Power to you...

The design of the vertical power poles (VWT) in the above picture, was a response to the immediate needs of people in the aftermath of a major earthquake. Survivors talked of being trapped in the dark, battery life of mobile phones failing, injured in the darkness and cut off all communication. In such situations off grid power sources become all important. What would be needed was a power source that could be placed in close proximity to buildings and be able to provide lighting, free Wifi and charge points for phones. None of the technologies used to meet this challenge are new, and yet it led to exploring the possibilities for sustainable power generation opportunities in unlikely places.

We are what Buckminster Fuller called “energy slaves” and with World energy consumption predicted to increase by 40% by 2030, access to sustainable power sources is becoming increasingly important. The argument by traditional power companies is that sustainable power cannot generate enough power on a sustained basis – but maybe it is that new technologies require new ways of thinking about where they are placed and how they are used.

I am trying to follow Jacques Franco's idea 'of not complaining without offering an alternative solutions' – or as Fuller put it: “you never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”. If 35% of energy created is lost in transmission, it would make sense that any new model is likely to work on local supplies – possibly as a bi-product of other activities. As in the above picture, could vertical wind turbines be placed in the dividing space on busy motorways or indeed beside railway tracks or the runways of international airports? How much energy could be harvested from the air-flow in such situations? With a slight modification the fixed baffles that increase energy production could ensure that there was no dangerous spray from the devices in bad weather. The power from existing wind turbines is reduced to a restricted rotation to reduce noise – but noise would not be a problem in such situations. We live in a strange World where the MOD in the UK are protesting against wind turbines in Cornwall UK as a 'security threat' and in the USA a 'nuclear weapons facility' tries to earn itself some 'Green' credentials by claiming to 'be powered by the largest Federal wind farm' and this makes some strange ideas seem really quite sane.

In Korea there are electric buses in operation that charge wirelessly from the road. Could this be the future for cars? Is there also the possibility to generate energy from the movement of the traffic on the road? Maybe we are just not seeing all the energy sources available to us? Could the movement of people on a busy street, the pressure of their movement on the pavement, provide the energy to light the street, or train terminal, or airport? This might seem 'off the wall', but apparently a night club is taking people power literally and harvests power generated by the movement on the dance floor. It sounds like I'm 'talking out of my behind', but 'Poop Power' has also been suggested as a serious sustainable option and let's face it, there is an almost unending supply of the stuff. It's the methane gas bi-product that provides the power source in this idea and why couldn't a sewage treatment plant not power itself by the methane it produces? Instead of just letting the methane from landfill drift up into the atmosphere, why not capture it and use it? If the methane from 'Fresh Kills' was utilized, it probably wouldn't be enough to power NYC, but it could help reduce consumption on existing resources.

Using energy created as a bi-product as something else is an attractive idea and it points to the idea that future power generation will be localized. In the USA an architect was asked to look at power generation for an olive factory – they had PV panels, but the factory operated day and night, so they needed to supplement the power source. He discovered that their waste product – olive pips, could be used as bio mass, which reduced the factories waste and provided power at the same time – other factories across Europe are using this idea, but could the idea be replicated with other waste products in other industries?

It is likely that there is no one sustainable solution to the energy problem, but rather that it is a case of using combinations of different energy producing solutions to meet different modern demands. It is 'eco – logical', we have the technological capability, 'the Future' is already here – it just isn't very well distributed yet. This means that as energy demand sky-rockets government policies should include measures for implementing the distribution of sustainable technologies and in a sense there is some movement in this direction, but we the general public have to do our bit.

Here is an idea that you can try at home and it is one that if you live in the right climatic conditions, will reduce your heating bills to almost zero. It is possible to heat your home from the air by using an 'air source heat pump'. My father has installed one in his home (see above photo) and so far the heating and hot water bills are a fraction of what he paid in a quarter with a traditional system. If he linked the pump to a PV Solar panel his heating and hot water would cost almost zero. I had thought that the system would need underfloor heating, but watch the 'air source heat pump' video on Youtube and it seems that some people have made the system work on a 'traditional' radiator system. Governments need to provide incentives to retrofit such technology in the same way as they might promote Solar PV panels.

How we generate energy is becoming increasingly important: Imagine a planet where everyone had $10,000,000.00 – but no basic resources: no clean drinking water, no arable land or access to food, what do they actually have of real value? It's a matter of offering alternatives to Fukushima and fracking, so let's put our heads together and see what we can do.

Alex King is an architect and his design 'Santiago Townhouseʼ won the British Homes Awards in 2011.

Calling himself 'Designalexable', he occasionally puts a selection of what passes through his head on a blog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yGQhlRz8mc

The Greenwich Foot Tunnel

            The Greenwich foot tunnel is one of London's great social engineering projects, and yet since the tube line extension created a direct link to the centre of Greenwich, it has in recent years become less used. Tourists occasionally wander through it to see the view that Canaletto made famous from Island Gardens and there has been renovation of the lifts, but this cannot sweep away the feeling that the structure could close to public use at any time.

               This structure was one of the great engineering feats of it's time. There had been tunnels through rock, but this was a tunnel through wet mud, with dangerous methane pockets (they tunneled by candle light), under London’s great water way. The Council surveyor for the tunnel informed me that the tunnel moves with the tide, “achieving a banana like shape when the tide is fully out”.

           

             The attached sketches/watercolors/part hand measured drawings were done as part of a historic study to describe the building in a style similar to the way it would have been presented when first created.

Alex King is an architect and his design 'Santiago Townhouse' won the British Homes Awards in 2011 - Alex King Design / Designalexable, examples of his latest work can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yGQhlRz8mc

Look after your staircase... It may be the only diagonal you've got (2)

    

              In look after your staircase... It may be the only diagonal you've got (1) I was in raptures over the Nelson Stair in the Courthold Institute, Somerset House, and rather flippantly bemoaned that it is rare to see such flamboyant design in modern buildings. Of course, there are many modern flamboyant stairs and I thought that I would share a few that I like in the hope that they might inspire. 

Alex King is an architect and his design 'Santiago Townhouse' won the British Homes Awards in 2011 - Alex King Design / Designalexable, examples of his latest work can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yGQhlRz8mc

On ugliness and beauty

“Beauty is sin deep” – Saki ¹

Coleridge defined beauty as 'unity in variety'

    Many places that are considered 'beautiful' contain horrible histories, grim realities that funded their construction or saved them from destruction. Venice 'trafficked in slaves, ignored her poor, dissipated her resources and exacted immoderate revenge on her enemies3. But does this, all these centuries later, detract from 'her' beauty? Venice is a place generally recognized as beautiful, romantic - a favorite place to visit for honeymooners and those on a romantic weekend and 'It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness'⁴ and yet 'we are merely the resultant of previous generations, we are also the resultant of their errors, passions, and crimes; it is impossible to shake off this chain'⁵. This monument to wealth and power that we perceive as 'beautiful' is built on the misery of others: 'the revived restrictions on the slave trade... aroused a great deal of discontent among the Venetians' who became involved in 'wars against the Croats, the Slavs, The Holy Land, The Greeks, The Hungarians, Belgrade, Rhodes, suppressing any would be power that might adversely affect its trading routes' ⁶.  The history that is the foundation to all that visual beauty becomes lost in some sort of collective amnesia, it sinks into the marshy waters and we are suitably impressed by all the facades that were built to impress. There is a disassociation with the place, the way it looks, and the history that created the wealth that funded the buildings we call beautiful – why?

            The past that produced the historic built environment is presented as a 'Golden Age', whatever the era and before WWI and WWII, the cities of Europe were filled with grand historic buildings that became casualties in the fighting. Even before those events one of the main jewels in historic Europe was Prague. Sometimes called 'the city of silence', there is a history in Prague that is rarely mentioned: As a tourist in Prague I admired Staromestske Namesti (Old Town Square), the Astronomical clock and the delightful buildings that weave towards the statues of the Charles Bridge, across the river and up to Prague Castle. I read Kafka and about Kafka, and about the atrocities by the Russian Communists that ended with 'The Velvet Revolution'. Eventually, after drinking coffee outside a street café, I climbed a magnificent modern spiral stair* looking for a toilet. Outside the toilet was a sign – 'These toilets are for the use of those visiting the Art Gallery ONLY. Being a respectful person, I visited the Art Gallery. I walked around the gallery, not intending to spend much time there, then a beautiful painting of a girl beside a river caught my eye. I liked the colours and the way the painting seemed to be suffused with the joys of Spring. I read the label stuck on the wall..... 'died Bergen Belsen. I was shocked. The pretty joy of the canvas was as removed from the death camps as was possible. I looked at the next canvas, same thing: 'died Bergen Belsen'. Every sign in the gallery said the same thing. I went to speak to the girl on the desk and she enlightened me: “To save the city from harm, the city Governors (Sudeten Party) traded the people to the Nazis”. When I went outside the buildings did not seem so beautiful. They seemed almost creepy, a stage set behind which piled up the bodies of the death camps. Here lies a philosophical dilemma: was it right to trade thousands of lives to preserve a city for future generations on the basis that it is considered 'beautiful'? If you think the answer to that is “yes”, then would it still be “yes” if it were your family, your Grandmother, your mother, your daughter? Does it make any difference if the target group is a religious group, 'intellectuals', 'deviant artists', political beliefs or because of the colour of your skin – all of who were targeted and ended up in the death camps? Can the city still be considered 'beautiful' when we become aware of the horror of it's history, of the thinking that allows it to exist? Surely, a good building graces it's environment, not disgraces it and why it is still standing there is surely as important as how 'attractive' it might be deemed to look within the street scene.

 

Mengo, capital of Buganda prior to the effects of slavery

     Similar stories of grand historic buildings standing on human misery are everywhere, from the slave plantations of the Caribbean and the Americas, to the 'elegant' streets of European ports where merchants and 'ordinary' people benefited from the slave trade⁷. Can such places be ethically conserved if they are separated from their social history? My personal experience⁸ is that such buildings are appreciated separated from their social history, which is actively suppressed. It seems that the buildings of the past are held up as an example⁹, but that example is sometimes a selective construct and we should ask the question 'why are some parts of the history are edited out'.

      The history behind the facades of historic buildings as a record of atrocities extends beyond WWII, the slave trade and far back into history. 'Languedoc (France) is now a peaceful land, but during the 13^th Century it was the site of one of the most vicious episodes in medieval history. It was invaded and there was a bitter battle for the soul of the people of the region, a battle in which beauty was used as a political weapon'¹⁰. This story focuses on The Cathars, a pacifist, religious sect inspired by the mysticism and non-materialism of Christ's teaching. 'It now seems extraordinary that one of the most fanatical and bloodthirsty crusades undertaken by Roman Catholic Christians in the Middle Ages was... against' its own people, 'a people that venerated Christ' and 'the crusaders were just as bloodthirsty in Languedoc as they had been in The Holy Land'¹⁰.

        Albi cathedral is at the center of this story and it is like no other cathedral in Europe. 'Built using treasure seized from persecuted families' the new regime sponsored by the Catholic Church of Rome extorted or confiscated money and property from the local people and 'property continued to be confiscated for the completion of the cathedral – which took over 100 years' ¹⁰. For the local people at the time the cathedral was being built, it must have seemed like 'an emblem of evil' and yet we might look at the buildings across the river Tarn on a spring day and think “how beautiful”. Is it beautiful? when we preserve such monuments, what are we actually preserving? When we visit the Vatican museum and see the wealth of objects displayed, do we consider where they come from? When we understand their history, soaked in blood and persecution, are they still beautiful, and if the answer to that is “yes”, then what does that say about our ideas of beauty and the power of aesthetics on moral perception?

        Buildings of the past have a history, the impressive monuments to wealth and power that form the streets of Europe's big cities are often the product of something we would rather forget. To articulate the past does not mean to recognize it 'the way it really was' as 'the past can only be seized as an image'¹¹ - our entire sensibility is locked into the time we occupy, with its own historical influences, concerns, tastes and fashions. We experience the past separated from its context, distanced from its embedded tradition : 'a statue of Venus stood in a different traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol'¹¹. Outside of this context there is sometimes a conscious act to reverse history, particularly with damage done by the different sides in the Second World War.

Market Square in the Old Town, Warsaw, Poland 1945

 

Market Square in the Old Town, Warsaw, Poland 1970

           From the reconstruction of Ypres (Belgium) or Market Square in the Old Town, Warsaw, Poland, to the rebuilding of Riga or Dresden, sometimes the act of 'Conservation' actively seeks to erase the past and restore things to how they were before the tragic event that led to their destruction: This is 'Conservation' of the built environment as active historical revisionism. 'We did not want a new city... we wanted the Warsaw of our day and that of the future to continue the ancient tradition'¹² explained the conservation chief of Warsaw's medieval city centre when it was proposed that it be restored so that it looked exactly as it did before the Nazi destruction. The rebuilding of a 'replica' of what had been is not an 'ancient tradition', traditionally after events, such as the destruction of Chicago or the Fire of London, people tried to use the situation as an opportunity to improve on what had been. The rebuilding of an exact replica of a place prior to a destructive act – particularly an occupation or act of war, is therefore 'Cconservation' as an act of political defiance that seeks to write the event out of history.

      An example of two, almost opposite, approaches in the rebuilding after an act of war would be to compare Coventry, England, with Dresden, Germany. Coventry was one of the first cities to be 'carpet bombed' by the Nazi aggressors, and they saw it as so 'successful' an act of destruction that they reportedly referred to later cities that they 'carpet bombed' as 'having been Coventried'¹³. With the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral, Basil Spence did not seek to rebuild the destroyed Gothic Cathedral or even to build in a 'historical style', but rather to keep the ruin of the destroyed cathedral as a record of the destruction and interconnect that space with the new building. The space within the ruins of the Gothic Cathedral becomes an event space, an open air chapel that seems to stretch back in history to the dawn of religion. As the buildings interconnect this almost becomes the entrance courtyard to the new building. The cross on the alter of the new building is formed of building elements fused together during the firestorm in the destruction of the original, and this seeks to connect the present to the past in the central focus of the new building; reinforcing history and the sense of place that the building inhabits. This is a modern building that speaks of history and is 'rich in invention' and has a 'real feeling of symbolism' ¹⁴.

       There is symbolism in Dresden too, the Frauenkirche may be a recreation of what was destroyed, however, 'over 2,000 original fragments were re-used in this reconstruction'¹⁵ creating a patchwork of dark original stones among the modern stonework. Therefore, the building seeks to appear as if the event never occurred and at the same time reminds us that it did. Is what we are looking at 'reconstruction', or is it more? 'Memory is a deep and complex phenomenon. It requires internalization and intensification; it means the interpenetration of all the elements of the past'¹⁶. This is important as it stops the building from being a mere replica, as the history of the building is embedded in its fabric for all to see. It seems to describe more than recollection as a reversal of an event, 'It is not simply a repetition but rather a rebirth of the past; it implies a creative and constructive process' ¹⁷. The inclusion of the burnt stones at Dresden show a past that has been re-collected and organized and assembled into a focus of thought.

The Frauenkirche, Dresden, Germany – reconstruction with reclaimed stones

             Is either approach to the rebuilding after the destruction 'better' than the other? If the quality of a modern building cannot be guaranteed, is the 'recreation' approach the safest approach for a city trying to recover? 'Since antiquity, beauty has been regarded as possessing a privileged relation to the truth'¹⁸ and Alain de Botton makes the point that 'bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design'¹⁹. If that statement is true, should we be worried? As Katherine Shonfield noted, the 'future ultimately rests on ideas we have about it'²⁰. So what does the increasing power of the conservation movement say about our views of the future? Nietzsche argued in 'The Use and Abuse of History' that 'the past mobilized against ideas of the present robs us of our future'^<1. But does it, or does it just create a different future? Is the 'recreation' of Dresden not a modern construct, a product of our time, a modern political act that seeks to validate itself through the promotion of the illusion of continuity with the past? If this is true, does it matter? Are not people, wherever they are, just seeking to create the environments that they wish to inhabit? With this in mind, it might be interesting to think on what the rebuilding of Iraq might look like and whether anyone other than the Iraqi people could do it successfully? Speed, security and lack of finance will probably create an environment that no one would want to live in, but if these were not issues, what would be produced and how would it reflect the Iraqi people's attitude towards recent events? How would it be perceived if the Iraqi people chose to restore Baghdad so that it appeared exactly as it had done before the fall of Saddam?

      Research undertaken by CABE in 2008 found that for most people 'beauty was important' and if from antiquity the idea of beauty is linked to truth,'from this follows that an ugly object is a negation not just of beauty, but of truth. Ugliness belongs to whatever negates the truth. It belongs to a series of categories which similarly distort the truth of things....It has negated what is real, what is a true object of thought'²². So maybe Le Corbusier was right when he said, 'a good building is an honest building'²³. Although 'when Coleridge tried to define beauty, he returned always to one deep thought; beauty, he said, is unity in variety'²⁴.

Alex King is an architect and his design 'Santiago Townhouse' won the British Homes Awards in 2011 - Alex King Design / Designalexable, examples of his latest work can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yGQhlRz8mc

1 Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) P287 Brit Wit Susie Jones 2004 ISBN 1 84024 415 1

2 The image of Venice 'Canaletto meets the future' is by Alex King ©Alex King 1995.

3 The Architecture of Happiness – Alain de Botton - . P135 - Ideals of home. 2007 ISBN 978-0-141-01500-2

4 The Kreutzer Sonata – Tolstoy - Dictionary of quotations 1994 Geddes & Grosset P53 ISBN 1 85534 743 1

5 'Use and Abuse of History'. Nietzsche. P21.

6 Francesco's Venice – Francesco Da Mosto - P39 -P48.

7 There are many books documenting the Slave trade both specific and as incidental to other histories: Bristol slave trade: 'Conquerors of Time' by Trevor Fishlock, 1988, Chapter 7, Page 77. also 'The scramble for Africa' by Thomas Pakenham – ISBN 0-349-10449-2 which describes the organization of traders such as Tippu Tib in the capturing of people for trade as slaves. Pakenham's book also includes an illustration of Mengo, capital of Buganda, the largest kingdom in central Africa and excerpts from missionary journals describing the structure of the society. What becomes clear from Pakenham's book is that many of the problems in Africa today are a direct result of Europeans creating countries with complete disregard for the local tribes and their land rights. The genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s was a product of this as is the continuing conflict in Nigeria.

8 'Terminology, Heritage and being 'Modern' by Alex King - read it at The Urban Times.

9 See Prince's Trust.

10 Adventure's in Architecture - 1996 – Dan Cruickshank - P26 'Beauty' ISBN 978 0 297 84444 0

10 IBID – P27.

10 IBID – P31.

11 Ranke quoted in Illuminations. Walter Benjamin. 1955. P247. ISBN 0-7126-6575-7

11 Illuminations. Walter Benjamin. 1955. P217. ISBN 0-7126-6575-7.

12 The Past is a Foreign Country – David Lowenthal. P46 quoting: Lorentz, 'Reconstruction of the old town centers of Poland' P46-47. See also: 'Protection of monuments' p 420.

13 Source: Yesterday Channel documentary – 'Secrets of World War II'.

14 Sir John Summerson, AA Files No 26. 1993 P69.

15 'Adventure's in Architecture' - 1996 – Dan Cruickshank - P132 'Beauty' ISBN 978 0 297 84444 0.

16 'Matiere et memoire'. Bergson.

17 'An essay on man'. Ernst Cassirer. P51 1944. Yale University Press.

18 'The Ugly'. Mark Cousins. AA Files No 28. 1994. P61.

19 'The Architecture of Happiness'. Alain de Botton. 2006. P248. ISBN 978-0-141-01500-2.

20 'Purity & Tolerance'. Katherine Shonfield. AA Files 28. 1994. P34.

21 'The Use and Abuse of History'. Nietzsche – See P172-173 'The Story of Philosophy'. Bryan Magee. 2001.

22 'The Ugly'. Mark Cousins. AA Files No 28. 1994. P61.

23 Corbusier is in this statement applying an idea that permeates philosophy to building: beauty and truth are linked. From Socrates 'Dinner Party' via Plato's 'Symposium' to statements such as 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know' – Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn.

24 The Divine Proportion – a study in Mathematical beauty. H. E. Huntly P14 .1970. quoting J. Bronowski – 'Science and Human Values' (Pelican 1964) p29-30.

*The stair and gallery are located at The House of The Black Madonna, Stare Mesto, Prague1.

But is it Art?

    The above artwork was a temporary installation seen in an empty store in Avignon, France. I don't know the name of the artist, but the use of empty shops by artists on a temporary basis while the shop is un-Let is a good policy for Landlords, artists and the high-street – all of which benefit from visible activity.

 Is what is being displayed here 'Art'? It is certainly engaging, shocking and provoked considerable attention in the street, however, in Tolstoy's essay, 'What is Art?', shock tactics are not enough for the work to be considered 'Art'. What is being displayed has to communicate something more, it needs in some way to alter our perception. The use of dead animals in art is not new, the dead shark in Hurst's 'the impossibility of death in the mind of someone living', for example, but the above installation unnerves us in a way that Hurst's work doesn't. It appears to have a similar quality to some of the 'primitive art' that used to be displayed in The Museum of Mankind (London), a quality that could be seen in the 'nkisi nkondi' nail fetish sculptures 'that served as a powerful guarantor of justice'. I believe that this work does communicate something more and we can understand this if we question what is distasteful about the installation.

If the deer had been hanging in a butcher's shop window, dangling from a hook in it's hind legs, would we still be shocked? Saddened maybe, shocked? I doubt it. But maybe we should be more shocked at seeing an animal in that pose, rather than seeing it reclining on a sofa. The reason the installation becomes shocking is because it endows the dead deer with humanness. We see it as part of our world, in a familiar pose, inhabiting the world we inhabit and that human world includes the right to be treated in a dignified way. The artwork therefore becomes a political act that questions how humanity treats animals – the human face presenting the poor creature as one of us. This fits in to Robert Irwin's definition of art as 'a continuous expansion of our perceptual awareness and a continuous expansion of our awareness of the world around us'.

  In an act that re-draws the demarcation lines between art and Society, instead of leaving storefronts empty, artists need to adopt Gorilla tactics and engage the current economic situation to convince Landlords to allow the temporary use of empty shops as exhibition space. As Banksy says in his book 'Wall and Piece', there are many good artists hiding away in their rooms, they need to get out there and show people what they can do.

Alex King is an architect and his design 'Santiago Townhouse' won the British Homes Awards in 2011 - Alex King Design / Designalexable, examples of his latest work can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yGQhlRz8mc

1 'But is it Art?' title taken from book of the same name by Cynthia Freeland

2 Leo Tolstoy essay 'What is Art?' - published in 1896, is freely available on the Web.

3 The term 'Primitive Art' was originally 'coined' by Clive Bell.

4 Banksy – 'Wall & Piece' buy it on Amazon. ISBN 1844137872.

Politics, Planning and the Urban Street-scape

 

              'Planning' isn't working. If it were, the built environment would be better than it is: An application is submitted, fees paid, sometimes amendments agreed and permission granted or declined. This often produces an urban environment that is a variation on something like the above photograph. Something is wrong, for the time, investment and aggregate learning of all the professionals involved, surely the end result should be better and more humane. This is not a matter of lack of funds: £25,000 was spent installing seats, one of which can be seen in this photo – but, would you want to sit there? It could have been useful as a waiting area, only there are yellow line restrictions and concrete bollards to prevent this. The pavement was extended, only it uses the same surface as the road and with the bollards and yellow lines this has the effect of simply creating a dead zone. This is no accident, someone planned it, authorized the expenditure and instructed someone else to carry out the works and all of this was done with your money. When you are told there is no funding for essential services, think about the waste that removes funding from where it is needed most. £10,000 was spent on installing the metal polls with empty flower baskets - also in the photograph. If there had been plants in those baskets, they would be supposed to survive suspended next to a traffic intersection with no water supply. I am being unfair, there is a water supply: more money is spent on a van that travels around watering the plants – most of which drains onto the floor around the seat. This means that the plants die and yet more money is spent regularly replacing them. I am not a fan of the phrase 'less is more', but in this case it really does apply. Those seats, plant polls and tarmac required minerals and power to make the steel that is sprayed with some polluting polymer coating. They required petrol and diesel and created traffic for their installation, all of which contributes to the degradation of the environment. How was this environment created? Because somebody delegated, to somebody who delegated, to somebody who picked a spot on a map – not because something was required, but because “there seemed to be space and it wouldn't get in anyone's way”. What you see, your urban environment, is not the result of lack of money, it is the result of a lack of care, of lack of thought, and everybody suffers as a result. The businesses are closing as there are no customers and this is hardly surprising as the environment that has been created is uninviting. If the businesses close, they will no longer pay the business rates that provide the money for the street clutter that has been sprinkled in front of their windows and it doesn't have to be like this.

            With a little bit of thought, planters could have been built on the ground so that the plants could be where they would naturally be and so require less upkeep. This would protect the pavement area making a more humane pedestrian environment. Short stay spaces could be provided in the 'dead zone' so that cars can pull over and access the businesses whose trade forms a large part of the economy. Sustainability includes economic sustainability, it is a fundamental part of that ecosystem.

            As it is, the tar-mac pavement is a false economy as metal barriers are then needed to differentiate between pavement and road and signs are required to direct traffic towards parking areas, that are not near the shops. Surely this is where 'planners' are desperately needed, not just on impressive master-plans, but on the small scale, everyday local environment. For all the talk of 'enhancement', local area plans, conservation areas and the importance of 'scale and mass', this is the actual result. Would not planning be of better use to Society, not as a judge of individual designs, but as a visionary act that is concerned with the spaces around the buildings as an aid to a better urban environment?

            You might have thought that in a time of austerity such wasteful practices would end. Well, think again: Oak posts have recently been placed at the end of each parking space in the local car parks and as this might damage the cars, signs have appeared stating that the Council cannot be held responsible for damage to the cars. To pay for this terrible waste of trees, the parking charges have increased. To avoid the increased charges people park in the surrounding streets, causing congestion and pollution as they cruise around looking for a space. Those that would tax you on the basis of your carbon footprint seem to be ensuring that it remains high.

           Instead of chopping down trees to stick in the ground at the end of each parking bay, would it not have been better to plant them? Planting trees is good for the environment both ecologically and visibly. If we breathe in our environment with all our senses we should not dismiss the importance that such small actions can make. I would suggest that planning departments might have their focus re-directed as curators of the street-scape with access to the funds that are currently used to litter the place with street junk. This is a different kind of occupy movement, one that is concerned with the space you already occupy, but which nobody seems too concerned about.

            With a little thought and care, the funding that Council's currently waste could be used to create a more attractive, more enjoyable, more ecologically sustainable urban environment. This will attract people and help the economy. All it requires is a little care and attention, is that too much to ask?

Alex King is an architect and his design 'Santiago Townhouse' won the British Homes Awards in 2011 - Alex King Design / Designalexable, examples of his latest work can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yGQhlRz8mc

Terminology, Heritage and being Modern

“Not even nostalgia is as good as it used to be”. - Alan Wicker, Journey of a lifetime. 2009.

                 Again, and again I am told that “the best use for a building is its original use”¹. It is a statement enshrined in UK legislation for the protection of the historic environment and yet if the statement were true, then Covent Garden should be a vegetable market, the Tower of London should be a prison with associated torture chamber and Marble Arch, which is sited on Tyburn, would start to hold public executions. Some might think that is a good idea, however the reply I usually receive is “not in the case of those examples, but generally the statement is true".  I beg to differ. Would the Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners conversion of a Spanish bullring into a shopping centre be better used as a place to 'fight' and kill bulls before a crowd of spectators? The Slave Market in Funchal, Madeira – is the best use for the square its original use? Is a Victorian workhouse that is converted into apartments actually 'better' as a workhouse? The relics of the past may look nice, but in reality you wouldn't want to live in the workhouse, and so unless the building has some significance as a museum; then in Conservation terms, it is simply a balance between the 'quality' of the original building and the design and construction of the conversion. Added to this would be ideas such as the best use for a building is a use that keeps the building in use and in the terms of society, provides something that society is in need of, such as accommodation. Change and subsequent alteration is often the result of obsolescence driven by social and economic reasons and too often statements are repeated to try to prevent change and support generalized views alleviating the necessity for actual thought.

Architects also repeat nonsensical statements, such as ' form follows function''². Form does not follow function, it follows intention. If an architect intends the form of the building to appear radical, then how the building functions will be subordinate to that intention. This should be worrying in an age of attention seeking buildings, because as Charles Eames said, “ the extent to which you have a design style, is the extent to which you have not solved the design problem” ³.

At the International Committee on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) general meeting in Canada in 2008 there was much talk of 'the intangible spirit of place'. It was a buzz phrase that was repeated by different speakers, and was then repeated later in the committee magazine. 'Intangible' means 'not capable of being touched, not directly appreciable by the mind – unfathomable – but often noteworthy or influential nevertheless'⁴. The curious thing about the phrase 'intangible spirit of place', is that places and their individual components such as buildings are not intangible They can be 'touched' they can be 'appreciated by the mind and so could this phrase just be a way of avoiding doing enough homework to be able to explain to someone why something should be preserved? There is a very good argument here, that if someone cannot state why something should be protected, then they are probably not the person who should be trying to protect it. We can all agree that elements of the built environment deserve protection, but should there not be some rigor in how that protection is determined?

Most of the buildings and places that Conservation seeks to protect came into existence before planning and conservation and curiously many places have become worse since. There may be multiple reasons for this but surely formalized preconceptions bound by a set of generalized regulations play a part in the resulting environment, or why would the legislation and accompanying regulations exist? Sir John Soane altered many buildings at a time when there were no controls to stop him and it is ironic that there are now controls in place to stop anyone altering one of his alterations. If planning and conservation controls existed in his day, then many of the buildings he altered – such as the John Soane museum (Soane's house) in Lincolns Inn Fields, London, would not exist and that would be a great loss to the Capital. The historic built environment is interesting because it has been allowed to evolve unhindered, creating strange juxtapositions, unusual hybrids of past styles that have been over written and altered to produce a complex panorama presented with all the simplicity of an English village.

           Nostalgia for past can be seen as comforting, the picturesque nature of a 'timeless' scene conferring the idea of permanence in an ever more transient world. The BBC have produced a program entitled 'Heritage! The battle for Britain's past' (BBC i player) and it is a battle, but is it the battle the heritage lobby would claim? Heritage legislation is very powerful and yet would we legislate so that only old medical practices be used, old cars driven, old radios listened to and old Televisions watched simply because they are 'old' and should therefore be preserved? All of these artifacts may be wonderful designs and interesting as part of the development of technology seen in a museum or documentary, or collected by an enthusiast, and yet most people have opted for modern, up-to-date alternatives. Even those that find the allure of old timber frame buildings compelling as places to inhabit, want kitchens and bathrooms, and indoor toilets, and a water supply and glass windows, and electricity and gas and central heating, and insulation and carpets and telephones and dishwashers and washing machines; and for the Oxfordshire Conservation Officer who said that an old house couldn't have a garage because “that house would never have had one originally”, the house would never have had all of those other modern conveniences and she would be very disillusioned if she woke up in the morning and they were missing. Many 'old' buildings exist precisely because they have allowed adaptation, without those alterations would anyone choose to live there? No longer can people just alter their homes as they had once done in the past. We have effectively created legislation to protect the past by preventing the very things that created it. This is curious, as History is a record of change. If we look at an English timber frame building we may see a massive, over sized brick chimney on the flank wall and this will have been a later addition, an ostentatious statement by the owner proclaiming to their neighbours that they had the latest modern heating system in their house. Today such buildings may appear to many as generically 'old', but their accumulation of alterations to reach their present appearance raises the question of how prescriptive should heritage legislation be? As Goethe wrote, 'history is the fanning of the flames, not the worship of the ashes' ⁵.

             How heritage is presented is selective in the parts of history that it chooses to tell. As a post graduate student I proposed a piece on the resistance to alteration of a group of merchants houses in Bristol, England. What appears as an elegant Bristol street with fine details was built on money derived directly from the slave trade and what was called 'the golden triangle' ⁶. My thesis tutor informed me that I could not include such information as it was “social history” and yet most historic buildings are conserved precisely because of their social history. Could it be that some social histories show something constructed on human misery and that the movement to protect them falters when faced with the harsh reality of how they came into existence? Do the 'elegant facades' and 'fine details' somehow become less appealing when we start to understand where they come from; and would this change our desire to protect them?

           When we look at the old buildings of our built heritage we are essentially looking at the edited highlights as 'bad' buildings do not survive. The buildings are then altered to suit modern tastes, so Nash's terrace at Regents Park (London) is Listed so that it can only be painted a particular shade of White – although when first constructed the buildings were painted Brown ⁷. The Acropolis, Athens (Greece) is maintained as a permanent ruin and preserved as such, reconstructed to a particular point in time. Like the Greek statues we see today, this is an altered state, an illusionary 'pure' sensibility of what never was – The Acropolis, like Greek statues of the period, were brightly coloured and yet are preserved as naked stone ⁸.

                The above picture ⁹ shows the construction in 1851 of The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, the first major steel and glass building in England. If we look closely we can see the building professionals with their drawings, dressed in frock coats and top hats. This juxtaposition shows us the radical nature of this structure. Just as there was with the Millennium Dome by Richard Rogers, there was a debate after the exhibition on what to do with the building and an 'ideas competition' was held. A solution by the architect C. Burton proposed a space saving solution of standing the steel and glass building on its end to create a 1000 ft tower ¹⁰ – and the heritage lobby would have us believe that modern buildings are disconnected from the past? For today's design professionals it might seem that 'when I most want to be contemporary the Past keeps pushing in, and when I long for the Past..... the Present cannot be pushed away' ¹¹.

What to do with the redundant Crystal Palace, C. Burton 1851

          The Shard, would be an example of why generalized regulations can be out of sync with the reality of a modern structure. The Shard is an overtly modern building and yet from a distance appears more like a very tall Gothic spire. Some may argue with that analogy and yet in the view of London by Canaletti, published in 1753 ¹², we see a London filled with, what in 1753 would have been, very tall structures that are in the Spire-like form of The Shard. Therefore we have a very modern addition to the London skyline that can be

seen to have a particular historic resonance.

              If we move forward in time to 1889 we can find examples of similar tall structures in London's history, such as the 1,234 ft high tower, with its twelve pneumatic lifts, proposed at Wembley, London as a competitive response to the Eiffel Tower ¹³.

1,234 ft proposed glass tower, Wembley, London 1889

              The Shard may be the tallest building in London and yet at street level, because of its tapered form, it appears less overbearing than many smaller buildings. This does not mean that we shouldn't question the impact of tall buildings in a city such as London, but it does call into question decisions that reject tall buildings simply because of their height. As Richard Rogers said, “The Shard could have been a few floors higher and it would have made no difference to its impact at all”.

         Development can have a positive impact on Society, especially in times of austerity and we can see this in examples such as the Rockefeller Center in New York. The Shard does not contain such social drivers to the development as The Rockefeller Center¹⁴, although the development does include the regeneration of London Bridge Station as well as accessible pedestrian access. The Shard is a commercially driven building and yet it appears to have intensified the regeneration and popularity of the locality, which suggests that major development can have a positive social impact on an area, even if that was not part of the original intention.

          Attitudes against modern buildings in the UK by the Conservation lobby are always slightly absurd as it is not possible to just jump out of history. Modern buildings are not independent of everything that has gone before, that has accumulated to make up this moment in time. A modern building might reference a building from the 1920s, but that building may well be referencing a building that came before it, just because we no longer see the reference does not mean that it is no longer there. Design style is a language and like human language there is room for different languages and what is important is not the language itself, but what is being said. Jonathan Meades recently made an excellent television program about Essex and the Utopian projects that for a short while emerged in the UK and particularly in Essex. As with all Utopian projects they would eventually fail, but isn't it wonderful that someone tried to make things better for people: better living conditions, better communities, a better environment to inhabit than their 'normal' circumstances would allow. It does not matter if such enterprises were linked to commercial activities, designs that contain such an idea at their heart really are worth preserving and promoting.

          Conservation of the built environment is important as buildings and places become symbols of cultural identity: Big Ben, The Gherkin, The Shard or Buckingham Palace may symbolize London or England; The Eiffel Tower or the Louvre Pyramid may symbolize Paris; The Colosseum – Rome; The Empire State, The Chrysler, The White House – The USA; The onion domes of Red Square – The USSR; The Forbidden City, The Bird's Nest or the skyline of Shanghai – China, The Taj Mahal – India; A hotel in Dubai, a bullring in Spain or anything by Oscar Niemeyer in Brazil – all contain a cultural identity that speaks of place. With Ceausescu's palace in Bucharest Romania, a building becomes a symbol of an era; a symbol of political ideology that has raised such strong emotions in the collective memory of Romania's people that many have called for it's demolition. If Ceausescu's palace survives outside of recent memory it may become Romania's Versailles or be regarded in a similar way to The Tower of London. Within this list are modern buildings that take their place in history and this should teach us that Conservation is important, but so is modern creativity.

          In the debate about the conservation and Listing of buildings my favorite story comes from the architect Cedric Price. When it was proposed that his temporary housing be Listed, he petitioned that they be demolished, “they were never meant to last”, he said.

 

        Alex King is an architect working at Alex King Design / Designalexable, examples of his latest work can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yGQhlRz8mc

The image of Constable's Haywain with the addition of the Villa Savoye by Corbusier is by Alex King ©Alex King 1995.

'Heritage! The battle for Britain's past' can be seen on BBC i player, with new episodes every Thursday.

1 Planning Policy Guidance, UK heritage legislation. The statement has continued to be used in the subsequent legislation that has followed and is often repeated by heritage professionals.

2 Quote from architect Mies van de Rohe. This is a statement that, for decades, has been repeated by architects. Tom Wolfe in his book, 'from Bauhaus to our house' draws attention to the profession's penchant for repeating phrases with obscure or dubious meaning.

3 Charles Eames quoted by Demetrios Eames, TED talks 2007.

4 Webster's International dictionary 1998.

5 Johann Wolfgang vonGoethe quoted in 'The story of Philosophy' by Bryan Magee. 1998. ISBN 0 7513 3332 8.

6 Bristol slave trade: 'Conquerors of Time' by Trevor Fishlock, 1988, Chapter 7, Page 77.

7 See: Listing for Nash's Terrace, Regents Park, London.

8 The Parthenon, Mary Beard. 2002. ISBN 1 86197 301 2 – no individual quote was used, however this excellent book shows The Parthenon as a structure continually in transition to the point where in 1839 (photograph page 84) a mosque was constructed by the Turkish army in the centre of the building; which only had columns on three sides remaining. When this is compared with the current alterations seen in Dan Cruickshank's BBC report on alterations to the building, it is clear that most of the Acropolis that we see today is a modern construct.

9 Picture of construction of the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. 1851: Source :Farringdon Historic Archive.

10 Picture Source: The Crystal Palace/Hyde Park/C1851/after the Great Exhibition: Public Record Office, London.

11 Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels. 1983. P 124.

12 Old & New London. Vol 2. Thornbury Archive.

13 Wembley History Society, Grange Museum, The London 'Eiffel' Tower promoted by Sir Edward Watkin MP and his newly formed 'Metropolitan Tower Construction Company'. The glass tower was not the winner of the competition. The winner was an 'Eiffel' tower 'replica' that was 165 ft taller than the original. This was partially constructed, but never completed.

14 Dan Cruickshank, Adventures in Architecture P54-61 and also available as a BBC DVD.