Get into the grove

The new residents of 30 Wickham Gardens in Newcastle’s South Byker only moved in three days ago, but they’ve already made quite a splash with the neighbours – they’ve invited the whole estate round for tea and cake. So far, they seem to have gone down well, and as neighbours go they’ve got a lot to recommend them – they’re

hard-working, clean-living and don’t have any loud parties. Victoria Henderson, who lives above the flat has certainly been impressed. “They’re lovely,” she tells me. “They know nearly everyone and their ideas are looking good. I really like them.”

But these trendy new arrivals aren’t just being friendly for the sake of it – they’re architects from the company Xsite and their aim is to get to know the area inside out. It is part of a consultation process before putting together a bid to revamp hundreds of homes in the St Lawrence Square and Raby Cross areas of the Byker estate. For seven days the architects will occupy the one-bedroom flat provided by the arm’s-length management organisation Your Homes Newcastle; they will live and breathe Byker in an attempt to work out what makes the estate tick so they can tailor their designs to local need.

With 60% of the housing in the square unoccupied, the challenges the area faces are obvious. Raby Cross has fared better but it is dominated by a derelict former home for elderly people and has been identified as being at risk from low demand. Xsite is the first of a total of five practices that will take up the challenge and move into what the team jokingly refers to as “the Big Brother House”, before submitting their ideas for renewal of the area later in the year.

The project has been organised by pathfinder Bridging Newcastle Gateshead and Newcastle council, and is funded by the European Commission and the pathfinder, with £20,000 for each practice to cover project costs. The redesign of South Byker will potentially involve demolition work, new build and large-scale refurbishment, so tenant representative Marcia Ash believes the architects’ stay could prove controversial – and that the consultation will only have been wide enough if it is. “If you have been in a week and you haven’t had anybody screaming and shouting and knocking your windows in, you’re not doing all you could be,” she says.

By the time I arrive on the Thursday morning, the day has started peacefully enough. The team received its first visitor at 8.30am. There are only three beds crammed into the one room, and so the team of eight rotates its sleepovers. “We were literally just getting up and having a bowl of cereal and we were half awake,” confides architect Christoph Oschatz, who was at home when a local pensioner called in to show them a video of a television documentary made about life on the estate five years ago. Oschatz had been working until gone 9pm the previous evening meeting with residents’ groups. “It is exhausting but very, very enjoyable. Part of the competition is to get to know people and inspire them.”

When his five colleagues arrive, some of the group stays in the flat – tea, cake and gingerbread men are on hand for any visitors who pop in – while others head out to put flyers through letterboxes to let residents know what is happening and meet people directly. Over the week, the team meet with street wardens and residents reps, ward councillors, the head of the primary school, Byker-based asylum seekers, youngsters from local schools and youth groups and the police. Each daily drop-in session attracts about six or seven people but Xsite feels that their leafleting also helps raise awareness of the project.

Roberta Davidson remembers Erskine well and says locals regularly popped into his office for a cup of tea

As we tour the estate it becomes obvious that residents have a real pride in the area, despite its problems. One tells me she had moved back to Byker because “it’s like a soap opera here – everyone knows everyone. In the streets you know people and you stop and chatter and they know how you are.”

There’s also a widespread appreciation of the iconic nature of the estate, developed in the 1970s by architect Ralph Erskine after the previous housing stock fell into such a poor condition that large-scale clearance became the only option. Locals say they are often visited by coachloads of architecture students and many can still remember Erskine and his team, who set up their project office in a disused funeral parlour and lived on site for the duration of the development.

Seeing things differently

The parallels between the two situations are clear. As we head back into the flat for lunch, the group tells me that the experience has given them an insight they wouldn’t have got from a one-off visit. One of the most impressed is architecture student Kabiee Hlalo, who has lived in Newcastle all of his life. “Just being here has changed a lot of perceptions for me,” he says. “Byker has always been seen as quite a rough place.

It is not like that at all. The one thing that has struck me is that most people know each other by name.”

Assistant architect Robin Parsons agrees. Originally from a small village in the Lake District, he has been impressed with the strong sense of community on the estates. “They have been wonderful,” Parsons tells me. “Obviously we are here for a short period and we are different from a lot of people in Byker. They have been very accepting.”

If you’ve not had anybody screaming and shouting and knocking your windows in, you’re not doing all you could be 

Marcia Ash, Byker estate tenant representative

The 26-year-old says his early impressions of the area were formed by the kids’ TV series Byker Grove and by studying Erskine at university. As the group relaxes on the sofas before their afternoon meetings, he admits that living in the house has forced him to re-evaluate his opinions – and given him a real insight into what locals actually want. “The big question they have had is, are we knocking down their houses. Our approach will be avoid demolition wherever possible.”

Instead they put the emphasis on large-scale renewal and making better use of the areas’ parks to form a “green corridor” connecting the square with Raby Cross, where properties are still popular.

By living on site the group has also experienced first hand some of the basic problems it must address, including the lack of facilities. At the bottom end of the Byker estate, St Lawrence Square and Raby Cross are ill-served for shopping, and the group complains of the trek to get food for the evening meal – “usually pasta” – and the lack of takeaways and restaurants.

If the council wants to “encourage a more mixed residential community”, as it states in the competition brief, it is things like this that will have to be addressed along with the design and type of housing.

In the afternoon, some of the architects welcome the estate wardens in to have their say. In the hour-and-a-half long meeting with Xsite, the wardens emphasised that local youngsters should be consulted as much as possible in the design to give them a sense of ownership and pride in the scheme.

They pointed to projects they have run with youngsters on allotments in the area that have helped spruce up the area and “involve” them in the landscape.

With 60% of the housing in Lawrence Square unoccupied, the challenges the area faces are obvious

Later on, Marcia Ash and three other residents’ representatives call in to give some feedback on how the team are doing.

It’s a useful opportunity for Xsite to find out how they are perceived by the locals. Ash is the most outspoken. “What people are interested in is ‘what is going to happen to me? Where am I going to live? What kind of house am I going to get?’” she says. “They have been short-changed and shafted and pushed and pulled in the past and they still have that assumption now. There are people who are very passionate and very concerned and quite emotional about what is going on here. In order to engage with the community you are really going to have to work hard.”

The project is meant to have a significant impact on the final plans that the architects draw up and to throw the process open to people who might not have their say during a conventional consultation. But how far will the exercise really feed into and alter the end result? Principal architect Tim Bailey thinks it will to a great extent. “Consultation is normally one or two evenings with drawings on the wall and an invitation to residents to come and look at what is proposed and to react to it. It is very exciting to be involved in something that is relatively unusual and has the potential of giving us an answer that we wouldn’t have arrived at without being here.”

A flash of inspiration

Evening starts to draw in and the reps leave, but the flat is still a focus of attention thanks to artist James Hutchinson who is working with the team and has set up a huge plasma screen in the window. He has spent each day filming Xsite’s work on the estate – and every evening the results are broadcast to the outside world on the screen, which takes up the whole of the front window. Kids hang around outside, distracted from the normal game of football, watching the images that flash out into the night.

One of the strengths of the architects’ stay is that it engages those residents who wouldn’t usually have a say. A group of youngsters comes in; they draw pictures of their ideal homes on the blackboards that adorn the walls of the front room – although it’s unlikely that ideas for swimming pools in every garden will be taken up.

Other children stand in front of the projector and pretend to shoot each other for the amusement of friends outside, but the Xsite architects firmly believe it contributes to increased awareness about the pathfinder.

At 7.30pm the last of the residents have left and the projector is turned off. As the team prepare to go out to get food they are tired but feel the day has gone well. The project is clearly ambitious but Xsite seems to have gained a better understanding than they might usually get of a project site. As Bailey says: “Nobody wants to talk about architecture. They want to talk about parking or investment. Our ethos is to try and understand the broader environment.” HT