[Info-vax] Completely OT: Frank Lloyd Wright

[Paul Sture]

In article <eda81$50728506$5ed43c14$2030 at cache1.tilbu1.nb.home.nl>,
 Dirk Munk <munk at home.nl> wrote:

> Paul Sture wrote:
> >
> > But the buildings do suffer from what the Fallingwater web site refers
> > to as "the effects of weather and time."  There comes a point when it
> > may not be economically feasible to save a site.
> 
> Economic feasibility is one of the less important arguments when you're 
> dealing with monumental buildings. The number one priority is to 
> preserve the building and restore it if necessary. Let me give you an 
> example. There is a British TV series about people building or restoring 
> houses.

That sounds like Grand Designs, an excellent programme.

> In one episode we saw a man who had bought the ruin of a manor 
> house. And when I say ruin, I mean ruin. There was nothing left of the 
> building than crumbling outside and inside walls. No roof, no ceilings, 
> no windows or doors, just a one meter thick layer of rubble in the 
> interior. But never the less, it was a listed building.

I saw the follow up where the programme's presenter revisits a project 
several years later to see how it turned out.

> Was it 
> economically feasible to restore it? Absolutely not. From an economic 
> point of view the bulldozer would have been the right solution. But he 
> did restore the building. All his plans needed approval from British 
> heritage. He spent a fortune on stone masons, enormous oak beams etc. 
> For the roof construction he used steel beams. That may sound strange, 
> but in modern restoration it is allowed to show where parts of the 
> building were completely replaced because they were missing. In the end 
> this man was the proud owner of a beautifully restored manor house.

IIRC he got very close to losing the lot to the bank.  Listed buildings 
can be a curse because the authorities will insist on expensive surveys 
and other costly work.  What surprised me was that when part of it 
collapsed British Heritage insisted on reviewing the property as a whole 
from scratch, and he couldn't do any further work until that was 
complete.

Naturally he ended up with a much larger mortgage than anticipated, and 
turned several rooms into bed and breakfast accommodation to cope with 
that.  IIRC he also used a ground heat pump which was necessary to dry 
the stonework out after so many years of exposure to the elements; the 
cost of conventional heating would have been prohibitive. I must say it 
was a testament to one couple's vision and tenacity, but it could have 
easily ended up as a financial disaster.

In his second visit, the programme's presenter stayed in one of those 
rooms.  They had turned the place into something really quite special.


> > My father was an architect and they do make mistakes, especially where
> > the use of new and untested materials is involved.  My theory is that
> > architects sometimes get carried away and tend to look at the big
> > picture.
> 
> That is absolutely true. Throughout the ages many architects 
> experimented with new materials and new building techniques. In the 
> middle ages many cathedrals collapsed during construction. It is always 
> left to later generations to deal with the technical problems. The 
> cathedral in Cologne for instance was built between 1248 and 1880(!!). 
> It has a permanent workshop with stone masons so they can replace 
> crumbling stonework because they used soft limestone for the 
> construction. Modern European architects like Corbusier also built 
> houses with technical flaws. It doesn't stop us from preserving those 
> buildings.

I recall an English cathedral (Ely?) which was built on marshy ground, 
and they started out with a base of wood.  Needless to say that didn't 
last forever, but later generations did manage to put new foundations in 
to save the building.

-- 
Paul Sture