[FORUM] What do you think of architecture conservationism and innovation?

[rfmcdonald]

Castrovalva had a link to an interesting essay defending the idea of modern architecture and opposing architecture conservatism, by defending the destruction of the Euston Arch. Some cities need to be rebuilt after trauma, true, Ypres and Warsaw being raised by the author, but that's exceptional. Most cities are substantially functional.

[A]n act of reconstruction is also an act of erasure: it wipes away the circumstances of the destruction. When the destruction was the result of a vast national trauma like a war, one can understand the desire to promptly rebuild things as they were, as part of a national recovery process that is as much psychological as it is to do with restoring buildings. But the Euston Arch was not the result of a war or invasion, and its loss – whatever the Euston Arch Trust might say – was not a comparable national trauma.

[. . .]

To restate what I said in the piece, the destruction of the arch was a symbolic defeat for the forces of conservation and traditionalist architecture in this country – and its symbolism has grown steadily over the years, judging from the melodramatic prose used to describe the demolition. The campaign to rebuild is about undoing a defeat more than any other consideration – any other rationales are simply convenient cover for this prime objective. It’s part of a broader cultural effort to discourage the modernisation of the UK in the later 20th century, and to present post-war modernist construction as a malign mistake to be rectified.

Central to this heritage-militancy is a national loss of nerve about the New. In the minds of the likes of Jenkins, the New was a modernist invention, but in fact centuries of British architects and city-builders had faith in the New over the Old. The Georgians swept away medieval cities and the Victorians swept away Georgian cities, and hundreds of good and tens of thousands of indifferent buildings were destroyed and places changed their character for better and worse long before the modernists appeared on the scene. The idea – often repeated by the Prince of Wales and others – that previous generations tended their cities bonsai-like, with nailclippers and tweezers, is a myth. And because there aren’t photographs of those pre-existing eras, just unfamiliar paintings and drawings, we don’t grieve all that much. And Stamp, to his credit, sees this, acknowledging in his introduction that the railways (for instance) were terrifically destructive…. The wholesale rejection of the New has completely failed, giving us only amnesia and routine philistinism. In distrusting development we have, as a country, not stopped development but ceded our ability to shape it and even plan it.

Me, I agree with the author. The below skyline pleases me.



I snapped it from the landing of Toronto City Hall, this picture shows, from left to right, the Eaton Centre's office tower, Old City Hall, and the office tower on the southeastern corner of Yonge and Queen Street West. Isn't the mixture of old and new, successfully conserved and excitingly new, fantastic? The same with the innovative new recladding of First Canadian Place I photoblogged, similarly; updating is wonderful!

That's my question for you today (alas, I overslept Sunday, consider this post yesterday's [FORUM] post): To what extent should architectural conservationism exist? Should the desire to make cities new predominate?

Discuss.