Speak Here: The Spa, the Station, the Space in-between
A sharp right turn and I depart from the rows of tightly stitched houses into a valley of beige towers and parkland. The pavement switches from grey stone to yellow brick. A line of hedges rises to my waist, cordoning pedestrians away from vehicles. Bollards, bars, and bumps collaborate to narrow the cars to one lane. This bend from The Avenue onto Willam Road leads downhill from an integrated urban fabric to a stark modernist plain. This is the boundary between the private dwellings of Tottenham and the housing estate of Broadwater Farms, known by its residents as ‘The Farm.’ Built in 1967, this complex houses an estimated 3,800 people in a cohort of residential towers and low-rise blocks. The buildings balance on concrete stilts, straddling a hollow ground floor of dimly-lit, desolate parking lots. The excess parking is evidence of an imagined middle class lifestyle, which contrasts from the realities of the low-income families and pensioners who live here. This spatial miscalculation has been adapted by residents as a covered short cut between buildings and a shelter from the rain. I spot a group of teenage boys standing in an empty parking space. They have their hoods up, perhaps to gain privacy from the security cameras perched on nearby lampposts.
I pass two small playgrounds and a grassy courtyard with benches – all are empty. Signs direct me to the enterprise office, community centre, and health clinic, all three of which are closed on this Saturday afternoon. As I follow the curve of Willam Road, I notice a bus stop and directly opposite, a long barn-like building. The drawn blinds and metal doors make it difficult to decipher the interiors. In one window sits an electric “Nail Spa” sign beside a pair of plastic hands, each nail modeling a different colour. I knock on the door and am greeted by a buzzing group of women and girls. The salon owner, Dionne is attaching fake eyelashes to a client, her friend Tony is standing by the microwave heating up a soup, and two young girls are waiting for their mother to return from her errands.
Dionne invites me to take a seat by the girls. I introduce myself and explain that I am researching the march to the local police station in response to Mark Duggan’s death this past August. Tony expresses disdain for the journalists who have been lurking around The Farm, probing for details of the violence and is eager to recount the overlooked peaceful events. Both Tony and Dionne were friends of Mark, and they helped organize the march from The Farm, gathering people in one of the main courtyards make signs and begin the walk (See Fig. 1). They were confident that the police were expecting them as they believe that the Farm is consistently monitored. Tony points to the lamppost across the street, ‘See that camera? The police can see us right now.’ Over the past thirty years, they have lived with a heavy police presence that shapes the narrative of The Farm, witnessing episodes of violence and participating in demonstrations. The women did not premeditate the route, but rather followed their usual path to the High Road. To command attention, they walked down the middle of the road, and upon arriving at the station, blocked vehicles from passing. After several hours of waiting, their demand for a high level officer to speak with Mark’s family members was unmet. Crowds amassed and latecomers set off the violence.
As we talk, chairs are reconfigured as visitors come and go and beauty services shift, the teenage boys I had seen earlier peer in to say hello, and a young woman drops off flyers for her church party (See Figs. 4 and 7). As the only semi-public, hang-out space open on this Saturday afternoon, this small room takes on multiple roles: it becomes a place for people to stop by for a visit, to share food, to publicize events.8 An hour passes, and I leave with the mother who returns to retrieve her girls. They offer to lead me along the same path as they marched to the police station. It is a twenty minute walk that winds up and down narrow residential corridors, avoiding the four-lane, fast- moving traffic of Bruce Grove (See Fig. 6). As we turn off The Avenue onto Sperling Road, we pass a corner with a fish and chips shop and a mini-market, where they stop to buy snacks. We make quick turns down Moorefield and onto St. Loy’s, landing on High Road, half a block north from the station. Along our walk, the built forms and ensuing street life does not seem relatable to the spatial lexicon of The Farm. There are no swaths of unused or empty spaces. Shoulder to shoulder two-storey homes offer ‘eyes on the street’ to the houses they face and the many people walking by (Jacobs 1972). Illuminated corner shops with large glass storefronts and displays that spread onto the sidewalk offer a clear sightline to the activity inside and blur the border between the commercial and the public realms. This walk to the high street frames the Estates as a sealed enclave, with a distinct spatial language not in dialogue with the surrounding area.
With my back to the police station, I can see identical billboards: one is across the High Road, perched on a roof; the other on eye-level, pinned to the side of small brick building on the corner with Chestnut Road. They feature a close-up photograph of melting margarine in a landscape of green beans, paired with the invitation to ‘go for it.’ The High Road is the commercial vein of Tottenham, the area most devastated by the riots. On either side of the station, the streetscape is pockmarked with storefronts shuttered with plywood, while an assortment of 99p stores, betting agencies and mini- marts are open for business. In this context, the dual margarine ads seem insensitive to the recent physical and economic loss. Lampposts lining the road are dressed with ‘I Heart Tottenham’ flags, part of the local council’s campaign to restore “community, consumer and investor confidence.” I turn around to face the station’s solid, 4-storey red brick mass. Security cameras line the facade and closed beige blinds, similar to those lining the Broadwater Estates shops, belie which parts of the station are currently in use. The building wears a skirt of iron fencing at the street level, with dust ruffle of grey metal grates that block access to its basement. Over the front door, a loose metal gate hangs over the glass like a suspicious eyelid. Upon entering the station, I take a seat on a chair that is attached to the wall. There are two men waiting ahead of me, one lingers by the phone booth in the far corner and the other is seated beside me. The waiting room has a similar footprint as Dionne’s spa, but lacks opportunities for eye contact between strangers (Figure 5). The layout’s control logic and sparse furnishings favor efficacy over intimacy. I face a blank wall, while to my right, a mother and teenage daughter make sobbing pleas to the officer through a plexiglass panel. The young officer explains he cannot take any action, and advises her to consult a private debt collector. As I try to avoid their crying faces, my attention turns to a single stale chip in the windowsill next to me. The bright fluorescent lights overhead and security cameras in all corners do not make for an appetizing place to eat a meal. When my turn arrives, I step up to the counter and speak through a small metal speaker. I ask if I can meet with a Safer Neighborhoods liaison for the Broadwater Estates. While the officer retreats to consult his colleagues, I notice that there is a large sticker branding our communication interface. It reads:
‘SPEAK HERE Sonic Windows Communication Hygiene Security
The label embodies a modernist design ethos of order through separation, and person- to-person exchange as potentially harmful. When the officer returns, he slips me a memo paper with the address of the Tottenham Station secretary and instructs me to write a letter. She will then pass my request to the appropriate department (See Fig. 9). In this public reception area, both publicness and privacy are in short supply: the space for communication is confined to a sterile metal circle in earshot of others and a prescription size piece of paper is the invitation to speak further.
Public space can offer a gradient of openness and intimacy. Setback from the total exposure of the street, the spa and the station function as semi-public rooms in response to everyday needs for social exchange and claims of citizenship. In ‘The Public Realm,’ Richard Sennett forwards a concept of closed and open systems that shape built form. He argues that closed systems although ‘harmonious,’ are stagnant and irresponsive to patterns of use. Whereas open systems are ‘incomplete’ and ‘unstable,’ and can lend themselves to adaptation over time (Sennett 2008). Inherent in the open system is the possibility for a conversation between spatial form and individual use: a mutuality that circumvents structures from becoming irrelevant and posits public space as a conduit for expression, exchange and change.
In the march to the police station, women and children appropriated the street as a public communication line, exposing layers of irresponsive systems in built and social form. Learning from this spontaneous appropriation of space between the spa and the station, it becomes evident that a public realm rooted in an open systems approach is needed to offer a more generous invitation to ‘speak here.’ A way to mitigate the hard boundary between the neighborhood and the Estates, the street as a potent form of public space and ‘cityness’ (Sassen 2005). Could a mediating line of communication along this path expand transparency, communication and offer a public form ‘made‘ by its users (Sassen, 2005)?
De Sola-Morales, M. (2011) ‘The Impossible Project of Public Space’, In Favour of Public Space: Ten years of the European Prize for Urban Public Space, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona and ACTAR: Barcelona.
Broadwater Farm Exhibition: Heroes and Homemakers, viewed 20 October, 2011, <http:// www.broadwaterfarm.info>.
Hall, S. (2001) ‘To Economise and to Localise: Austerity and a real life view of the Bankside Urban Forest Project’, unpublished conference paper submitted to the Economy Conference, Wales School of Architecture, 6-8 July.
Haringey Council, viewed 25 October, 2011, <http://www.haringey.gov.uk/index>. Jacobs, J. (1972). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Harmandswoth: Penguin. Lefebvre, H. (1984) The Right to the City Oxford: Blackwell.
Lewis, P. (2011) ‘Tottenham riots: a peaceful protest, then suddenly all hell broke loose’, The Guardian 7 August, viewed 3 November, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/07/ tottenham-riots-peaceful-protest.
Low, I. (2011) ‘Elemental Chile: Alejandro Aravena and the South African Experience’, in Architecture South Africa, Jan/Feb.
‘Moving On: Building a Better Future for Haringey’, Haringey People (October-November 2011), p. 16.
Sassen, S (2005) ‘Cityness in an Urban Age’, Urban Age, Bulletin 2 Autumn, viewed 3 November, 2011, http://urban-age.net/0_downloads/archive/Saskia_Sassen_2005- Cityness_In_The_Urban_Age-Bulletin2.pdf.
Scott, S. (2011) ‘The voices of Tottenham are being marginalised’, The Guardian 16 October, viewed 20 October, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/16/voices- tottenham-marginalised.
Scott, S. (2011) ‘If the rioting was a surprise, people weren't looking’, The Guardian 8 August, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/08/tottenham-riots-not-unexpected.
Sennett, R. (2008) The Public Realm, unpublished paper for QUANT.
Space Syntax Limited (2011) ‘First Findings: 2011 London Riots location analysis, Proximity to town centres and large post-war housing estates,’ 15 September, viewed 25 October 2011, http://spacesyntaxnetwork.files.wordpress.com/2011/09 ssx_2011_london_riots_20110922.pdf.
1 Broadwater Estates is built on a river basin of reclaimed agricultural lands. To avoid potential flooding, the residences hover one-storey above the ground, leaving a layer of dank, empty space at the street level. In a Google street map of the area, Broadwater Estates is a grey void – no streets bisect this mass of city, its footprint is proportionate to nearby parks.
2 Originally built for offices, this structure now houses four small shops, which includes a catering business, a hair salon, a grocer and a hardware store, as well as an arts and crafts workshop that is open on weekdays.
4 Inside the spa, there are thresholds of publicness and privacy. Upon entering, you can take a seat in a row of chairs, where you can watch the manicures and nail drying taking place. More private procedures such as piercing and waxing take place on a bed in the far corner, that can be curtained off for privacy. When not in use, the curtains are drawn and the bed becomes another place to sit or lounge.
5 Mark Duggan was a 29-year-old man who grew up in the Broadwater Farm Estates until the age of 13. Although he did not reside at the Farm as an adult, he was integrated into the social life and was regarded as an “elder,” a well known community figure within the estates.
6 Mark’s family learned of his death from a television newscast, rather than being informed directly by the police. The motivation behind the march was to demand an official acknowledgment by high-ranking police officers of Mark’s death in police custody and to draw attention to the police’s failure to communicate with members of his family before releasing his name to the press.
7 In his article about the demonstration outside the police station, Guardian journalist and Tottenham resident Stafford Scott articulates the frustration of protestors with the police’s lack of open communication: “All we really wanted was an explanation of what was going on. We needed to hear directly from the police. We waited for hours outside the station for a senior officer to speak with the family, in a demonstration led by young women,” (Scott 2011).
8 When I return the following Saturday for a manicure, I am able to talk in more depth to Dionne about the history of her shop and the different community functions her business plays. Dionne rents her shop from the Enterprise Centre of the Haringey Council at a subsidized rate. She hopes to relocate to a bigger space so that she can accommodate the number of visitors she has stopping by each day, in addition to her customers. She explains that the teenage girls like to come site at the shop to learn how to paint nails, to get life advice, and to have a place away from their families to socialize.
9 ‘Moving On: Building a Better Future for Haringey’
10The waiting area perpectuates everyday tragedies due to over-determined, under-considered form. For example, there is nowhere to privately to cry and there is no graceful way in which an officer can hand you a tissue.
11 I returned to the police station three times, I wrote one letter, made two phone calls and in total spoke to four officers. Unfortunately, I was never able to speak with an officer able to address my inquiry about the policing strategy of the Broadwater Estates and any community communication strategies.
12 An example of planned optimism is embodied by the public housing design by Elemental in Santiago, Chile, in which half of the house is built to the highest quality that the budget allows, but the infrastructure and footprint will facilitate improvements and expansion as the inhabitants improve their economic status and their housing needs evolve (Low 2011).
13 An initial report by the Space Syntax Group finds a relationship between areas where riots occurred and proximity to post-war housing estates. The Group specifically correlates the outbreaks of violence to the frustration and isolation caused by the “over-complex, under used spaces” of modernist architecture (Space Syntax Group 2011).
