BUILD FIRST AND ASK FOR PERMISSION LATER

Konstantina Eleni Koulouri Intermediate 2 Year 3 HTS Tutor: Costandis Kizis

Brazil, where hearts were entertaining June We stood beneath an amber moon And softly murmured someday soon We kissed, and clung together there Tomorrow was another day The morning found me miles away With still a million things to say Now, when twilight dims the sky above Recalling thrills of our love There's one thing I'm certain of Return I will to old Brazil
Theme song from the film Brazil 1

Brazil is a science fiction movie directed by Terry Gilliam. The story concerns a bureaucrat in a retro future world who tries to correct an administrative error but ends up becoming a rebel. The main character is split between the bureaucratic world he works for and his dreams of escaping it. The title Brazil and the lyrics of the theme song reveal the main characters nostalgia for a less bureaucratic reality.

Movie analysis: Brazil (1985). Wikke Novalia et al. 2 December 2011. Netherlands. 24 March 2013 < http://brazilanalysis.wordpress.com/>

(1) Extract

from

newspaper

that

reveals

the

thoughts

of

the

minister

on

chaotic

planning

Mr.

Panayi

is

property

developer

in

The new planning vision that Mr. Boles 3 throws on the ministers table concerning a more chaotic type of planning could vindicate Mr. Panayis architecture; an architecture that is freed by the grim world of paperwork. Building without bureaucracy is the theme of this essay. Notions of non-plan and sub-plan will be examined. Launching off, the government Acts that first brought the idea of strict planning in England

Caledonian road. 2 He arrived in England from Cyprus in 1985. Now, he walks around showcasing the flats he has managed to squeeze onto extra floors, in backyards and underground, many built without planning permission. Build first and ask for permission later is the motto of his small company. His friend adds that town hall planners bring the crucifixes when they hear his name because he disregards enforcement action and he never gets punished. Mr. Panayi has created a complex series of spaces that are outside bureaucratic recipes and are successfully used because there is demand for them.

Joseph Bullman (producer). The secret history of our streets: Caledonian Road.BBC, London, 26 January 2012.

The information on Mr. Panayi are taken from a BBC documentary:

Planning rules and bureaucracy swept away so buildings can be extended without local authority permission. James Chapman and Martin Robinson et al. 6 September 2012. United Kingdom. 24 March 2013. <http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgagesh ome/article-2199273/Planning-rules-bureaucracyswept-away-buildings-extended-councilpermission.html>

(2) 1947 Town and Planning Act imposed strict regulations on planning architecture. (Scene from the movie Brazil)

(1947) 4 and the formation of the RIBA Committees (1929) especially concerned with planning issues are being presented. How does the resulting city that is being regulated through these Acts look like? Later on, Richard Sennetts idea of an open city and Reyner Banhams article Non-Plan: an experiment in freedom are being investigated as a response to the bureaucratic world. What might the bureaucrats horror of disorder look like?
5

1929/ RIBA Advisory Panels Beginning from 1929 the RIBA, in conjunction with the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, had formed the Control of Elevations Joint Committee to deal with matters of uniformity and preservation. Its concerns were to secure means for ensuring that the elevations and sittings of new buildings were in accord with their surroundings and that alterations to existing buildings of interest were controlled by an independent body. These Advisory Panels

All the information on the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act in this essay is from: Jonathan Hughes and Simon Sadler (eds), Non-plan : essays on freedom participation and change in modern architecture and urbanism, (London: 2000), pp. 68-69. 5 All the information on the 1929 and 1947 RIBA committees is from: Ibid.

were the first formations attempting to impose a specific approach towards planning through aesthetics and appearance.

(3) The Act aimed at reforming the physical and social order by producing homogeity (Scene from the movie Brazil)

1947/ Town and Country Planning Act In 1947, the Town and Country Planning Act was put into action. For the first time, under this Act every potential development had to secure planning permission. The result of these changes was that any future development was to be governed by plans produced by local authorities that had to be passed by central government. The documents of this Act included control of land use, distribution of industry and development areas, road design and layout and of course, town and country planning legislation. 1947/ RIBA Panels and Government Policies Later the RIBA Panels formed in 1929 were named the Central Committee for Architectural Advisory Panels. This Committee also advised

the government on the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act. Within the advices coming from the Committee, prescriptions on the use of suitable materials, standards of house design and the layout of open spaces were included. 1969/ Non plan 6 20 years after the enforcement of the Planning Act, cities had started to become uniform landscapes. The governments planning

decisions for social housing resulted to massive developments. This governmental architecture that prescribed how to live started to become a
6

All the information on Non plan is from: Jonathan Hughes and Simon Sadler (eds), Non-plan : essays on freedom participation and change in modern architecture and urbanism, (London: 2000), pp. 20-21.

(4) In the 70s Reyner Banham and Richard Sennett expressed their ideas opposing the bureaucratic city

problem. A group of architectural figures produced an article arguing for the concept of non plan. In 1969, Cedric Price with Paul Barker, Reyner Banham and Peter Hall wrote an article responding to the grim world of paperwork. The article was titled Non-Plan: an experiment in freedom published in a social affairs magazine titled New Society. The idea emerged after a conversation about the appalling results of current urban planning strategies. At the time, Non-Plan was going against the established order and controlled uniformity of the built environment. The main question was What would happen if there were no plan?. The idea of Non-plan did not mean the complete abolition of planning. Non plan does not reject planning. To deny planning overall is irrational

because it would mean to deny the basis of economic life as developed in the second half of the 20th century 7. Banham suggests that the economies of all advanced industrial countries are planned, whether they call themselves capitalist or communist. In the United States or Japan or Germany or Britain, the need to make elaborate and long-term plans is as pressing for the individual firm, as it is for the central government. 8 Instead Banham argued what was wrong was the misconception of the term planning as the

Jonathan Hughes and Simon Sadler (eds), Non-plan : essays on freedom participation and change in modern architecture and urbanism, (London: 2000), p. 20 8 ibid

(5) Banham and Sennett argued for an architecture that is freed from the strict bureaucratic policies of 1947 (Scene from the movie Brazil)

imposition of certain physical arrangements, based on value judgments or prejudices 9. These become an established order that instruct the implementation of architectural rules that dont take into consideration time and space context. The Town and Country Planning Act was a result of time and space context. The destruction of towns during WWII called for strict planning regulated by the government. Nonetheless, by 1969 England was healed and was booming. Thence, planning policies needed to be changed because they were not responding any longer to the context.

Banham, then, calls to scrap off the prejudices born in 1947 and create a new idea of planning that directly responds to the frenetic and immediate culture 10. Thus, planning is

conceived as having an inherent element of spontaneity. adaptable. In order to achieve spontaneity, bureaucratic processes and planning permissions should not endorse the type of architecture to be built. As an alternative, planning should consist of setting up frameworks for decisions, within Physical planning becomes

Jonathan Hughes and Simon Sadler (eds), Non-plan : essays on freedom participation and change in modern architecture and urbanism, (London: 2000), p. 20

10

Jonathan Hughes and Simon Sadler (eds), Nonplan : essays on freedom participation and change in modern architecture and urbanism, (London: 2000), p. 20

which as much objective information as possible can be fitted . Then this type of non plan brings about change and the development of a natural social progress of land usage. 1970/ The Uses of Disorder 12 During the same period, Richard Sennett writes about the The uses of disorder. In his essay The open city 13, he argues that city planning declined dramatically after the middle of the 20th century. This deterioration in city design is due to one fault; over-determination. This over determination is due to the absence of context in planning policies presented in Banhams Non plan concept. Over determination was necessary after WWII in order to restore living standards, but now that the living standards were recovered there was no need for strict state intervention. Sennett argues against the unprecedented high level of modern zoning regulations of overdetermination 14. The Town and Country
11

order and control. A regime that pursued the proliferation of bureaucratic and zoning

regulations was created. This proliferation of rules led, however, to the restriction of local innovation and growth. Instead the type of growth that bureaucratic regulations push

involves erasure of what existed before and the placement of a new imposed structure. This closed system, as Richard Sennett names it, is the result of the bureaucratic system where the city is segregated through zoning and there exists a specific regulation for the meaning of places in order to homogenize the population. Cities and communities were regulated through bureaucracy by the welfare state. When neo-liberalism arrived these regulations were passed on to an elite that was speaking the language of freedom whilst manipulating closed bureaucratic systems for private gain 15. Hence, the city still consists of over determined spaces imposed onto the population although the context has changed. According to Sennett, over determination creates a Brittle city, in which the urban environment and its population decay faster than ever before. This excessive order freezes the individual and the architecture in rigid structures that eradicate spontaneity. Thus, he proposes the open city that is based on an open system. The open city embraces three

Planning Act led to a regime of power that wants

Jonathan Hughes and Simon Sadler (eds), Nonplan : essays on freedom participation and change in modern architecture and urbanism, (London: 2000), p. 26 12 All the information on The Uses of Disorder is from: Richard Sennett, The uses of disorder: Personal identity and city life, ( New York: 1970), p. 27-30 13 All the information on The Open City is from the article: Richard Sennett. The open city. Urban Age, Berlin (November 2006). 14 ibid
11

15

Richard Sennett. The open city. Urban Age, Berlin (November 2006).

elements; passage territories, incomplete forms and narratives of development 16. A type of planning that deliberately seeks to promote discontinuity and contradiction is suggested. It would be a planning focused on efficiency and minimums catering to fine-scale variety, rather than ideal end states and onerous rules benefiting large-scale development 17. The open city that Sennett argues for results from the ideas of urbanist Jane Jacob of a city that is dense and diverse (1961). Conditions of over-crowded encounters, places chance produce unexpected and

discordant city spaces. As a result the city is understood as a process of spontaneity

adaptability and unrest, rather than a definitive plan. The eclipse of a definitive plan on the functioning of the city creates spaces that become an experiment for a new architecture and a new place meaning. 2008/ Permitted Development Rulebook 20 In 2008 the realization of Banhms and Sennetts assumptions got a preliminary form. The planning issues that Mr. Boles suggested to the prime minister where finally accepted and signed in 2008. The result was the publication of the Permitted development rulebook. The excuse for the publication of this book came from a research on the UK planning system. As part of a wide-ranging analysis of the UK planning system, the 2008 Killian Pretty Review found that 97% of all planning applications were for householder, minor or other small scale development, 80% of which were directly approved by planning officers. The Reviews findings suggested that local planning

discoveries

innovations 18. The growth then of such a system differs from the concept of growth of a closed system. In the latter, as discussed above, growth signifies erasure and then replacement. In the former, growth is a dialogue between the past and the present rendering growth an evolution. According to Jane Jacobs, strategies that promote an evolutionary urban development include encouraging quirky, jerry built adaptations or additions to existing buildings and encouraging uses of public spaces which dont fit neatly together, such as putting an AIDS hospice square in the middle of a shopping street 19. Hence, planning becomes a series of schemes that produce unresolved and
16

authorities were devoting excessive time and resources to minor applications, leaving too few resources available for major developments. In response to this bureaucratic blockage, the

ibid 17 ibid 18 Richard Sennett. The open city. Urban Age, Berlin (November 2006). 19 ibid

All the information on the Permitted Development rulebook is from the article: DK-CM. Living on Infrastructure. Architecture Today Issue 212, United Kingdom ( October 2010)

20

(6) Image of the Subplan city whre the grey volumes are spaces created based on the ambiguity of legal terminology

Reviews recommended solution came in the form of a radical expansion of Permitted Development - the set of laws dating from 1948 which define what can be built without planning permission. In response, the Permitted

Thus, the rulebook has flaws. The undefined assumptions has led to confused owners and angry neighbors unable to understand their rights. In April the legislation expanded to include permitted development in shops, offices, schools and industrial buildings. 2009/ SUBPLAN 22 Subplan is a publication lead by DK-CM architectural studio. Their book examines the legal loopholes created by the enforcement of the PD rulebook and finds opportunities for a new type of architecture that is characterized by the quirky, jerry built additions that Jane Jacobs suggests. The assumptions made in the

Development (PD) rulebook was duly rewritten by the UK government in October 2008 to fulfill these recommendations. 21 The PD rulebook states that certain alterations and extensions to houses can be carried out without a planning permission. In the book there are guidelines of how these structures should be constructed. However, the obscurity of the terminology allows for various interpretations.
21

DK-CM. Living on Infrastructure. Architecture Today Issue 212, United Kingdom ( October 2010).

The information on Subplan is from the DK-CM architectural studio website: < http://www.dk-cm.com/writing/under-the-radar/>

22

book explore the new physical landscape of planning without bureaucracy. Where non-plan and the open city advocated the strategic abolition of laws in specific areas, subplan finds opportunity in the existing planning system. One example of such a loophole that is described in the book concerns a couple that want to build an extension to their house in order to place a home cinema. If they decide to build an extension then they can only build 4m back, 4m high and up to half the width of their house. Nevertheless, they can decide to build what is called an independent structure. The size of such a structure can be up to half of their open plot and can stretch all the way to the plot boundary. Still, questions arise on how close the structure could be to the house and still be considered an independent structure. In addition, the rulebook states that as long as the structure is 2m from the plot boundary, giving it a double pitched roof allows it to reach up to 4m. If the back wall is slightly pitched, does the structure have a double pitched roof? The final outcome floats in an ambiguous state where the independent structure could actually result to a cinema capable of containing the whole neighborhood. 1985/ Mr. Panayi For the conclusion, we return to the small scale developer on Caledonian Road, Mr. Panayi and his semi legal properties. Mr. Panayi by exploiting the ambiguous terminology of the law

is creating a new type of architecture. One that is planned based on legal loopholes. By

recognizing the faults of the bureaucratic system he has succeeded in behaving according to Sennetts idea of an open system. The type of planning Mr. Panayi is carrying out is a planning focused on efficiency and minimums. Rather than committing to centrally directed localism applied either by the Town and Planning Act in 1947 or the large scale developments; Mr. Panayi has chosen to commit to localism in a much finer scale. He has acknowledged that the governments

commitment to localism is desperately weak and has cunningly recognized the grey areas of poor legalese. He has created his own interpretation of planning; a type of planning that is not concerned with existing legal boundaries. When a projects premise lies on existing legal boundaries then it invites bureaucrats to comment on it. Many times the bureaucratic system will conclude that the scheme is on the wrong side of the boundary. Mr. Panayis scheme, however, involves the concealment of his real plans from the government. As a result, the boundary emerges only after the scheme is completed. The structures Mr. Panayi is creating operate beyond the law and push legal boundaries. One of his ideas that he is very proud of, is to build underneath sidewalks. He is trespassing public space but because the space he creates is

invisible he is able to compromise with the law later and create a new legal and physical boundary. This strategy is in accordance with the view of the growth of the city as an evolution and a process rather than a determined space. Working beyond the legal boundaries undermines the existing boundaries. As a result, planning policies are rendered undetermined. Spaces evolve through the breakage of boundaries. Legal loopholes reduce the permanence of the assumed past uses of the space because there is no specified legitimate reinforcement. Hence, new priorities of land usage emerge.

Hence, the Permitted Development Rulebook assumes that people respect an unwritten law. The publication of such a legal book that frees planning (to some extent) relies on the fact that there already exists an unwritten law that is valued. Mr. Panayi is the extreme position of a person that completely disrespects the spoken law by trespassing public space. However, the example of Mr. Panayi can be studied by architects. The PD rulebook allows for a type of architecture that can be built beyond legal boundaries. New land uses can be found within the city to create the Subplan city. The movie Brazil presents the suffocating

After

the

publication

of

the

Permitted

organization of a future city as perceived in the 1970s. The main character is unable to escape his bureaucratic existence in order to chase his dreams. He stands beneath an amber moon and hopes that someday soon, he will return to old Brazil. Now, in 2010, he can find another way to realize his dreams. Rather than escape it involves boundaries Rulebook. the maneuvering between the

Development rulebook, the planning statement, takes on a less powerful role. The city without planning permissions becomes a space of continuous unevenness in both process and result. The spaces of ambiguous legalese become acute. The obscurity creates opportunity areas for the development of a new type of small scale architecture. If multiplied however, the impact of such structures can change the environment of the city. Nonetheless, the eclipse of controlled

of the Permitted Development

development has an inherent fault. Mr. Panayi has proved that pure human greed that thrives on human need can develop planning. The

underground sidewalk spaces he has created, where there is almost no light, are not respectful to the residents.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Jonathan Hughes and Simon Sadler (eds), Non-plan : essays on freedom participation and change in modern architecture and urbanism, Architectural Press: London, 2000. Richard Sennett, The uses of disorder: Personal identity and city life, Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1970. Pat Morton (ed.), Pop culture and Postwar American Taste, Blackwell: London, 2006. Paul Barker, The freedoms of suburbia, Frances Lincoln: London, 2009. ARTICLES Richard Sennett. The open city. Urban Age, Berlin (November 2006). DK-CM. Living on Infrastructure. Architecture Today Issue 212, United Kingdom ( October 2010) WEB PAGES Movie analysis: Brazil (1985). Wikke Novalia et al. 2 December 2011. Netherlands. 24 March 2013 < http://brazilanalysis.wordpress.com/>

Planning rules and bureaucracy swept away so buildings can be extended without local authority permission. James Chapman and Martin Robinson et al. 6 September 2012. United Kingdom. 24 March 2013. < http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-2199273/Planning-rules-bureaucracyswept-away-buildings-extended-council-permission.html>

DOCUMENTARIES Joseph Bullman (producer). The secret history of our streets: Caledonian Road.BBC, London, 26 January 2012.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: Newspaper extract on new planning reforms Source: www.thisismoney.com, 24 March 2013 < http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-2199273/Planning-rules-bureaucracyswept-away-buildings-extended-council-permission.html>

Figure 2: Scene from the movie Brazil Source: www.imdb.co.uk, 24 March 2013 <http://www.imdb.co.uk>

Figure 3: Scene from the movie Brazil Source: www.imdb.co.uk, 24 March 2013 <http://www.imdb.co.uk> Figure 4: Collage. Background scene from the movie Brazil. Foreground Richard Sennett and Reyner Banhams faces Source: <http://www.imdb.co.uk> Figure 5: Subplan drawing Source: www.dk-cm.com, 24 March 2013 < http://www.dk-cm.com/projects/living-on-infrastructure/>