IHBC’s new issue of its members’ journal Context is out – No. 186 – takes a heftier view of heritage opportunities, from Scotland’s ‘uplifting’ heritage and reusing big industrial structures to its conservation areas, railway infrastructure, and much more.
The IHBC writes on ‘The big picture’:
Conserving infrastructure can be difficult. It’s often big, making it expensive to maintain or repurpose. It reflects the technology of its time and may be no longer useful. It may be part of a system that is still in use. Remember the Big Dig, the nickname of the Boston Central Artery/Tunnel Project, which rerouted Interstate Highway 93 from the elevated Central Artery highway through a tunnel after it had cut off the city centre from its waterfront for four decades? When the new road opened in 2003, five years late and wildly over budget, a former director of the project described it as ‘doing open heart surgery on a patient who continues to work and play tennis’. US Representative Barney Frank commented that it would have been cheaper to elevate the city than depress the artery (which was probably inspired by producer Lew Grade’s comment about his film Raise the Titanic: ‘It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic’).
Infrastructure consists of the basic physical and organisational structures and facilities needed for the operation of a society or enterprise. Building it in the first place is often unpopular, generally due to its size, expense and unfamiliarity. John Ruskin, for example, was a vehement opponent of railways, seeing them as symbols of materialism and greed. It certainly was not worth trying to make them beautiful. ‘There never was more flagrant nor impertinent folly than the smallest portion of ornament in anything concerned with railroads or near them,’ he wrote in The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849). ‘Keep them out of the way, take them through the ugliest country you can find, confess them the miserable things they are, and spend nothing upon them but for safety and speed.’
If he were around today, Ruskin would be considering whether to support the UK’s most expensive infrastructure projects, which probably (‘probably’, because the likely eventual cost of any major infrastructure project is always a mystery) include High-Speed Rail 2, Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C nuclear power stations, the Lower Thames Crossing road project, and the Thames Tideway Tunnel super sewer.
Time adds a new dimension to our appreciation of infrastructure, like any other type of heritage. We are taken back to the past to marvel at what was achieved with such sophistication and at what scale. Impressive structures – cranes, ironworks, cooling towers or whatever else – become symbols of the industries that shaped places. Sometimes, with imagination, they can provide the structure for a new activity that their hard-headed, original creators never thought of. And a time-travelling Ruskin might be surprised to discover that it is often those unadorned structures for which no one thought it worth paying for a ‘portion of ornament’ that most impress us today with their beauty and power.
Context 186: CONTENTS
Regular & Occasional features & updates
- Briefing
- Out of Context
- Periodically
- The writer’s voice
- Letter
- Law and policy
Themed Articles
- Editorial
- The protection and reuse of large industrial structures, Peter de Figueiredo
- Historic England and infrastructure, Luke Wormald
- Reflections on railway heritage, Simon Hickman
- Scotland’s uplifting heritage, Miles Oglethorpe
- Power for the people, Wayne Cocroft
- Industrial heritage in the Ruhr, John Pendlebury
- Industrial conservation areas, Diane Harvey-White
Feature Articles
- Housing and heritage, Dave Chetwyn
- Celebrating brick gothic, David Andrews
IHBC Updates
- Notes from the chair
- New member profile
- New members
- Inter alia
- Vox pop
- Reviews
Commercial
- Products and services
- Specialist suppliers index
Reading Context helps IHBC members develop their skills across all of the IHBC’s Areas of Competence, and so is a critical baseline in addressing priorities in Continuing Professional Development (CPD)
Access the online archive and see the issue online
See more IHBC background and guidance on IHBC CPD and on how you might use past, current and future issues of Context
See the formal guidance paper on IHBC CPD (scheduled for update)
See more on the IHBC Competences and Areas of Competence
