Silly season

Bestowing listed status on Milton Keynes typified a grim summer, says Eelco Hooftman

We will always remember the summer of 2010. At the 21st of June 2010, the longest day of the year and the first day of summer, secretary of state Jeremy Hunt and heritage minister John Penrose went on a secret undercover operation to Milton Keynes and at exactly 11.28 – mission accomplished – their final decision was made: Milton Keynes shopping centre was to become grade ll listed.

While at Stonehenge 20,000 revellers, in jovial mood, celebrated the summer solstice, our newly-appointed secretary of state and heritage minister witnessed the same rising sun miraculously appear in exact alignment to Milton Keynes’ Midsummer Boulevard.  For once, the town planners and their wacky landscape architects had got it right; the sun brilliantly illuminated the axis of the half mile long shopping centre – appropriately opened in 1973 by shopkeeper’s daughter Margaret Thatcher – to reach right into the very heart of the inner sanctum of Midsummer Arcade. The glorious dazzling of the sun’s celestial rays, bouncing in all four corners of this ‘Miesian’ temple of commerce, created a moment of ecstatic euphoria and within that split second – that moment when the North Pole is tilted closer to the sun than on any day of the year – a moment of sublime revelation, the future of Milton Keynes was sealed.

The announcement was made 25 days after the event, on the 16th of July. 

Holy cow
Milton Keynes’ shopping centre, a building never universally loved and, under fierce protest of its commercial owners who pleased themselves to own a nondescript building without character, was designated with a stroke of the ministerial pen as a treasure of national importance.  In the glistering eyes of a new ‘Get Carter’ 20th century heritage lobby, the world of sacred cows has miraculously turned concrete.

Was the celestial alignment of Milton Keynes’ divine inspiration or an early post-modern architectural prank? The Englishness of English Town Planning is still to be written but its foundation and blue print may well be found in the positioning of the stars.  John Wood the Elder, the Bob the Builder of Georgian times, fashioned the trend when he based his Circus in Bath on the 318 feet circumference of Stonehenge, of which he himself produced a precise and extensive set of measured drawings in 1740.

Net loss
On Sunday 11 July, after an unbeaten run of 20 games, Holland lost the World Cup final 1-0 to Spain. This tournament was the end of Holland playing the beautiful game in a beautiful way. 

The Dutch had invented and perfected the concept of Total Football; a golden age of innovative attacking play in a fluid 3 /4 /3 formation. Its essence was that each player could change position at any moment in time. Compared to this the English play an opportunistic physical game not unlike a traditional rugby scrum, kicking the ball in the box and hoping for the best….

Most interestingly, the two types of football could be compared to the two nations’ different planning systems and even the way in which their architecture is conceived. Holland is the only country in the world where architecture is allowed, even expected, to fail as long as it is designed beautifully. In Holland, God has never been in the detail but in the overall concept. The Dutch shaped the way they played their football like architecture and vice versa. 

Alas, Holland lost its cool, we lost the final and our reputation; we played dirty and are no longer a pleasure to watch. How ironic it is that in the summer of 2010, the Dutch have turned into Germans, and the Germans into Dutch.

Giant leap
And finally, the summer of 2010 will be remembered for the glorious revolution of David Cameron’s new Big Society. One step by Humpty Dumpty David (followed by a joyful little hop skip and a jump by Nick) is a giant leap for mankind. Who needs Schools for the Future if we can brush off our old school ties? Why give financial support to our Olympic medal candidates? After all, the poorer the country, the faster they run!

From now on we can clear our minds and desks; old fashioned time- and paper-wasting masterplanning exercises are to be abandoned and replaced by simple hand written notes signed by Royal Discreet (Prince Charles, Chelsea Barracks) or Yankee Doodle phone calls to Scotland’s first minister (Donald Trump, golf course). Beware: all SSSIs will from now on become Site of Specific Scandalous Interest. The treacherous word ‘regional’ is banned from the vocabulary of our Conservative cabinet ministers. DIY planning permissions are to be obtained by a friendly fire chat over the garden fence. A five year Non-Plan will let free enterprise recoup lost profits and regain net gains. The new zoning plan for London will be defined by distinct sectors of Russian, Chinese and Middle Eastern developer-led enterprise zones.  Unemployed architects will be strongly advised to apply for on the job training as volunteers at the London Olympics or sell their soul to the devil in countries where Blueberry is not yet fully compatible… So far for progress; first we had Architecture without Architects now we have Architects without Architecture. Climate Change is no longer a natural disaster but a political concept.
We always will try to forget the summer of 2010.

Eelco Hooftman is a partner at Gross.Max landscape architects