The Royal Institute of British Architects, the Department of Energy and the National Grid are running a competition to redesign electricity pylons, those steel-framed behemoths that criss-cross the landscape and infuriate the countryside middle-class everywhere. There are no to pylons campaigns running throughout the country. We'd all rather that electricity was carried in underground cables hidden from sight. However, I'm sure that none of us want to pay the extra costs of burying cables, and I'm equally sure the same complainers would be protesting against the disruption cause by the tunnelling works necessary.
©Copyright Jackie Harman
I'm not going to argue that pylons are attractive (large electricity substations are particularly ugly), and I doubt we'll ever be able to build aesthetically-pleasing towers that somehow blend into the countryside, mountains, and moorlands alike. I am not going to join the Pylon Appreciation Society. In 2008 the Icelandic national grid company Landsnet ran a similar competition, and there was some genuinely creative thinking on pylon design from architects such as this entry from Choi + Shine. I hope that the RIBA competition comes up with some similarly original submissions. The competition is quite technical, however, so a few pretty sketches from me are not going to win anything.
What really annoys me, however, is this all-persuasive notion that we should be hiding our industry completely, and that our landscape must remain 'unsullied' by human hands. It is of course a fallacy to suggest that there is much unspoilt wilderness in the UK - pretty much our entire landscape has been managed and shaped by human hands from the bronze age forward. Instead, I welcome these huge reminders of our necessary industry. Our cities and towns rely on power stations and power transmission, on sewerage works and damns, on motorways and railway lines. We should not try to hide this. They are essential for the lives we all lead.
©David Ayrton
In fact, the more we hide away our unsightly infrastructure, the easier it is to forget about its consequences. If we were faced with the reality of power stations in our neighbourhoods, would we not work to make them cleaner and less polluting? If motorways were closer to our homes, perhaps we would be more mindful of the noise and pollution caused by cars, and rethink those journeys to out-of-town retail parks? (Of course, people do live near powerlines and motorways, but usually in sink estates where communities cannot afford to protest and complain).
I have on my bedside reading pile a novel called Site Works, written by Robert Davidson, which is a story set in a sewerage plant construction site in the north of Scotland. I met Robert, a former civil engineer at the launch event for his book, and he was keen to stress how much we rely on the work of engineers and builders for our clean streets and warm homes, whose efforts are so often hidden underground or placed out-of-sight. Ours is an engineered society, and our infrastructure is as much a marvel as any Roman aqueduct. We should celebrate this - and of course, ask that it is designed well, with thought to the landscape and people who use it.
I welcome the RIBA design competition, and hope that as much thought can be put into our other major infrastructure projects in the future.