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This topic has 5 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 14 years, 1 month ago by victus_maestro.
arch-nostrad
Hi people
Whats your views on conservation of architecture.
Is destroying old buildings, flattening the land and building another RCC box is the solution? ..
Or some radical solutuion can come out over here….
Definately… destroying the traditional heritage is not the solution… a new solution has to be provided…
May 7, 2008 at 12:53 pm #39179
ameeta Sharma
Welll i believe a very integral part of conservation is reconstruction to the original fabric.
Anything that is left dilapidated needs a lot of efforts to be rebuilt, thus i think its a lot of work that goes into it which obviously is not acceptable to most of the general public…
June 13, 2008 at 12:53 pm #39180
adiwall
Maybe the best thing is to be radical.
We know what the earlier people did, its in the record books. If you have extracted everything out of something, whats the use of storing it now?
So move the old structure to a new place, reconfiscate the land and start some new good construction there. Usually the land in such cases has become very costly.
The best solution is to use it in best fasion. But this should be done only when you know everything about the structure and about the people associated with it and when the demolishment does not hurt the publics sympathy to the structure.
Who knows, while breaking the structures, you find something new?
Sorry for replying late.
Anyways "adiwall" .. I really don't agree with you because heritage building is itself an history and rather than simply destroying it we can do something much better. And if you are saying " new good construction " then i would like you to define what do you mean by that….
I don't find that amazing sense of proportion in any of the modern building which the historic one possessed …
And making new one just for money, will simply destroy our base…
victus_maestro
I think that too much is dependent on the specific situation. A building should not be disconnected from its history. You have to consider, then, what is it about the building that makes it worth keeping? I may just have a very American view of it, but I think that it is a bad idea to keep every old building unless there is a good reason. They take too much maintenance, and provide much less efficiency than newer ones.
For example, I don't think an apartment complex should be kept if it is just sitting there. Even if the land is used for another apartment complex, it could be better designed to accomodate more people, more comfortably. Rather than wasting the materials, they should be reused whenever possible. Old wood that can be salvaged could be used for furniture. Old bricks could be used to make a path in the "garden" type area of the building.
However, I don't think we should demolish or move buildings that are historical or useful…no matter the cost of the land it's on, a building should stay because it is how we interact with our history. We can put old things away, but old buildings among us are a constant reminder of where we (as a society) and even more so we (as architects) have come from.
I know this point of view is naive and somewhat romantic, and money will always rule the decision-making process, but that's just how I feel about it.