CONTEXT 176 : JUNE 2023 5 ‘SO MUCH dedication, scholarship and belief, all delivered with that wonderful raucous voice and style that was very much not that of your usual architectural historian. The best in the business.’ The architecture critic Rowan Moore mourning the death of the Elain Harwood on Twitter @rowanmoore ‘ELAIN was unafraid about being a champion for the more controversial forms of modernism, including brutalism… ‘Throughout her busy life, she still had time to lecture in very lively style on her architectural passions, including at IHBC events. She will be very sadly missed, but her legacy will live on in her writing’. From IHBC chair David McDonald’s appreciation of Elain Harwood on the IHBC NewsBlog ‘CURRENTLY have one project on indefinite hold due to predicted costs now being 2.5 times the budget, and a retrofit shifting to phased approach for similar reasons. At least retrofits can be phased to spread costs – a lot harder to do that with new build.’ John Butler on Twitter @the_woodlouse ‘I NEVER imagined that I would see a planning inspector order a developer to put back what he’d just knocked down, to look exactly as it was. I thought the developer would get a slap on the wrist, a £6,000 fine. I was flabbergasted. It has set an incredibly useful precedent: other planning inspectors will remember it – and so will developers.’ James Watson, pub protection adviser for the Campaign for Pubs, speaking to the Guardian after a judge had ordered that the Grade II listed Punch Bowl Inn at Hurst Green in Lancashire must be rebuilt, at a cost that the developers have put at £1.5million, plus £70,000 in fines and court costs. ‘ONE OF MY main reasons was that we have a relatively new visitor centre with a glass roof. It leaks, there’s glare, it overheats, and it has a huge air-handling unit for an area that’s less than half as large as the Orangery. I thought, why on earth are we spending all this money, £2 million, doing the same thing? Kelly Whitton, head of building heritage at Blenheim Palace, explaining to the i Newspaper why the 19th-century glass roof to the Orangery will be replaced by a traditional slate roof, enabling the building to better weather extreme heat and heavy rainfall. The new roof will allow a wider gutter, which should remove the problem of the old one flooding and sending water cascading down the walls. Insulation will be fitted, reducing the heating bill and making the room more tolerable in summer. ‘THERE ARE decades of evidence that window replacement has the worst bang for the buck of any action to reduce heat loss. And who in their right mind would toss something made of natural oldgrowth wood that has lasted 100 years for plastic and sealed glazing units that won’t last for a fraction of that time? As historic buildings consultant Donovan Rypkema has noted: “That is why they are called ‘replacement’ windows; you have to replace them every 30 years”… ‘Blower door tests on properly restored 200-year-old windows have demonstrated that they are as airtight as new windows. And if they are still draughty, add window inserts or exterior storm windows, and you have pretty good thermal performance without all the upfront carbon emissions of making new windows… Blenheim Palace: coping with the climate (Photo: DeFacto, Wikimedia)
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