Conserving20th centurybuildings David Morton picks up the theme of 20th century buildings by looking at attitudes to buildings of different ages. My history master at school used to say that 1914 (ie the beginning of the First World War) was the social and economic terminus of the 19th century. It was also the date at which there was a fairly clear divide in building styles. Therefore the conservation issues of the period 1900-1914 are very similar to those associated with the Victorian era. This illustrates my first point about 20th century conservation. Public perception of recent architecture is closely bound up with our knowledge of the economic, social and political events of the period and its effect upon them. That part of the last century (this shows I have been millennium-proofed) after 1914 can be divided into two phases. The inter-war period The economic conditions of 1918-1939 meant that relatively few new buildings were erected compared with Victorian or Edwardian times. However, it was a period of quite distinct architectural styles and some of these are associated with the rise of Fascism. I told a story in my article on Paris a while ago about the Museum of Mankind buildings, near the Arc de Triomphe. Particularly because of the space in which it is set, it is a very good and massive example of its type. As I was taking a photograph of it, a nearby German said to me that it ought to be pulled down. His reasons had nothing to do with the architecture of the building, but were related to the social and political connotations of the period which it suggested to him. Today, we conserve Georgian buildings associated with slavery and its proceeds and Victorian buildings that resulted from the Poor Law system. In these cases we judge them primarily as pieces of architecture and ignore the social and political conditions that led to their construction. This is because, as we have no direct experience of those conditions, they have to a large extent been sanitised in our minds. Many people forget the scale of change in public perception of Victorian and Edwardian 24 Any listing of recent buildings is bound to be judged today with similar social, economic and political influences that influenced the 1960s views of Victorian buildings buildings over the last 30 years as fewer and fewer people have firsthand experience of those periods. Just one example will suffice to make the point. In the 1970s the old West Riding of Yorkshire was a good and progressive planning authority. It had adopted a positive approach to the designation of conservation areas and even produced appraisals for some of them! However, all of the early conservation areas in the Yorkshire Dales - Buckden, for example - had boundaries which carefully avoided the Victorian part of the villages. Seventy years after the end of Victoria's reign, economic and social factors were still influencing the judgement of what should be conserved. I would be interested to know how many buildings are listed from the inter-war period because, 70 years on, they do not stimulate the public interest that Victorian architecture has now generated. The inter-war period was an era literally ofDepresSirTitus sion between two world wars. In the 'high-tech' noughts(?) of the 21st century, this generates little interest and highlights the first issue for 20th century conservation: are we far enough away from it in terms of experiential and emotional attachment to form an objective view of what future generations will wish to see conserved, or do we make conservation judgements which are still influenced by increasingly second-hand views, with their emotional, social and political undertones? If Victorian buildings are a yardstick, by 2030 there will be an almost total public respect and awareness of inter-war buildings in their own right and a different view reached on which buildings are worth conserving. This raises the second fundamental point about the conservation of 20th century buildings. Victorian architecture survived national dislike to become respected. Today, the methods of construction and the pace of economic change are such that the associated development/redevelopment cycle is much shorter than it was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thus a 'wait and see' approach cannot be adopted. Conservation judgements have to be made about inter-war buildings - whether they should be listed, whether an area is of special interest - before enough time has elapsed for a consensus view on the architecture or the civic design of the period to develop. This is an even more relevant consideration for the period after the Second World War. The post-war period. I was a student in the 1960s and, ifI stir my little grey cells, I can recollect the response at the time to the great numbers of new buildings which were appearing in our towns and cities after years of austerity and lack of new buildings. They were generally seen as a breath of fresh air and the public was happy to see the demolition of what were then considered to be old, often Context 65 March 2000 r
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=