4 C O N T E X T 1 2 1 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1 ‘Ifyouwant to change your house in this country you have to go to the council for permission. Now this is to stop people putting up pink conservatories and generally ruining the heritage of Britain. And it all makes sense.’ Jeremy Clarkson speaking on Top Gear ‘A PLAN by the Mayor of Florence to complete, 500 years late, the bare facade of San Lorenzo – which ran out of money in the 15th century leaving an ugly brick wall, is under threat because Antonio Paolucci, the director of the Vatican Museums and an authority on the heritage of Italy has said: “It would be inappropriate because one would have to superimpose construction techniques and an architectural sensibility that would not be in harmony with the original building. We should leave the church in peace – San Lorenzo is beautiful as it is.” ‘I can imagine what Michelangelo would have said. Apparently the Medici in their will granting their art collection to the city stated that funding be provided to complete it. After living off this artwork for 500 years, perhaps the Florentines have an obligation.’ Andrew Lainton writing in his blog andrewlainton.wordpress.com ‘One of London Forum’s civic societies has considered what to do if the businesses they have been fighting set up a consortium to prepare a neighbourhood plan. The businesses are companies building basements and offering energy-reduction projects involving double-glazed windows, solar panels on all roof slopes, etc. ‘Local householders want them but their homes are Grade II listed in a conservation area. They have failed to get permission so far because the conservation society has worked with the local authority to keep the architectural integrity and public realm attributes that led to the listing and conservation area status. So there could be community support (by those who do not care about heritage, in this case) for a neighbourhood plan with proposals to take out planning restrictions and introduce permitted development rights in an area so that home owners could do anything they wished to do to their properties. ‘A similar approach might be taken by a developer wanting to demolish houses with large gardens and put up blocks of flats to increase the housing stock. That would get a lot of local support also, but all of us will have to consider how the conflicts will be managed. It’s something for local authorities to think about if presented with competing proposals.’ Peter Eversden writing on the LinkedIn neighbourhood planning group ‘The graffiti is a bit of thumbing of the nose at the conservationists, who are terribly precious about our environment, and that’s always good fun but you don’t want to cause the building permanent damage. If the building is fine and stable, there is no harm to it, then fine – paint it bright pink.’ Neil Baxter, secretary of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland talking to DeutscheWelle about Kelburn Castle in North Ayrshire, whose outer walls display a bright psychedelic graffiti mural. The 13th-century castle was decorated with 1,500 cans of spray paint. Its owner, the Earl of Glasgow, explains: ‘We were intending to take all the rendering off the castle walls and have it re-rendered, and so we thought it was the perfect time to have this great mural painted on the side of the castle.’ Historic Scotland granted permission based on the threeyear time limit, which is now up.The earl has written to Historic Scotland to ask if he can keep the mural ‘not permanently, but at least indefinitely’. From A Pattern Language: towns, buildings, construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein, published in 1977 [Compare] the work of a 50-year-old carpenter with the work of a novice. The experienced carpenter keeps going. He doesn’t have to keep stopping, because every action he performs is calculated in such a way that some later action can put it right to the extent that it is imperfect now. What is critical here, is the sequence of events. The carpenter never takes a step which he cannot correct later; so he can keep working, confidently, steadily. The novice, by comparison, spends a great deal of his time trying to figure out what to do. He does this essentially because he knows that an action he takes now may cause unretractable problems a little further down the line; and if he is not careful, he will find himself with a joint that requires the shortening of some crucial member – at a stage when it is too late to shorten that member. The fear of these kinds of mistakes forces him to spend hours trying to figure ahead: and it forces him to work as far as possible to exact drawings because they will guarantee that he avoids these kinds of mistakes. The difference between the novice and the master is simply that the novice has not learnt, yet, how to do things in such a way that he can afford to make small mistakes. The master knows that the sequence of his actions will always allow him to cover his mistakes a little further down the line. It is this simple but essential knowledge which gives the work of a master carpenter its wonderful, smooth, relaxed, and almost unconcerned simplicity.
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