As a fundamental objective buildings provide shelter and a practical sense of protection for humanity.This is architecture at its most primordial, providing for humanities well being through the provision of a consolidating and strengthening framework. In this most primeval of necessities buildings provide a medieval sense of comfort through strength.[1]
An essential component of this sense of fortification and strengthening of humanity comprises a sense of familiarity and of the identifiable. [2]
This engagement with buildings is articulated through multi-sensory perception, for example through the feel of materials, the sound within a space or the specific associations and feelings that buildings provoke. Importantly it is these perceptions and relations that ultimately define the very nature of experiencing a building. [3]
Of course it can be argued that all of this multi-sensory perception is ultimately being processed by our psychological capacity, depending on whether one accepts the ocular- based philosophy of Kant or the more corporal approach of Merleau-Ponty for instance. Regardless of this however buildings form the corporeal framework with which we engage within a daily ‘reality’.
Perhaps then this offers some explanation as to why buildings that are now classed as ‘historic’ are normally so highly regarded. They are surviving, tangible connections to our past. Through experiencing these structures, through an initial physical experience and then subsequently through perceptive association, it is possible to establish a connection and a sense of place within a historical, social and demographic context. [4]
This however poses a predicament, one that has become increasingly prevalent over the last century. Namely how these historic buildings continue to serve their intended purpose or furthermore adapt to fulfill an alternative rationale when they are increasingly consigned to the realm of artificial preservation?
Truly authentic buildings, it can be argued, should remain relevant and essential within society. When they cease to perform their intended pragmatic function or fail to adapt in order to address an alternative, they become artifacts. This state is more analogous to a museum piece than the practical and indeed essential framework within which we base the very reality of our existence.
Generally speaking this approach to historical architecture has only transpired relatively recently. A gradual progression from a Renaissance notion of interpreting the past, where an objectifying ancient architecture was freely re-articulated in a creative present, including both existing and new buildings, to the current Romantic idea of historical architecture has come into existence.
The Romantic, in contrast to the former Renaissance model of intellectual re-articulation, results in our treatment of historical buildings being now largely consigned to preservation and nostalgia. We often treat them as archeological objects rather than something living and transient. Furthermore these interpretations are often consigned an aesthetic and historical, analytical approach. [5] Is architecture art? Should it be understood and preserved as a static and fixed relic, one that is often representative of superseded social values?
It is perhaps interesting to speculate that the prevalence of the preservation movement of the nineteenth century to the present has run in parallel with the acceleration of technological advances since the advent of the industrial revolution in the mid eighteenth century. An explosion of new building technology and a standardization of regionalism had a direct impact upon the rate of evolution within architecture. We therefore now feel our historic buildings are increasingly vulnerable[6] and with them a sense of our relative position within history as well as a tangible connection with our past and even present milieu. [7]
However, as previously articulated, buildings, no matter how historic, need to physically accommodate change and so this raises the question what is the right approach? Do we distinctly add or replace elements of buildings with the contemporary to establish a dialogue of contrast? Alternatively do we attempt to maintain a sense of continuality through imitation?
What if both were achievable as parts of a new whole, a cohesive dialogue and outcome that draws from both contemporary and from existing elements? [8]
On the other hand are all of these considerations ultimately inconsequential? Much of architectural development is an intuitive and subjective process. Whilst objective processes define it there is arguably only one objective reality. This is that buildings continue to provide a relevant and valuable framework for their contemporary context.
It can also be fundamentally proposed that it is the processes inherent within and the subsequent perception of these buildings, in other words their phenomenological presence, that bestows the associations and reactions that they evoke.
Despite this however, ultimately, at a practical level, architecture is what we perceive and experience as a tangible and real object. It can be argued that our subsequent perceptions and interpretations are actually only derived after this tectonic framework has first been installed. Something must first ‘exist’ for us to then bestow a sense of value and association. [9]
Thus the question can be proposed how can this physical framework, which so strongly influences our sense of perception regarding who, what and where we are, be most successfully derived and manifested in the case of new interventions and changes to existing building fabric.
[1] W. Rybczynski: ‘Home’ Pages 20-22
[2] J. Ruskin: ‘The Poetry of Architecture’ Pages 1-6
[3] J. Pallasma: ‘The Eyes of the Skin’ Pages 31-32
[4] J. Strike: ‘Architecture in Conservation’ Page 22-25
[5] J. Jokilehto: ‘A History of Architectural Conservation’ Foreword: P.Philipott
[6] C.Amery and D. Cruickshank: ‘The Rape of Britain’ Pages 10-14
[7] J. Strike: ‘Architecture in Conservation’ Pages 14-18
[8] R. Venturi: ‘Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture’ Page 88-90
[9] P. Zumthor: ‘Thinking Architecture’ Page 83
