5. David Knight & Cristina Monteiro

Architects
London - UK

‘Dreaming Ground’

Many aspects of literature are quite rigid. We have a lot of assumptions around how we read. We assume that we start at the beginning and must read until the end; that if a text is written and printed then it must be absorbed in a linear way. There is a lot of shame associated with ‘dipping in and out’. When teaching, I am constantly trying to work out people’s assumptions, to understand where they are going. This normally involves knocking things over, like cats in YouTube videos. You may try to steer them away from one reference, or point out that they are giving a certain resource too much respect.

Could you please give us a brief introduction to your library?

CM We are fortunate enough to have various libraries, one in the flat we rent in London, one in the Studio in Bethnal Green and the other in our house in Sussex.

How do you find the books are split?

CM Most of the books in Sussex are related to Sussex, including my small collection of Virginia Woolf books, as well as a number of first edition and antique books, particularly relating to the topography and social history of Sussex.

DK It is a collection of books related to the specific landscape of Sussex, which is where I was born; artists who worked there, local history, geology, and so on. These are topics that I am writing about at the moment, particularly the landscape and development history of the villages and towns around Brighton.

In our London flat, we have a large collection of fiction, as well as a number of books on planning history and theory because that's largely where I wrote my PhD. Plus a lot of cookbooks, topographical writing, travel books and a worryingly large number of Doctor Who novels from the 90s.

CM In the Studio, we have all of our architectural history books and monographs and also this amazing resource; the first five years of The Architectural Review (AR)
and then the print edition from 1947 until 2001, though we have some gaps that we are working to fill.

DK The ARs are mostly two separate collections that we inherited and merged, one from a late architect named Ronald Riggs who used to work for Basil Spence and the other from the wonderful writer Sutherland Lyall who gifted them to us.

What era of the magazine do you find yourself returning to the most often?

CM I am looking a lot at the late 1940s into the early 1950s. A truly special era documenting the birth of national planning. We are currently missing the beginning of the 1940s, which I would like to find.

Having been given two collections, it does feel like we are custodians of these magazines in a way. I've been subscribing to the AR for years now and we have become much more fastidious in how we store them. It is of such high quality, particularly in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. An amazing resource that documents key moments in the development of the built environment in the UK and further afield. As a monthly magazine, it provides an ongoing snapshot of the development of national planning which we are fascinated with. The immediacy of the magazine as a format becomes important.

DK Absolutely. The AR was aiming for posterity and for influence, trying to commission research that engages with and develops the profession. This issue (October 1949) was critical to the publication of our own book, Public House: A Cultural and Social History of the London Pub (Open City, 2021). In the wake of the Blitz destroying several pubs, the AR published this special number called, Inside the Pub concerned with the loss of pub culture in relation to the reconstruction of the post-war city. An incredible piece of research with original photography.

CM Also with amazing graphics!

DK Yes. It was part of an AR campaign at the time called, 'The Functional Tradition', which argued that modernism was not only rooted in avant-garde ideas but also related back to everyday vernacular buildings of the past. The Inside the Pub issue ends with a call for readers to redesign the pub for 20th century Britain. Gordon Cullen made spectacular drawings to promote the competition, which were far better than any produced for the actual competition. At the time, Cullen was at the forefront of modernist architecture, having drawn perspectives for the Festival of Britain. Yet, here he was also concerned for the future of the pub, advocating its retention. His drawings merge ideas of the traditional pub with the modernist Royal Festival Hall, and relate strongly to his work on Townscape.

Incredible.

DK In the history of British architectural culture, magazines, particularly issues such as these, were critical.

CM The canal issue is also fantastic.

DK Yes, just 5 months prior to the issue on pubs, the AR had released an issue on canals. Again, a specialist issue, authored by Eric de Maré, a famous architectural photographer who captured most of the images in the magazine during this period.

CM This issue particularly celebrates these photographs. Incredible light and shadow.

DK The photographs are presented alongside a history and analysis of the canals and again, this idea of the functional tradition. During the war, de Maré was rejected for military service on medical grounds, instead working on various community activities along Britain's canals, documenting them as he went. The photographs are incredibly sculptural. With an inherent risk of nationalisation, the issue ends with a speculation on the future of canals. It was a vanguard effort to try and preserve them. Again, we see immaculate drawings by Cullen, showing canals as we might expect to see them today, as focal points within our cities. At the time, this vision would have been incredibly forward thinking.

It is fascinating to think about; Cullen drawing iconic modernist buildings in Central London, whilst at the same time concerning himself with this contextual approach to, as the AR labelled it, 'the functional tradition'.

The ideas discussed in these issues have obviously been important to your work, with your recent book on public houses, as well as your research into canals. What is the relationship between literature and your own practice?

CM I think we reference topics, such as these back issues of the AR, in an intuitive way. They form part of our background knowledge on a topic, a reference, but without 100% knowing where that reference is coming from.

It feeds into our teaching as well. Open City commissioned us to write about pubs after David undertook research into the public house at Kingston School of Art.

DK Many of the drawings from Unit 25 ended up in the book. Probably my favourite drawings from that series are of The Wenlock Arms in Hoxton, illustrating the pub in its (then) current state of inhabitation. The drawings were designed to begin a discussion on calibration; for students to learn lessons about how architects need to work when designing public buildings - buildings for shared or collective use. A pub's character is never strictly defined by architects, but instead, by those running them; their stewardship, management and care, by time. In the following term, students had to translate this idea on public dwelling to an alternative typology.

CM That particular study was a real breath of joy and captured a lot of people's imagination. During that period we realised that there was no planning law to protect the pub as a community venue, particularly the first floor space, often used by local people. Whilst campaigning, we had several discussions with planning consultants that were quite shocking. They were completely focused on the facade of the pub, its appearance, with very little concern for its programme. These drawings demonstrated the particular characteristics of the pub, promoting plural cultures, and talking about the pub as community infrastructure.

Following David's Unit 2 year, I suggested to Daniel Rosbottom, Head of the Department of Architecture and Landscape at the time, that we should survey 100 London pubs the following year for the Vertical Project.

DK The idea was for the school to focus on ideas of heritage and its protection. The public house became a vessel to discuss these ideas. It is not an ancient monument. It is not Stonehenge. But in many ways, it is far more complex to analyse as a result. Heritage becomes about use, diversity, complexity, narrative and unity. It was a positive and nuanced way to get an architecture school to think about heritage practice.

CM We wanted to lodge an appeal for the public house to become designated as a piece of Intangible Cultural Heritage, in the same way that the Vienna coffee house is protected.

DK A formative book when thinking about this survey, was Society (SteidlMack, 2007). A collection of photographs by Bridget Smith, showing club and society rooms from around the UK. Incredibly eloquent photographs of community spaces. They are captured empty, but you get a glimpse of the way in which people come together. This book was commissioned by Clare Cumberlidge and Lucy Musgrave when I was working for them at General Public Agency, and continues to be important to me.

This all relates back to your question in the sense that I don't think we know how to design without research. We always either find ourselves delving in local history archives, trying to identify threads we can work with and use, or we look at precedents. Historical references that provide an avenue into our own thinking. We use research to interrogate the endless learning potential from good work that has already been undertaken. Personally, I don't know how to function as a designer without background research, it is inherent to our process of creating new work. If you asked me to develop a proposal in front of a blank piece of paper, I would struggle to find any meaning.

CM I am going to briefly mention this book as it was written by our Head of School at the University of East London, Peter Salter: TS: Intuition & Process (Architectural Association, 1989). This publication helped us define the way we approach research. It collates 20 students' strategic approaches to material, landscape and economy of scale. The projects are often foreign to the landscape they are sited in, but a research-led approach helps embed them in a place. They form a dialogue. As a student this was essential reading to understand the character of a place.

DK A poetic approach to teaching technical studies.

CM Exactly. For me, it is exactly this poetic approach to working with research that helps to evolve architecture from one that speaks, to one that listens. There are two volumes in particular that were critical for both our practice and our teaching in working with the idea of the survey, which were published as Arquitectura Popular em Portugal (Sindicato Nacional dos Arquitectos, 1961). They present systematic collections of vernacular Portuguese building. During this period, the dictatorship in Portugal, the Estado Novo regime, as with most dictatorships, displayed a keen interest in national pride and identity. Whilst at the time, there was a group of architects focusing on contextual studies of Portuguese architecture. In an incredible coup, the architects were commissioned by the government to develop an in depth study of the Portuguese vernacular.

DK It was genius! We are talking about a period of architecture in Portugal that included now famous architects, such as Álvaro Siza and Fernando Távora. In that particular context however, they were working in the context of a repressive regime, but a regime that in 1940 decided there was such a thing as 'the Portuguese house'. A series of exhibitions, construction and propaganda were made by the government at this time, presenting a strong yet fictional idea of what Portuguese architecture and culture was all about, buildings and vernacular details with peasants standing outside wearing 'national costume'. It was completely invented to try and standardise, and thus, reinforce the paternalistic regime. Távora suggested that the government commission a book documenting this regional architecture, leading to which over about six years, became Arquitectura Popular. The result is a fantastically subversive survey that inverted the right wing state's idea of Portuguese culture and architecture, using their own money!

CM When you look at the early work of Siza and Távora, you can see the influence of this survey on their work. At that point, with such repression, this research was the only way that they could practise modernism. You can see multiple echoes of Siza's Boa Nova Tea House in the book. It is a completely unprecedented, special building, but you can trace the borrowing of vernacular ideas from these books that form the wonderful geometries and spatial qualities Siza creates.

It is quite similar to Kidder Smith's series in that it documents a country's position through an investigation into the cultural and historical makeup of their built environment.

DK It is, but for me, what is amazing about this book is the volume of architects engaged; dozens and dozens of architects, for several years, undertaking this work. It is a fantastic example of how a survey can inform design. You can clearly see in the work of architects such as Siza and Távora the inheritance from this research.

This idea of the survey seems to be a common thread throughout your work, particularly the work you do in developing strategy for local councils. Finn Williams described this body of work as 'grey literature' and I'd be intrigued to understand a bit more about your process in creating this work?

DK Archival work is hugely important. One example, in direct response to Finn's 'grey literature' term, is a book we created, Canal Placemaking Study (Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC), 2019). Whilst working, we realised the density requirements for the scheme were very high such that the Grand Union Canal passing through the site would become the single largest public space in the area, beside Wormwood Scrubs. The placemaking strategy that resulted was an intricate process of working out a vision for this linear space, utilising detailed exploration of the current condition and how it is perceived.

CM We are particularly interested in translation; about how a design vision is developed. This is an area of our work that is rarely published. Our research often, if not always, starts with conversations on site, trying to understand and learn from those who reside there. We wanted to collect that information into one publication, Canal Placemaking Study: Listening to the Grand Union Canal (OPDC, 2019). The aim was to give this early stage dialogue the same weight as the outcome, which is something we have done repeatedly now.

Almost like the elements of research that fall between the cracks. I think it is a wonderful thing to be presenting that archival information - to showcase the research, the engagement...

DK Public engagement has been codified since the late 1960s; an element of practice that you have to undertake. It is good that it became part of that process, but 50 years later and 90% of that work is just lip service. For us, with connections in teaching and research, going out and engaging with people is a profound thing to do. It should be the underpinning of decision making.

CM For 2 weeks, for the Canal Placemaking project, we had a canal boat and collected stories. This dialogue led us to develop three priorities; caring, nurturing and enlivening. All the conversations we had fell into at least one of these categories, with lack of care being the most prevalent. These became the key threads of the design guidance. The vision for how this place could be transformed.

DK Most engagement is built around implementing a consensus. People spend hours in church halls and in council chambers arguing until the idea is beaten down to a single way forward. What I believe you actually need to do is to make decisions in the context of dissensus; record the counter-narrative, the challenges to the decision. It is critical that you record everyone's view. If something doesn't work then you can go back, to look at other ideas and new ways of moving forward. This leads me on to a fantastic book by Peter Hall, Great Planning Disasters (University of California Press, 1982). One of the few books to look at the consequences of a planning project, rather than just discussing its initial intention. By monitoring big planning ideas, like London's motorways, or designs for a third airport, Hall explores how the project transpired, drawing on professional bureaucrats, community activists and politicians to try and further develop the planning system as something agile and responsive.

It becomes about embracing complexity, rather than trying to create a simple, middling idea. East Architecture Landscape and Design have spoken about their process of engagement, one of walking and talking, which they highlighted as far more useful than a designated form of public engagement. Time spent on site. As an architect, it is inspiring to hear about this form of practice. It is astonishing that it is a distinct stance when it should be unanimous across the profession. It should be an integral part of practice.

DK Absolutely. The problem is that it is expensive and hard. It takes a long time and involves multiple relationships of trust.

CM Exactly. You have to be vulnerable in order to engage properly. You need to be ready to be wrong. That level of humility can be challenging. It is not something that we are taught enough at school.

DK That is why it can be important to frame these elements as research. As research, you have a hypothesis about what is going to happen, and if it doesn't happen, then that is when the learning takes place. There is no research worth doing that doesn't have uncertainty in it.

Literature obviously plays a significant role in your own process, but would you present literary references to help navigate these conversations? Be it a social history, or narrative. Maybe with the public, or a collaborator, or a local planning authority?

DK If it felt right in a particular circumstance, then yes. But we would do it in a deliberate and careful manner. Discussing literature can alienate as much as it can help. But we do find stories to be an incredibly useful tool when talking about place.

CM The conversations that we have with a diverse range of communities feed into these stories as we try and hear voices that we otherwise would not. Working in London, there are multiple pluralities across history and culture. We find a richness in the everyday, as well as local histories. Our projects try to capture that essence. A lot of our work has been about trying to refine conversations to capture the quieter voices. That is something we definitely want to continue.

DK These voices can also become literature. This book by Mary Chamberlain is amazing, Fenwomen: A Portrait of Women in an English Village (Virago, 1977). The book was largely written and published in response to Ronald Blythe's Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village (Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1969), a series of interviews in a Suffolk village about their expectations for life, in which unfortunately the experiences of men vastly outnumbered those of the women. In response, Chamberlain recorded the missing accounts of women, giving meaning to ordinary, anecdotal stories. Which interestingly relates to what Cristina was saying about the importance of the everyday; the richness that comes with a simple insight.

DK They can be banal, but with a great author like Chamberlain, these stories become incredibly powerful. Fenwomen is the rural, feminist version of People of Providence by Tony Parker (Penguin Books Ltd, 1985) that Finn Williams has already spoken about in your series. Chamberlain also wrote another book on the women of Lambeth, Growing up in Lambeth (Virago, 1985). It is the perfect companion to People of Providence.

Do you find spatial elements in these books, or are you primarily finding them useful as a social history?

DK We have written design statements for villages, although sadly not in Norfolk or Suffolk. We find this kind of documentation eloquent about how land is used, the arrangement of the home, and the role of public buildings such as pubs, churches and village halls. We do not reproduce the information at face value, but we would find it useful when thinking about the design of a new public building in a rural setting, for example. It is a fascinating insight into how a building can be shared amongst an existing community; working with the functional history of the village, but ultimately, creating a new proposition.

It is interesting to hear you talking about using books and stories to understand rich social histories and the impact that can have on the development of a project. In another interview, you discussed new ways of living; developing new forms of conviviality to enrich lives and how, for you, this does not oppose ideas on style, language and character. Is this pattern of thought mirrored in your library?

DK Absolutely. Our dog is called Morris, after William Morris, who is a figure from ancient history now, but we both still find him relevant to the present. He pursued radical, progressive, socialist politics as a core principle of his practice, promoting social causes that he truly believed in; from the rights of craftsmen; the rights of labour; enjoyable work; through to thinking about the arts and crafts. At the same time, he was tortured by the fact that he was making products for the affluent.

CM He was very conflicted. The strong principles he defined himself by were not always aligned with a singular version of himself. I see that in myself a lot and not in a negative way.

DK Part of that conflict was formed out of him being a craftsman himself. By selling products to Liberty, Morris afforded himself the time to write News from Nowhere (Penguin Classics, 1993), an incredible artistic and anarcho socialist future. A compelling contribution to culture. I think most, if not all, architects are in a similar bind.

Most definitely. Of production versus process. In many ways this relates to our earlier discussion around community engagement.

CM These complexities are embodied in a lot of Morris' essays. News from Nowhere predicts today's world and it is wonderful to see your hero get things so wrong. A lot of the seeds he planted in this book have grown however, garden cities being one particular example.

William Morris becomes the focal point for how you balance your own practice.

CM Idealism and reality.

DK The idea of garden cities brings me on to another book, Lilienbergs stad: Göteborg 1900-1930 by Albert Bjur (Balkong Förlag, 2018). Around 100 years ago, Gothenburg's first city engineer, Albert Lilienberg, set up a planning framework in order to grow the city. This involved adding several new, extraordinary neighbourhoods. Complex portions of city that included housing alongside gardens, cemeteries and civic buildings. City making became an art form, led by the design of the landscape. With the spaces between the buildings becoming crucial, the housing itself formed a backdrop to these spaces. Lilienberg's work is a fantastic reminder that the scientific, technical and political aspects of planning and urban design must be matched by a design and aesthetic conscience.

How are you working with books like this? Especially when this book is written in Swedish?

DK I don't speak Swedish so I have had to translate the text, but in general, books like this surround us when we develop projects. A critical element of my own practice is to draw precedents. This becomes a method to think about design questions, which might be used directly or indirectly.

Your drawings are beautiful. Are you looking at a reference whilst drawing or is it from memory and translated in your own way?

DK I am always looking at an image or some other reference, even loosely. Again, it is about putting research into the foreground. Less about remembered or imagined things, but rather, drawing and working through something that is right in front of you.

And this process is important to you.

DK Until you draw something, you don't realise all the small intricacies. It wasn't until I copied one of Lilienberg's drawings that I realised the implementation of a landscape strategy involving hedges. This subtle condition balances housing and landscape, adding depth and complexity to the scheme. Without drawing it, I never would have observed this.

This discussion on landscape leads me on to a particularly influential book for me, Arcadia for All. The Legacy of a Makeshift Landscape (Mansell Publishing, 1984). With Dennis Hardy, Ward studies plotlands, whereby low value farmland was sold off particularly in the interwar period to make way for similarly low value huts, shacks and bungalows. I come from a town that had one of these developments. I did a project at school trying to unpick this type of development, then suddenly, it vanished!

This book is very personal to you in that sense, having experienced the settlements firsthand, as well as their erosion.

DK Exactly. Ward, as an anarchist, is sticking up for popular intervention and a town made by a collection of people without much money, or agency. For me, that is something to celebrate. In this book, Hardy offers an extraordinary story about the particular development that I used to live next to. After the invention of national planning in 1947, compulsory purchase was used as a method to buy land and re-plan it, in a rational way. This is exactly what happened to the settlement next to me. As a child I had no idea that this had gone on, but I was witnessing the results of a foundational moment in the logic of our planning system. The existing settlement was made out of railway carriages and had a lot of character. They flattened it and started again, creating a relatively boring suburb.

It is amazing that you bore witness to the planning system in action at such a young age, which then went on to form the basis of your research.

DK It stinks of post-rationalisation, but it's true [laughs]. As well as being fascinated by the settlement, I remember being very empathetic towards it. As a 12 year old, I assumed something terrible had happened. When I was around 19, I remember reading Arcadia for All. It allowed me to connect the dots - the profession I was becoming a part of, did not like places like this. It did not fit with their idea of community. It was a slow but critical foundation for all my work.

What do you see as the role of literature in the development of the planning system? I think it is often considered by many to be quite undesirable as a topic. Do you think literature could help engage people more? To think about their communities in different ways...

DK It really shouldn't be seen as undesirable. The planning system should be our collective system for deciding our future; for what we, collectively, want to do next. Do we want to live in the air? Do we want houses with gardens? Do we want our children to be able to go to the park without crossing a road? These are poignant questions that all sit within the framework of the planning system. It is a shame that the current model is maligned by alienating, technocratic procedures. It has become staggeringly slow and underfunded, whilst the baggage associated with it as a system has led to it being used as a political whipping post. Despite its importance, or potential importance, it has become banal. If you look at the beautiful communities Lilienberg created in Gothenburg in the 1920s, you can clearly see the extent to which they are wonderful, productive places to live. There is definitely no banality to living there, nor in the process of creating them.

I think a big issue is engagement. It seems like the planning system in the UK has got lost, mired in bureaucracy as you mentioned, with large levels of disillusionment, both within the built environment profession, but also further afield.

DK Definitely. It has become anonymous. But I think people have an opportunity for the planning system to regain its relevance. It has been beaten up by the private sector, but if the planning system can reach out in new ways, to set up meaningful relationships with people and communities then it has an opportunity to become relevant again. In this regard, direct engagement is critical.

CM This is a book by Alison and Peter Smithson, called AS in DS: An Eye on the Road (Lars Muller Publishers, 2001). Having listened to a number of their interviews, I am not a huge fan of theirs. I find the way they spoke about people and communities at Robin Hood Gardens particularly troubling. Full of prejudice with a strong feeling of class difference. But, I do like some of their work. Again, that conflict I mentioned earlier.

As an object, I love this book. It is designed in the shape of a Citroen DS. A very tactile book. It is a commentary on the journey from city to countryside. Something that I inherently relate to as we travel to Sussex most weekends. It is a fascinating translation of the everyday; a familiar journey told through design and drawing. As we leave London, I have a habit of recording our journey, documenting it throughout the seasons. This process has allowed me time to reflect on the idea of transitioning away from the city.

DK An Eye on the Road is opposed to the idea that a journey is solely pragmatic. It tries to unpack that process; not necessarily in a perfect way, but it suggests that it might be publishable. Through questioning the commute, it could become the protagonist of an architectural, or urban, idea.

CM

The idea of transitioning between urban and rural is fascinating. I know, Cristina, you have been doing a lot of work around rewilding. It must be captivating to see and document this landscape in a different format. We are in a strange paradox where some of our most ecologically rich areas will be found in vacant plots or brownfield sites - whilst on this transitional journey, you will see a significant variety. Is there any literature that has fed into this fascination?

CM A lot! Firstly I will mention Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life by George Monbiot (Penguin, 2014), which talks about agriculture, land ownership, and wilding. It made me think about how we should manage land in a completely different way and the potential we have to do so. There are a number of projects, especially in London that are small oasis, that Feral made me realise we really need to celebrate. However, it was Isabella Tree's, Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm (Picador, 2019) that truly captivated me. Coupled with a beautiful Spring in 2020, Tree's book led me to appreciate nature in a way that I had previously not.

DK During lockdown, with our seven year old child, we experienced nature in a way that we never had before. We developed an understanding of the order in which flowers bloom. We had never stopped to think about it before! Suddenly we were obliged to be an educator at home. The learning process was fascinating.

There are also a number of books by Melissa Harrison, particularly those for children, that are wonderful. By Ash, Oak and Thorn (Chicken House, 2021) and By Rowan and Yew (Chicken House, 2021) are contemporary fairy tales that highlight the destruction taking place across the natural world, whilst also questioning ideas of ecological richness. They paint a complex picture of where and how nature can thrive in both city and country and the relationships that can form around that. Although children's books, the images and ideas they discuss are incredibly important for us moving forward.

All photography by Tim Lucas unless otherwise stated.

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5. David Knight & Cristina Monteiro

Architects
London - UK

Index

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5. David Knight & Cristina Monteiro

ArchitectsLondon - UK

Index

Architects
London - UK