Architecture and The City: Coastal Urban Renaissance

The Faculty of Arts - in conjunction with Brighton & Hove’s Economic Partnership, the City Council and the regional Arts Council - played a key role in the holding of an important closed seminar focussing on coastal urban renaissance and the regeneration of the city. Fifty key figures, including policy makers, councillors, politicians, national, regional and local government agencies, academics, architects, designers, developers and bankers active in the region were invited to participate.

Part of national Architecture Week 2003, the event was held in the Royal Pavilion and chaired by Paul Finch from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment with keynote presentations by Professor John Worthington, Chair of the City Futures panel for the RIBA and CABE, Lord Bassam and the architect Piers Gough. Professor Worthington’s talk raised a number key concerns relating to the fragility and diversity of economies of cities such as Brighton & Hove, notions of identity, a distinctive sense of place and the extreme contrasts of class, age, wealth and density, whilst Lord Bassam presented the government’s urban task force agenda and the opportunities and issues for Brighton & Hove afforded by recent policies for Sustainable Communities. He also identified the need to respond to the national housing crisis by building a further two million homes in the South East over the next twenty years, calling for innovative solutions to local predicaments given the immediate pressure such policies place on popular and already dense destinations such as Brighton & Hove.

Piers Gough’s presentation was provocative and challenging, with many of his asides providing considerable food for thought in the fertile discussions that followed the talks. Recounting a recent meeting of London design champions he summarised their advice thus - “don’t consult specialists and don’t consult the public”. He also commented that the public only ever liked his built work and rued the proliferation of guidelines and policies created by middle class experts in response to government agendas that appeared to do little except suppress passion and optimism. The wide-ranging discussions that followed on from the speakers included considerable focus on ‘nimbyism’ and the negativity created by a conservationist lobby that has tended to over-ride the positive aspirations and energy of the city as a creative laboratory. Central to the debate was a concern for devising effective means of championing urban quality and design excellence and the value of the seminar was seen as an important and positive step in the move towards its achievement. The outcomes were recorded and are planned for publication as a means of providing a springboard for positive and responsive plans for action.