Beauty and the Built Environment

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered beauty and the built environment.

It is a great pleasure to speak on this subject. I am prepared to be corrected if anyone knows better, but I imagine that this is the first House of Commons debate specifically on beauty for a very long time indeed. Yet the journey through life should be the pursuit of the sublime. It should be a search for absolute truth. In it we should experience and rejoice in all the exposure to beauty that characterises each and all of our journeys.

Beauty, whether in the laughter of a child, the scent of a rose, a glorious landscape or the setting sun, makes life richer and more fulfilled. In doing so, it does not merely satisfy our aesthetic needs; it takes us closer to the understanding of truth. As Keats wrote:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all”.

What Keats meant was that absolute truth is exposed to us—explained to us, one might say—through the experience of beauty. It is very hard for human beings, who are frail, faulted and fallen, to understand that truth except through the means that I have described: those touches or experiences of something pure, special and magical.

Sadly, we live in an age that is dull and utilitarian and in which mystery and magic are extraordinarily unfashionable. It is odd that that should be, for it was not true for most of our history, and has not been so for most great civilisations. It is unusual to be as utilitarian as we are, but now it is time for a change—for a renaissance. It is time for beauty to be put back at the heart of Government policy. I am delighted that the Minister shares that view, as I know from our conversations. It is a delight to have a Housing Minister who cares about the quality of housing, and all that says about its look and feel and our sense of place, rather than simply the quantity of houses that we build. I shall say more about that in my long and fascinating speech.

The scale of the housing problem means that some may dismiss concerns about style, regarding them as indulgent or even irrelevant. “Aren’t there more important things to worry about?”, we hear people say. Indeed, the focus of housing policy has long been on targets for quantity rather than quality. We risk having a competition across the political spectrum to build the most houses the most quickly by stacking them high and selling them cheap, regardless of their quality or what they look like. That is not good enough. It short-changes our countrymen and the generations to come. Everyone should have the opportunity to live in a place of which they can feel proud and through that to develop a sense of place that informs their sense of worth, which in turn feeds social solidarity through fraternity.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend in the flow of such an elegant speech, but does he share my view that we gave ordinary people the ability to concentrate on the essence of good design as one of the key things in putting together neighbourhood plans? I am disappointed that very few have taken that up. Will he help me to try to instil it in the minds of those who are conducting neighbourhood plans?

[Mr Hayes]

That is a good and important point that relates to something I shall say later about taking a bottom-up approach to delivering better-quality housing, rather than imposing top-down targets. My hon. Friend is right that we need to inspire a new generation to believe that this can be done, because there are some who say that it does not matter or even that it cannot be done—that it is no longer possible to build wonderful, lovely things, and that we are no longer capable of imagining what generations before us created. I just do not believe that. I think we can and should do better, and my hon. Friend rightly describes one of the mechanisms that might achieve that.

To dismiss concerns about the quality of what we build is both wrong and, ultimately, destructive. We cannot hope to change the public perception of new development unless we fundamentally change its very nature. Beauty should be at the heart of the public discourse. It should be part of our conversation about housing and development. As the great philosopher Roger Scruton puts it,

“we are losing beauty, and there is a danger that with it we will lose the meaning of life.”

If I am right that the journey through life requires us to experience beauty to build the personal fulfilment and communal contentment necessary to make a society that works, ignoring beauty does not merely short-change future generations; ultimately, it will destroy our chance to make a nation of which we can all feel proud. There is a close relationship between the sense of place and the social solidarity necessary to build a harmonious society. I could say a lot about harmony, but that is a subject for another time or another debate and His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales has spoken about it far more eloquently than I ever could, so perhaps I should defer to him.

The first misconception that I would like to quash, which sometimes prevents the debate about quality from taking place at all, is that the kind of approach that I am trying to articulate, which concentrates on beauty, is both marginal and gets in the way of getting things done. According to that view, constantly demanding more of development—I am talking about commercial as well as domestic buildings, because this is not wholly about housing—somehow acts as a barrier, an impediment, to delivering the bigger objective of building to provide a basis for growth and prosperity. I just do not believe that. Actually, I think the opposite is true.

When Her Majesty the Queen came to the throne, her reign was marked by talk of a new Elizabethan age. After the destruction caused by the war, people looked to new development with optimism. They believed that we could create a society that both looked better and was better to be part of. How curious and how sad that during Her Majesty’s reign, attitudes to development have diametrically altered. Whereas people once anticipated development with joy, they now very often look on it with despair. Frankly, that is the result of successive Governments and local authorities of all political persuasions; I cast no slur on any single party in this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman knows of my extremely strong views on social justice and the redistribution of advantage in society. If we are going to redistribute advantage, as I think we should, it is not good enough to suggest that people who are less well-off, people who need to rent a home or young people who are looking to make their first home could make do with something inadequate, while those who are advantaged and privileged can buy the kind of lifestyle that was available to my working-class parents. The lifestyle I enjoy in my constituency in Lincolnshire is a bit like the lifestyle I enjoyed when I was a little boy on that council estate. We still use local shops, we have a garden to play in, we have a nice home and we have what might be called a traditional way of life because I am in a position to be able to provide that for my children—going to the village school and all the rest of it—but if I went back to places such as the place where I was brought up, by and large that life would not be available to most people who are rather like my mum and dad were that short time ago. I emphasise that it was a short time ago, Ms Dorries, but you knew that anyway. I want beauty for all, not for some or for the privileged or rich alone.

[John Howell]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Hayes]

I happily give way to my hon. Friend, who is just as committed to social justice as I am.

[John Howell]

My right hon. Friend is being incredibly generous with his time. One point that I would bring out strongly is something that he has mentioned in passing but has not concentrated on: the need to include the environment in housebuilding, to be able to enjoy the space that comes with that, and to be able to provide opportunity for the family.

[Mr Hayes]

It will be alarming to some, but a delight to others, to know that I am only on page 3 of my very long speech, and I want to make a bit of progress. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that part of the sense of place, to which I referred earlier, is about green space. I will come in a moment to some of the research done by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales’s organisations on what people want, because a lot of the interventions have mentioned the role of consultation, engagement and involvement in shaping policy around what people actually want. There has been a lot of work done on this by a variety of organisations, to which I want to refer.

Let us be clear about what we aim to achieve. We aim to build homes of which people can be proud. Le Corbusier, who is responsible for many bad things, said:

“A home is a machine for living”.

A home is not a machine for living. Homes are a reflection of our humanity. William Morris said:

“Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”

That was because Morris understood that beauty and wellbeing are inextricably linked, and that a politics that is serious about welfare and wellbeing must be serious about beauty. It is not possible to believe in the common good as passionately as all those here in the Chamber do but not care about aesthetics—the two are inseparable.

That beauty is somehow detached from matters of fairness and social justice is the second misconception that must be challenged. For the ancient Greeks, aesthetic and moral judgements were inseparable. In the 19th century, many artists considered beauty to be the vital link between freedom and truth. I sense that today there is once again a growing understanding of how aesthetics are a vital part of our judgment of value and worth. That is partly intuitive; people instinctively understand the connection between the value of beauty and a wider conception of worth.

This can be seen in protests at the ugly buildings that developers still attempt to foist on communities against their will. It can be seen in the despair at identikit supermarkets that lack any sense of craft or character, built with no consideration of the past and no regard for the future. Indeed, at the heart of modern architecture, like all modern art, is the Nietzschean idea that the past is irrelevant and we can create our own value system. Much modern architecture, like modern music, fails precisely because it rejects those principles of harmony that time has taught us to delight in, and that excite our senses not because they are discordant, but because they are harmonious.

Where modern design does succeed, that is largely by accident or because, where form has at least followed function, a building has a high degree of utility. That is important, because we often hear architects, planners and engineers speak about ergonomics, but they frequently confuse ergonomics with aesthetics. It is not sufficient for a building to be ergonomically sound, irrespective of its aesthetic.

Just occasionally, a combination occurs that unites those two things—the extension to King’s Cross is a very good example. Looking at the extension to King’s Cross and the engineering of the roof, it is clear that what is a functional requirement has been turned into a work of art, as aesthetics and ergonomics have come together. That is such an exception that it is frequently mentioned, because people are searching for an example of something joyful. Every time I go to King’s Cross station, which I do frequently on my journey to and from Lincolnshire, I look in wonder at that development. I know that we should be doing that time and again in towns and cities across the county—if not in scale, certainly in essence.

These lessons are not new, and I offer nothing that is not the wisdom of the people. The buildings that are most often treasured and valued by the public at large—our constituents—are usually older buildings that are shaped by vernacular style, where architects have taken care to be in harmony with the surroundings and where craftsmen have laboured over detail. A study by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment found that, when asked to name the most beautiful buildings in Sheffield, most respondents cited the two cathedrals.

Even the very same architects, planners and technocrats who foist ugliness on the rest of us often choose to live in beautiful, old houses in communities that still have a sense of place and a link to their surroundings. In fact, it is quite alarming that most modernists choose to live in Georgian or Victorian houses. That is the problem: escaping to gated lives, they leave well alone those who are forced to live in the kind of houses that the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) mentioned, and that is just not acceptable. Beautiful housing has become increasingly unaffordable to the kind of people he mentioned, precisely because it has become so scarce. We have seemingly become incapable of building anything of comparable quality or of planning new developments with a similar sense of place and community, which are values that matter directly to our quality of life, our sense of wellbeing and our health and happiness.

It cannot be fair that beauty is increasingly the preserve of the few, which brings me to the third misconception that cannot be left unchallenged: that beauty belongs to the past. It is often considered, sometimes unthinkingly, that it is no longer possible to build beautiful buildings. We have somehow, rather depressingly, come to believe that the supply of beauty is both finite and exhausted, perhaps because people assume that it must be dated, kitsch or whimsical to build according to the principles of classical architecture, or to extend such a vision across a development so that it is harmonious, with a sense of community and place.

Such snide comments are sometimes made about the Prince of Wales’s vision for Poundbury, although the popularity of that place reminds me of what one wit said about the original Broadway production of “The Sound of Music”: “no one liked it, apart from the public”. The truth is that, when surveyed, the public repeatedly identify those kinds of place as places where they would like to live and that they aspire to own one day.

Beauty does not have to come at too high a price and it does not have to be sacrificed for the sake of utility. Those assumptions are false. When the city fathers of Birmingham, Nottingham and Manchester built great town halls in classical or gothic style, they did so because they understood that these styles had endured. A fine example is Nottingham, a city I know very well, having lived there for 20 years, studied there and been a county councillor in Nottinghamshire. The Council House in the centre of Nottingham, which is a great neo-classical building, was built in 1929. Right up until then, we understood, but the problem has grown in scale and depth since the war. Those planners, engineers and architects built something that they wanted to last, and they succeeded. The modernist library in Birmingham’s Chamberlain Square was recently demolished, just 40 years after it was built, but no one would seriously consider doing the same to the classical town hall or the other great public buildings of the Victorian era.

Despite their appearance, those buildings are, in other respects, modern: they were built using modern construction techniques. In historical terms, compared with the cathedrals I mentioned, they were built yesterday. Many were built in the late 19th or early 20th century. There are no good reasons that we cannot continue to build beautiful buildings, as the Prince of Wales has demonstrated to such wonderful effect.

While I am dealing with the Prince of Wales, I want to return to the issue of what the public want. The Prince’s organisations consulted widely on the principal things that people want and do not want. I will highlight four. They do not want their town or village to lose a strong sense of identity; they do not want green space to be unduly threatened by urban sprawl; they do not want too many tall or large buildings, out of scale with what is there already, to be built; and they do not want change to be too rapid or overwhelming. In other words, people want building development on a human scale that is incremental and in tune with the existing built environment. Is that really too much to ask of our generation? I think not, and I hope the Minister agrees.

The irony is that many modern and postmodern buildings are more expensive than buildings built and designed according to classical principles. Even in cases where improving design and build quality comes at a price, in the longer term that will save money, and not just on maintenance. A British Land study estimates that better design could save the UK economy an estimated £15.3 billion by 2050, making us all happier and healthier.

Good design has the power to strengthen communities and improve physical and mental health through abundant green space and walkable streets. It has the power to improve safety and security through the abolition of semi-private spaces, walkways and underpasses, which trap people and encourage criminality. All those considerations should be fundamental to planning policy.

It would be a genuine tragedy if concerns about the supply of housing led us to revisit the failed post-war experiment in high-rise living. That is not the answer. Tower blocks are actually built at lower densities than terraced housing. We must consign such misconceptions to the past, and in their place develop a planning system that has true regard for people and communities. For almost 60 years, our planning system has encouraged or allowed out-of-scale buildings. We need fundamental change.

I will say one other thing about His Royal Highness, who put this issue in such clear terms and speaks, I think, for the people when he said that he did not want the place

“which I love greatly disappear under a welter of ugliness”.

How many communities and individuals have felt that? How many have felt that their voice is not heard by architects, planners, engineers and—I have to say it—politicians of all persuasions?

We need fundamental change. In the future, buildings should be in harmony with the landscape, vernacular in style and built from local materials, and they should offer local distinctiveness, which is the foundation of people’s sense of place. Pride in communities is unlikely to flourish if people have no say in how housing is built or how their neighbourhood develops.

As the hon. Member for Coventry South and my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) said, that obliges us to engage and involve local people in the character, shape and scale of developments close to them. Although the revised national planning policy framework now encourages local authorities to produce design codes and styles, we must go much further.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate. I congratulate the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) on securing it and, as ever, for speaking so eloquently and poetically. I would never be able to emulate his use of the English language and his flow, but others might be able to—I suspect that the right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) will do so.

The focus of this debate is the national planning policy framework, which provides a framework for producing local plans for housing and other developments. Those plans, in turn, are the background against which applications for planning permission are decided. I appreciate that the NPPF applies only in England, but it is important to have well-designed and visually attractive developments across the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

I am sure most, if not all, hon. Members will have heard me talk about my beautiful constituency of Strangford, which I have the honour and privilege of representing, and working and living in. I genuinely believe it is the best place to be in all of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Other hon. Members will say, “I expect the hon. Member for Strangford to say that,” but I honestly believe it. I urge those who have not been there to make that journey. When they see the beauty that we have, they will undoubtedly have the same opinion as me. We have large towns, small towns and lots of small villages, but for the most part we are a rural constituency with rolling green hills, a glistening lough, beautiful walks, canoe trails, and much more, all under the protective gaze of Scrabo Tower as it looks down from the edge of Newtownards down to Strangford Lough and across the constituency of Strangford.

Those of us who represent rural constituencies know how important it is to balance the need for development with the need to maintain natural beauty, ensuring that buildings are in keeping with the local area. In 1943, having seen a burnt and crumbling House of Commons, Winston Churchill remarked:

“We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.”—[Official Report, 28 October 1943; Vol. 393, c. 403.]

That is spot on. As a boy, one of my childhood heroes was Winston Churchill, as was Blair Mayne and a former Member of this House, Dr Ian Paisley. To receive planning permission to build in the countryside in Northern Ireland, one of the requirements is to

“promote high standards in the design, siting and landscaping of development”.

It is no longer enough for buildings to be structurally sound and to simply do the job. It has to be more than that. They must also be aesthetically pleasing to the eye, whether they are in the countryside or an urban area.

While we battle to maintain our green spaces, we also recognise the demands for more housing and the infra- structure to support it and keep villages and towns connected. In Northern Ireland, the regional development strategy—RDS 2035—sets out eight aims, two of which are:

“Promote development which improves the health and well-being of Communities”—

and—

“Protect and enhance the environment for its own sake”.

According to neuroscientists, buildings and cities can affect our mood and well-being—I believe they do—and specialised cells in the hippocampal region of our brains are attuned to the geometry and arrangement of the spaces we inhabit. For example, evidence shows that people’s happiness levels can be more easily achieved by living in an aesthetically beautiful city or a beautiful location in the countryside. I declare an interest as chair of the all-party group on healthy homes and buildings. Last week we launched a white paper in which we outline the need for modern homes to be energy-efficient, to have the correct air quality, and to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye inside and out. Last week the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) introduced a ten-minute rule Bill on those issues and how we can make housing more accessible to people right across the United Kingdom.

[John Howell]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the need to provide infrastructure along with housing, but environmental infrastructure is the big thing that is mostly missing in the development of new housing estates.

[Jim Shannon]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. He is right. That is why we make sure that the environmental impact is a big part of development approval in Northern Ireland. He is clearly right and that should be at the centre of any development on the mainland as well.

Studies have shown that growing up in a city doubles the chances of someone developing schizophrenia and increases the risk for other mental disorders such as depression and chronic anxiety. Despite a higher concentration of people, much of that stems from a lack of social cohesion or meaningful neighbourly interaction. It could be one of the reasons that access to green spaces, where people can gather and escape, is so important for people living in cities. The correct environment around someone helps emotional and mental well-being.

Although we face potentially different issues in rural areas, the need to ensure that developments are in keeping with the area and, if possible, enhance it rather than detract from it is vital. The greatest problem in rural areas is the increasing need and demand for developments, and, as a result, improved infrastructure in terms of roads and transport. Of course, rural development always poses difficulty, especially in areas that have either seen an influx of new buildings or in more remote areas that are almost untouched by architecture or by any development at all. In both cases—I can speak with some authority on this because it is something that many constituents have come to speak to me about—the fear is that something is being lost, and that natural beauty and natural habitats are being replaced by concrete and stone. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that rarely sits easily with residents.

We are also, arguably, more aware than we ever have been before of the impact that we are having on the world: our carbon footprint and the increase in pollution and waste. That is an issue for us every day in this House and outside. Those are fairly new considerations that architects now must deliver as well as ensuring that buildings are safe and structurally sound, along with providing an element of beauty for the local area. The Government have set some money aside within the health budget to address mental health issues. I read the other day that among students and young pupils in school there has been a 50% increase in mental and emotional issues. In Northern Ireland we have 10,000 children who have such issues. It is good that the Government have set that money aside. We need to have departmental co-operation and interaction to ensure that what we deliver in terms of houses also helps to reduce the mental and emotional issues.

In rural areas we must ensure that the requirement to bring something to the local area and to enhance it—at the same time as complementing the local environment—is always met. In urban areas more needs to be done to ensure that, where possible, residents have access to green open spaces and that architecture can respond to the demand for something different and interesting, particularly as simple and monotonous architecture has already been shown to have a more negative impact on citizens. When something as simple as our surroundings can have such an impact on our daily lives and therefore on our mental health, it is important that measures to improve the aesthetics of new and existing buildings should be considered.

Again, I congratulate the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings on securing this debate and I look forward to other contributions.