Owen Hatherley (We trash our modernist heritage on a whim: why is Britain so in thrall to the wrecking ball?, 31 March) is correct that our towns will only flourish if we get the harmony proper between conserving anything and providing developers a free of charge-for-all. In theory, the listing procedure makes certain that the most effective of every single era is saved from destruction, and the general blend receives richer and richer. But, as Hatherley notes, listing is a “blunt instrument” and 1 that developers are all too experienced at manipulating. It is true that it fits them to maintain that listing 20th-century structures is continue to controversial.
In actuality, conservation is now really broad-minded and has bought around the point that a lot of of the excellent modernist structures now shown sit on top rated of the rubble of great Victorian kinds – none of them is going to be magicked again into existence by the punitive demolition of the former. We have a good opportunity to make confident we don’t make the same blunder once again.
Now that we realize the effect of demolition on local climate change, there is all the additional reason to prioritise reusing buildings on environmental grounds – there are even now lots of web pages for new masterpieces (only 2% of constructing stock is detailed). As with cherished structures of preceding eras, the best 20th-century examples deserve light conservation. We must halt trashing our modernist heritage.
Catherine Croft
Director, Twentieth Century Society, London
The problem with Owen Hatherley’s plea for preserving the modernist properties of the 1960s and 70s is that at virtually no point does he mention the individuals who have to stay or do the job in them. Does he stay in a concrete tower block 25 storeys up, exactly where the lifts break down, or store in a bleak, windswept precinct with bits falling off the facade? When no 1 would dispute that cities and towns require to evolve, the reality is that quite a few illustrations of modernism were plonked down with out regard to record, geography, community resources or traditions, or to the practicalities of every day existence.
The total Le Corbusier concept of modernism was in essence monumental, inhuman in scale and rather authoritarian. Architecture can be both of those practical and beautiful. If we have to nevertheless glance to the distant earlier for elegance, so be it. But modernism was never about compromise with the earlier, or even how individuals want to dwell. It failed for the similar explanation that the Victorian gothic style in the end failed. They were being much better in smaller doses, not the normally substantial-scale blitzkrieg of urban centres and communities.
Garth Groombridge
Southampton
Owen Hatherley expertly highlights the dilemma going through city planners, who look to fall into two distinctive groups – people who technique each individual developing as a individual design and style difficulty to be solved, and those with a extensive-phrase eyesight for whom the finished metropolis centre was a concept influencing their structure solution. I grew up in Coventry, wherever wartime destruction gave architects the possibility to develop a grand approach. What transpired was far more like a collection of adjustments which, in lots of situations, experienced to be rethought. The Precinct browsing area was afterwards demolished, as it turned evident that the initially floor, attained by an exterior stairway, was very unpopular with customers.
The distinction with Birmingham is putting. There, somebody saw the more substantial photo and a walk from Brindley Position alongside to Symphony Hall is a nice working experience for anyone attuned to the visible stimuli afforded by desirable structures located in harmony with each and every other. I wish I could be additional faithful to the metropolis of my childhood, but the more mature sections will always be what I keep in mind most fondly.
Bob Caldwell
Daventry, Northamptonshire