Extra-curricular: There are many ways to educate yourself when it comes to the built environment. An increasingly popular way seems to be through the medium of Hollywood blockbuster. Stacey Meadwell grabs the popcorn
Picture the development: A tower, a cross between the brutalist architecture of the Barbican’s high-rise flats topped with the sort of angles Will Alsop would be proud of. It is residential, mixed tenure, with its own gym, swimming pool, squash courts, supermarket and school. A vertical city.
But this isn’t one of the 120-plus tower applications submitted in 2015 in London. This concept is from the imagination of writer JG Ballard and the setting for his 1975 novel High-Rise, which has just been adapted into a film starring Tom Hiddleston and Sienna Miller.
The high-rise of Ballard’s imagination sees the residents divided by class, with the lower classes taking the lower floors and the upper classes the tops floors, sandwiching the middle classes between them. The architect of the development – Anthony Royal, played by Jeremy Irons – lives in the penthouse with a huge roof terrace, where his wife rides a white horse and a goat prunes the shrubbery.
It is a vision of the future, or an alternative history, and the high-rise of Royal’s design is his pet project, his “crucible of change” where everyone can live harmoniously and in splendid isolation from the outside world.
However, this is a dystopian story. The utopia quickly unravels when middle-class resident Wilder (Luke Evans) is relegated to the lower floors where they experience power shortages. Wilder and a group of children from the lower floors are barred from the swimming pool because of an upper class party and life in the high-rise quickly descends into anarchy.
In the film, directed by Ben Wheatley, the classes try to out-party each other with destructive and murderous consequences. It is an extreme view of class divide but it comes at a time when there is growing concern about gentrification, the re-development of council housing and the provision of affordable housing, particularly in large scale developments.
The proposed Garden Bridge across the Thames in central London is proving controversial for several reasons, including the fact that it will be closed for private functions.
In High-Rise, dividing the classes proves a mistake, yet when you talk to housing developers they say pepper-potting tenure is tricky. The film takes an extreme stance – it is big screen entertainment after all.
High-Rise is not the only film in recent months to tackle property issues albeit it is the only one to approach it metaphorically.
Last year’s film 99 Homes was equally brutal, but from a moral and emotional standpoint. Based on recent events, the story revolved around an unemployed father (Andrew Garfield) whose family is evicted for mortgage arrears. He ends up working for the company that carries out the evictions and makes money out of seized assets. His dilemma is whether he should put his family back on an even footing by doing to others what was done to him.
It is a great companion piece to this year’s Oscar best film nominee, The Big Short. Whereas 99 Homes tells the story of the crash from the homeowner perspective, The Big Short tells it from the viewpoint of the bankers and hedge funds. It follows a handful of people that spotted the wobbly footing on which the housing boom was standing and then made lots of money from kicking its legs away.
EG rating: 4/5
Whether you are anti- or pro-tower, a viewing of High-Rise is sure to raise important points for discussion.
• High-Rise is in cinemas now.
