There are at least three reasons why the proposed (I’m optimistic, no doubt stupidly) development at White Rocks is a showcase of government incompetence and immorality. First, it is a damning indictment of our abysmal standards of stewardship of good architecture generally and especially that of the 20th century. By ‘good architecture’ I don’t just have in mind towers and churches and stately piles. Rather, I mean buildings and spaces that are well-designed, that sit well with their built-up or natural surroundings, and that tell us something of their time.
The White Rocks complex is easily all of that. A generous someone drew my attention the other day to a 2010 piece in Kamra tal-Periti’s journal The Architect.
In it, architect and researcher Edward Said describes the place as among the best post-war developments in Malta.
Together with the original parts of University and a few other bedraggled survivors, it represents the 1960s idiom at its happiest in terms of both form and function.
It has also grafted itself very successfully onto the landscape. Not only was it wisely massed and contoured to start off with, the patination on the local stone now has all the honeyed glory of 60-odd years spent under the Maltese sun. The pine trees and shrubs that grow half-wild around and into it add their bit to the equation.
There’s another thing that Said says about the place which is perhaps rather unsettling. I quote: “Apart from patches of spalling concrete, much of the structures still stand strong ... Given the countless conservation projects that the government has undertaken on much older, larger, more decayed and complex edifices, restoring the fabric of the Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq barracks should be quite petty.”
The least we can do is to be honest with what we are about to destroy. I came across well-educated people last week who went on about the worthlessness of the place – the dilapidation (it-telqa), the rats, the masses of used syringes, the graffiti and such.
I’m tempted to think they are the same people who looked at the Piano plans and saw a giant cheesegrater (or was it a garage on stilts?). But let’s be charitable and assume they’re parroting the developer-driven rhetoric.
The truth is that we stand to lose a set of buildings that are iconic of their time in the local context, that have aged very well indeed, and that could easily be restored and put to good use.
The second problem with the proposed development is that it is essentially a state-captained land grab. The government has simply decided to hand over a huge chunk of public land to private interests.
Little wonder the Malta Developers Association is so beside itself with joy. Many of its members will shortly be salivating all the way to the bank. I mean, to be given a chunk of prime-location public land to build your apartments and whatnot, and to be hailed as a champion of the national economy in the process, must be the mother of all developer’s orgasms.
It’s not just the brazen immorality of it all that gets me. The proposed development is also a good indication that government has pretty much given up on public space.
The Gonzi government’s cunning plan for the site – a kind of Olympic village without the Olympics – was loopy to be sure, but at least it made a tiny rhetorical nod to public space. Love them or hate them, sports facilities do have some breadth of function.
Malta’s very own exclusive costa del concreto, how about that?
Forests of apartments don’t, especially not when they come wrapped in rarefied adjectives from Day One. In fact, White Rocks as described by the Economic Affairs Minister will be little more than a giant gated community.
Not that I imagine it will be physically cordoned off. But gated communities have a funny way of thriving in the absence of actual gates. The adjectives provide a good clue: ‘upmarket’, ‘exclusive’, ‘luxury’, ‘high-quality lifestyle’, and ‘not less than five stars’ were dished out in generous portions by Minister Chris Cardona at the press conference last Monday.
The CCTV, private security, barnacled architecture and ‘No dogs, No bicycles’ signs will eventually see to it that lesser mortals with not-less-than-five-star pockets do not overstay their unwelcome.
Since I mentioned them, gated communities are almost universally seen as a bad thing by sensible urban planners. That’s because they represent an atomised fabric made up of inward-looking islands of privilege, in many cases adrift on a sea of thwarted hope.
It’s depressing enough when they are built by private developers. It’s nothing short of tragic when they are sponsored by governments, on public land. When those governments happen to refer to themselves as progressive, centre-left, and Tagħna Lkoll, we’re looking at multiple heart attacks.
There’s another thing. As is, the remaining rocky bits along the east coast serve as an antidote of sorts to a rash of carbuncles that would otherwise stretch from Xemxija down to Marsascala.
The lower end of the puzzle was recently completed by that other gated horror, Smart City and its hideous Laguna Walk. Piece in the White Rocks complex, the plans for land reclamation for yet more exclusive development, and the cavalier coast road itself, and it all falls into place.
Malta’s very own exclusive costa del concreto, how about that?
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