Comments on: The CR Ashbee Lecture 2020 https://spitalfieldslife.com/2020/01/06/the-cr-ashbee-lecture-2020/ In the midst of life I woke to find myself living in an old house beside Brick Lane in the East End of London Mon, 06 Jan 2020 20:48:02 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 By: Isabella Underhill https://spitalfieldslife.com/2020/01/06/the-cr-ashbee-lecture-2020/#comment-1326575 Mon, 06 Jan 2020 20:48:02 +0000 https://spitalfieldslife.com/?p=178822#comment-1326575 Sold out? Appears to be ‘waitlist’ only now.

]]> By: JA Woolf https://spitalfieldslife.com/2020/01/06/the-cr-ashbee-lecture-2020/#comment-1326559 Mon, 06 Jan 2020 09:28:55 +0000 https://spitalfieldslife.com/?p=178822#comment-1326559 Looking at this picture I thought what a lovely conversion it seems, but what a sad bleak area of grass in the middle. I know an architect cannot always specify the treatment of a building’s surroundings, but perhaps this would be an opportunity to mention that Octavia Hill founded a charity, the Kyrle Society, in 1877, which is directly relevant to this. She and her sister felt it was important to improve the everyday lives of people in the East End by bringing in the natural world. Their charity was a pioneer of civic amenity societies and not only provided parks but encouraged city dwellers to create windowboxes or tend scraps of land to give access to flowers, shrubs, birds and butterflies. http://www.octaviahill.org/about-octavia-hill/early-social-reform-influences/amenity-societies/ I feel it could be well worth reviving this idea today – there are plenty of developments which seem to treat their outside space as a nuisance and give no thought to it.

]]> By: Jill Wilson https://spitalfieldslife.com/2020/01/06/the-cr-ashbee-lecture-2020/#comment-1326556 Mon, 06 Jan 2020 08:44:41 +0000 https://spitalfieldslife.com/?p=178822#comment-1326556 I went to a lecture by Peter Barber last year which was very inspirational so I thoroughly recommend this! I was pleased to see that there were so many young students packed in to hear him speak, and so I hope his ideas will filter through to the next generation.

Not only did he have lots of thoughts about how decent, well designed and affordable social housing can be built but I was also pleased to hear him say that he is very keen for his students to do a lot of sketches and drawing by hand. (I am convinced that one of the main reasons why so much of today’s architecture is so bland and boring is because most of it is done on computer, and the thinking time and creative process which is involved in having to draw everything by hand is lost when it is so much easier to just press a “copy and paste” or “repeat” key…)

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