the-sheet.com Your Architecture Resource » Natural disasters and extreme weather

Response: Christchurch should not restore its mediocre cathedral

The Sheet — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:25:38 +0000

The earthquake-hit city will need memorials which look to the future, not to the past

Simon Jenkins suggests that the restoration of the Christchurch cathedral bell tower should be the memorial for the current tragedy (Restoring Christchurch's bell tower is a first step to easing the city's trauma, 25 February). He does not underrate the appalling consequences of the earthquake in New Zealand, nor do I. But the thought of restoring a mediocre building makes my hackles rise.

As a pupil of the Cathedral Grammar School and Christ's College I was marched to and from the cathedral. I looked at books on cathedrals in England, France and Italy, and wondered why our cathedral was so ungainly, unwelcoming and cold. In the late 1940s I moaned to the primate, Archbishop Campbell West-Watson. His gnomic response was along the lines of "I think of Christ walking by water" and "My sister and I prefer modest churches".

Jenkins admires the cathedral's architect, George Gilbert Scott, so he concludes: "Scott's cathedral tower should be reconstructed as a matter of priority. That way Christchurch will recover quickest from its trauma."

If Christchurch's cathedral had York Minster's stained glass, the nave of Ely, the ribbed vault of Durham and the cloister at Westminster, it might alleviate pain. But I doubt it. This forlorn relic – a jobbing design executed by workmen without the devotion or manual skill of those who built at Gloucester, Salisbury or Winchester – is not magical.

A memorial to a dead father or son, mother or daughter does little. It is the passing of time and the warmth of others that cause grief to be modified. The Victorian age was obsessed with shrines, gravestones, cairns and the like. Jenkins believes that "the evil of a disaster, whatever its cause, is best conquered by reinstating the good that was before".

No doubt his assertion is well meant, but Jenkins does not understand that Britons migrated to Christchurch for independence. They were revolting against the economic and political inhibitions of their homeland. My forbears undertook the long, arduous and dangerous voyage for a better life. Although it was the intention of the so-called founding fathers to imitate English shibboleths, the settlers soon asserted their independence. One example is the 1883 act of parliament that gave women the vote (women in the United Kingdom had to wait until 1918).

The writings of the stoic adventurers who sailed to New Zealand record their difficulties, their self-reliance and their tenacity. It seems to me axiomatic that their descendants will equal them in courage and commitment. They may not welcome Jenkins's wish to restore in order to "help a community resume normal life".

The irony is that the Cathedral Square is the centre but not the heart of Christchurch. It is too big to be intimate, and so open to the fierce winds that lingering is uncomfortable. In the evening, the lanes of second-hand bookshops, boutiques and coffee bars are deserted.

As Christchurch rebuilds, its independence will become clear. The city's resurrection will celebrate the first arrivals, the Maoris, and all who subsequently joined them. No doubt there will be many memorials. Let us hope they will be relevant to today: not looking backward, but striding forward.

• This article was amended on 10 March 2011. The original referred to the knave of Ely. This has been corrected.

Angus Stewart

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Restoring Christchurch’s bell tower is a first step to easing the city’s trauma | Simon Jenkins

The Sheet — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 17:59:09 +0000

The spire lost in New Zealand's earthquake matters. Obliterating past treasures or leaving the scars of ruins never helps

The collapse in Tuesday's earthquake of the bell tower of ChristChurch cathedral is a tragedy both for those killed and for the heart and soul of New Zealand's second city. The tower was the focus point at the heart of this charming, peaceful chip off the old British block. Its loss is symbolic of the tragedy. It should be rebuilt at once.

Cities vary widely in their response to disaster. London reacted to terrorist attack differently from New York. The resignation of the poor of Pakistan, Haiti and Indonesia faced with earthquake and tsunami surprised western observers, as families and villages turned in on themselves and found a comfort and security the state could not supply. It is the same in time of war.

In each case someone comes along shouting for a memorial. They demand some artist's self-regarding creation of modern sculpture, like a Diana fountain. They demand hunks of concrete and steel, cenotaphs and memorial walls, the crude litterings of New York's Ground Zero or London's Hyde Park Corner. It is as if tragedy required atonement in an all too visible and eternal gesture of commemoration.

I am sure there will be talk in New Zealand of how – and if – the tower's stump should be handled. Whenever a prominent building is damaged or destroyed, there are those who see an opportunity to make some personal statement, if not to win a contract. Some will claim that the ChristChurch ruin should be left as a memorial, even an exercise in urban picturesque.

Some may claim the site should be cleared and used for something else. Some may claim there should be a new tower, but in the "modern idiom", which nowadays usually means a spike, a lump of concrete, a rolled-steel joist or a corkscrew.

I believe that the evil of a disaster, whatever its cause, is best conquered by reinstating the good that was before. This was illustrated in the postwar efforts of defeated, ruined European cities to reinstate what bombs and shells had obliterated. No sooner had the guns gone silent than the citizens of Warsaw were seen with wheelbarrows, spades and trowels, carting in materials to rebuild their Old Town square. It was the boldest possible assertion of their cultural identity and continuity. It restored their morale.

In the same spirit, Stalin ordered the restoration of Leningrad's ruined palaces, even though they evoked the age of the tsars and even though those working on them were starving in their hovels. France rebuilt Caen abbey and the centre of Tours. The recent civil war devastated the former Yugoslavia's churches and mosques. It is being redeemed, where possible, by their reconstruction.

Britain, in contrast, boasted its victory in 1945 by redoubling the destruction of the Luftwaffe. Building contractors descended on Bristol, Plymouth, Southampton and Coventry and tore down what had been left of their historic cores. Neighbourhoods that should have been reinstated to reassert respect for the country's values and give back a spirit of history to its cities were turned into banal modernist memorials to bomber and bulldozer alike.

On Wednesday the dean of ChristChurch cathedral said that the loss of his tower was devastating, "but the most important thing at the moment is not the buildings, it's the people". The dead must be found and buried. I would question only the implied demotion of the buildings. Unlike dead people they can live again, and if revived can restore more than brick and stone. They restore morale, civic pride and collective memory.

ChristChurch cathedral tower is the totem of civic continuity. Begun in 1864, it was built apart from the nave to minimise collateral damage should it fall. The same was true of some East Anglian churches, whose flint and mortar construction made them unstable. While not the greatest work of its English architect, Sir George Gilbert Scott, ChristChurch was in the muscular two-tone gothic favoured for his overseas commissions, as in Newfoundland and South Africa. They reminded the early settlers that Northamptonshire was just a hop and a skip away.

Scott's design was vindicated in Tuesday's collapse, when the tower did not fall on the adjacent church. It had already suffered earthquakes in 1888, 1901 and 2010. On the last occasion, its bells eerily started ringing at the height of the quake, released from their locks to swing free, as if given tongue by the subterranean forces of nature.

Reinstating the past induces existential horror in architects and city planners. The rebuilding of Warsaw is still dismissed as "Disneyland nostalgia" by leftwing critics, for whom the hapless citizens should have awaited the arrival of Le Corbusier and his concrete mixer. A similar "truth to history" led the communists to argue that Dresden's Frauenkirche should be left as a heap of rubble and not be rebuilt, as it has been magnificently. Some wanted the World Trade Centre left as a gaping memorial, the same cult of the ruin as led the Picturesque Romantic William Gilpin to demand that a few more corbels be knocked off Tintern Abbey, the better to evoke the cruel transience of history.

There are those who object to English Heritage's admirable reinstatement of Norman Dover Castle as "Disneyfication", and who abuse Moscow for reconstructing its pre-revolutionary churches as "Disneyland" facsimiles, rather than as steel and concrete boxes. This attitude infests Unesco and the council of Europe, to yield such absurdities as the spatchcock Erechtheion pseudo-ruin on the Acropolis in Athens, and the diktat that the Bamiyan Buddhas, blown up by the Taliban, should not be replaced. The giant niches should be left empty and "true", presumably to punish local peasants for allowing the Taliban to take power in the first place. As Nato bombers pulverise their villages, they will doubtless be banned from restoring them too.

The Victorians of Scott's day suffered no such mumbo jumbo to impede them in the greatest ever rescue of ancient civilisation, that of medieval Europe from industrial and political revolution. From Carcassonne to the Tower of London, from Durham cathedral to the west front of Chartres, from thousands of English churches to almost every medieval structure in Europe, the Victorians studied and sought to restore the past for the enjoyment and edification of the present. Had some official fussed over their archaeological "authenticity", all would have disappeared.

For the Victorians a great building was more than the sum of its parts. It was a manifestation of human identity. Western historians may feel that when a building is damaged or destroyed the ruin should be retained as "part of its memory". But who are they to dictate? Why should the gaping scars of other people's tragedies be left unrepaired, so some pundit can exult in "the pleasure of ruins"? A readiness to restore, to make amends, to gather up the nerve-endings of history to help a community resume normal life, these are surely the best future for a devastated past.

Scott's cathedral tower should be reconstructed as a matter of priority. That way Christchurch will recover quickest from its trauma.

• This article was amended on 25 February 2011. An error in editing led to "East Anglian" becoming "East Anglican" on original publication. This has now been corrected

Simon Jenkins

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Prince Charles drafted in to help rebuild quake damaged Port-au-Prince

The Sheet — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 19:17:19 +0000

Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment will restore part of Haiti's historic capital

Everyone from Ben Stiller to Bill Clinton has promised to help, but now Haiti's homeless have a new would-be saviour. Eight months after Port-au-Prince and its residents were devastated by a powerful earthquake which killed more than 230,000 people, the Prince of Wales has responded to a plea for greater assistance from the Haitian government and deployed his architecture charity to help rebuild a swath of the capital's historic centre.

The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment will lead the planning of a makeover of the capital's old quarter, with the prince's aides travelling to the island to start the design process in December.

Sources close to the project in the Caribbean country have warned that the move risks embroiling the prince in Haiti's complex and often corrupt politics.

The country's flagship rebuilding programme is being overseen by Lesley Voltaire, an architect by profession who is standing for president in the 28 November general election, and who is said to have spoken directly to the prince about the scheme.

Last week the prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, trumpeted the prince's charity's involvement, telling reporters: "The contact has already been made, there is an informal agreement."

The prince's architecture charities have helped redesign historic centres in difficult conditions before, including Kabul and Kingston in Jamaica, but Haiti will be his biggest challenge yet.

Last week, an engineer working for a charity building shelters at a refugee camp was shot dead by robbers shortly after he cashed his pay cheque, and a British architect working full-time in the country reported he travels everywhere with an armed guard after being attacked on several occasions.

"We are honoured to have been given the chance to help create a better future for Haiti after the suffering and devastation of the earthquake," said Hank Dittmar, chief executive of the prince's foundation. "We hope to play a small part in bringing hope and benefit to the city by maintaining its authentic character, reducing its environmental impact and helping train local people in construction skills that equip them for future employment."

But there is suspicion locally that the prince's charity may have been drafted in by Haiti's government to score political points.

"There is no way he has chosen Prince Charles because he offers the kind of architecture he wants," said a source close to the project who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He [Voltaire] has done it to help burnish his image and grab headlines."

The foundation was approached amid growing concern about the international response to Haiti's medium and long-term problems. Bellerive has estimated there are 1.3 million homeless earthquake survivors living in camps in and around Port-au-Prince and has been critical of the international response, saying last month: "I need more, I need better and I need it differently."

He has estimated that building decent housing for the victims could cost $10bn (£6.2bn), almost all of the foreign aid promised so far, and is seeking a "coherent" rebuilding plan for a capital notorious for its chaotic layout.

The prince's foundation will work with Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, planners and architects based in Miami and Washington, to run a workshop involving local professionals, property owners and representatives of the Haitian-American communities among others. The result will be a masterplan including homes, streets, public spaces and amenities.

Regardless of the political subtext of the prince's involvement, his decision to work in Haiti puts him at the forefront of British involvement in one of the biggest problems facing Haiti, the construction of solid, earthquake proof and hurricane proof homes to replace the lightweight structures devastated in January.

The only British firm of architects working in Port-au-Prince is thought to be John McAslan and Partners, which is redesigning the historic Iron Market adjacent to the Prince's Foundation site. It is also overseeing an international competition to design templates for new homes that will be built using funds from the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission which is overseen by Bill Clinton, the UN envoy to Haiti, and prime minister Bellerive.

"There simply aren't many British firms there," said Andy Meira, who runs McAslan's operations from a surviving apartment in the largely collapsed Montana Hotel where 200 people died. "In terms of construction and design we are the only ones."

The firm has worked with British engineering firm Arup to kick-start the development of cheap housing on behalf of the Haitian government, producing designs for 150 rapidly buildable and environmentally responsive homes costing only £3,000 each. Designs by nine firms of British architects, including Proctor and Matthews and Jestico and Whiles, which are experienced in building social housing in the UK, have been accepted by the Building Back Better Homes competition which is being run by McAslan on behalf of the Haitian government. Individual British architects have been volunteering through the charity, Architecture for Humanity which is active in Port-au-Prince.

"I hope that we're going to see Port-au-Prince as a huge construction field," said Haitian central bank governor Charles Castel last week, adding funds freed up by an International Monetary Fund cancellation of $268m (£167m) of debt would help in the reconstruction of the city's administrative heart.

Robert Booth

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Bunker mentality: the ultimate underground shelter

The Sheet — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 23:09:14 +0000

Come the end of the world, you might like to sit it out in style. All you need is money and a few DIY skills…

Abandon any notion of surviving the apocalypse by doing anything as boringly obvious as running for the highest hill, or eating cockroaches. The American firm Vivos is now offering you the chance to meet global catastrophe (caused by terrorism, tsunami, earthquake, volcano, pole shift, Iran, "social anarchy", solar flare – a staggering list of potential world-murderers are considered) in style.

Vivos is building 20 underground "assurance of life" resorts across the US, capable of sustaining up to 4,000 people for a year when the earth no longer can. The cost? A little over £32,000 a head, plus a demeaning-sounding screening test that determines whether you are able to offer meaningful contribution to the continuation of the human race. Company literature posits, gently, that "Vivos may prove to be the next Genesis", and they are understandably reluctant to flub the responsibility.

Should you have the credentials and the cash, the rewards of a berth in a Vivos shelter seem high. Each staffed complex has a decontamination shower and a jogging machine; a refrigerated vault for human DNA and a conference room with wheely chairs. There are TVs and radios, flat-screen computers, a hospital ward, even a dentist's surgery ready to serve those who forgot to pack a toothbrush in the hurry. "Virtually any meal" can be cooked from a stockpile of ingredients that includes "baked potato soup" but, strangely, no fish, tinned or otherwise. Framed pictures of mountain ranges should help ease the loss of a world left behind.

Vivos says it has already received 1,000 applications.

How long do the rest of us have to decide? "Nobody knows" when disaster will strike but Vivos takes a shot at guessing, sourcing clues from Nostradamus, the Bible and Native American lore to suggest 2019, 2029 and 2036 as danger years. But the real fear is for 21 December 2012, a date forecast for doom by the Mayans and towards which a countdown clock on Vivos's website ticks.

We ought not to get too comfy over the next couple of years either: President Obama's recent warnings about nuclear terrorism proved "timely", a Vivos spokesperson told the Observer. "Doomsday may be closer than many would otherwise like to believe..."

It's warning enough. £32,000? Check. Carpentry skills? Check. Jogging bottoms? Check. Good luck in the hills.

Tom Lamont

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Response: Architects are often the last people needed in disaster reconstruction

The Sheet — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:39:36 +0000

Most of them focus on buildings rather than people, and will be of little use in Haiti or Chile

Steve Rose's article concerning Haiti and the demands of disaster-zone architecture is wide of the mark when he states that shelter after disaster and the plight of hundreds of millions of slum dwellers are "real, urgent problems for architects to solve" (Out of the wreckage, 15 February).

As I was told by a professor when studying some 20 years ago, the role of architects in these circumstances is "marginal at best". In fact, most architects are taught almost the exact opposite of what is needed. Architects are taught to focus on the product (a building), whereas humanitarian practitioners major on the process (involving people). For architects, ownership of the design rests with them and fellow professionals; for the aid world, engaging beneficiaries through sharing decisions is paramount.

Good post-disaster shelter interventions engage those affected in solving their own problems. When this doesn't happen, the results can be painful. As your article notes, Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation employed high-profile architects to produce "funky housing types" in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, but was criticised for "transplanting alien architecture into a context where it wasn't called for".

Too many aid-delivered shelter programmes have lacked genuine participation by affected people, and as a consequence have been poorly designed and wrongly located. Architects need to be taught this stuff if they are to be relevant in places where disasters like this happen.

Take Haiti, and now Chile. The need is immense and the issues extremely complex. As your article states: "Natural and man-made disasters have created similar circumstances around the world, where homes, schools, hospitals, and other structures are needed quickly and cheaply." Yet before the earthquake some 75% of Haiti's population was already poor. This disaster was anything but natural. Buildings fell down because of poor maintenance, lack of planning, and mismanagement. As Salvano Briceno of the UN's International Strategy for Disaster Reduction stated: "It's poverty that is at the core of these disasters."

Reconstruction in places where disasters are caused more by poverty than natural phenomena involves building back what can't be seen as much as what can. I agree with Robin Cross of Article 25, the UK's leading architectural aid charity, who says: "You need to pick up those [social and economic] threads and build a new Haiti around them."

Some architects may argue that to take this on board is too intractable and is beyond their remit. But this is the nature of the beast, and they cannot afford to ignore it. Architects must evolve to address the radically different circumstances for which they were trained.

Beyond the groundbreaking work of Architecture For Humanity and of Article 25 to which you refer, architects need to move beyond their traditional role of designers of buildings in places of relative certainty, to become facilitators of building processes that involve people in places of uncertainty and rapid change. Without this change, architects will remain on the margins of humanitarian response.

David Sanderson

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Chile’s earthquake was horrible – but it could have been so much worse

The Sheet — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:01:11 +0000

Chile is one of South America's richest, best-organised countries and many of its homes and offices were built to be earthquake resistant

Chile's earthquake was many times more powerful than the one that devastated Haiti earlier this year but caused only a small fraction of the casualties, thanks to geological luck and the country's preparation for such a disaster.

Saturday's 8.8-magnitude quake was a "megathrust" which unleashed about 50 gigatons of energy, but it was centered offshore and about 21 miles underground, dissipating its force by the time it reached towns and cities.

In contrast, the 7-magnitude quake that struck Port-au-Prince on January 12 was much shallower – about eight miles deep – and right on the edge of a city where 3 million people lived.

Eight Haitian towns and cities suffered "violent" to "extreme" shaking, whereas Chilean urban areas did not suffer more than "severe" shaking: still horrible, but a let-off.

The other reason Chile was counting its dead in the hundreds rather than hundreds of thousand was that this is one of South America's richest, best-organised countries. It has long experience of dealing with earthquakes.

Seismic activity is common along its Andean ridge. In 1960 it suffered one of the strongest quakes on record. Saturday's was the third with a magnitude greater than 8.7.

Homes and offices are built to sway with seismic waves rather than resist them. "When you look at the architecture in Chile, you see buildings that have damage, but not the complete pancaking that you've got in Haiti," said Cameron Sinclair, executive director of Architecture for Humanity.

Sinclair said Chilean architects have built thousands of low-income houses to be earthquake resistant. It is required by blueprints and building codes.

Chileans may still ask themselves if they did enough to prepare. In Concepcion, one of the hardest hit places, many houses made of adobe crumbled, as did a recent 15-storey apartment block. The university caught fire and gas and power lines snapped. Many streets were littered with rubble and, just as in Port-au-Prince, inmates escaped from a damaged prison.

In Santiago, the capital, large sections of the renovated airport's roof caved in. About 1.5 million Chileans were affected and 500,000 homes severely damaged. In some places rescuers complained of lack of fuel for equipment.

Even with damage estimated at $15bn-$30bn (£9.8-19.6bn), and airports, motorways and bridges shut, the state responded swiftly. "The fact that the president [Michelle Bachelet] was out giving minute-to-minute reports a few hours after the quake in the middle of the night gives you an indication of their disaster response," said Sinclair.

Rory Carroll

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds