Owen Hatherley (We trash our modernist heritage on a whim: why is Britain so in thrall to the wrecking ball?, 31 March) is appropriate that our metropolitan areas will only prosper if we get the harmony ideal involving conserving everything and giving builders a free-for-all. In idea, the listing procedure guarantees that the best of each individual era is saved from destruction, and the all round mix receives richer and richer. But, as Hatherley notes, listing is a “blunt instrument” and 1 that developers are all too competent at manipulating. It’s correct that it suits them to keep that listing 20th-century structures is continue to controversial.
In reality, conservation is now really broad-minded and has received around the actuality that numerous of the remarkable modernist properties now detailed sit on prime of the rubble of excellent Victorian kinds – none of them is heading to be magicked again into existence by the punitive demolition of the former. We have a great chance to make absolutely sure we never make the similar error again.
Now that we have an understanding of the effect of demolition on weather modify, there is all the extra cause to prioritise reusing constructions on environmental grounds – there are even now a good deal of web pages for new masterpieces (only 2% of constructing inventory is mentioned). As with cherished buildings of preceding eras, the finest 20th-century examples should have light conservation. We ought to prevent trashing our modernist heritage.
Catherine Croft
Director, Twentieth Century Culture, London
The challenge with Owen Hatherley’s plea for preserving the modernist properties of the 1960s and 70s is that at practically no issue does he point out the folks who have to are living or function in them. Does he stay in a concrete tower block 25 storeys up, wherever the lifts crack down, or store in a bleak, windswept precinct with bits falling off the facade? While no a person would dispute that cities and towns will need to evolve, the fact is that lots of examples of modernism were plonked down without regard to background, geography, nearby resources or traditions, or to the practicalities of each day daily life.
The total Le Corbusier strategy of modernism was essentially monumental, inhuman in scale and alternatively authoritarian. Architecture can be each useful and attractive. If we have to nonetheless look to the distant previous for magnificence, so be it. But modernism was hardly ever about compromise with the past, or even how folks want to dwell. It failed for the exact explanation that the Victorian gothic style finally unsuccessful. They ended up much better in smaller doses, not the generally significant-scale blitzkrieg of city centres and communities.
Garth Groombridge
Southampton
Owen Hatherley expertly highlights the predicament going through city planners, who look to tumble into two distinctive teams – these who method each making as a individual structure trouble to be solved, and these with a extended-expression vision for whom the finished city centre was a strategy influencing their design strategy. I grew up in Coventry, wherever wartime destruction gave architects the option to create a grand system. What happened was additional like a collection of modifications which, in quite a few instances, had to be rethought. The Precinct buying space was afterwards demolished, as it grew to become obvious that the first ground, achieved by an exterior stairway, was very unpopular with customers.
The distinction with Birmingham is striking. There, another person noticed the even bigger image and a stroll from Brindley Position alongside to Symphony Corridor is a pleasant experience for any one attuned to the visible stimuli afforded by attractive structures situated in harmony with each individual other. I want I could be additional faithful to the town of my childhood, but the more mature sections will usually be what I don’t forget most fondly.
Bob Caldwell
Daventry, Northamptonshire