Examination of Witness (Questions 120-139)
1 NOVEMBER 2004
MS MIRA
BAR-HILLEL
Q120 Mr O'Brien: A little?
Ms Bar-Hillel: I would suggest
that at every design review panel meeting minutes are taken and
the name of every single member of the panel present is recorded,
the debate is recorded, the forum is recorded, how much information
has the panel received about this scheme, how many drawings have
they seen? For example, one of the things which amaze me about
CABE is that they never go to the site. Again there is evidence
in this report from all the amenity societies, they do not go
to the site. It is like computer-dating. "Send us some snapshots,
with a brief résumé of why you're so wonderful,
and we'll match you up with a planning application and you'll
live happily ever after." It is superficial, it is irresponsible.
If rules are laid down and if someone is going to open that piece
of paper and find out how they have reached that decision, it
is very possible that local authorities will take a different
view of what is before them.
Q121 Mr O'Brien: Could local authorities
take over? If CABE finished after the design stage, would local
authorities have the skills to assess the design quality and the
planning applications?
Ms Bar-Hillel: They always have
in the past.
Q122 Mr O'Brien: They will not have to?
Ms Bar-Hillel: No, there was life
before CABE, I am suggesting. CABE is actually only five years
old. I know sometimes we think it is suffering from some sort
of senile dementia, but it is only five years old.
Q123 Mr O'Brien: You did hear my colleague
suggest that the reason why CABE came in is because of the experience
that we had in the sixties and seventies, in my area, where large
estates were built and they were pulled down after such a short
time because no-one would live in them. That is one of the reasons
why CABE came in. So there was life before CABE but it was not
a very good one?
Ms Bar-Hillel: In the eighties
and the nineties a lot of very good estates were built without
any input from CABE.
Q124 Mr O'Brien: CABE came in to improve
the design. Are you saying that it has not been successful?
Ms Bar-Hillel: As I said before,
I am not sure. I have yet to be convinced either way. You were
asking about housing estates. Can I relate to you a recent experience
I had, it is so recent that I could not put it in my submission
because it happened afterwards. As you probably all know, CABE
produced a very scathing report on house-builders and said what
rubbish a lot of their designs were. I got a call saying "Would
you like a copy for publication?" and I said, "Yes,
of course, and by the way did you actually talk to anyone who
had bought any of those houses, the good, the bad or the ugly?"
and there was a gasp at the other end of the 'phone. My initial
thought was, "Oh, he's going to say, `Whoops, we should have
done that shouldn't we?'" but he did not. He was gasping
because he was taken aback at the question. They had no intention
of asking people who actually bought the houses whether they liked
them and, if so, why, or if they did not why not. There was some
kind of contempt for members of the public there.
Q125 Mr O'Brien: What you are saying
then is that CABE should be more involved, by site visits, by
looking at the environment around the site, and report and give
opinions on the design after seeing the site, so CABE should be
more involved with design quality?
Ms Bar-Hillel: Talk to real people,
get down from your ivory tower. Remember that buildings are there
for people, not the other way round.
Q126 Mr O'Brien: You are not saying that
CABE should not be involved with design or the recommendations?
Ms Bar-Hillel: As long as a procedure
is totally open and transparent then I do not see any reason why
not.
Christine Russell: Can I take you up
on the points you were just making about the capacity of local
authorities, because these halcyon days you refer to in the eighties
and the nineties, of course, those were the days when local authorities
actually did have in-house architects and most local authorities
do not have any in-house architects any more. If they do not have
that capacity and if CABE did not exist, from where should local
authorities get this expert advice on design, purely on design?
Q127 Sir Paul Beresford: Could they buy
it in?
Ms Bar-Hillel: They could choose
to buy it in and they could choose to use their own commonsense.
Q128 Christine Russell: From whom would
they buy it in?
Ms Bar-Hillel: From private architectural
consultants.
Q129 Christine Russell: From rivals to
the applicant?
Ms Bar-Hillel: In fact, if you
are talking about a really big scheme in central London, you are
much more likely to find rivals on the CABE panel than elsewhere,
much more likely.
Q130 Christine Russell: Does that not
help the accountability argument, if they are rivals?
Ms Bar-Hillel: Again, because
of the lack of transparency, they get away with it. If they were
named, the applicants would look at the list of panellists and
say, "Hang on a second, we may not be rivals on this side
but we're rivals there," or "We had a very nasty exchange,
with personal abuse involved, over some competition in China,"
or whatever. Architects take things terribly personally.
Q131 Christine Russell: Is the bottom
line of your obviously deep-seated aversion to CABE based on the
fact that you think that ordinary people, as you called them earlier,
do not actually like good designs, good modern architecture?
Ms Bar-Hillel: I do not know what
you mean by good design and good modern architecture. Ordinary
people I think have the commonsense, and, ordinary people, for
goodness sake, it is you and me we are talking about here. Are
we not allowed to have an opinion as to what we think is good
architecture?
Q132 Christine Russell: Do you not think
that most ordinary people, given a choice, would like to live
in, I do not know, mock Tudor, or whatever, a pastiche?
Ms Bar-Hillel: Obviously CABE
think so, which is why, when I suggested they would like to speak
to ordinary people, they cringed in horror. Their attitude, I
have to say, probably was more along the lines of "Forgive
them, Father, for they know not what they do. We cannot possibly
ask members of the public, in case, God forbid, they should tell
us what they really think. We have to educate them to like glass
and steel boxes."
Q133 Chairman: Is it CABE in particular
you do not like, or is it architects in general?
Ms Bar-Hillel: Some of my best
friends are architects.
Q134 Christine Russell: Would it help,
would you come round perhaps to liking and loving CABE if the
kind of composition of the design review panel were different?
Ms Bar-Hillel: Yes. Let us be
serious about this.
Q135 Christine Russell: Who would you
put on it? You want transparency and openness so give us a list
of who you would put on it?
Ms Bar-Hillel: At the moment there
is too much of the sort of Trinny and Susannah approach, "We
will dress you and it will change your life," or not. That
is the height of arrogance. Another example of the height of arrogance
is the letter from a former CABE person, saying "We do not,
as a matter of course, set out reasoning which leads us to support
projects." Meaning "This is good and we're going to
like it and you're going to like it and don't ask us to tell you
why." How arrogant is that? Who would I want to see on CABE?
That is asking me to be arrogant, so, no, I am not going to tell
CABE who to have. I would suggest that CABE would be better off
if it removed from its design review panel anybody with a commercial
interest in design and development. If you say, "That empties
the ranks," I do not think so.
Q136 Christine Russell: Would not that
exclude architects too?
Ms Bar-Hillel: No, it would exclude
only commercially-active architects. There are a lot of architects
who are not commercially active, a lot of them are Fellows of
the RIBA.
Q137 Andrew Bennett: You would have all
the failures, would you not?
Ms Bar-Hillel: No. Those people
will not have the time to sit on CABE design review panels. Failed
architects do not tend to, if you like, maybe you are suspecting
that they will be teaching so you will not have academic architects.
I am not sure that is straightforward. I will give you a name.
Ian Henderson has just retired as Chief Executive of Land Securities.
I have known him for 25 years. I could not mention anyone whom
I hold in higher regard as to his integrity, most importantly,
his integrity. He is a completely straight and honest man, who
from now on will have no commercial interests, unless there is
something I do not know and he has got 40 other chairmanships.
That is the sort of person I suggest you should be looking for.
Q138 Chairman: You have got a generational
thing here, have you not? If you are immediately going to go to
people who are retired then people with new ideas coming up are
almost going to be excluded from the process because they are
going to be working?
Ms Bar-Hillel: Have a few students,
architectural students.
Q139 Chairman: Is this really the advice
we want, from some students and some retired people and you leave
out everyone in the middle?
Ms Bar-Hillel: No. It is a matter
of balance, if you have enough of a mixture of people.
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