Mepa - Into the breach once more

Some weeks ago, you argued that the best procedure would be to completely shut down the Malta Environment and Planning Authority and reconstitute it on different lines. However, you did not go very far in setting out these different lines. Can you sketch out some ideas about what the new structure should look like?

The length of time taken before a project is approved or disapproved is one of the most frequently heard complaints.

In other countries, inordinate delays are often avoided by placing much more responsibility on the architects. The procedure adopted is that, first, the Planning Authority establishes very clear guidelines and policies well tailored for specific areas. Then the architect is expected to himself ensure that his project fits in within the established parameters. He is assumed to work in good faith and allowed the flexibility that artistic creativity requires. He is not required to submit his plans for time-consuming detailed scrutiny by the usually fledgling employees of the authority.

The construction that is put up is then assessed from the point of view of its fidelity in spirit to the well-defined pre-established criteria. No mercy is shown to manifest defaulters.

Implementing such a system would clearly require a different recruitment of personnel. Fewer staff but of higher grade would be required both to produce the different kinds of policy statements and guidelines as well as to assess constructions. Such a change would elevate the operations of the Planning Authority to a higher level.

Have you any idea of how the architectural profession feels about such a change?

My impression is that the best document produced in this regard is The Urban Challenge, through which the Chamber of Architects made a signal contribution to what should eventually become a national architectural policy. In a European perspective, it is a sad fact that Malta does not have such a policy just as it still does not have a cultural policy.

A section of the proposals by the chamber naturally concerns the planning process. The characteristic of these is that a much more positive approach by the Planning Authority is deemed necessary than the largely negative system in existence. For instance, with regard to tall buildings, the chamber asks: how can they be successfully integrated into the local landscape with minimisation of their notorious disadvantages? The answer is: only if their erection takes place within an overall forward strategic planning system. For this, adequate resources are at present still lacking.

Likewise, for successful focused re-development of certain areas, involving authorisation of building more storeys, instead of allowing sprawl and spread, more resources need to be devoted to positive action with incentives for good design and scenographic considerations rather than to merely restrictive measures.

The chamber also suggested that the Planning Authority would be better able to deal with the problem of continued new building while there was such a high proportion of vacant housing if its structure was more oriented towards, and equipped for, positive master planning.

An authority with this new orientation would be able to provide much more positive assistance to local councils for each of them to cultivate their specific identity. For instance it should be possible for a village (say Gudja) to be developed in such a way that it could be visited by tourists who would be able to experience the sense and typical features of various dimensions of Maltese rural conviviality.

The chamber in fact recommended that the authority should stimulate co-ordination on a regional basis of several local councils to provide more holistic spatial planning.

This emphasis on a different balancing between the various roles of the authority indicates that local architects would be ready to accept the much more responsible function in the planning process that I have been envisaging grosso modo for them.

Why have you, a philosopher, always taken such a keen interest in architecture?

The intense contemporary focusing by philosophers on architecture is undoubtedly mostly due to the influence of Martin Heidegger.

He argued that living decently as a human being meant principally mastering what he called "the art of dwelling" (bauen, in German). By 'dwelling' he meant not just living in a place, but caring for that place, cherishing and protecting it.

Initially, it meant such things as tilling the soil or cultivating the vine. Now it means anyway of preserving the specific character of any segment or parcel of earth. The most typical way of dwelling is that of building in a manner appropriate to what the Romans called the genius loci and Richard England calls "the spirit of place". If Heidegger is anywhere near right, then the best measure of how much the life we are living is authentically human, is the quality of our architecture.

The chamber, in its Mepa Reform report, devotes the central part to lamenting the poor design of much contemporary building in Malta and urging means, including a new Mepa commission for the purpose, by which it hopes quality of design might be improved. The chamber's fervent hope for salvation by Mepa in this regard fills me with apprehension. Personally, I would place greater trust in the growth of slightly more interest in the philosophy of architecture.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Alessandra Fiott.