Beyond The Walls

Commonwealth

beyondthewalls — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 16:57:23 +0000

And so to London, where English Heritage have been hard at work cementing their reputation as unenlightened guardians of post-war architecture with their far-from-unexpected decision to allow the Commonwealth Institute (Peter Newnham and Roger Cunliffe for RMJM, 1960-62) to be severely compromised by an ‘enabling’ development by Rem Koolhaas/OMA. The architecture press have leapt upon this with aplomb, with an admirably vicious degree of opprobrium towards English Heritage in the comments section. There is far more at stake here than the loss of a functional office wing, axially and ideologically an integral part of the original scheme, highly unfortunate though that is. No; the crux of this, what rises to the surface once again in this case, is the idea that post-war architecture is simply too difficult to sustain to full conservation standards, and that we shouldn’t try. The political substance and aesthetic meaning of architecture like this, so the message goes, is too foreign to the desires and approaches of contemporary developers and architects. What they like is a straightforward silhouette, a napkin sketch-shape that can be immediately appreciated, with none of the addenda which made the building substantively what it was intended to be. They also, it goes without saying, like physical and creative space for the expression of the contemporary design ego and the realisation of full profit potential.

All of this represents a highly dangerous approach, all in the name of constructive conservation and the greater good. It is a truism that the listing process – a tough enough system to navigate in the first instance – is only the beginning of successful conservation. The unfortunate facts of the matter are that the entire programme of post-war listings, an urgent enough process that has itself stuttered out of breath too soon, has happened sufficiently quickly that research-based knowledge, and both expert and popular opinion, have had nowhere near enough time to catch up with it.

English Heritage are almost solely responsible for cock-ups like this, barring the interference of ministers with exquisitely suburban tastes, and they are beginning to add up to quite a catalogue of failure, and one worthy of noting. This is the first, therefore, in an occasional series: Concrete is Too Hard.

View from a window

beyondthewalls — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:59:04 +0000

So although it made sense at first to venture beyond the walls on this second day, I found that by far the most logical place to proceed from was this view from the building that defines the majority of my daylight hours. I’ve not yet managed to escape outside, then, but on a typical day this glimpse of the sky is the closest that I get to it for most of my working hours, so it is entirely appropriate.

This is York, or at least a partial view of it, a city that offers a never-ending collision of historical periods and one that could be pored over endlessly in a search for meaning and significance. This is something I’m not going to do on this blog, despite it representing the majority of the space outside of my walls on any given day. The city holds, I suppose, a drily academic interest for me, and provides me with a place to live and work, but largely that’s where our relationship ends. For a place of such importance during the mediaeval period it is now curiously dulled by a complete lack of any significant progress since the 19th century. Even the most extensive changes in that century were mostly in chocolate factories and proletarian housing of the most uninspired stripe, with very little work of note in the centre to relieve the sense of clerical oppressiveness that the Minster offers. Mediaeval churches abound, too, and the densely-packed streets of jettied housing and shops offer the sense of a circumscribed past of narrow horizons and superstition preserved perfectly and presented to the market as an open-air shopping centre par excellence. Shopping, proffered alongside the maintenance of an illusion of historical unity with an unselfconsciously picturesque period of history, holds no interest for me. Only the most recherche slices of York’s architecture will be worthy of discussion here.

Back to the view, though. It provides something of a potted account of what York exists as today: an agglomoration of highly-important buildings of some considerable antiquity and a panoply of more contemporary structures, quaking in their shadow, that would disgrace a business park in Luton. The church with the tower is St Martin’s, Coney Street, largely of the 15th century and, following its bombing in a Baedecker raid in April 1942, its south aisle and tower were preserved as a peace chapel, fitted out quite stylishly by George Pace and opened in April 1968. The church with the spire is All Saints North Street, primarily of the 14th century and containing some of the most important medieaval stained glass of its date anywhere in Europe, not least the very affecting Pricke of Conscience window. The be-gabled building with terracotta detailing is the York Equitable Industrial Society building of 1899, with showrooms and shops at street level and offices above. The terracotta-coloured tiles in the immediate foreground form part of a 21st century re-cladding scheme on a concrete-framed car park-cum-retail block immediately adjacent to my workplace. They are not the bit of the view I value the most.

There may – almost certainly will – be more on this. It does, as I’ve said, represent the greater part of my daily visual nourishment.

Beyond The Walls

beyondthewalls — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:01:24 +0000

This begins within the walls, in a position where the destinations of this blog can be surveyed and thought about. Beyond the walls are the meanings of architecture, the life with which it intersects and the ideas that are much, much larger than the mere concepts of style and construction. Beyond the walls, buildings can be viewed in endless different ways, their often inert interior existence tranformed into politics, fashion and the most visible expressions of culture. Beyond the walls of the institution, out in the world, buildings fight for their own lives and offer their own account, shunning theory, history and conservation and riding powerful forces that can destroy them or save them. Beyond the walls are other walls, a collection of structures that make sense as much together as apart, more so; places that are made by accretions from the past and the processes of the present. Beyond the walls the building becomes object and subject, a starting point for argument and a muse for new production.

This will change and, hopefully, make more sense as time goes on, but tomorrow I will venture beyond the walls to see what direction I will head in first of all.