6 C O N T E X T 1 3 1 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3 Periodically Did you ever expect to read of a paean of praise for sticky-backed plastic in this column? C20, the magazine of the Twentieth Century Society (No 2, 2013) features the material in its Ephemera column. Christopher Garrard rediscovers in a 1959 copy of Practical Housekeeping the wonder of self-adhesive vinyl, a few yards of which would gladden the hearts of industrious husbands and fashionable housewives. If you are old enough, you may remember it as Fablon, as Garrard remarks.That name was trademarked in 1948 by Commercial Plastics of Wallsend-on-Tyne with the curiously prescient use of ‘fab’, which did not come into its own as a word until the sixties. The magazine also looks at the fate of modern library buildings (as the Victorian Society did about 19th century ones in its March issue). KenWorple notes that libraries are still being built, despite cutbacks and technological change. Bernadette Bone looks at postwar provision in Lancashire, where libraries were always a priority from the 1850s onward, highlighting those built in the 1950s and 60s. ChristineWall reminds us that the South Bank Centre should be recognised as ‘an exceptionally important twentieth century structure’. Catherine Croft remarks that ‘the quality of the concrete and the contrast between concrete boardmarked in situ and precast panels is certainly remarkable’.Wall comments that ‘concrete structures… seldom reveal how they were made’ but Croft prefers a slightly different interpretation, ‘that we have forgotten how to read them’.Wall’s article and her research, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, will help people to do this, and so appreciate them more. One generally under-appreciated type of concrete structure is the hyperbolic paraboloid roof (although subject of an excellent study by Rachel Parry for the IHBC GASAs in 2008). An article by Karolina Szynalska highlights the designer Sam Scorer’s work on these striking structures. One of the most memorable of them is the 1961 butterfly canopy of the Markham Moor service station on the A1. Listed Grade II in 2005, it is now sadly closed, boarded up and deteriorating. The issue carries obituaries of three significant men who it might be hard to imagine more different from one another in temperament and career: Sir Lawrie Barratt, Rick Mather and Oscar Niemeyer.Try drawing a narrative between those three! The print version of the latest issue of the Journal of Architectural Conservation (Vol 19, No 1, March 2013) was somewhat delayed by the title moving to Routledge from Donhead. It was worth the wait as it contains a number of interesting papers offering significant insights into policy and practice. Being able to return to a project after a long period and assess the effectiveness of an intervention is a luxury not often afforded practitioners. So it is invaluable to have David Odgers’ paper reviewing work completed on the consolidation treatment of clunch after an interval of nearly 30 years. Clunch has been widely used as a building stone in the south and east of England since the 14th century but is sometimes characterised by its propensity for surface delamination. This was the problem faced on the west elevation of the south stable block atWoburn Abbey. In 1985 half the elevation was dressed back behind the decay zone and the other half was not, and comparative consolidant treatments were applied. In 2011, simple evaluation techniques permitted effective measurements of the impact of the treatments.The results are clearly and succinctly illustrated. While the debate about the future of energy efficiency in historic buildings continues unabated, the National Trust has been applying and demonstrating a variety of new energy-saving technologies at a new visitor centre opened in a Victorian stable block at Morden Hall Park, south-west London. Caroline Pankhurst and Andrew Harris explain how the scheme aims to balance the introduction of a significant number of new and compatible materials and technologies with the minimum intervention to the historic fabric. Where possible, materials were used that had low embodied energy and were from sustainable sources or recycled materials locally sourced or from National Trust estates. Improving the thermal performance of historic churches while retaining their special interest is a particularly fraught issue where scope for physical impact on the special significance is restricted. Ingenuity is required when exploiting solar energy, as in the implementation of a programme of improvements to Hol Church in Norway, described in a paper
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=