Shiv Malik

pensioners saying oh well i'll own a house and let some kind of young student pay for my pension well it's a terrible way to run an economy we don't want to rent your economy so that's the stuff that i think is really radical that's actually what ebenezer howard who by the way was a journalist uh garden city yeah who set up letchworth uh garden city in the garden city movement uh in his book tomorrow if you read it it's actually by the way full of accounts it's very boring read uh you

It would be more interesting given that he was a journalist.

But actually, that's the bit that he was radical about and tried to get right, failed, but was like, look, how do you make this housing affordable forever or for many, many generations to come?

I think for me, I don't simply want to re-emulate the past in terms of aesthetics.

There's a lot there in terms of placemaking and wayfinding, right?

They got right, you mean?

They got right.

That is wonderful.

But can you do it with a different look?

I mean, for me, Charles Rennie Macintosh is probably one of the best architects, I think, for us to kind of reconnect with.

Scottish architect that people aren't familiar, famous for his work in Glasgow, coming off, I guess, the back of the kind of arts deco and arts and craft movement.

But he has a very distinctive style.

And for me, I've always been attracted to his work.

And it's ornament, right?

So he didn't dispel with ornament in any way.

In fact, he totally embraced it.

And his buildings show and reveal all of that.

So they're the most prized and most lauded buildings in Scotland for that reason.

So I look, there's a lot that we can move forward with, but rather than simply copying the past.

Lots of people have suggested that to me.