The announcement in January 2007 that the Byker Wall, a part of the internationally acclaimed Byker Wall Redevelopment in Newcastle, had been listed as Grade II*, was yet another accolade for its architect, the late Ralph Erskine. Two other English works of this iconic architect are the Ark, in Hammersmith, London, and the Greenwich Millenium Village.
Ralph Erskine was born in London in 1914. The main influences on his early and formative years were the socialist ideal of his Scottish Presbyterian parents and his attendance at the Friends School Saffron Walden, where he became committed to Quaker ideals. These ideals carried through to his views on society, man’s place in it, and into his perspective on architecture.
After studying architecture at the Regent Street Polytechnic, London, including the requisite study of classical architecture, he and his contemporaries were allowed to follow their own ideas. Among those contemporaries was Gordon Cullen, the architect who developed the idea of “townscape”. After qualification, Erskine worked for Louis de Soisson’s office designing the Garden City of Welwyn. He managed to find time to study town planning, and that increased his awareness of and further stimulated his interest in the concept of the inter-relationship between the built environment and the community.
He went to Sweden in 1938 where he founded an architectural practice. Much of his work was in Sweden where the Scandinavian landscape and climate, along with his socialist principles, were the major influences on his work. He was known for his designs being ecologically conscious and the fact that his developments balanced interests of the community and the individual. He was a very inclusive architect and it is said that the Byker redevelopment in Newcastle on Tyne is one of the largest and most thorough examples of user participation in design.
The main feature of the Byker redevelopment, started in 1969 and finished in 1982, is the Byker Wall. It was intended as a barrier against a motorway, which was never in fact built, but it shielded a mix of low rise and individual houses, together with a network of public, private and semi-private spaces. The development was planned so that its inhabitants had a view towards the River Tyne.
The Byker Wall is a long unbroken block of 620 maisonettes in the Functionalist Romantic style, with textured complex facades, colourful brick, wood and plastic panels. Its innovative and visionary design has won many awards including the Civic Trust Award, the Eternit Award, the Veronica Rudge Green Prize for Urban Design from Harvard University, and the Wall has been placed on Unesco’s List of Outstanding 20th Century Buildings. Its recent Grade II* listing is, therefore, another fitting accolade.
As a contrast to Erskine’s visionary development in the context of social housing, the Ark, in Hammersmith, is an office block in the centre of a roundabout. This building too shows Erskine’s commitment to social and environmental responsibility. Its users have the benefit of an architectural space which, through the cleft and the atrium, brought daylight to every level. It was built in 1992 and its shape suggests its name – with its hull being easily recognisable, with a cutaway in the façade which is believed to be for a large ramp leading up to the entrance but this was unfortunately not carried through to the finished design. Its enlightened design has, unfortunately, led to it being described as being “at the cost of inefficient use of space in conventional office terms”.
The last but by no means least of our “A B …G” is the Greenwich Millennium Village. This innovative, modern, urban village is part of the regeneration of the whole of the Greenwich Peninsula, home of the ill-fated Millennium Dome. The village has 670 residences of an environmentally friendly design as can be expected from Erskine and has integrated village shopping and community centres.
He won the RIBA Gold Medal of Architecture in 1987 and was appointed a CBE in 1979. His own words tell of his personal beliefs: “architecture, like the shaft of an axe, must beautifully and precisely symbolise its own good reasons for its necessary existence. Insight and sincerity will tell us which reasons are good” and “Architecture and urban planning – be it at macro or micro level, a private villa or an office block – must not only be a showpiece of design and technology, but give expression to those democratic ideals of respect for human dignity, equality and freedom that are fostered in our society”.
Ralph Erskine died in March 2005 aged 91, in Drottingholm, near Stockholm, Sweden.
For further information or advice, please contact Peter Tugwell.
This article was first published in Construction News, Spring 2007
