Social and Public Housing in Kingston, Jamaica

Social and publicarchitecture inKingston, JamaicaJACQUIANN LAWTONThere are circumstances that site modernism. Events such asthe Great International Exhibit of 1891 launched the trademark ofJamaica as a partner in celebrating industrialization with the world’sbastions of exhibition pavilions. Natural disasters have made demandson inhabitants to recover and re-structure living since 1692.58Fig. 1. Kingston, 1967THE IMPACT of World War II on cultural identityand historicism had its peripheral effects. In the WestIndies it nurtured an ideology of self-governance andthe spirit of independent nations, a West IndianFederation. These interstitial nodes locate stations ofmodernity. A modern architecture emerged most visiblyin Kingston and St Andrew, the legislative seat andcultural depository of Jamaica.THE ICONOGRAPHY OF KINGSTON’S PLAN disclosesthe figure of a key. It is a structural figure in themorphology of the city (fig. 1). It traces the events of the1907 earthquake, consequentfire and city renovationthereafter. The city centerwas then connected toSpanish Town (the formercapital) by railway and aninternal motorized tramserviced the John Geoff grid(1693) on the north-southstreets, where telephone andelectrical power generationwere operational. Post 1907building codes were revised.Of significance was theuse of stone and cement inlieu of bricks as buildingmaterials. By mandate ofthe Kingston Council, allpublic departments weremoved from the water’s© photo J. Tyndale-Biscoeedge, Harbour Street, and internalized on the North-South primary artery of King Street (fig. 2). The city’stheater located at North Parade (the end of King Street)was rebuilt as the Ward Theatre (1912).THE FORMAL PROPERTIES of these significant civicstructures (attributed to contractors Henriques Brothers) aredistinctive. The public departments’ greco-roman archedcolonnades are severe in their repetition and reduction ofornamentation, whereas the Ward Theatre’s façade issymmetrical and eclectic in ornament, as emphasized bythe arched and oval treatment of its openings. The publicdepartments’ imagery, shared with other colonialstructures of that time like the Commander in chiefResidence, New Delhi, India, 1 points to architecturalproduction as an instrument of the colonial office. Inaddition, from 1907 through to the 1950s, the sign of themaster builder is inconspicuous in its signification asinventor of predisposing universal formal laws.SOCIAL AGENDA 1940s–1950sThe Central Housing Authority (CHA) was formed in1937 to address deteriorating housing in Kingstonmetropolitan area and gained legislative support with theSlum Clearance and Housing Law of 1939. The majorityof projects were located in western Kingston along theline of approach from rural Jamaica by railway and theSpanish Town Road. Squatter settlements in Trench Town,Dung Hill and Back-O-Wall, Kingston Pen were inexistence since the 1920s. The program’s schemesincluded the provision of rental housing, tenement blocksof multi family units with one and two room apartments,Docomomo N°33September 2005

shared communal service areas and detached cottages. 2Simultaneously, private production of single-familydwellings occurred in St Andrew East Central. They wereof a standard rectilinear typology, L shaped, with a publicvolume (verandah) at the corner, set on a plinth for airflow beneath, with hip and/or gable roofs. Of interest isthe systemization of typological determinants andmaterial properties of combined concrete block walls(150 mm) and concrete nog (75 mm).© photo J. Tyndale-BiscoeTHE KINGSTON AND ST ANDREW Corporation has onfile numerous built and un-built approval submissions,variations of the theme with examples like Repole,Sanguinetti and Co Ransford Avenue, Lyndhurst Park, forP. G. Serrart, 1936.In 1951 the hurricane Charlie relief fund, implementedthrough the Hurricane Housing Organization (HHO),increased the urgency of the CHA agenda. Solutions tookthe shape of site subdivisions with roadways and a basicshell unit. These communities were located in Port Royal,east and western Kingston. The parcels of landdesignated for relief housing varied in scale from 6.5 to42 and 75 acres respectively and with densities at14–20 lots per acre. 3THE PREMISES OF THESE SCHEMES were self-helpwith a small grant for materials and a nominal charge forrent with the right to purchase the lot once infrastructurewas installed. The scheme was managed by the Ministryof Housing. 4Formally, the pattern of modules were generated froma core unit of 10x10 for Tower Hill and 24x20 forBalmagie in western Kingston. They were bungalow-likewith gable or hip roofs and assumed the disposition ofcottages in timber (Tower Hill). Land area for cultivatinggardens and livestock remained consistent withrural/urban living rituals.BETWEEN 1948 AND 1952, the Jamaica ManufacturersAssociation licensed the Caribbean Cement Company tobuild a factory at Rockfort, the entry to Kingston from theeast and Palisadoes airport (built during World War II forthe British army) (fig. 4). 5 Recovery from the hurricaneplaced heavy demand on production.The Housing Act of 1955 created the Departmentof Housing and Social Welfare, a merger of HHOand CHA. The act, amended in 1958, set provisionsFig. 2. GovernmentBuildings, KingStreet© Elizabeth Pigou-Dennis collectionFig. 3. UWI campus and Queen's Wayfor private capital, financing construction to extendthe portfolio of state housing to the middle-incomeintra-urban migrants. 6THE MONA HEIGHTS 1958 SCHEME was built within200 acres that were originally designated for the WestIndian Federation. The fabrication is a system of ribbedpre-cast reinforced panels erected on site. Following suitwere the major developments of Harbour View (1960),Duhaney Park (1963), Hughenden (1967), Edgewater(1970) (fig. 7). The single-family dwellings or ‘JamaicanBungalow’ were now pre-fabricated for massconsumption; industrialized in a horizontal settlement.Sanitization policies within the inner city squattercommunities continued with four story blocks of flats inwestern Kingston (Trench Town and Tivoli), but productionof the vertical type was limited. 7 Housing strategiescontinued in the envelope of the Ministry of Housing thatreplaced the Department of Housing and Social Welfarein 1966. It wasn’t until the 1970s with the McIntyre LandsDevelopment (architects, design collaborative) in easternKingston that a viable solution of an aggregate of publicand private spaces found a livable equilibrium in a lowriseclustering plan.SINCE 1947, the Office of the Town Planner (the postof Town Planning Adviser consequently becomingthe Government Town Planner) was instrumental asthe government’s adviser in activities relating to housingand land use. The Town Planning Department carried outextensive island wide mappings of population and landuse data. However, the integrated use of this data withhousing policies was disjointed. What was purposefulwas the department’s development of the first ten-year59Docomomo N°33September 2005

strategic plan for physical development with emphasis oncoastal towns and the urban development plan for aconduit connecting the suburbs of Spanish Town withKingston. 8 The urban development of open public areas,park and beach facilities was also implemented. 9Planning adviser David Spruell, town planner GrahamCharles (Bill) Hodges (1952–1967) and Jamaicanarchitect Carl Chen are of relevance.DURING THE 1940s the University College of the WestIndies (UCWI) Mona campus, Papine, was beingconceived as the single tertiary education institution in theregion that would fulfill the needs of the West Indies.Medicine for public health was of priority. Britisharchitects Norman and Dawbarn were commissioned forthe campus design in 1946 (fig. 3).A ring road was central to the planning of the university’sadministrative functions and circulation distribution toThe displacement of function in relation to building typein the transposition of the rum store to chapel,notwithstanding classical attributes of the structure, ismodernist in operation. Yet, memory resides in theplanning. The central spine, Queen’s way, which wasplanned as two parallel avenues whose ends were toconnect the Senate House with an amphitheater embeddedin Long Mountain recalls the procession of Ephesus.The Senate House, and the Registry, Library and Artsbuildings within the ring road were completed by 1953(fig. 5). The programmatic components are extensions ofthe ring’s diameter without the panoptic guise of Ledoux’sideal city. The buildings are simple rectangular sectionsthat exaggerate lines and are suspended between skyand earth on pilotis. Facades are mosaic skins ofbreather block modules or brise-soleils that are integratedwithin a post and beam system, yet appear free in theirhomogeneity. The Arts buildings are in principle rows ofFig. 4. Kingston harbor and Palisadoes airport© photo J. Tyndale-Biscoe© photo Jacquiann Lawton60Fig. 5. University of the West Indies, part of Registry buildingthe greater campus. It was sited West of Gibraltar camp,World War II barracks constructed by the Public WorksDepartment as a safe haven for evacuees of Gibraltarand Malta (1940–1941). The camp buildings were thefirst temporary home of the university. 10THE RING interrupts an aqueduct which serviced theHope Estate from Hope River during its period of sugarproduction. The fragmented aqueduct is a colonnadeof continuous arches that ends in the campus as achapel, located perpendicular to the processional entry.“Resident Engineer Ainsworth David Haughton Scott (A. D.Scott, 1912–2004, Jamaican) ‘painstakingly pulled down,numbered and transported to Mona the cut limestoneblocks of an eighteenth century rum-store from Hampdenload bearing walls that appear as bookends. The wallsare individually cut limestone with irregular mortar joints.They are tactile and hand crafted.The work presents an ideal of naturalism driven climaticallyand a synthesis of the artisan and industrialized labor. Amodern classicism concerned with equilibrium.As Dawbarn wrote in a newspaper article of 1947 quotedby Francis Brown: “by logical and sympathetic appreciationof local and current conditions; by a reasoned simplicityenhanced by local arts married to blue skies and luxuriantvegetation.”PRE / POST INDEPENDENCE1950s–1970sDuring the transitional pre-independence decade theprivate practices of Wilson Chong, Harold J. Ashwell andEstate in Trelawny,’ as historian Douglas Hall recorded.” 11 Docomomo N°33September 2005

© photo Jacquiann Lawtonwalls. A formal affinity for shell structures is evident in thePresbyterian church (Mona), Oxford pharmacy, and theTexaco service stations. International attributes appear inthe works of the Ministry of Education seemingly inspiredby Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation and the brutalism ofthe Central Sorting Offices.Fig. 6. M. F. Campbell and R. A. Brandon, Public Works Department,Commissioner of Income Tax Department, recently painted blueTHE WORKS, sited throughout the limits of Kingston andSt Andrew, were constructed primarily during the 1970sdecade and point to an ideology not solely concerned withthe materials’ monolithic and system building contingencies.As a member of the Society of Architects (1957), Chongforged the establishment of conditional guidelines forpractice: engagement, fee scales and conduct codes aswell as laws governing the Registration of Architects. In1979, he was made Commander of the Order ofDistinction by the Government of Jamaica.V. R. Mc Morris and J. P. Sibley started practice in 1955,later joined by H. W. Robinson in 1958.Mc Morris Sibley Robinson were established. Contractorswere still creating the majority of buildings in Jamaica.Early practices strategically offered design and buildingservices, as was the case with Wilson Chong andengineers Leonard Chang and Mc Morris SibleyRobinson and contractors Marley and Plant, howevershort lived the relationships might have been. Alternately,local architects who were foreign trained practiced withinthe Public Works Department (PWD). The PWD was thegovernment’s architectural firm, with the responsibility ofall government building other than the Ministry ofTransportation’s facilities.WILSON CHONG (1922–1984) epitomizes the spiritof the age. Of Chinese-Jamaican descent, born inSantiago, Cuba, he studied at the University of Notre-Dame and at the University of Illinois (1952). Hewas able to realize a co-existence of handicraft andindustry. He invented a hand pile bore (1967) that wasgranted U.S., British and German patents in 1971. Heingenuously embraced the lyrical potential ofpre-stressed, reinforced and pre-cast concrete buildingtechnology. His National Stadium (1960–1962)triumphed as the emblem for nurturing the collectivespirit. Its gothic grandstand of concrete vaults fromcantilevered beams on a tripod base is empathetic withthe plastic limits of the material (fig. 8).HE ELEVATED the concrete block module to wall panel. Inthe Henriques Building at Cross Roads, it appears as theresidual template of fretwork: a cubist scaffold, tetheredby the building’s corners, which rises beyond the wallinducing vertical extension of post and panel system(fig. 9). He used it also as kit component forprefabricated low resource housing units: ribbed, pre-cast© photo J. Tyndale-BiscoeFig. 7. Harbor view housing schemeMc MORRIS, SIBLEY AND ROBINSON (MSR)graduated from the University of Manitoba and McGillUniversity, architecture schools in Canada. Their studiowas the mentoring forum for generations of Jamaicanswho studied externally and returned home to practice,including the first female architect Verma Panton(McGill University, 1964). Members of the partnershipalso lobbied the Commonwealth Association ofArchitects on behalf of the Society of Architects for aregional school to be sited in Jamaica. The Bahamaswas the alternative location being considered. At thetime Canada was the primary CAA delegate of theAmericas and architect Norris Mitchell of Grenadawas the representative for the Caribbean. The schoolwas realized in 1988.61Docomomo N°33September 2005

62Fig. 8. Wilson Chong,National Stadium© Jamaican Institute of Architects archive © Jamaican Institute of Architects archiveTHE ARCHITECTURE OF MSR captured the spirit ofa new Kingston, with repetitive façades of urbananonymity celebrated in concrete. Construction methodvaried. In the example of Scotia Bank Center locatedon the Kingston waterfront both in situ and pre-castconcrete components were utilized. MSR were alsoidentified as associate architects for multinationalcorporations with foreign architects investing capitalthrough regional offices in Kingston, for buildings suchas the British-American building (1967), now VictoriaMutual, New Kingston.The linguistic expression of the group varied, appearingambiguous with the expressionistic works of the UCWICreative Arts Center (1969) and the Matalon Residence(1970), St Andrew East (fig. 10). What prevails is astructural rationalism, hinging on building method andmaterial technology.ARCHITECTURE PRODUCTION since 1958 has inessence debated the limits of a materialist basedrationalism. The objects of Marvin Goodman andAssociates are sensitive to tropical climatic themes mostevident at a private residential scale, with the exceptionof the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica office building(New Kingston). The dialectic extreme of H. D. Repolé’smonolithic office towers integrates public concern withthe implementation of livable streetscapes in NewKingston. Works of Patrick Stanigar in East Kingston(Harbour Street) reveal an organic bridge towardsnaturalism.PROPOSALS between 1957 and 1970 for the expansionof the business and industrial facilities geographicallyconfined Kingston’s administrative limits to St Andrewnorth east (New Kingston) and pushed port facilitiesfurther west (Newport west). This made way for the superblock redevelopment of the Kingston waterfront andplaced the Urban Development Corporation Act of 1968and its vehicle the Urban Development Corporation(UDC) at the center stage of development plans. Initiallythe UDC only worked in designated areas: rural tourismtowns such as Ocho Rios, Negril, Montego Bay. The firstappointed chief architect was British architect DavidGregory Jones, of Shankland and Cox, who assisted inthe establishment of the UDC.Fig. 9. Wilson Chong,Henriques BuildingDEVELOPMENT IN CONTEMPORARY Kingston is statedriven as a result of the management of capital since the1970s. High-rise housing is on the social agenda again,utilizing defunct models of modernisms past. Numerousproposals for the revitalization of Kingston have beenguided by the UDC. In its capacity as member of acommittee or board, it provides technical support andcoordinates consultants both local and foreign. Initiativesinclude: Vision 20/20, the Kingston Restoration Company,and the Kingston City Center Investment CompanyDocomomo N°33September 2005

(KCCIC). The master builders’ obsession with stylepersists and embodies a resilient entrepreneurial history.Between 1998 and 2002, the National Stadium wasrenovated in two phases by the Urban DevelopmentCorporation (project managers and consultants) as partof a joint agreement between the Government of Jamaicaand the Venezuelan Government. 128 Colin G. Clarke, Kingston Jamaica, Urban Growth and SocialChange, 1692–1962 (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: Universityof California Press, 1975).9 Arch. Ann Hodges, Conversation in Kingston (March 2005).10 Suzanne Francis Brown, Mona Past and Present (Jamaica, Barbados,Trinidad and Tobago: University of the West Indies Press, 2004).11 Ibid.12 Christopher Shaw, chief architect UDC, Conversation at theCaribbean School of Architecture (March 2005).JACQUIANN LAWTON is a lecturer in architectural design,history and theory at the Caribbean School of Architecture, Universityof Technology, Jamaica W.I. and is the Editor of AXIS, the CSA journalon Caribbean regionalism. She is a scholar of the Cooper Unionin New York City (1990) and as architect has authored several builtworks in Jamaica.NOTES1 Beverley Elizabeth Pigou, “The Social History of the Upper andMiddle Classes in Jamaica between 1914–1945.” Ph.D. diss.(University of the West Indies, 1995). Beverley Elizabeth Pigou makesthe comparison page 205.2 Pauline McHardy, “Housing Provision and Policy Making inJamaica: Charting the Level of Involvement of the Architect.” Paperpresented at the Commonwealth Association of Architects Meeting,Goa, India, October 2–5, 1997.3 Jean and Oliver Cox, Self built and expanded housing in Jamaica,A Comparative Study of single story housing from 12 projects(London: Shankland/Cox, 1985).4 McHardy, “Housing Provision.”5 Anthony S. Johnson, City of Kingston Souvenir, 1802–2002,Commemoration of the Bicentennial of The City Charter (ISKAMOL,2002).6 McHardy, “Housing Provision.”7 Ann Norton, “Shanties and Skyscrapers, Growth and Structure ofModern Kingston.” Working Paper 13, Institute of Social and EconomicResearch, University of The West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, 1976.Fig. 11. Mc Morris, Sibley and Robinson,Turtle Beach Apartments, Ocho Rios63Fig. 10. Mc Morris, Sibley and Robinson,UWIC Creative Arts Center, 1969© L. Mark Taylor collection© L. Mark Taylor collectionDocomomo N°33September 2005