Architects Reclaim The Streets in the Architectural Week - Tuesday, 21/06.

The Bad Sheets intervention in Leicester Square (17:00) and Russell Sq. (21:00).

The highlight of Architectural Week’s public events is expected to be Transgressive Architecture's Bad Sheets intervention. The Bad Sheets will reclaim the street again, after events at the RIBA, in Charing Cross’ underpasses, and Trafalgar Square over the past three months. The Bad Sheets will travel at night between Leicester Square. and Russell and Bloomsbury Squares.

Transgressive Architecture is demonstrating against the corrosion of architects’ ascendancy in the formation of public spaces and against the social cleansing of public spaces by London authorities. When it comes to the designing of public spaces, architects nowadays either comply like whores (Johnson 1980) to the demands of the powerful, and create exclusionary spaces (see Russell Square) or simply leave the issue of public space in the hands of local politicians, the police, policy makers and bureaucrats.

Transgressive Architecture chose Leicester Square as an important example for the above claims. The square, which most architects would like to see as an open, inclusive, vigorous, and puzzling urban space, has undergone the process of restriction, sterilization, and social cleansing. Many of the street vendors, buskers, painters, and prostitutes. have been removed from the place.

The loss of such engaging and democratic public spaces is a social injustice. Lord Richard Rogers, London’s City Architect goes further. He recently said, "the disappearance of 'open-minded' public space... can generate dire social consequences launching a spiral of decline. As the vibrancy of public spaces diminishes we lose the habit of participating in street life".

This formed the basis of Lord Rogers declaration, at the RIBA, for the rights of homeless people, prostitutes, protesters, beggars, street vendors, buskers and other marginalized communities, to act in the public space. The fact that a report presented recently to Westminster Council viewed street entertainers as merely a cause for "pedestrian congestion, opportunities for crime and anti-social behaviour and noise disturbance" indicates how far Rogers’ vision of street activities is from the other players in the formation of London's public spaces.

For some time now, London authorities are committing the social cleansing of public spaces with zeal, using empty slogans, such as ‘regeneration’, ‘beautification’, ‘safety’, etc. to justify their actions. In some cases, such as in Russell Square they are actually employing architects to do the dirty work of cleansing. In other cases, like in Leicester Square, they use laws and questionable semi-legal tools to highjack the public space from the public.

For further details about the intervention in Leicester Square, Transgressive Architecture group, and the Bad Sheets history, please see http://www.oocities.org/transgressivearchitecture or write to t_a@btinternet.com