8 CONTEXT 182 : DECEMBER 2024 ‘JUST BEFORE the election, the now deputy prime minister Angela Rayner revealed new visions of today’s towns of the future, renderings apparently created using AI that showed mistily nostalgic Edwardian-style, red-brick mansion blocks, treelined streets and pavement cafes. Rayner, whose ministerial brief covers housing, suggested that only “attractive” homes would be built… ‘The historicism of those machine hallucinations is a revealing echo of lingering British anxieties over style and modernity. The nation (or at least its developers) proved a little resistant to modernism in the early 20th century, its public buildings veering between neoGeorgian or art deco, and its housing dominated by artsycraftsy, half-timbered semis with the occasional stab at a more “continental” modernism.’ Edwin Heathcote writing in the Financial Times ‘THE INCREASE in annual rainfall in Scotland over the past 10 years has intensified the challenge for traditional fabric – particularly when this fabric has been compromised by the use of modern materials and the loss of traditional detailing. ‘It has exposed the fundamental flaw in fashion-driven removal of lime harling coats and limewashes, both of which were essential components of traditional building technology. Both – in all of their porosity – were designed to keep buildings dry… ‘While surface finishes might be seen by many as aesthetic,… it is their functional performance – their effective porosity and high capillarity – that made them universal in the past, and that their like-for-like reinstatement is essential in meeting the challenges of the growing climate emergency. ‘You would not remove half the notes from a Beethoven sonata in the hope that someone who can’t play the piano can perform it.’ Nigel Copsey reporting on the Building Limes Forum Gathering in Stirling ‘HERE, for one hallucinogenic moment, the Thames becomes the Nile. It is as if Kenneth Grahame had decided to set The Wind in the Willows in Luxor.’ Hugh Pearman, chair of the Twentieth Century Society, celebrating Sphinx Hill in Oxfordshire, ‘the gleefully polychromatic neo-Egyptian house’ designed by the architect John Outram, becoming Britain’s youngest listed building. ‘IF THE Twentieth Century Society got £0.01p for every tourist or TikToker who takes a selfie in front of a phone box we have got listed, we’d never have to fundraise again!’ Phineas Harper writing in X @ PhinHarper after the the latest phone box listing: a 1935 K6 Jubilee kiosk in Sheffield, notable for its proximity to a rare 1928 police box, both now designated Grade II. ‘INFURIATINGLY, when I ask council officers what more they are going to do to stop listed buildings from rotting away to the point of collapse, they say that it is the responsibility of the building’s owners. ‘The council should be much more proactive in using its statutory planning powers, such as urgent works notices and listed building repairs notices, to prevent further decline, rather than just mopping up the mess once buildings have collapsed. ‘The council does seem to be more trigger-happy in serving dangerous buildings notices, however. No sooner than a planning application for student flats was submitted for the former ABC venue last month, the council bypassed the normal process for demolition of a listed building by ordering the total demolition of the historic venue’s facade… ‘It is unacceptable that councils can exploit dangerous buildings notices to fully demolish listed buildings without first presenting evidence from conservationaccredited engineers to demonstrate that there is no alternative to demolition.’ Paul Sweeney writing in the Glasgow Times after the city council ordered the demolition of a facade that had stood on Sauchiehall Street since the venue was gutted by the second Glasgow School of Art fire in 2018. Glasgow’s former ABC venue (Photo: Fraydattheedges, Wikimedia)
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