Building better style of home should be necessity

Traditional architecture is human cultural ingenuity gifted from one generation to another. And whether it be the Chevron Building in New York or the Hermitage in St Petersburg, when you stand in their shadow, it’s evident that the creators were determined to produce something beautiful and everlasting.

I say traditional architecture as a broad reference to pre-modernist architecture, where buildings were careful, considered, functional and encouraged to be beautiful.

It is sometimes as simple as a sophisticated colour palette or a single defiant bezel. Other times it’s layers of detail, symmetry and texture. Those buildings are from a time when society invested in construction as an art, not just a science or a chore.

The advent of ‘industrial’ modernist architecture has achieved little except to provide humanity with a great disservice.

Natural materials have been replaced with metal and glass, symmetry has been replaced with distortion and colours have been replaced with dreary shades of grey.

It has been justified to save on expense, improve sustainability and modernize our cities.

In reality, it has sanitised creativity, glorified ugliness and isolated communities from their surrounds.

In Australia, we fiercely protect traditional heritage buildings.

On the other hand, modernist buildings that were lauded as icons in the 1970s and 1980s, such as the Gas and Fuel Building in Melbourne, the brutalist FESA House in Perth or the Octagon Building in Parramatta have either been demolished or are slated for redevelopment.

And, in that process, there have been few to mourn their demise.

Looking forward, query which newer ‘landmarks’ will be gone in 40 years. Traditional design tends to lend itself to being repurposed and given new life.

The Edwardian façade of 252 High Holborn in London started life as the offices of the Pearl Assurance Company. Decades later, its detail was painstakingly restored and it is now home to the Rosewood Hotel, one of the finest hotels in London.

Imagine a modern insurance company building becoming home to a luxury hotel? I think not.

Better still, imagine going on a world tour to soak up cold and aloof high rises that look the same in every country. Again, unlikely to become a thing.

So great is the diminution of our cities, that in the United Kingdom the government set up the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission to report on how to improve public architecture.

The commission focused on ‘beautiful’ styles, to make the next generation of buildings more visually appealing, with better quality design, to be better interconnected with the local environment and more focused on replacing the social cost of ugliness with a sense of beauty, place and spirit of community.

The report was published in 2020 and is intended to positively influence future planning approvals.

An Australian movement named Street Level is hoping to achieve something similar here.

Rather than importing masses of cheap materials to build ugly repellent public buildings, it wants us to return to designing buildings for people rather than to simply appease jaundiced modern building trends.

The fact is, if public funds are going to be spent on public buildings, we should at least build things we are proud of, which connect us to our environment and which can be gifted to future generations.

Rather than denounce the idea as being too costly, we should consider good design an invaluable investment.

There is no point spending public money on buildings which lack appeal and functionality – and which we tear down in a generation.

And this isn’t about being elitist. This is about making beautiful communities available to everyone, not just the affluent.

We owe it to future generations to gift them cities they can and want to live in.

There is no shame in aspiring to being both functional and beautiful.