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.

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.

Future Proof

'Science fiction has a funny habit of becoming science fact'¹ - William S. Burroughs

'Hi-Tech' would by it's nature soon become out-of-date as technology moved with the times, so as an 'architectural style', could only ever be a fad or short term solution. At the same time any building that contains the latest components could be termed 'Hi-Tech'. Hardwick Hall - 'more glass than wall', would have been Hi-Tech in 576-97.  The pursuit of technology in building is nothing new - it is the terminology to promote ideas that is new.

Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, England by Robert Smythson

      With the 'intrinsic flight into the future' ², it is now common to hear architects claim that their buildings are 'future-proof'³ – although, as we have very little idea about what the mirage of the future will bring, it is a slightly odd claim. It might be 'characteristic of the development of ideas that they do not appear as memories pointing to something that is past, but as expectations directed towards the future'⁴, but how could the design of an office be 'future proof' if in the future everyone worked from home? We simply don't know what will happen. A school may claim to be a future proof design and yet in the future all teaching may be via a computer terminal at home: It would make good economic sense for both government and individual families: The value of buildings would also no longer be inflated by their proximity to the 'best schools'; It would relieve traffic congestion, lower emissions, slow the spread of infections, stop class disruption, bullying and student shootings – it could also possibly improve education as the best teachers could reach the maximum amount of pupils via a medium that is known to engage their interest. Under such a future scenario the building would become redundant and what might be needed in its place would be more green space on which to socialize and play games. The claim that a building is 'future proof' rests on the fact that nobody knows what will happen.

What could be said of many modern buildings is that they have become less 'future proof', designed more as stand alone 'art objects', they tend to be less adaptable: When some large office blocks on Canary Wharf (London) remained empty at the end of the 1980s, one building owner complained, “a Nash terrace in Nottinghill Gate could be designed as a house, converted to offices, then to flats, it moves with the market – but what can I do with an acre of open plan office space when no one wants it?”

Oddly, what might in reality be the most 'future proof' of building types could be the timber frame buildings that were constructed in 1250 and are still here in 2013. These buildings might not look futuristic, but they were the original pre-fab kit houses and have withstood the test of time and are still sought after centuries after their creation. All that the architects of today mean by the term 'future proof', is that access can be gained so that the 'short-life parts of the building can be changed and its total lifespan can be extended'⁵. Changing a few wires does not make a building 'future proof' – especially if everything goes wireless. As Winston Churchill said, “It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see'⁶.

Futurist pre-fab housing circa 1250 AD

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 'The adding machine & other essays'. William S. Burroughs 1985 ISBN 0-7145-4073-0.

2 'intrinsic flight to the future' – Hegel's technological concept of history suggests that 'progress' has become mixed up with both technical progress and Darwinian evolution. This 'history underpins a technological bias of practice, often at the expense of architecture and making places for “life and action” - 'Architecture Re-assembled'. Trevor Garnham. 2013. Routledge.

3 The term 'future-proof' was mentioned by Norman Foster in his German TED Talks Lecture, it appears in Richard Rogers 'Architecture – a modern view' and has recently made an appearance in the RIBA Journal and other architectural publications. For architects the idea of the future has a long history - 'But in human beings the awareness of the future undergoes the same characteristic change of meaning which we have noted with regard to ideas of the past. The future is not only an image; it becomes an “ideal”... This belongs to the realm of prudence, not to that of wisdom. The term “prudence” (prudentia) is etymologically connected to “providence” (providentia). It means the ability to forsee future events and to prepare for future needs' ('An essay on man'. Ernst Cassirer. P54-55. 1944. Yale University Press). This is a theoretical idea of the future, a symbolic future, more akin to expectation.

4 'An essay on man'. Ernst Cassirer. P53 1944. Yale University Press. Original quote: William Stern.

5 'Architecture - a Modern View'. Richard Rogers. P53 1991 ISBN 0-500-27651-x

6 'The wicked wit of Winston Churchill'. Dominique Enright. P146. 2001. ISBN 978-1-85479-529-8.