Beauty! Michael Gove has declared on several occasions, in his capacity as secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities. Let’s have beautiful buildings. In this he’s picking up on a drumbeat that has been coming from the conservative thinktank Policy Exchange for some years, and from a well-connected campaign group called Create Streets, which wants “beautiful and popular” new neighbourhoods to be built. Last December, Policy Exchange proposed a “School of Place”, which, as Gove put it, would enable architects and planners “to go out and build beautiful, sustainable places in which people and communities can thrive”.
A number of smug Twitter accounts, meanwhile, like to post single images of unquestionably lovely old architecture, while lamenting that contemporary architecture doesn’t reach the same heights. And indeed we all like beauty. If new housing were as loved as old, neighbours might welcome it a little more. Few would wish that, say, the city of Edinburgh or a Cotswolds village would return to the natural landscape they once were, because their architecture is generally loved. Some questions, though, are begged. What actually makes a place beautiful? How can beauty be achieved by modern housebuilders, driven by the wish to erect homes as cheaply, efficiently and predictably as possible?
