![Sample our Built Environment journals, sign in here to start your access, Latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5926/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Built-Environment.jpg"})
Abstract
The University of Birmingham, UK, has been at the forefront of the last decade’s marketization of higher education in England. It has invested massively in its estate, and we examine the ideologies at work in its new masterplan and architecture. We account for the campus’s history. We then review the idea of lounge space – around which it has been reconfigured – and focus on three projects: The Alan Walters Building, a new Library, and the so-called Green Heart. We examine the ideological outlook of the campus and its new architecture to draw conclusions about the ideas of contemporary society and economy that they represent. The trajectory of its masterplanning and architecture inscribe a shift from a postwar liberal view of higher education to a contemporary marketized one under the economic, social and cultural condition characterized as neoliberalism. It now constitutes what we call the university of nonstop society.
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Students are made a so-called “unconditional offer.” This is a misnomer since it comes with conditions attached: an offer of a place at the university is made based on a prediction of very high A-level (school leaving exam) results but does not depend on actual A-level results, provided the student makes the University of Birmingham their first choice.
2. Samuel Austin, “Lounge Space: The Home, The City and The Service Area,” in Reading Architecture and Culture: Researching Buildings, Spaces and Documents, ed. Adam Sharr (London: Routledge, 2012), 106–120.
3. Tony E. Adams, Autoethnography (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014).
4. Architecture expresses the values involved in its inhabitation, construction, procurement and design, tracing the thinking of the individuals who have participated in it. Importantly, the values embodied in buildings and their depictions can sometimes be unanticipated, at variance with their architects’ and promoters’ stated intentions. See: Sharr (ed.), Reading Architecture and Culture.
5. Jeremy Gilbert, “What Kind of Thing is Neo-liberalism,” New Formations, Autumn/Winter 80–81 (2013): 7–22; David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (London: Verso, 2005); Andrew Glyn, Capitalism Unleashed: Finance, Globalisation and Welfare (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006); Douglas Spencer, The Architecture of Neoliberalism: How Contemporary Architecture Became an Instrument of Control and Compliance (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).
6. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994); Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer Society (London: SAGE, 1998); Francesco Proto, Baudrillard for Architects (London: Routledge, 2020).
7. Andy Foster, Birmingham: Pevsner Architectural Guides (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 240.
8. Eric William Ives, Diane K. Drummond, and Leonard D. Schwarz, Birmingham: The First Civic University: An Introductory History (Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham Press, 2000), 116.
9. Jacqueline Bannerjee, ed. “University of Birmingham, by Aston Webb and Ingress Bell: Aston Webb blocks and Chancellor’s Court,” The Victorian Web. Available online: http://www.victorianweb.org/art/architecture/astonwebb/8.html (accessed July 08, 2019).
10. Ibid.
11. Foster, Birmingham, 242.
12. John McIlwain, Westminster Cathedral: The Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of Westminster (London: Pitkin, 1994).
13. Foster, Birmingham, 242.
14. “Sir Hugh Casson: Obituary,” The Independent, 1999. Available online: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituaries-sir-hugh-casson-1113219.html (accessed July 08, 2019).
15. The idea of “townscape” stems from a series of influential essays in The Architectural Review from the 1940s and ‘50s. These were collected, amended and extended in Gordon Cullen, Townscape (London: Architecural Press, 1961). See also: David Gosling, Gordon Cullen: Visions of Urban Design (London: Phaidon, 1996); Jonathan Glancey, “Townscape and the AR: Humane Urbanism in the 20th Century,” Architectural Review, 7 June (2013); and John Macarthur, The Picturesque: Architecture, Disgust and Other Irregularities (London: Routledge, 2007).
16. Kenneth Powell, Arup Associates – Twentieth Century Architects (London: RIBA Publishing, 2018).
17. Sherban Cantacuzino, Howell, Killick, Partridge and Amis: Architecture (London: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 1981); Geraint Franklin, Howell, Killick, Partridge and Amis – Twentieth Century Architects (London: RIBA Publishing, 2017).
18. Arthur Marwick, British Society Since 1945 (London: Penguin, 1996); Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Social and Cultural Transformation in Britain, France, Italy and the United States 1958–74 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998); Dominic Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (London: Abacus, 2006); Dominic Sandbrook, White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties (London: Abacus, 2006).
19. Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy (London: Thames and Hudson, 1958); c.f. Jo Littler, Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power and Myths of Mobility (London: Routledge, 2017).
20. Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good.
21. http://mjparchitects.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/mjp_univ_masterplanning_07.pdf (accessed July 08, 2019).
22. David Eastwood figures near the top of the league table of Britain’s highest paid Vice Chancellors: https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-8227#fullreport (accessed July 08, 2019).
23. Conversion from xe.com (accessed July 08, 2019).
24. https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/university/building/estates-strategy.aspx (accessed July 08, 2019).
25. Ibid.
26. https://glennhowells.co.uk/project/bramall-music-building/ (accessed July 08, 2019).
27. https://www.associated-architects.co.uk/aston-webb-student-hub-opening/ (accessed July 08, 2019).
28. https://glancynicholls.com/projects/chamberlain-hall/ (accessed July 08, 2019)
29. https://www.lds-uk.com/projects/university-of-birmingham-indoor-sports-centre/ (accessed July 08, 2019).
30. https://www.sheppardrobson.com/architecture/view/university-of-birmingham-collaborative-teaching-laboratory (accessed July 08, 2019).
31. https://www.churchmanthornhillfinch.co.uk/projects/birmingham-university-green-heart (accessed July 08, 2019).
32. Ibid.
33. Alan Budd, “Obituary: Sir Alan Walters,” The Guardian, January 6, 2009. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/jan/06/sir-alan-walters-obituary (accessed July 08, 2019).
34. Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzsky, Transparency: Literal or Phenomenal (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1997). First published 1964.
35. Austin, “Lounge Space.”
36. Gilbert, “What Kind of Thing is Neo-liberalism.”
37. Samuel Austin and Adam Sharr, “‘The Collective’: Luxury in Lounge Space,” in The Third Realm of Luxury: Connecting Real Places and Imaginary Spaces, eds. Joanne Roberts and John Armitage (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 121–142.
38. Francis Duffy, “Office Study: Burolandschaft Revisited,” The Architects' Journal 16, no. 13 (1975): 665–675; Kathryn Morrison, English Shops and Shopping: An Architectural History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003).
39. Laura Latham, “The Rise of the ‘Meanwhile Space’: How Empty Properties are Finding Second Lives,” The Guardian, 28 Nov (2018). Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/nov/28/the-rise-of-the-meanwhile-space-how-empty-properties-are-finding-second-lives (accessed July 08, 2019).
40. As Rem Koolhaas notes of “junkspace” – the mode of spatial production for which lounge space provides a homely alibi – apparent contingency and impermanence shields such environments from scrutiny and, in their ubiquity, they take on the guise of a new nature, in “Junkspace,” The Harvard Guide to Shopping (Köln: Taschen, 2001).
41. Siegfried Kracauer, “The Hotel Lobby,” reprinted in Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, ed. Neil Leach (London: Routledge, 1997); Marc Katz, “The Hotel Kracauer,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 11, no. 2 (1999): 134–152; Tom Avermaete, ed., Hotel Lobbies and Lounges: The Architecture of Professional Hospitality (London: Routledge, 2012).
42. Pauline Garvey, Unpacking IKEA (London: Routledge, 2011).
43. Neil Leach, Camouflage (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006).
44. Baudrillard, The Consumer Society.
45. Gilbert, “What Kind of Thing is Neo-liberalism.”
46. Koolhaas, “Junkspace.”
47. As Anna Klingmann demonstrates in Brandscapes, architecture becomes entwined with the experience economy, called upon to add value not only functionally by enhancing the efficiency of activities that take place there, but by stimulating desire and, with it, economic activity through spatial and material qualities. Lounge space’s curated array of experiences aligns with Klingmann’s attention to the switch from a “one-size-fits-all economy to a customization-for-all economy.” Anna Klingmann, Brandscapes: Architecture in the Experience Economy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 1.
48. Brian Lonsway, Making Leisure Work: Architecture and the Experience Economy (London: Routledge: 2009); Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects (London: Verso, 2005). In lounge space, differences in detail, like the choice between differently branded versions of the same product in the supermarket, conceal the common alignments of the whole. As it helps visitors to feel everywhere at home, lounge space increasingly binds them to its commercial logic and common terms of use.
49. Stefan Collini, “Browne’s Gamble,” London Review of Books 32, no. 21 (2010): 23–25. Student tuition fees were first introduced by the previous New Labour government in the Teaching and Higher Education Act, 1998, at the rate of £1000 per student per annum, and raised potentially to £3000 in the Higher Education Act, 2004.
50. Stefan Collini, “What’s Happening to Universities? Historical and Comparative Perspectives,” in Speaking of Universities (London: Verso, 2017), 12–37; Cris Shore, “Beyond the Multiversity: Neoliberalism and the Rise of the Schizophrenic University,” Social Anthropology 18, no. 1 (2010): 15–29.
51. This distinction was made by John Henry Newman in The Idea of a University (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1976). First delivered as a lecture series in 1852. An online edition is available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/idea/ (accessed July 08, 2019). See also: Stefan Collini, What are Universities For? (London: Verso, 2018); Chris Brink, The Soul of a University: Why Excellence is not Enough (Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press, 2018).
52. Richard Adams, “20 Universities Account for Bulk of Rise in Unconditional Places,” The Guardian, January 31, 2019. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/jan/31/20-universities-account-for-bulk-of-rise-in-unconditional-places (accessed July 08, 2019). The University’s Strategic Framework celebrates how the scheme “sent shockwaves” through the sector’ and “gave Birmingham an edge”: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/strategic-framework/strategic-framework-2015-2020.pdf (accessed July 29, 2019), 10. The regulator, the Office for Students, has publicly expressed its concern for this practice in the face of tabloid criticism, notwithstanding the contradictions of an organisation set-up to establish a marketplace in universities complaining when universities behave like a market: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/publications/unconditional-offers-serving-the-interests-of-students/ (accessed July 08, 2019).
53. Renae Acton, “Place-People-Practice-Process: Using Sociomateriality in University Physical Spaces Research,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 49, no. 14 (2017): 1441–1451, 1449. We gratefully acknowledge Rosie Parnell for this reference, and her generous guidance on pedagogical literatures in relation to this article.
54. https://www.edglossary.org/student-centered-learning/ (accessed July 08, 2019).
55. Collini, What are Universities For?; Brink, The Soul of a University.
56. Lieven De Cauter, The Capsular Civilization (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2005). De Cauter develops the notion of capsularization with reference to Foucault’s work on “Heterotopia”: “the heterotopia is no longer a different kind of space; it has become the norm for all places that seek to affirm their independence in the continuous, placeless space of the network,” 63. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias,” Lotus 48, no. 9 (1985/6): 9–17.
57. Richard Adams, “Student Loans: Use of RPI Costs Graduates up to £16,000,” The Guardian, June 28, 2018, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jun/28/student-loan-interest-rates-rpi-retail-prices-index-inflation (accessed July 08, 2019).
58. Alfie Packham and Rachel Hall, “Students Struggle to Support Themselves as University Rent Costs Rise,” The Guardian, July 15, 2019. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/jul/15/students-struggle-to-support-themselves-as-university-rent-costs-rise (accessed July 29, 2019).
59. Matthew Jenkin, “Working While You Study: A Means to an End or Career Opportunity?” The Guardian, April 16, 2018. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/apr/16/working-while-studying-turn-university-job-career (accessed July 29, 2019)
60. https://www.winjigo.com/what-is-a-social-learning-space/ (accessed July 08, 2019).
61. Mareile Pfannebecker and James A. Smith, Work Want Work: Labour and Desire at the End of Capitalism (London: Zed, 2020).
62. Jonathan Beller, “Paying Attention,” Cabinet, 24 (2006–2007). Available online: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/24/beller.php (accessed July 08, 2019); Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (London: Profile, 2019).
63. Ivor Southwood, Non-Stop Inertia (Winchester: Zero Books, 2011); Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity, 2016).
64. Tim Cresswell, On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World (London: Routledge, 2006); Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command (New York: W. W. Norton, 1948).
65. “Against the armature of glass and iron,” he wrote, “upholstery offers resistance with its textiles.” Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 218.
66. Charles Rice, The Emergence of the Interior: Architecture, Modernity, Domesticity (London: Routledge, 2007).
67. Anne Friedberg, Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994).
68. As De Cauter puts it, “The More Mobile We Become, the More Capsular Our Behaviour: We Are Sedentary Nomads,” Capsular Civilization, 79.
69. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996); Reinhold Martin, Mediators: Aesthetics, Politics and the City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014).
70. Maurizio Lazzarato, Governing by Debt, trans. by Joshua David Jordan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015); Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979: Lectures at the College De France, 1978–1979, trans. by Graham Burchell (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
71. Franco “Bifo” Berardi, The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy, trans. Francesca Cadel and Giuseppina Mecchia (South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2009).
72. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation; Baudrillard, The Consumer Society.
73. Edward Wainwright, “The Office is Always On: DEGW, Lefebvre and the Wireless City,” Journal of Architecture, 15, no. 2 (2010): 209–218.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Samuel Austin
Samuel Austin is Lecturer in Architecture at Newcastle University where he is Degree Program Director of the BA in Architecture and Editor of ARQ: Architectural Research Quarterly (Cambridge University Press). Past experience includes architectural practice at Mecanoo Architecten, Delft and at the Design Research Unit, Wales.
Adam Sharr
Adam Sharr is Head of the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University, Editor-in-Chief of ARQ: Architectural Research Quarterly (Cambridge University Press), Series Editor of “Thinkers for Architects” (Routledge) and Principal of Adam Sharr Architects. He is the author or editor of eight books on architecture, most recently Modern Architecture: A Very Short Introduction with Oxford University Press.