The Guardian of Future Generations, Maurice Mizzi, touched some raw nerves the other day when he spoke of the need for planners to design a standard building to be used by architects for future construction.
Many must have wondered whether he was perhaps suggesting that this country should go for the type of standard government housing commonly seen in East European countries. When Mr Mizzi has already come down hard on the monstrous development planned to take over the site previously occupied by the Institute of Tourism Studies in St Julian’s, it is not possible that he had this in mind when he called for the design of a standard building to give symmetry and beauty to future streets.
There can, of course, be taste and grace even in uniformity, as the townhouses of character in Sliema’s Tower Road of bygone years showed only too well. What has replaced them as time went by is a conglomeration of apartment blocks that stand absolutely nowhere near the grace of the townhouses of character.
Maybe Mr Mizzi will find time to explain in greater detail what he meant and the kind of buildings he had in mind when he referred to housing in Prague, Vienna and Corfu. Judging by his frame of mind, at least as it has been expressed publicly, he is surely after seeing the development of beautiful housing, not nondescript estates of concrete shoeboxes that have marred so many iconic sites, such as Tigné, now earmarked for even further development.
When Mr Mizzi made his point, at a seminar on urban development, the president of the Chamber of Architects and Civil Engineering, Alex Torpiano, shot down the recommendation out of hand. He said it simply would not work, arguing that having a form of template would not only kill architects’ creativity but would also not help create better structures.
He has a very valid point too. Disappointingly, not much creativity, if it all, has been shown in the design of quite a lot of property developments that have taken place all over the island these past few years. There is a difference between building a row of houses in new development areas outside villages and the rebuilding of rundown places in village cores.
While it would make sense to have some pleasant characteristics in the design of houses in new estates, any new buildings in village cores ought to incorporate or complement the characteristics of the area. When much of Sliema, St Julian’s and Gżira have already been ruined by overdevelopment, the building of skyscrapers there will not offend as much as they certainly would in, or close to, areas that are, as yet, untouched by any of the concrete structures on the planning boards today.
As Mr Mizzi warned when he came out against the way development was taking place all over the island, even the most lucrative economic boom needs to be managed. The prevailing frenetic building drive is getting completely out of hand, with huge offences to development causing permanent scars to otherwise idyllic environments.
The kind of development going on today may be generating a great deal of money to the property moguls but it is making Malta a worse, not a better, place.
This is a Times of Malta print editorial