"The point at which buildings become ruins is a philosophical question."
-- David Littlefield
Architectural Voices: Listening to...
If a building could speak, what would it say? What would it sound like? Would it be worth listening to? This book treats buildings as deeply human creations - built by people for people; they come to embody the dreams, imaginings and stories that take place within them.
David Littlefield and Saskia Lewis argue that buildings have voices and that it is worth listening to what they have to say. By focusing on elderly structures that are the subject of reinvention, this book examines how the buildings guide architects and artists. These reinventions, or re-imaginings, are not merely examples of straightforward conservation, nor simple exercises in contrasting old and new; they represent a more sensitive, personal approach to creative reuse. The authors' accounts of more than 20 historic buildings and their interviews with the people responsible for renewing them, demonstrate that the poetic qualities of the places we inhabit are not limited to just architectural style.
In this book, the voices of an abandoned cathedral, a former brothel, a stately home and a Royal Mail sorting office reveal themselves. Listening to these voices opens up a new dimension to understanding the lives and meanings of old buildings.
Architectural Voices
By Edwin Heathcote
Can a building hold memories? Is a house more than the physical materials from which it is built? We’ve all entered houses that feel creepy, in which a darkness and gloom, a chill that penetrates the bones, seems to descend – just as we’ve all been in churches that seem to radiate numinosity and awe, or in houses where the layers of history have been peeled back revealing wallpapers, colours or covered-up openings that seem to speak of past lives and incarnations. The painfully ordinary, usually domestic, sites of the most notorious murders are often demolished, ostensibly to deter souvenir-seekers but perhaps actually because we feel these places have been tainted by tangible evil, that something of the trauma cannot but be left in the walls and the earth. >>> Read More
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