[HN Gopher] Prince Charles' experimental city
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Prince Charles' experimental city
Author : classichasclass
Score : 73 points
Date : 2021-07-25 12:05 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smh.com.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smh.com.au)
| uwagar wrote:
| somethings missing. needs a bit of wabisabi.
| [deleted]
| nine_k wrote:
| This town is very young (and entirely not Japanese). Let a
| hundred years pass, and what you are missing will manifest.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| It's probably a century of soot.
|
| When I grew up, I saw a sandstone building get powerwashed for
| the first time in a decade.
|
| Well, I realized it was yellow sandstone when it was clean. It
| was brown when they started.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _But after two days wandering the streets and talking to
| residents who have forked out big money to be guinea pigs in this
| experiment, it's clear Poundbury's strengths far outweigh its
| weaknesses._
|
| I'm sure the area being pre-gentrified has nothing to do with the
| opinions of the locals whatsoever. Cynicism aside, I do empathize
| with Prince Charles view on brutalist architecture here.
|
| (But what do I know? The only books on architecture I ever read
| were Christopher Alexander's _The Timeless Way Of Building_ and
| _A Pattern Language_ , and only because I heard they somehow were
| influential on software development)
| adrian_b wrote:
| I have not understood what you mean by "pre-gentrified".
|
| According to the article, this was built on land previously
| owned by the Duchy of Cornwall. I assume that the land was not
| inhabited, so there were no former locals who were displaced by
| the new ones.
|
| Moreover, the article says that one third of the houses have
| been reserved for those who cannot afford to buy such a house,
| so a majority of the current locals might belong to the
| "gentry", but a significant part should have a lower income.
| pityJuke wrote:
| > Moreover, the article says that one third of the houses
| have been reserved for those who cannot afford to buy such a
| house, so a majority of the current locals might belong to
| the "gentry", but a significant part should have a lower
| income.
|
| Hah!
|
| >The royal family has used a secretive procedure to vet three
| parliamentary acts that have prevented residents on Prince
| Charles' estate from buying their own homes for decades, the
| Guardian can reveal.
|
| >His PS1bn Duchy of Cornwall estate was later given special
| exemptions in the acts that denied residents the legal right
| to buy their own homes outright. [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/09/prince-
| charl...
| kitd wrote:
| Yes, it's literally a green-field development.
|
| Nice part of the country. It's where Thomas Hardy lived.
| Nearby Dorchester is "Casterbridge" in his books.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| I will be curious to know the racial and ethnic composition
| of this town.
|
| I have no background but the reporter seems to be trying
| really hard to vindicate the prince and it's not clear that's
| justified from the contents.
|
| "Even real estate agents love it" I mean yeah they love any
| monstrosity of a building if it sells, especially to white
| people.
| dazc wrote:
| The area where this town is located does not have a
| racilly/ethnically diverse population that is in anyway
| comparable to many other places in the UK.
|
| If it were otherwise I have no doubt the ethnic make up
| would be the same.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Here you go:
| https://mapping.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/statistics-and-
| insights...
|
| Pretty much the same as the rest of Dorset and southwest
| England.
| throwawaybumeer wrote:
| Ramraj- you are racist. I am sure Komodo health would love
| to see your postings about your complete distaste for white
| people. If you are so bothered by white people, move back
| to Chennai.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| Don't forget the average family income too.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| About critics taking a piss about the model city:
|
| > The second problem is that so often the criticisms are purely
| aesthetic and have little underlying understanding of what's
| going on beneath the surface.
|
| To contrast to Charles' views on why existing cities are bad:
|
| > Birmingham's post-industrial building boom had left the city a
| "monstrous concrete maze", Charles once declared, while the
| city's new Brutalist library - since demolished - looked "like a
| place where books are incinerated, not kept".
|
| Both sides seem pretty similarly superficial and vacuous to me.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Unfortunately, one of the superficial and vacuous sides will
| soon be king, and there's little political will to prevent
| this.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Unless he gets reincarnated as a tampon first.
|
| https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/a34736481/tampongate-
| scan...
| xor99 wrote:
| The future of the UK's architecture will be developed in places
| like this (also in Dorset as it happens):
| https://designandmake.aaschool.ac.uk/projects
| brudgers wrote:
| Until I see pictures of the bus station, the methadone clinic,
| and homeless shelter; I cannot think it a city.
|
| I will admit it is prettier than average sprawl. Lipstick does
| improve the pig so.
|
| It's Chuck's eat cake for council estates.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I can't get from the article what the habitants of Poundbury do.
| Looking at wikipedia [0] there's around 180 local businesses,
| which doesn't seem to be a lot for a whole town.
|
| If the point is to show a real world city functioning around
| Charles' ideal, it seems to be pretty far off yet. It still seem
| weird to have a city with a completion date.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundbury
| jhbadger wrote:
| There's only 3500 inhabitants, so "town" is rather generous
| (even if it may legally be one). So 180 businesses seems about
| right (even a bit much).
| pydry wrote:
| This article gives Charles waaaay too much credit. The Brutalist
| architecture he railed against was yes, bad, but it was popular
| because it was cheap and the UK was rather poor and in a period
| of war recovery.
|
| It's hardly a surprise that you can create something nicer if you
| set aside a bit of cash.
|
| Even so, Poundbury (I grew up around there) is a very uninspired
| part of Dorchester.
|
| >Thirty-five per cent of homes are affordable housing reserved
| for rent, shared ownership or discounted to the open market. It's
| impossible to distinguish private from public housing because the
| latter is built to the same high standards as everything else,
| and it is evenly dispersed throughout the town.
|
| Is a good idea, but the reason it doesn't happen elsewhere is
| because profitability takes precedence over good town planning.
| This article does demonstrate that the "stink" of socialism can
| be overcome by dousing it in the perfume of royalty.
| xor99 wrote:
| Mock Georgian is the lamest/ugliest thing going and it's already
| all over the UK (like every town or suburb). Sure original
| Georgian architecture is beautiful in many ways. However, mock
| versions are a blight because people cannot afford to use the
| correct materials and resort to stylistic similarity with garish
| bricks and pvc windows. Where is the vision in the above for
| alternative materials or cheaper reuse of existing ones that are
| also beautiful etc? There's also a little mock Grecian-Dutch-
| Turkmeni (see those horrific cylinders on the big building or the
| car park entrance that looks like a downtown Ashgabat-in-Dorset)
| which seems utterly bizzare and surreal.
|
| Irritating when you consider the value, tradition, and heritage
| of the arts and crafts movement and people like Edwin Luytens
| that is being destroyed here. Its just way cooler too:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munstead_Wood
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Drogo
|
| and same goes for the Barbican which follows similar style but
| with more mixed results in terms of fitting in with the
| surroundings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbican_Estate
|
| Southbank does look like a nuclear site and/or antarctic base
| (some of these are dope imo). But it is so brilliant to walk
| around and the diversity of the people that use the skatepark
| there or hangout says it all tbh. Poundbury seems like a fake
| past, cosplay village, where "no ball games" signs and death by
| sandwich committees would make life miserable for anyone with a
| whiff of interest in contemporary culture.
| heurisko wrote:
| I'd much prefer mock Georgian than Brutalist.
|
| I'm someone for whom Southbank and the Barbican are
| architectural monstrousities, who piggy back on London's
| success, rather than contributing to it.
|
| Concrete + England's maritime climate has a nasty tendency to
| look very grubby after a while, as it gets stained by moss.
| xor99 wrote:
| Matters of taste, so yes there's a truth to what you are
| saying and those buildings were literally meant as
| aberrations on the history of the city. Brutalist vs
| traditional works for those cases but compare Luytens with
| Poundbury and its not so easy. The former invents while also
| making something at ease with the surroundings while the
| latter just reinvent with a fake version of the past.
|
| Mock Georgian is an extreme imo (like below link) but I do
| like Georgian architecture in general if it is original or
| convincing: https://external-
| content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
| [deleted]
| larksimian wrote:
| (post script at the start, this is meant to be a bit faux
| outrage/tongue in cheek, I didn't realize my childhood dislike
| of brutalism was still so strong :D everyone has different
| tastes, it's not that big a deal etc)
|
| I feel like this is just horribly pretentious stuff that I hear
| all the time in Britain from posh people. I moved to the UK
| from Romania, I grew up surrounded by brutalist apartment
| buildings. They're ugly and awful and everyone I know from back
| home agrees.
|
| Poundbury looks quite pretty, I would enjoy living there. The
| barbican towers look absolutely hideous. They're literally too
| ugly for socialist architecture committees, our 1980s Bucharest
| apartment buildings look a lot nicer than that(and they're
| still ugly). Also brutalist buildings weather horribly, that
| sickly yellow mouldy look, you end up needing to repaint them
| every 10-15 years or just deal with the shabby look.
|
| It all just sounds like "Oh no, poor people are mimicking the
| architecture of their 'betters' quick lets mock their plebeian
| tastes. You either live in a legit bajillion pound period home
| or a concrete box. Know your place, plebe! PVC windows _gasp_
| _pearl clutch_ "
|
| My post-socialist country working class taste says that if we
| are to have a standardized building style we could do far worse
| than mock georgian. No comment on the type of person that would
| want to live there, I can imagine given that it's a trial run
| it'll be some fairly "you have no authority here, jackie
| weaver" type folks. But in a random village/burb that's just
| styled like this, I think the people would just be average
| normal.
| pasabagi wrote:
| The barbican is super expensive, fwiw. They are also really
| nice inside.
|
| Personally, I like brutalist buildings. I feel like a lot of
| the fake georgian cutesy stuff is built to look good (for a
| certain taste) but almost always sucks to live in. I spent my
| student years living in mouldy little semi-detatched houses
| in the UK, and they are really shit houses. Brutalist flats
| I've lived in have all functioned pretty well as flats (no
| mushrooms in the walls, etc).
| larksimian wrote:
| You're 1000% correct about build quality. Ironically, re my
| prior post, I've been missing soviet style flats ever since
| I moved to the UK many years ago. Affordable, better
| soundproofing, no mold, way better plumbing, no personal
| boiler to have to screw around with. Also 4-story apartment
| buildings are obviously a better way of doing medium
| density than stuffing 4-8 people into a 4 bedroom house the
| way South East England does it.
|
| However, that's sort of orthogonal(maybe wrong word) to he
| architectural style. I'm sure decent build quality can be
| done with a decent outside facade, even though private
| British home builders are all awful these days.
|
| I have joked to friends several times (when angry about
| rentals' value/money ratio) that Oxford could have
| benefited from a Ceausescu figure tearing down the crappier
| working class neighborhoods and replacing them with 4-6
| story apartment buildings. Only about 10% serious about it,
| since he would've torn down the downtown as well to build
| himself a McPalace, tacky bastard that he was.
| pasabagi wrote:
| The thing is, georgian houses only look good if they are
| actually made with all the right materials and skills -
| and that stuff is _expensive_. If you look at all the
| neoclassical / retro stuff the nazis built, for example,
| it generally looks really dystopian, no matter how well
| you look after it,
|
| My personal feeling, aesthetics-wise, is that materials
| look good and work well when you respect their innate
| properties. Trying to force an aesthetic from one
| material on another is, at best, a recipe for an cheap
| and ugly chimera - which is kind of how I view Poundbury.
| More often, it just results in buildings that don't work
| (every UK house ever). Georgian buildings come from a
| specific set of materials and skills, many of which don't
| really exist any more. You can replace the stucco with
| concrete or polystyrene or whatever, but it's never going
| to look the same, because part of the 'aura' of the old
| stuff is it was made by really skilled people who had
| generations of experience showing in every move they
| made.
| nmstoker wrote:
| I stayed there for a weekend about four years ago and thought it
| was a decent place.
|
| The only negative thing that stuck out to me was that the shop
| density was too low as they were all intentionally spaced apart
| (more than shops in communities that have grown up organically
| over time) and this meant that they didn't get enough places in
| close together to be convenient for a shopper to visit in quick
| succession, you ended up traipsing much further than normal and
| this had a knock on effect on the buzz (or lack thereof) around
| the shopping area.
|
| But other than that it was charming: things worked, the people
| were nice, the places were well built.
| montenegrohugo wrote:
| If you're interested in human-centric urbanism like this, I
| wholeheartedly recommend the twitter account @wrathofgnon [1].
| One of the most knowledgeable and diverse sources of information
| I've seen on the topic.
|
| Really valuable content.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon
| [deleted]
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