I spent an uplifting hour today being introduced to the Special Collections at the Bishopsgate Institute, an amazingly impressive public resource, usefully independent of the control of either Tower Hamlets or the City, apparently funded by a well managed historic endowment: very remarkable, particularly when I was taken down into the basement vaults.

Outside, there is fine, low relief decoration on the Townsend façade:-

I was interested to read the attached comments on the Policy Exchange paper advocating the establishment of a School of Place, an absurdly utopian proposal to answer a set of immediate issues – how to encourage and enable high quality housing which gets public support.

The suggestions from Claire Bennie, as attached (assuming you can open it), look much more sensible – informed by analysis and experience.

I was interested in reading the attached coverage of a planned new student development in Cambridge by Queens’ College: new graduate housing in a very sensitive site in water meadows towards Granchester, but which looks as if it has been planned with extreme care. But people are objecting because of the displacement of bats. It demonstrates the difficulties which new development faces – however well considered, there is always some reason to object, so we face a huge shortage of good new housing.

Not sure what the answer is.

https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/new-cambridge-university-flats-decided-25891291

Happy New Year to my readers !

I only half heard it from the noise of the explosions outside, but let’s hope that 2023 is a bit better than 2022: fewer catastrophes; less war; and the re-opening of the NPG in June to look forward to.

I was slightly baffled to hear Michael Gove advocating the creation of a brand new School of Architecture on the airwaves over Christmas. While I’m sympathetic to the issues he raises – how to create a good quality urban environment – I am not convinced that creating a version of the École des Beaux Arts is the solution. Surely, it ought to be possible to work with the existing architecture schools, rather than have to establish a new one. Besides, the problems are immediate: how to enable the construction of new housing with public support. Gove is actually in the best possible position to make changes to planning law, which would be much more effective than putting money into a new architecture school.

My views as attached in The Critic:

https://thecritic.co.uk/A-School-of-Place/?s=09

Talking of things which arrive unexpectedly through the post, I have just received a copy of the booklet published to coincide with the Garden Museum’s Lucian Freud exhibition – like the exhibition, small scale, but extra special, showing the full strength and variety of Freud’s work and the intensity of his engagement with plant life, quoting his teacher and mentor, Cedric Morris, who said, ‘when I see plants, I do not see prettiness but, rather, ruthlessness, strength, and lust’.

Having been away the week before Christmas and what with postal strikes and the fact that the GPO punishes anyone who puts our address as 133-135, instead of 135 only (I suppose they regard 133-135, rightly, as pretentious), we have returned to an unexpected mountain of Christmas cards, which I thought might be depressing, but is actually oddly, and unexpectedly, uplifting:  messages from old friends;  the odd change-of-address;  much artwork;  interesting choice of cards;  news from people we haven’t seen because of COVID;  a sense of connectness.   Since I’ve abandoned card sending, doing it electronically instead (and also somewhat haphazardly), this is a way of thanking those of my blog followers who sent cards.  

I particularly liked the old postcard of a brass in Saffron Walden Church with the greeting GAUDETE NATO SALVATORE, now that Happy Christmas is politically suspect.