Laura Weldon: Why do we tolerate ugly buildings?

Laura Weldon was the Conservative candidate for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley in the General Election and is the Deputy Chairman of the Five Towns and Hemsworth Federation of Conservative Associations.

Look at the horrible building above. Just look at it. Its very existence offends me. I’m confident that it offends nearly everyone in Wakefield.

In case you can’t see the picture or have averted your gaze from the horror, I will describe it to you. It’s what you think of in your head when someone says “brutalist building”. Concrete. Rectangles. Pebble dash. At some point, someone has tried to tart it up a bit with some multicoloured perspex. There are some nondescript shops on the ground floor. The bigger one used to be a Sports Direct. It’s an ugly box that some post-war architect probably thought was the best thing since sliced bread.

Blood pressures quite justifiably reach dangerous levels in Wakefield when we see pictures of what it replaced: the Georgian Corn Exchange. All classical features, carved stonework, golden ratios and master craftsmanship. Demolishing it was truly a savage act of cultural vandalism.

I grew up in Stockport – a town with so many brutalist concrete buildings that the makers of the TV show “Life on Mars” decided that it made the ideal stand-in for “The Seventies” – but practically every town and city in the UK has a few of these carbuncles around. Some are commercial office blocks, but many are the handiwork of local authorities – civic buildings, schools, sports centres and social housing.

They’re not just ugly though (and they are really REALLY ugly), they’re also dangerous.

Because it’s the fact that the building was ugly that led to highly flammable cladding being attached to the exterior walls of Grenfell Tower. There’s asbestos waiting to jump out of the walls of these buildings and into your lungs if you put up a shelf. Those big lumps of RAAC concrete landing on schoolkids’ heads? They’re what happens when you prioritise cheap and speedy construction over lasting quality. And there are the links to crime and antisocial behaviour in housing estates that idealistic brutalist dreamers claimed would be a mini utopia, but instead become bleak and desolate rat runs. Sometimes with literal rats.

As they come to the end of their lifespan – mere decades after their construction – we’re feeling the backlash from this fashion for quickly constructed, trendy buildings.

We’re losing access to swimming pools all over the country because those flat-roofed concrete pools that replaced the passé Victorian baths aren’t just uneconomical to repair, they’re completely past saving.

Rather than learning from these previous mistakes though, the people commissioning new buildings are sticking their fingers in their ears and singing “LA-LA-LA-LA-LA”.

We’ve been warned off over-consumption and fast fashion when it comes to clothes. We all know expressions like “buy cheap, buy twice”. Even if we bury our guilt in the queue at Primark we know that we should probably be investing in quality basics instead of polyester tat, but when it comes to buildings (especially public buildings) we can’t seem to resist a trend.

And Wakefield continues to go mad for modish white elephants – Sandal Magna primary school was built in 2010 for £5.2 million, and the Islington-based architect was still showing off awards on her website until her recent retirement. Meanwhile the builders were apparently so baffled by the quirky design that the roof was badly installed and left leaking, costing millions in public money over the last 15 years to rectify.

Our market was built for £3 million in 2008 by another award winner that went on to design buildings for the Smithsonian, but shoppers and traders hated it, it cost a fortune to heat, so after years of sitting empty after repeated failed attempts to do something useful with it, the council shovelled some more public money at it to make it into yet another “multi-use arts space” that I give 5 years, tops.

There are countless more examples all over the country of trendy buildings where timber cladding is rotting off, green “living” walls become brownish graveyards, and designers’ interior “visions” are peeling away from their MDF foundations.

Donald Trump’s order that American civic buildings are to return to an aesthetic, neo-classical style caused consternation on social media from people who make their money designing the kind of buildings they’d rather call “conceptual spaces” – lots of complaining about their artistic freedom being infringed. Thankfully, however, there was wisdom in the comments section. The most frequent responses seemed to be “Good.” or “About time.”. People everywhere want nice buildings – who knew?!

The end of the Concrete Era could be a golden opportunity for civic architecture. We could take the time to build a lasting legacy for the future. We could value quality and craftsmanship and create opportunities for our artisans to shine. We could erect beautiful buildings that evoke a sense of wonder in our young people for generations to come, instead of a feeling of hopeless nihilism and a headache from the fluorescent lights.

Just like for clothing though, the reason we reach for fast fashion in architecture is that we can’t afford the good stuff. Budgets are tight and Rachel Reeves has ordered growth and speed, so mosaic tiles and classical columns are probably as much of a pipe dream as finding haute couture in my local Oxfam shop.

But still, we should try and do a bit better than a Shein going out top and a timber-clad sports centre in the shape of a wave. Wonder which one will fall apart first?