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Restoration? Just Say No to Griff Rhys Jones

Our Lady Has Left the Building

20:32 / 08.05.04

Right, I have absolutely no evidence whatsoever for this theory, but it's been bouncing around in my brain for about a month now and I had to get it out somewhere.

Conservation efforts, mainly those by such agencies as the National Trust and English Heritage (the latter having responsibility for all buildings listed as being worthy of preservation due to features of historical interest), are responsible for the rise of Conservative values in this country. Or perhaps the two go hand in hand, and if we attack the historic buildings in a community we can weaken local conservatism.

Conservatism tends to look to the past as the answer to all our problems, that things were better in the good old days when a smaller proportion of the people could vote, child mortality rates were higher and any of them that did survive were given jobs so as to not waste people's time with educating them. The buildings that are conserved are tied into the past.

Take Bodiam Castle. The carefully taken photo at the top of the page makes it look all right, go down about a third of the way and you see a picture from the inside, revealing it's mostly a shell, the insides destroyed during the Civil War. The surrounding countryside is beautiful, but why is this shell maintained?

Richborough Roman Fort is a listed site because it was the first fort built when the Romans invaded Britain twenty million years ago, but again there's practically nothing there.

I can't help but wonder if the sheer number of such sites has an effect on the mental state of people. I don't think this is a worldwide phenomenon, the United States has proportionally very little history, though historical buildings that they do have (such as the Alamo in Texas) do seem to attract people of a certain type.

Does the presence of old buildings encourage a certain rigidity of thought and belief that manifests as Conservatism? Is there really a value to tactile touchstones of our past? Would getting rid of them encourage the general population of Britain to stop looking back at their imperial past and start looking toward and being invested in creating a brighter future?

Irony of Ironies

21:08 / 08.05.04

Without knowledge of history, you're condemned to repeat its mistakes. While you might argue that having history constantly all around you can lead to encouraging a belief that there was "a golden era" - essentially a Conservative idea - that's only true if your own age isn't creating its own heritage.
I certainly don't think that's true, at least in terms of architecture - look at Canary Wharf or the Swiss Re building, which to my mind are as magnificent in scale and imagination as anything ever built in Britain.

Tryphena Absent

21:16 / 08.05.04

I disagree entirely with your theory. I think that old buildings remind us all that we're going to die, I think the main ideological problem in the USA is that people don't remember that they're going to die (willingness to join the army despite danger, levels of obesity, gun wielding).

You're being terribly general here, restoring buildings tends to lead to great beauty, think about the Tate Modern and the dome in the British Museum, they're wonderful conserved buildings. I refute your theory entirely but apologise for the flippancy of this post.

10:37 / 09.05.04

Interesting that arguers for and against see, in the world around them, an affirmation of their political beliefs.

I'd argue that as conservative values rely on capitalism and preserving old buildings is largely less profitable than developing new buildings, conservation is not conservative.

I'd also refute the 'they have no history' argument. Americans obviously do not have the same history as Europeans but they've been around for a while now. Those skyscrapers were built by their now-dead grandfathers and there are proper 'old' colonial buildings to remind them of their own mortality, if that really is a function of architecture. As an experiment (in Europe), keep your eyes open for the rest of the day and count how many buildings or any other artefacts you actually see that pre-date the notional discovery of America in 1492.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:54 / 09.05.04

How on earth does tearing down a load of old houses, castles etc mean we loose our history? Do we not have books, do we not have TV shows, do we not have the Internet? I didn't say anything about giving rid of the information, just the visual relics, which are usually the most useless part. Ruins of a Sixteenth Century Castle Won't House my Children and all.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:58 / 09.05.04

Linus- The Conservatism I'm thinking of is the adherence to tradition, the tradition that has the State Opening of Parliament and Ministers that work 'for the crown' when the Queen knows she can't actually do anything to stop a bill passed by both houses. The Conservatism of upper-class snobbery towards the 'lower classes'. Conservatism is not just Capitalism.

10:59 / 09.05.04

So you're saying that we shouldn't have to bother preserving primary sources because Joe Blow has summarised his interpretations of those sources and posted them on his geocities page or in 'The Journal of Marxist Interpretations of Stuff'?

11:02 / 09.05.04

Our Lady -- You're assuming that all preserved architecture is of the stately home variety when many efforts are directed at vernacular architecture.

12:18 / 09.05.04

There's a difference between the aggrandizement of history and a balanced critical approach to history, and the same goes for the preservation of old buildings. In that, you can restore an old castle and present it as the pinnacle of European/British culture, or as quite the opposite, or in a neutral way. It would be possible to conserve and present an old building in a critical way, as a lesson of how not to do something as much as a romantic/nationalist spectacle. A very obvious example is the way Germany has preserved its concentration camps.

English heritage, etc, may use a romanticisation of the past in order to attract funding, perhaps, but I don't think that's a reason to abandon their efforts.

I don't think my being a socialist is in any way under threat from my love of old buildings, castles, etc, either

Also, Canary Wharf is hideous.

Irony of Ironies

08:33 / 10.05.04

"Tearing down a load of old houses" means we lose our history because reading about it in a book lacks the impact of seeing something in the flesh. Read about Stonehenge, and most people just get bored: go to see it, and you can easily imagine the work it took to drag huge blocks of stone half way across the country. Or take the impact on everyday lives of WWII. In Britain, we largely escaped damage - and the houses that were bombed, we tore down and replaced. Yet I remember the first time I went to mainland Europe as a kid, seeing ordinary buildings that were pockmarked with bullet holes - it brought it suddenly home that, actually, this wasn't something that was just in war comics: soldiers had actually fought and died here, while civilians fled or hid.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

13:54 / 11.05.04

I don't believe you can say that because we've rebuilt all the buildings destroyed in WW2 we don't have a connection to the events. I think that's exageration.

Linus Dunce Our Lady -- You're assuming that all preserved architecture is of the stately home variety when many efforts are directed at vernacular architecture. 'True' working buildings (ie: buildings that haven't just been turned into copies of how they were when they were used, like council chambers still used for meetings etc) have a valid argument for being kept, but I'm questioning why we need to keep the council house that John Lennon grew up in, or the listed Tower Block that probably five months before it was listed people wanted to tear down. I'm curious as to why people get very touchy feely when it comes to old buildings and are worried that they'll forget them the minute they're dynamited. Should schools organise coach trips to CERN in the hopes that touching the cyclotron will get kids more interested in science courses?

So you're saying that we shouldn't have to bother preserving primary sources because Joe Blow has summarised his interpretations of those sources and posted them on his geocities page or in 'The Journal of Marxist Interpretations of Stuff'?

So why so cynical? The National Trust, English Heritage and museums and universities produce a lot of information about each historical site, are you suggesting that at the moment it's all incredibly biased? If so, I'm not sure that if we read about a House from a 'Neo-Stalinist with a shot of Hegelism' perspective then see the house itself it dispels the bias and we see the place in it's 'true' light.

14:35 / 11.05.04

So why so cynical? The National Trust, English Heritage and museums and universities produce a lot of information about each historical site, are you suggesting that at the moment it's all incredibly biased?

LMFAO

Of course it is! What, all of a sudden History is an objective thing? It's not cynicism, it's proverbial, surely you've heard "History is written by the victors"? I only took History until I was 16 and even I know that.

A man I know read History at University and due to the very dry academic intelligence he has he hadn't really considered the full implications academic bias until his dissertation. At which point he promptly realised what a steaming pile of subjectivity all written Histories really are, his brain frazzled and he couldn't finish his work. Now maybe this was all a smokescreen for the more mundane reason of not being able to get his shit together to finish up his dissertation. Knowing this guy personally, I seriously doubt it, History was his passion y'know?

14:37 / 11.05.04

What is up with the text formatting these days? That's the second time this has happened to me in two days and I'm not a spaz ALL the time.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

16:07 / 11.05.04

Nobody's girl What, all of a sudden History is an objective thing? It's not cynicism, it's proverbial, surely you've heard "History is written by the victors"? I only took History until I was 16 and even I know that.

But that's not what I'm arguing! If anything I'm agreeing with this point, that just because you have the building intact does not mean that either the texts written about it are correct or free of bias, or prevent bias from happening. The analysis is going to be subjective whether the source is still here or not. If we believe that something liek Stalinism or Thatcherism is wrong yet believe we can argue about it without calling up Uncle Joe or getting Maggie Thatcher off her gin bottle long enough, why is there this belief that we have to keep old buildings intact to save them from those evil historians?

19:10 / 11.05.04

The analysis is going to be subjective whether the source is still here or not.

True, of course. But once the building has gone, there will be no source or evidence for any further meaningful analysis or debate.

I can see that it might be a fair argument that conservation and conservatism are sometimes, perhaps often, connected. But you have conflated the two. Why, I don't know. Do you think that everything worth knowing has been discovered already or do you think that there is some larger ideal that makes architectural history irrelevant or even undesirable?

if we attack the historic buildings in a community we can weaken local conservatism.

Ah, I see. Has it occurred to you that an awful lot of conservative people already live in shiny, new Wimpey homes?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

07:49 / 12.05.04

From the outside looking in it's always difficult to say, my perception of the National Trust and English Heritage is that they aren't largely interested in a 'dialogue' (if that's the right term and it probably isn't) with the places they look after, they strive to get it as close to what they believe to be 'how it was', then try to keep it at that point from then on. Historians would have a role in that 'setting up' stage, but after that wouldn't likely be involved again. I could be completely wrong. It's at this point that, the site is 'done', that I think we have to consider the continuing value. I wouldn't support tearing down Stonhenge because it's still in use by pagans for example. To suggest that there is an infinite well of knowledge that an artifact or place could give us is an interesting idea, but woulkd suggest a stop to ALL construction throughout the country and indeed the world because even an empty field would have an infinite amount of information to give us back to the creation of the planet and beyond? Where is the cut-off point in this?

ANd Linus, Has it occurred to you that an awful lot of conservative people already live in shiny, new Wimpey homes? Aaah, but are they conservative or Conservative?

10:41 / 12.05.04

Flowers> If you're all for keeping buildings in use, then I'm surprised you don't favour the Restoration approach, because they're very big on keeping buildings alive by making them useful, often in ways that the building wasn't designed for (eg church converted into the largest Indian restaurant in Britain), but useful nonetheless. I think it is the National Trust's policy to have people living in their properties where possible but I'd have to check that.

Possibly going slightly off track here, but from a pragmatic, use-of-resources point of view, isn't repair of old things less costly, in terms of materials and energy, than building new?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:58 / 12.05.04

It would depend on the type of building, the current state of disrepair and how many people could use it when it was repaired. A badly run down old house in the middle of an estate that was only home to a few people might be more usefully turned into a housing estate.

13:26 / 12.05.04

just because you have the building intact does not mean that either the texts written about it are correct or free of bias, or prevent bias from happening

Dude - it's not the texts written about the building that are important - it's the building itself, the historical artefact, which is the important bit - it's the evidence for a whole bunch of theories about how people lived, how they thought about their buildings, how those buildings were constructed, what tasks were carried out in which room, how people decorated their houses, what was thought to be prestigious or useful, the status of the inhabitants, what building materials were local and what had to be imported... It would be hubristic in the extreme to say that we know all there is to know about these things, and will never need to evidence again and can therefore destroy things with impunity.

I agree that some buildings are of less immediately obvious value than others (endless neo-Palladian country houses, boooring) but the definition of value is, well, subjective...

There is another argument for keeping them, which is that they are pleasant to have around. I think it is pleasant to have reminders of the past about... but I am probably slightly small-C conservative in some ways (definitely not to be confused with radical Thatcherite Conservatism), and prefer old buildings to 'noddy boxes'. Decent new build is of course another matter entirely.

It is certainly very pleasant to be able to go to places such as Bodiam Castle - have you ever been? It is very beautiful.

14:54 / 12.05.04

OK, in my job I had to write up a story about this 12th century place which was once used by the crusaders. There's the perfect example of a part of our history that it is necessary to preserve (relating the Crusades to our government;s present military excursion, etc), but I do wonder how effective English heritage et al's approach to it is. A really incisive Foulcault type approach to it would be tremendously helpful, but a 'look at the grand history of England' approach maybe less so.

When you go and see the Elgin Marbles at the British museum, for example, the information given about them is terribly old scholarship, and (as far as I remember) doesn't include anything about the contraversy over them and/or the implications of that.

And don't get me started on the Imperial War Museum. Maybe it's something that's just a natural part of museums/conservation of the past that makes it kind of staid and retrogressive but it doesn't have to be.

So I say, don't abolish english heritage, but maybe change it into something less staid.

18:39 / 12.05.04

I think if you scratch beneath the surface of the IWM and a lot of these institutions you will find that what appears to be old-fashioned and even nationalist scholarship is in fact only the commentary they serve up to the average visitor -- who is not very academic -- and very different to the analysis they produce behind the scenes.

18:58 / 12.05.04

I think if you scratch beneath the surface of the IWM and a lot of these institutions you will find that what appears to be old-fashioned and even nationalist scholarship is in fact only the commentary they serve up to the average visitor -- who is not very academic -- and very different to the analysis they produce behind the scenes.

Perhaps, but in a way it would be even more valuable for them to serve something up to the public which has some analytical thought behind it. Simply the fact that something is presented a certain way in an authorisied space like a museum has got to have an effect on what the general - non acedemic - viewer takes away.

I guess the 'Imperial' War Museum signals its point of view pretty openly in the name, but still. For example, the way that it presents materials from the holocaust - in particular evidence of the attitudes of ordinary germans - as hallowed and horrific (of course, rightly so), but on the other hand evidence from the daily lives of the allies in the second world war - which, when you look at them, are often as bigoted and stupid as the german materials. It is very much a heros/evil villains dichtonomy.

Obviously, there is a reason for that, but I'm saying they are simplifying and mythologising the British position in a way that isn't necessarily good.

Baring in mind the average visitor is a young school kid, who will take this at face value, and absorb that mythology, I think there is definately argument that it needs reform.

On the other hand, the Imperial War Museum, in its favour, is very good at communicating the 'horrors of war' - for example, I know when I was a teenager I went there with school to see some really graphic footage from WW2. They don't ever give the impression that war is a good thing, and the focus is often on the victims (some of them, anyway).

19:10 / 12.05.04

You mean that the IWM should be telling kids that invading Poland and gassing people is just, like, their culture, man, and we shouldn't judge it?

And yet you yourself took away a sense of the horror inflicted on both sides. The museum must have done something right.

07:32 / 13.05.04

No, obviously I don't think that. I think they should, however, paint a realistic portrait of what attitudes were like in the allied countries, and of the things that the allies did which were also horrific, if not on the same scale.

I took that away because I am an adult, with a critical approach to history. I didn't take that impression away at all when I went on school visits etc, that's what I'm talking about.

07:34 / 13.05.04

For example, they are happy to put xenophobic propaganda in one box as evidence of the horror of the nazi regime, and then rather similar propaganda in another box as evidence of the jolly home front.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

08:59 / 13.05.04

Kit-Cat Club It is certainly very pleasant to be able to go to places such as Bodiam Castle - have you ever been? It is very beautiful.

I've probably been there about a dozen times, it is beautiful, but a beautiful shell. When I was a young en I didn't even realise that most of the Interior no longer existed, I assumed that what was open to the sky now was open to the sky then and people lived in very cramped conditions in the four towers at each corner, and only one of those is still accessible. It may be nice, but there's nearly nothing left. Why are we keeping it and not making parkland instead? We can't attempt to rebuild it, no, that would ruin the... um, ruins! It's insane.

I must admit that I like Saveloy's idea, that things are restored and used.

09:40 / 13.05.04

It may be nice, but there's nearly nothing left

Isn't that half the pleasure of it?

Its so romantic. I much prefer visiting ruins than stately homes, which seems to be what all the intact buildings have been turned into.

Does everything really have to be so useful? Can't it just stay there for us to enjoy and wonder around pretentiously?

It seems almost Stalinistically (or Capitalistically) lacking in joy to destroy everything just because it doesn't have a specific useful function.

09:54 / 13.05.04

But, if you're interested in re-use of buildings here's what an architect friend of mine had to say on Black Napkins, a think I post on:

'Todays stuff gets "value engineered" which is a fancy term for "as fucking cheap as possible" and i hate poor recreations of stuff, i figure, don't even fucking attempt it if you can't do it right. However, I love classical buildings and being an architect who specializes in enviornmental design (i believe you brits call it BREAM) there is nothing that makes me happier then taking an old decrepid building and giving it new life. I love those kind of projects. The second part of recreating older design is just from an enviornmental standpoint. Something like 60+% of all human landfill waste and close to 75% (or more) of pollution is directly a result of new construction, recreating old mistakes and building typologies does nothing to help that. There are catagories of new construction types and models that utilize more eco-friendly techniques which is something that I am attempting to further specialize my field into. Yes, i am a tree hugging HIPPY.'

Link

Our Lady Has Left the Building

09:47 / 14.05.04

Hmmm, I like.

Was it FLW or de Kooning who said "a building is a mchine for living in"? I guess that's what I believe in, though maybe not 'machine' but something more organic. Keeping a building purely because someone famous lived there, is there necessarily a value in that?

10:04 / 14.05.04

Again, the question is, who decides what is of 'value'? I'd say that even if it's something as basic as 'people are interested in going to see it', there's value in keeping such a building (even if I personally have no interest in going there).

I think that what we might call the heritage culture in this country can be pernicious, in that it encourages small-c conservatism and unimaginative building e.g. of developments of 'executive homes'. However - I'm not sure that conservation is responsible for this - certainly not directly. In fact I understand, from my regular readings on Private Eye's 'Nooks and Corners' section, that English Heritage in particular often has a hard time rescuing listed buildings from avaricious owners who neglect the properties so that they can demolish them and use the land to build new developments of executive homes...

You know, it seems obvious that a lot of people want to live in traditional houses, but with all mod cons, and that's why contemporary building and development companies produce the buildings they do. I'm not sure how helpful it is to blame the National Trust and English Heritage for this cultural phenomenon... the English people have been obsessed with property for centuries...