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THE CONCEPT OF CHARACTER IN HISTORIC BUILDINGS
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Short Description: The deliberate attempt to eliminate character. from modern architecture in the 20th century. has partially resulted in the concept being ...
Content Inside: A redundant croft in the Outer Hebrides. This is the type of building which epitomises the modern notion of character. THE CONCEPT OF CHARACTER IN HISTORIC BUILDINGS Julian Holder Character, like so many of the central the Arts and Crafts Movement. It is a direct, interior paint scheme at Bolsover Castle. concepts we use on a daily basis in and frequently effective appeal to the emotions However, like all concepts, `character' is conservation, is a somewhat nebulous concept. of those who make decisions in planning historically constructed and has its own It is also one we rarely stop to think about committees up and down the land. At its worst history. in abstract. Not only is it hard to define it is a transparently bullying misappropriation In his recent work Words and Buildings, but it shares with related concepts such as which fails to impress the hard headed and Adrian Forty has performed a valuable service integrity and honesty, a family resemblance by leaves conservation looking distinctly amateur. in clarifying the historical development of employing what Ruskin termed `the pathetic However, if we take the human analogy at many central concepts in architecture. In so fallacy.' That is to say we apply concepts face value perhaps it is not so inappropriate. doing he chronicles the development of the properly belonging to human beings to We are perturbed when a person's character closed language of contemporary architecture inanimate objects. Can a building really be changes out of all recognition and we no longer which has alienated the architectural `compromised,' its `integrity' questioned, its know who they are. Character, at least for profession from the public it serves. Many `character' altered? It all rather conjures up the human beings, is meant to be fixed and stable, of these, such as `character', are as applicable image of a shy Edwardian bather embarrassed something we `settle into,' and any alteration of to conservation as they are to architecture. to be caught half-way through changing into this, unless, as in literature, the redemption Interestingly, the use of such concepts in a swim-suit in a bathing engine on the South of a bad character, is seen as unfortunate. So conservation has not alienated us from the Coast. it is for buildings. We believe that we know public in the way that their use in the When using these concepts we ask those them, their age, their history, their appearance. development of modernist architecture has. reading our letters of objection, our proofs of Should this change as a result of new research, Why should this be? How has the architectural evidence, and our conservation plans, to take possibly leading to a new appearance then we avant-garde managed to use the same concepts them on trust and engage in a debate partially feel let down, sometimes confused, and even to exclude the public that conservation seems defined, controlled, and organised around angry. Sometimes, as we learn more we value to have deployed to include them? such anthropomorphic concepts. To accept the more a building is upgraded, a friend more Forty argues that `character', with a concepts ensures that all the participants are valued. Yet it works both ways. How often background in literary debate, entered the already treating buildings as people, as living do we say of a person that `such-and-such' an architectural vocabulary in the 18th century, breathing beings, whose fate we care about, event, usually a new partner or new interest being found first in the writings of French and not simply as bricks and lime mortar. following a death, has `been the making of architect Germain Boffrand, such as Livre At its best this is a linguistic slight of them'. Such may be the defence of some high d'Architecture (1745). For Boffrand the concept hand, based on custom and practice going profile restorations such as that of Stirling of `character' was clearly related to function, back to Ruskin, Morris and other members of Great Hall, or the recovery of the original or genre, as when he writes that "Different thebuildingconservationdirectory2001
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