The Restoration of Otto Laird

by Nigel Packer

  ‘Should have kept your mouth shut all these years,’ he muttered to himself, taking a paper knife and slicing open Pierre’s letter.

  As ever, it was composed in perfect English. The handwriting was microscopically small and claustrophobically spaced. Thirteen pages of the stuff. Otto sighed, flicked briefly through its contents and noted the references to the usual suspects: Foucault and his panopticon, Lefebvre and space production. It was like some game of academic tennis, this ferocious hitting back and forth of different names and systems of thought. Pierre and Otto were in the depths of a discussion about the architecture of control, its uses by various political regimes as a way of securing and maintaining power. It was an important topic, but one with little bearing upon Otto’s current field of research. It was a misunderstanding between them, really; a sign that, with the passing years, Pierre and he were steadily drifting apart. The themes of their discussions were broadly the same as they had been many decades before. But Otto, at least, had moved on.

  Pierre still thought of Otto as a pioneer of the ‘Brutalist’ style of building. He remembered him as the energetic and committed young socialist who saw in architecture – the art of arranging space – the means to contribute to both social and personal liberation. Architecture in those days was a political act, no less. Otto and many others at the time believed that by creating large housing estates it would be possible to ensure that everyone lived in a clean, safe and comfortable environment. The well-kept public spaces would encourage interaction and neighbourliness; the uniform size of the apartments would abolish notions of hierarchy. People from all backgrounds, he had argued, would eventually want to inhabit these estates. They would become a microcosm and a foretaste of the society to come: peaceful, progressive, egalitarian, and free from all physical and social division.

  That was more than fifty years ago and things had, of course, worked out differently. Otto himself had also changed. Unlike some of his fellow travellers, he hadn’t abandoned his ideals completely in the rush to embrace Neoliberalism, a trend that began as a trickle in the late 1970s and became a great flood after 1989. But he had let those ideals quietly slip. He had laid them carelessly aside, one day, and conveniently forgotten where he had left them. Now all he wanted was to build unobtrusive houses in the Jura hills and tend to his broken body, grabbing moments of happiness where he could. And if most days he barely had the energy to walk down the hill in order to fetch a baguette from the local store, then battling the worst excesses of capitalism was clearly no longer on the agenda.

  Pierre, on the other hand, remained up for the fight. His energy could be terrifying – even now, when he was well into his seventies, it showed no signs of dissipating. He regularly worked eighteen-hour days, while writing a new book, and three times a week ran the circumference of the Bois de Boulogne, usually clocking up a time of less than three hours. Politically, Pierre remained deeply immured in the spirit of 1968 – he had played no small part in the events that unfolded in Paris that May. He knew about the long-term waning of Otto’s political commitment, but there were passages in their correspondence when he remained convinced that the small red flame in his old friend’s heart had not yet died out entirely.

  Otto would not have agreed.

  He doesn’t realise how far it’s gone, he thought, noting with a slight sense of shame Pierre’s tireless activism, and then remembering his own recent afternoon spent communing with an egg.

  It’s not his fault – I’ve kept it all from him. The Bentley, the golf clubs, the beneficial tax arrangements, the underpaid cleaner from the developing world who visits twice a week and tends to our expensive mess. I’m hopelessly bourgeois now, I’m afraid. I’m the class enemy – perhaps I always was.

  But then he knew how hard it was to really change people. He had seen it in others and experienced it in himself. All those noble intentions, abandoned to self-interest. Cynicism, winning out each time.

  It’s such a struggle, trying to keep up the struggle. I don’t know how Pierre manages to do it.

  Otto had learned his lessons the hard way. Throughout his career, he had encountered the brute forces of capital on a regular basis, and he knew the machinations of which it was capable. He had come up against its iron laws many times, when fighting to maintain the integrity of his projects, and usually he had lost. Apartments in his own Taylor House, for example, developed as a serious experiment in social housing, now sold for large sums of money to wealthy young people with a taste for ‘retro’ and ‘urban grit’. The building had even featured on some TV property show: Angelo had sent him the link. The imbecile of a presenter called it ‘funky’, whatever that meant.

  No, Otto thought. Everything has become a commodity nowadays; and maybe every person, too. All of us have become commodities to each other. The profit motive has entered every sphere of life, and its hegemony is complete.

  He was among those who had seen this coming – he had fought against its spread for decades. Finally, sometime in the mid-1980s, he had thrown in the towel, sickened by the grasping cynicism of the emerging generation. Cynthia’s loss had been the final straw, sapping the last of his once steely resolve. And so he had fled to France, where he hid himself away in the mountains, buried in perfect seclusion until he encountered Anika one day in a hillside café overlooking Lake Annecy. She had approached him as he sat nursing a coffee at a terrace table and asked if she could borrow his binoculars. And then, much to his surprise, life had begun again.

  But how could Otto explain all this to Pierre? How could he explain the long and tortuous journey that had brought him to his hillside villa in the Jura?

  Pierre’s a sociologist at the Sorbonne, Otto thought. The man lives in a time capsule.

  Lectures, seminars, late-night discussions at literary cafés – Otto had seen it all first-hand during his visits there in the 1970s. And from the tone of Pierre’s letters it was clear that nothing much had changed. Otto knew the slow, eternal rhythms of academia. He also knew that, for all their brilliance and fine intentions, the people who inhabited that world were as far removed from everyday reality as the average rock star. Otto loved Pierre like a brother. They had been through a great deal together in the old days. But he no longer wanted to read his long and rather boring letters about Foucault. Or reply to them, for that matter. Otto’s powers of recall were not what they had been, for one thing, and he struggled to keep up with all the changes in terminology, especially now that his voracious appetite for books had waned. There were moments when he didn’t have a clue what Pierre was writing about. Well, now was the time to draw a line. He must put a stop to it, once and for all, and either re-establish their friendship on a sounder footing, or abandon it altogether.

  He picked up his pen.

  Dear Pierre,

  Thank you very much indeed for your latest letter. I should say at the outset that I agreed with everything you said – something of a first, I know. Your argument was beautifully crafted and I have little else to add. In our games of intellectual head-tennis, you take game, set and match every time. You’re a clever old bugger, aren’t you?

  Sorry if my opening remarks appear flippant – I realise you were probably expecting a more considered response. But I’ll have to ask you to show some compassion and forgive an old friend his crassness. I’m rather frail these days, you see, and losing my mental sharpness. Many of your more subtle arguments are simply lost on me. These are my shortcomings, of course – not yours. I’m sure that your discourses remain as lucid as ever. But my mental energies are somewhat depleted nowadays, and those that have been left to me are largely dispersed in concerns more pressing than a long meditation upon architecture as a tool of political control. I have to deal with this pain in my gut, for a start, and I also find myself teetering on the brink of mysticism – an odd thing for a man of science, I realise, but I’m trying to work it through.

  In short, I’m no longer the coherent and articulate figure of old, bursting with a pa
ssionate commitment to social transformation and global justice – the person you befriended in the late 1950s, in other words. My ambitions these days are more modest ones. I want my stomach to hurt less, I want Anika to be happy and I want to design a building that’s as perfect as an egg. That’s about it. Oh yes, and I want to try to save Marlowe House from destruction. That’s the rundown tower block in south London, by the way, not the mystifyingly fashionable one out west. They announced a few days ago that they plan to demolish it.

  I know you’ll welcome my attempt to fight this decision, but I feel duty bound to confess that the reason I’m trying to save Marlowe House is not because of the high ideals it once represented. I could pretend that’s the reason – it would certainly make me appear nobler in my intentions. But any such claim would be less than honest. No, I want to save Marlowe House for other reasons. For itself, and for myself. Because I think it’s a good building and I’m still rather proud of it, despite the decades of neglect, its terrible reputation for crime … and three generations of yobs, pissing in its stairwells. Yes, despite all these negatives, I still think that Marlowe House is a building worth saving. It probably has something to do with Cynthia as well. I haven’t really thought about that one, but I expect it’s the case. She played a large part in its design, after all, and I think she would probably have wanted me to do something. Finally, I’m doing it just to keep myself occupied, to wake myself up a bit, and maybe ward off some of this encroaching senility. I know there’s something not quite right with my mind, these days, although it’s so hard to tell what exactly, when one is living on the inside of these things.

  I danced with a butterfly recently, you know. Can you imagine? An elderly man, prancing round the forest like a wood nymph. I nearly gave myself heart failure. And I’ve started taking my clothes off at inappropriate times. Poor Anika got a terrible fright the first time it happened. So I think it’s pretty obvious that something is amiss. I find myself in an odd situation, mentally. Is it like this for everyone at a certain age, do you think? So little serious work has been done on the psychology of ageing. I find that there are moments of great clarity, even wisdom of a kind. But there are also moments of terrible confusion – perhaps that’s the price for those of wisdom. And I keep thinking about the past. It swamps me, sometimes; more vividly than I’ve ever known before.

  So, you see, it’s important that I keep myself busy, although not – I regret to inform you – by reading any more Foucault. I hope that doesn’t upset you. Do you think we could write about other things instead? How is your body bearing up these days, for instance? Do you still get laid, now and then? Do you regret your failed marriage to the violinist? Are you as frightened of ageing as I am? My guess is that you must be, judging by your behaviour. Racing round the Bois de Boulogne like a man possessed. You ought to be careful at your age, you know. They’ll find you dead under the trees, one of these days, and think you were up to no good.

  Anyway, I hope you don’t mind the rather candid tone of this letter. I realise it’s somewhat out of keeping with our usual discussions, but please don’t take any offence, because absolutely none is intended. I’m attempting to save our friendship, not destroy it. It’s been so many years since we spoke honestly to each other. I think now is the time to scrape off this crust of formality that has developed between us, and get back to basics while there is still time. We used to have so much fun together, do you remember?

  I hope to hear from you soon, old dear, and sorry once more for my rambling thoughts. Look after yourself and good luck with the launch of the new book. Friday week, isn’t it?

  With deepest affection,

  Otto

  He read the letter back to himself, correcting one or two grammatical errors as he did so. Should he send it? If he was going to, then he must do so quickly, before he had a chance to change his mind. Pierre was an unpredictable fellow, and there was no telling how he might react to Otto’s irreverent tone. It was decades since they had spoken like this, before the accolades and awards began to weigh them down with their own self-importance. Pierre might laugh delightedly, with that deep, infectious bellow of his. Or he might catch the first flight over and punch Otto’s lights out.

  Sod it – just send it to him, thought Otto. I can walk to the postbox this minute. I’m feeling well enough today. Then I’ll come back and write some more, now that I’m in the right frame of mind.

  He was already planning how to tackle the next letter on the pile. It was from his old friend Laszlo – an architect turned avant-garde composer. But just as he was searching out his jacket in the hallway, the telephone rang in his study.

  Four

  ‘Otto, it’s Angelo.’

  ‘That was quick.’

  ‘Quicker than expected – which is a good sign, hopefully. I’ve several developments to report, if you have a few minutes.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Otto sat down.

  ‘Firstly, I’ve been in touch with my lawyer and she’s already preparing the paperwork. We have a strong case – there are precedents – and your name will be a factor, too. Secondly, a number of influential people have indicated that they are willing to help out with the campaign. The Twentieth Century Society are definitely interested. English Heritage have said they will take a look. And I’ve also spoken to several of your friends and former colleagues in the profession. Norman, Richard, Rowena – even Jorge has said he’ll write something on your behalf.’

  ‘My goodness, has he really?’

  Jorge was the rival who had designed Marlowe House’s loftier neighbour.

  ‘You’d be surprised at the levels of support we’re receiving. As I told you yesterday, the situation is nowhere near as hopeless as you appear to think. Things have begun to change in the past few years. People are revising their views about postwar architecture. Did you get a chance to look at that link I sent you last month?’

  ‘You mean to that ridiculous property programme? Yes, I did take a look.’

  Angelo seemed a little thrown by Otto’s tone and hesitated before continuing.

  ‘I know that sort of thing isn’t really to your taste, but it can be a useful way to generate support in a situation like this.’

  ‘I suppose it can,’ Otto replied, with little enthusiasm.

  ‘Helps spread the message to a broader public, educates them about the value of twentieth-century architecture, you know the sort of thing.’

  ‘I’d hardly call programmes of that sort educational,’ said Otto. ‘Vacuous morons, leaping about with paintbrushes, working out how many thousands they can add to the value of their investment. Those apartments weren’t built for their benefit,’ he added. ‘They were meant to improve the lives of the socially excluded.’

  ‘And that’s exactly what Marlowe House has done,’ broke in Angelo. ‘Well, that’s what we’ll be trying to argue. If Taylor House, which is now largely privately owned, has received a listing, then surely Marlowe House – earlier, architecturally more significant and still serving the purpose for which it was designed – well, surely that deserves a listing, too.’

  ‘It’s a nice argument,’ said Otto, ‘but there are some voices missing in all this.’

  ‘And whose are those?’

  ‘The residents. What do they think? From what I read in The Architectural Eye, they were pretty much unanimous in their condemnation. People hate living in Marlowe House, apparently. That’s why they want to knock the thing down.’

  The disappointment in Otto’s voice was clear.

  ‘And ultimately, whatever the architectural merits of the building, whatever its place as a piece of post-war social history, if the people who actually live there regard it as a failure, then perhaps one should admit that it probably is a failure.’

  Angelo sought to pluck Otto free of his descending gloom. He had strong ideas of his own on the subject.

  ‘You can’t blame yourself for the current condition of Marlowe House,’ he said. ‘You’
re not responsible for the direction British society has taken over the past thirty years. The lack of public investment, the crumbling social fabric, drugs, crime, everyone for themselves, the rampant materialism, turning our built heritage into a used-car lot.’

  Angelo was getting into his stride now. It was obvious he had spent time as Otto’s apprentice.

  ‘If Marlowe House has become emblematic of the modern urban nightmare, then that’s the result of multiple social and economic factors – not the fact that it’s made of bloody concrete, whatever the authorities might say. Look at Taylor House, it’s becoming a popular place to live. Marlowe House is very similar, physically. The only difference is that it’s in a more deprived part of town. If it had been properly maintained by the authorities, and if society hadn’t long ago pulled the plug on the poor sods who live there, we wouldn’t have a fraction of the problems that exist there today. Don’t let the politicians try to push the blame for this onto you, Otto. It’s their failure – not yours.’

  Angelo paused to draw breath, while Otto considered his answer.

  ‘You have a point,’ he conceded. ‘And I’m almost convinced … but I’d still like to know what the residents think.’

  Angelo paused. Should he say it now? Why not?

  ‘There’s another reason I’ve called you back this soon.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Otto, sensing the reticence in Angelo’s voice.

  ‘I got a call this morning’ – say it, he told himself – ‘from a television director.’

  The involuntary sound in Otto’s throat might have come from The Exorcist.

  Angelo pressed on.

  ‘They’re launching a new cultural show on television next month. It sounds as if it could be reasonably highbrow.’