high-end hi-tech of Rogers was not to their taste. | Community architecture was one of the main enthusiasms of the "loony left" councils. Its meaning often shifted, but it generally meant a way of building public housing that was based on close public consultation rather than de-haut-en-bas state provision, on what was called the "human scale" (as if skyscrapers weren't something that only humans could ever conceive), on the "vernacular" (which, in the absence of craft traditions, meant building stuff to blend in with what was there already). It ranged in style from the magnificent, confident Byker estate in Newcastle, with its metropolitan scale and architectural warmth, wit and complexity – to the deeply conservative, low-density, Barratt Homes-like estates built by Liverpool. This was the stuff that set 80s Labour councillors' pulses racing – the high-end hi-tech of Rogers was not to their taste. |
| Something happened to Labour's architectural ambitions after 1987. By 1992, Rogers had co-written, with then Labour shadow culture secretary Mark Fisher, a manifesto called A New London. They presented a new architecture and urbanism that flourished on the continent but had no equivalent in Britain. The book showed public housing in the Netherlands, designed in witty, modern forms by young architects Meccanoo; the Olympic village in Barcelona, with its wide streets, mix of uses, cultural facilities and public spaces; and of course the Centre Pompidou in Paris, designed by Rogers himself with his one-time partner, Piano. | Something happened to Labour's architectural ambitions after 1987. By 1992, Rogers had co-written, with then Labour shadow culture secretary Mark Fisher, a manifesto called A New London. They presented a new architecture and urbanism that flourished on the continent but had no equivalent in Britain. The book showed public housing in the Netherlands, designed in witty, modern forms by young architects Meccanoo; the Olympic village in Barcelona, with its wide streets, mix of uses, cultural facilities and public spaces; and of course the Centre Pompidou in Paris, designed by Rogers himself with his one-time partner, Piano. |
| The report argued for opening up the Thames and other post-industrial sites with public-spirited architecture of curved glass and expressive steel. After Labour came to power, Rogers was appointed as head of John Prescott's Urban Task Force (to investigate the causes of urban decline) and adviser on architecture to the GLA. This European model was going to be given its opportunity, and with the very public support of Mayor Livingstone. | The report argued for opening up the Thames and other post-industrial sites with public-spirited architecture of curved glass and expressive steel. After Labour came to power, Rogers was appointed as head of John Prescott's Urban Task Force (to investigate the causes of urban decline) and adviser on architecture to the GLA. This European model was going to be given its opportunity, and with the very public support of Mayor Livingstone. |
| How this managed to seduce is not hard to guess. In Berlin, Bilbao, Rotterdam and, most of all, in Barcelona, Labour politicians found a novel aesthetic for municipal post-socialism. Modern, but not in the harsh, severe way favoured in the 1960s, when most of these people cut their teeth as young new left radicals, mortified by the concrete cities taking shape around them. It was leisured, sexy, architecturally dramatic and attractive. It was also, importantly, "business friendly", which suggested some ways in which cash-strapped local authorities might manage to extract much-needed capital. So a Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment was set up to guarantee architectural quality, and the mayor proclaimed that dozens of new public spaces would be created. A developer was planning a "tallest building in Europe" near London Bridge and, after much lobbying, Broadway Malyan, the multinational hacks responsible for the notoriously hideous St George's Wharf flats by Vauxhall bridge, were replaced with Piano. Instead of the cheap postmodernist tat that defined its 1980s architecture, London would have as its city-crown a monument lovingly crafted by a world-renowned architect, who would create something entirely unique, a sheer spire of steel and glass. | How this managed to seduce is not hard to guess. In Berlin, Bilbao, Rotterdam and, most of all, in Barcelona, Labour politicians found a novel aesthetic for municipal post-socialism. Modern, but not in the harsh, severe way favoured in the 1960s, when most of these people cut their teeth as young new left radicals, mortified by the concrete cities taking shape around them. It was leisured, sexy, architecturally dramatic and attractive. It was also, importantly, "business friendly", which suggested some ways in which cash-strapped local authorities might manage to extract much-needed capital. So a Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment was set up to guarantee architectural quality, and the mayor proclaimed that dozens of new public spaces would be created. A developer was planning a "tallest building in Europe" near London Bridge and, after much lobbying, Broadway Malyan, the multinational hacks responsible for the notoriously hideous St George's Wharf flats by Vauxhall bridge, were replaced with Piano. Instead of the cheap postmodernist tat that defined its 1980s architecture, London would have as its city-crown a monument lovingly crafted by a world-renowned architect, who would create something entirely unique, a sheer spire of steel and glass. |
| "Community architecture" would have entailed something tweedy, worthy and useful on the site, but that was long forgotten. But what of the social functions that councils still had to provide? Unable to seriously borrow, or in the case of the GLA even to tax, other means were necessary. Local authorities all over the country favoured the section 106 agreement – a form of "planning gain" where developers were legally obliged to provide some sort of public infrastructure as part of their schemes. A complicated game of percentages began. New "luxury" housing developments, of which there have been hundreds since 1997, were obliged by the GLA to provide around 40% "affordable" housing. In theory, this could replace the now-impossible provision of new council housing. Except for another percentage – the definition of "affordable" is 80% of market rent, which prices out nearly all council tenants. This should have been obvious early on, but it was passed over in silence. Livingstone, convinced of the virtues of skyscrapers after being dazzled by a visit to Shanghai, made the new City skyline a major source of section 106 agreements. Again, this was unexpected. The old corporate skyline – the NatWest tower (now Tower 42) and Centre Point – was never popular, least of all among leftish activists. | "Community architecture" would have entailed something tweedy, worthy and useful on the site, but that was long forgotten. But what of the social functions that councils still had to provide? Unable to seriously borrow, or in the case of the GLA even to tax, other means were necessary. Local authorities all over the country favoured the section 106 agreement – a form of "planning gain" where developers were legally obliged to provide some sort of public infrastructure as part of their schemes. A complicated game of percentages began. New "luxury" housing developments, of which there have been hundreds since 1997, were obliged by the GLA to provide around 40% "affordable" housing. In theory, this could replace the now-impossible provision of new council housing. Except for another percentage – the definition of "affordable" is 80% of market rent, which prices out nearly all council tenants. This should have been obvious early on, but it was passed over in silence. Livingstone, convinced of the virtues of skyscrapers after being dazzled by a visit to Shanghai, made the new City skyline a major source of section 106 agreements. Again, this was unexpected. The old corporate skyline – the NatWest tower (now Tower 42) and Centre Point – was never popular, least of all among leftish activists. |
| Centre Point, so famously empty that a London homelessness charity was named after it, was specifically cited by one community architecture group, the Architects' Revolutionary Council, which wanted to ensure that "every time an architectural student passes a building like Centre Point he vows that he will never work in a practice that is involved in such obscenities". The new towers would be different, however. | Centre Point, so famously empty that a London homelessness charity was named after it, was specifically cited by one community architecture group, the Architects' Revolutionary Council, which wanted to ensure that "every time an architectural student passes a building like Centre Point he vows that he will never work in a practice that is involved in such obscenities". The new towers would be different, however. |
| They wouldn't really be different in function – most were office blocks for financial institutions, though the Shard's sheer vastness eventually demanded something more complex – but they would certainly be different in aesthetic. More friendly, more optimistic, more "inclusive" than the austere or aggressive towers of earlier eras. | They wouldn't really be different in function – most were office blocks for financial institutions, though the Shard's sheer vastness eventually demanded something more complex – but they would certainly be different in aesthetic. More friendly, more optimistic, more "inclusive" than the austere or aggressive towers of earlier eras. |
| The Gherkin was clearly the first of these new cuddly skyscrapers. Its originally much-vaunted green technologies barely worked, but its accidental masterstroke was its very name – its shape eliciting a cabbie's affectionate monicker. Subsequent towers all came ready-nicknamed – Helter-Skelter, Walkie-Talkie, Cheese Grater, Shard. Typically, they weren't much more public – the days when the tallest buildings could be council housing, like the Trellick Tower, or NHS hospitals, like Guy's Hospital Tower, neighbouring the Shard, were long gone – but they were definitely more populist. | The Gherkin was clearly the first of these new cuddly skyscrapers. Its originally much-vaunted green technologies barely worked, but its accidental masterstroke was its very name – its shape eliciting a cabbie's affectionate monicker. Subsequent towers all came ready-nicknamed – Helter-Skelter, Walkie-Talkie, Cheese Grater, Shard. Typically, they weren't much more public – the days when the tallest buildings could be council housing, like the Trellick Tower, or NHS hospitals, like Guy's Hospital Tower, neighbouring the Shard, were long gone – but they were definitely more populist. |
| What, for instance, was the Shard's contribution to the public sphere? Well, the erection of the tallest building in the EU paid for a new bus station and roof at London Bridge station. This is the eventual upshot of this realignment of local government's priorities, this doomed attempt to do good deeds by stealth – little more than skyscrapers in exchange for bus stops. The local politicians in question laboured under the misapprehension that they were smarter than developers, that they could make the private sector play a public game. These things have their own momentum, however, and public bodies that sold this as all-inclusive "regeneration" rather than as a necessary Faustian pact could hardly have objected when each new regenerative structure brought a developers' "quarter" in its train. | What, for instance, was the Shard's contribution to the public sphere? Well, the erection of the tallest building in the EU paid for a new bus station and roof at London Bridge station. This is the eventual upshot of this realignment of local government's priorities, this doomed attempt to do good deeds by stealth – little more than skyscrapers in exchange for bus stops. The local politicians in question laboured under the misapprehension that they were smarter than developers, that they could make the private sector play a public game. These things have their own momentum, however, and public bodies that sold this as all-inclusive "regeneration" rather than as a necessary Faustian pact could hardly have objected when each new regenerative structure brought a developers' "quarter" in its train. |
| The Shard, along with the "Philishave" Strata tower of luxury flats in Elephant and Castle, is part of a huge reorganisation of inner south London, involving the demolition and clearance of 1960s council estates, justified via a circular social argument ("they broke up communities, so we have to break them up"), the building of incessant luxury flat complexes, and the opening up of the Thames. It was all promised in A New London, except for the fact that in 1992, Rogers probably thought he would be designing council housing under a Labour government. What he actually designed in SE1 was "Neo Bankside", a "stunning development" of three towers next to Tate Modern, the transformed Bankside power station – once a derelict structure highlighted in A New London – where you can pay £1.5m for a one-bedroom flat. | The Shard, along with the "Philishave" Strata tower of luxury flats in Elephant and Castle, is part of a huge reorganisation of inner south London, involving the demolition and clearance of 1960s council estates, justified via a circular social argument ("they broke up communities, so we have to break them up"), the building of incessant luxury flat complexes, and the opening up of the Thames. It was all promised in A New London, except for the fact that in 1992, Rogers probably thought he would be designing council housing under a Labour government. What he actually designed in SE1 was "Neo Bankside", a "stunning development" of three towers next to Tate Modern, the transformed Bankside power station – once a derelict structure highlighted in A New London – where you can pay £1.5m for a one-bedroom flat. |
| What exactly is the Shard? Luxury apartments, a luxury hotel, a spa, and offices, all swept up into a mute, impenetrable glass skin, owned by Qatari Diar, owners also of the publicly funded Olympic village. It's incredible to imagine that all this was supported and abetted by people who considered themselves on the left – but it was. They thought that by trying to make big business look nicer and act nicer they could manoeuvre their way to a social policy. Their mistake is now visible from every corner of London. | What exactly is the Shard? Luxury apartments, a luxury hotel, a spa, and offices, all swept up into a mute, impenetrable glass skin, owned by Qatari Diar, owners also of the publicly funded Olympic village. It's incredible to imagine that all this was supported and abetted by people who considered themselves on the left – but it was. They thought that by trying to make big business look nicer and act nicer they could manoeuvre their way to a social policy. Their mistake is now visible from every corner of London. |
| • This article was amended on 13 February 2013. The original stated that "in 1986, the governing bodies of British urban areas – the metropolitan district councils ... were suddenly abolished". This has been corrected. | • This article was amended on 13 February 2013. The original stated that "in 1986, the governing bodies of British urban areas – the metropolitan district councils ... were suddenly abolished". This has been corrected. |
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