Is Norman Foster selling his soul?

Foster Associates designed a ‘signature building’ (the ‘Leaf’) as part of a commercial redevelopment proposal in the London suburb of Ealing in 2007. Brought in presumably to lend a certain ‘caché’ to the otherwise uninspiring and vastly overdeveloped project near the Ealing Broadway Station, the proposal was slammed by English Heritage and CABE as well as local residents and community groups. In response, the developers, Glenkerrin, made a few changes, lowering the height of the main Foster designed tower from a massive 40 floors (just below the Heathrow flight path!) to 27 floors and resubmitted it.

Foster has made a name for himself by designing iconic buildings like the ‘Gherkin’ office block in central London and no doubt the developers thought the local residents would be naïve enough to value having a well known architect gracing their neighbourhood, even if it was the wrong building in the wrong place. Despite Ealing Council approving the revised scheme, it was called in by the government and after a public inquiry, the inspector recommended rejection and this advice was accepted by the Secretary of State, a rare example of central government reflecting local community interests against those of its own council.

But Foster is probably too busy to notice his rejection by the suburban upstarts in Ealing. According to today’s television programme by Kevin McCloud (Slumming it - India’, Channel 4), he is one of a number of leading international architects lending their names to the redevelopment of one of the largest slums in Asia, Dharavi in Mumbai. Dharavi is a massive slum, housing well over 600,000 mostly poor people living at extremely high densities, but generating livelihoods for so many it is helping keep Mumbai’s economy afloat and certainly does most of the city’s dirty business, like recycling its wastes. Yet, as in Ealing, developers are anxious to get their hands on the land in order to redevelop Dharavi and turn it into shopping malls and offices with high-rise apartments for some of the existing residents.

Foster will be part of this ‘makeover’, helping to impose commercially profitable versions of urban life for an affluent minority at the expense of the poor majority. If he has been advised that this is really in the interests of the poor, or even the long term interests of Mumbai, then perhaps he should select some new advisers. If he is doing this in full knowledge of the social, cultural and economic impacts such an approach will have on the poor, then it suggests he has wilfully turned his back on what is really needed and has, indeed, sold his soul. Call me a NIMBY, but it’s not the sort of icon I would want in my backyard.