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BUILD FIRST AND ASK FOR PERMISSION LATER
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Konstantina Eleni KoulouriIntermediate 2
Year 3HTS Tutor: Costandis Kizis
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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 ofReturn I will to old Brazil
Theme song from the film Brazil1
1Brazil 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/>
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(1) Extract from a newspaper that reveals the thoughts of the minister on chaotic planningMr. Panayi is a property developer in
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 townhall 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.
2The information on Mr. Panayi are taken from a
BBC documentary:
Joseph Bullman (producer). The secret history
of our streets: Caledonian Road.BBC, London,
26 January 2012.
The new planning vision that Mr. Boles3 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
3 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.
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(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)5 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?
4 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.
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
were the first formations attempting to impose a
specific approach towards planning through
aesthetics and appearance.
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(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 plan6
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
6All 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.
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(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 century7. 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
7Jonathan Hughes and Simon Sadler (eds), Non-plan
: essays on freedom participation and change in
modern architecture and urbanism, (London: 2000),
p. 208
ibid
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(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 prejudices9. 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.
9Jonathan Hughes and Simon Sadler (eds), Non-plan
: essays on freedom participation and change in
modern architecture and urbanism, (London: 2000),
p. 20
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 culture10. Thus, planning is
conceived as having an inherent element of
spontaneity. Physical planning becomes
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 ofsetting up frameworks for decisions, within
10Jonathan Hughes and Simon Sadler (eds), Non-
plan : essays on freedom participation and change in
modern architecture and urbanism, (London: 2000),
p. 20
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which as much objective information as possible
can be fitted11.
Then this type of non plan brings about change
and the development of a natural social progress
of land usage.
1970/ The Uses of Disorder12
During the same period, Richard Sennett writes
about the The uses of disorder. In his essay
The open city13, 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 over-
determination14. The Town and Country
Planning Act led to a regime of power that wants
11Jonathan Hughes and Simon Sadler (eds), Non-
plan : essays on freedom participation and change in
modern architecture and urbanism, (London: 2000),
p. 2612 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. 27-3013
All the information on The Open City is from the
article:
Richard Sennett. The open city. Urban Age, Berlin
(November 2006).14
ibid
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 gain15. 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
15Richard Sennett. The open city. Urban Age,
Berlin (November 2006).
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elements; passage territories, incomplete forms
and narratives of development16. 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 development17.
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 places produce unexpected
encounters, chance discoveries and
innovations18. 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 street19
. Hence, planning becomes a
series of schemes that produce unresolved and
16ibid
17ibid
18Richard Sennett. The open city. Urban Age,
Berlin (November 2006).19
ibid
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 Rulebook20
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
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
20All the information on the Permitted Development
rulebook is from the article:
DK-CM. Living on Infrastructure. Architecture
Today Issue 212, United Kingdom ( October 2010)
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(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 from1948
which define what can be built without planning
permission. In response, the Permitted
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.
21DK-CM. Living on Infrastructure. Architecture
Today Issue 212, United Kingdom ( October 2010).
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/ SUBPLAN22
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
22The information on Subplan is from the DK-CM
architectural studio website:
< http://www.dk-cm.com/writing/under-the-radar/>
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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, sub-
plan 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
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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.
After the publication of the Permitted
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
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.
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
theSubplan city.
The movie Brazil presents the suffocating
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 the maneuvering between the
boundaries of the Permitted Development
Rulebook.
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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
Planning rules and bureaucracy swept away so buildings can be extended without local authoritypermission. J ames Chapman and Martin Robinson et al. 6 September 2012. United Kingdom. 24 March2013.
DOCUMENTARIES
Joseph Bullman (producer). The secret history of our streets: Caledonian Road.BBC, London, 26
January 2012.
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L IST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 1: Newspaper extract on new planning reformsSource: www.thisismoney.com, 24 March 2013
Figure 2: Scene from the movie BrazilSource: www.imdb.co.uk, 24 March 2013
Figure 3: Scene from the movie BrazilSource: www.imdb.co.uk, 24 March 2013
Figure 4: Collage. Background scene from the movie Brazil. Foreground Richard Sennett and ReynerBanhams facesSource:
Figure 5: Subplan drawingSource: www.dk-cm.com, 24 March 2013