Here Comes the Sun: Architecture and Public Space in European Culture

by Ken Worpole

Here Comes the Sun looks at how social reformers, planners and architects in the early twentieth century tried to remake the city in the image of a sunlit, ordered utopia. While much has been written about architectural modernism, Worpole concentrates less on buildings and more on the planning of the spaces in-between – the parks, public squares, open-air museums, promenades, public pools and other public leisure facilities. Life in the open was of particular concern to early urban planners and reformers, with their dreams of release from the confines of overcrowded, unsanitary slums. Picturing youthful working-class bodies made healthy by exercise and tanned by the sun, they imagined an escape route from cities. Worpole demonstrates how open-air public spaces became sought-after commissions for many early modernist architects in the early 1900s, resulting in the transformation of the European cityscape.

"...a fascinating account of the political idealism that informed urban planning for the first two-thirds of the twentieth-century...full of insights into how public space influences a sense of belonging and ownership."— The Guardian

"This is one of those books you stroke lovingly. Open it, and there is page after page of beautiful photographs...this book combines history, society, politics, environment and place in a well-written and emotive text. The strength of the book is the way it crosses these traditional boundaries and disciplines."— Town and Country Planning

"Drawing on architectural theories, philosophy, literature and even film-making, Worpole's book is wide-ranging and erudite and should be of interest to the layperson as well as to the urban planner. It is also elegantly written and complemented by a mixture of black and white and colour photographs to provide a visual emphasis to the points he raises."— N16 Magazine

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Tom M (London) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an analysis of public space by a noted sociologist. Alas, he is not thinking of those urban spaces that are the soul of the European city; he takes no cognisance of real urban fabric and the civilised life it so successfully sustains. For him it seems, "civilised life" is not something in which people will spontaneously indulge; they probably won't behave properly -a very British view. For him, urban space means designated areas where otherwise unruly people will have "a good time" under controlled conditions. Think of the Dome - that's how he seems to see it. But as he asserts in the book, attempts to make successful "public spaces" too often fail. What are the good examples, and why have they been successful? The problem is that in talking about "the culture of public space" he tends to mean municipal politics for funding recreational activities and how these should be designed - surely a penny-pinching view of what urban space is.

The book includes some interesting photographs by Larraine (Mrs.) Worpole showing the populace carrying out sanctioned activities on official territory. Interestingly, everybody seems to be Caucasian - suggesting that significant parts of Europe's multi-ethnic population choose, thank God, to seek their pleasures in other ways. The more innocuous these official pastimes, the better: open-air chess, Tai Ch'i, strolling in the park. Excellent. Bland, harmless and jolly just the way we like it. The sun is always out in these pics, the sky is blue, and everything is under control. That's how Worpole sees the role of public space.

Initially, the book incorporates a rather sketchy history of modern architecture - perhaps intended for the lay person - in which Worpole tries to sum up its elements and to explain what recent theorists have had to say about what these elements mean, semiologically speaking. You know - the glass wall symbolising transparency and all that. He goes on to talk about urban space as the Utopia pursued by city decision makers since 1918 and to explore the problem of how that "decision-making" class (urban planners, paternalistic benefactors, developers, Fabians like himself) have tried over the years to "provide" suitable spaces for "the people" by pursuing utopian dreams about how they should live - in modernist schools, mass housing, parks, lidos, play areas and so on. In other words, public space as a publicly provided social service. What a strange notion; it took your reviewer a while to realise that this is how Worpole sees it.

There are sections about Port Sunlight and Letchworth Garden City, yet nothing about the New Towns that came along later. It doesn't help that Worpole avoids stating his own position. When he talks about Red Vienna it's far from clear whether he sees the Karl Marx-Hof (Karl Ehn, 1927) as an authentic working-class community of a revolutionary kind or, alternatively, an unacceptable form of social engineering. He recounts how in the Fifties do-gooders like Rowntree and Lavers made trips to Scandinavia and then proposed reforms (not for themselves, of course) intended to get the workers out of pubs and into parks. He professes a liking for the paternalistic "fun palace" run by leftish intellectuals to provide uplifting entertainments (like Joan Littlewood who, so far as we know, never had the slightest effect on the working classes of the East End but remains very popular in Hampstead).

And that, indeed, is where he's coming from. It's not easy to review Worpole's book in detail; it does include a considerable amount of useful background about what these Utopias were and how they were expressed in built form as housing, pleasure gardens, and so on, but he suffers - in my view - from a shocking misconception. Public space is not to be construed as publicly-funded, publicly-managed space. It's streets, bars, libraries, markets, alleyways and little corners of cities; private and collective spaces, interiors and exteriors, the domestic and the public, the very stuff of life. To quote a sociologist Worpole cites, but who has a a very different take - Richard Sennett - what we need is urban chaos. Lord save us from the planners (and their ideologues).

[Mike Bularz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this does a bit of dropping names and places it isn't too difficult but kind of tedious in parts where sidetracking on specific projects/historical movements happens. This is all made up for in the other 3/4 which covers a good chunk of interesting modern thought on public spaces, and the in-between public / private courtyards and shopping malls that often fit many categories by definition. Although not precise on solution, this one was good for thought-provoking ideas and hypotheticals, and turned out to be a great source of further reading to do through citations.