Continuity & Change - Roger Ebert & London's Shard

My favourite film reviewer, Roger Ebert, recently blogged about his disapproval of architects “whose designs seek to redefine the ways that people naturally want to sit on a bench, or look at a skyline”.

I’m happy to concede that, when it comes to sitting down, form should follow function. However skylines are a very different matter.

The Shard, London (Image- Wikipedia)

Roger was reacting to reports about the new skyscraper known as The Shard currently under construction in London. When completed it will be the tallest building in Europe. From certain vantage points it will dramatically change the skyline of London – in the same way that in recent times Norman Foster’s “Gherkin” building or the London Eye have done.

Roger confesses to being a traditionalist when it comes to town planning and architecture and that he likes “old buildings” and “continuity”. I too like old buildings and consider it indeed fortunate that any imperative to modernise London has not laid waste to the city’s remarkable layers of built heritage. Where I take issue with Roger is in his view that The Shard, and for that matter the Gherkin, are necessarily inappropriate intrusions into the London skyline.

Roger talks about “harmony” and “order” and “proportion” and an “essential rightness of things that seem to go together”. If I am correct in my understanding of his argument as it applies to London, then he is simply expressing an opposition to the introduction of any new buildings or other structures that would change our view of the skyline as exists today. In other words what we have achieved now is the ultimate in harmony, order, proportion and the “rightness of things that seem to go together”. This would therefore preclude the desirability of further change.

He is not alone in his view and I share some of his apprehension.  But what I think is at the bottom of this apprehensiveness, when it comes to our built environment, is our tendency to find comfort in the familiar. Added to this is a widespread wariness of the new and different, as art critic Robert Hughes identified in  “The Shock of the New” more than 30 years ago.

Eiffel Tower ( Image - Wikipedia)

This may help explain why there was so much hostility in Paris towards the Eiffel Tower when it was built as the entrance arch for the 1889 Paris Exposition. The proposal to construct the tower met with fierce opposition. Many prominent Parisians, including members of the arts establishment, joined together in a campaign to prevent it being built.   

They petitioned the Exposition organisers:

“We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of the slighted French taste, against the erection…of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower”.

They didn’t mince their words and described the tower as being, inter alia, “giddy and ridiculous”, “a gigantic black smokestack”, “barbaric” and a “hateful column of bolted sheet metal”.  Had their views prevailed Paris, would have been denied its most iconic building.

It was originally intended that the Eiffel Tower would only stand for 20 years, but by 1909 the City of Paris apparently found it served a useful purpose as a communications tower. For more than 40 years it remained the tallest man made structure in the world. It would be hard to imagine the Paris skyline today without this “intrusive” structure. Familiarity wins out in the end.

Closer to home for me, Victoria’s state capital has undergone a dramatic transformation since the glory days of the so-called Marvellous Melbourne of the late Nineteenth Century. A city built on the wealth of the goldfields that resulted in one of the world’s best collections of grand Victorian era buildings and streetscapes. Sadly some of this legacy of the gold rush fell foul of the urge to modernise in the 1950s and 1960s and “Whelan the Wrecker” did his worst.

With hindsight all of Melbourne’s significant Nineteenth Century buildings and streetscapes within Hoddle’s Grid should have been preserved and all new high rise development concentrated in areas such as the Docklands and Southbank precincts – but of course these were never options at the time. 

While we may lament what was lost, there is still an excitement to be found in how Melbourne has developed. Continuity and change are not mutually exclusive - but they do create a tension. The old and the new can co-exist and the best architects and town planners know how to respond creatively to this tension.

What is particularly exciting about Melbourne is how the skyline has been transformed as a reflection of changing patterns of social and economic behaviour. The trend towards inner city living and an increased focus on recreation and entertainment are having a profound influence on Melbourne’s built environment.

Federation Square, Melbourne (Image - Wikipedia)

Opinion is often divided when it comes to the merits of new buildings. Melbourne’s Federation Square certainly had and still has its detractors. There was a widely held view that it would take away from the surrounding heritage vistas. One of its most vocal critics, Barry Humphries, has variously dismissed Federation Square as looking like “a set of dilapidated Italian luggage” or “a clump of crumpled kerosene tins”. 

But I would now argue this post-modernist development sits very comfortably opposite three of Melbourne’s most historic buildings - Flinders Street Station, St Pauls Cathedral and Young & Jackson’s Hotel.  As they say “people vote with their feet” and the success of Federation Square can be measured by the large number of visitors it attracts. In 2011 it was reported to be Victoria’s second most visited tourist attraction. Once again the “shock of the new” gives way to familiarity.

Roger Ebert in his blog talked about his preference for cities “that seem to have grown gradually and organically”. I agree, but great cities can also be the result of dramatic interventions. 

The Paris that we know and love today is very much the product of Baron Haussmann’s “renovation” of the city in the 1860s. This was no gradual evolution. A large swathe was cut through old Paris to create the boulevards, avenues and parks that characterise the city of today. But understandably not everyone approved of what he was doing at the time. People’s lives were seriously disrupted.

Bundestag, Berlin (Official Bundestag Image)

Likewise today Berlin has emerged as one of the world’s most interesting and exciting cities – but of necessity it is a very different city to the one that existed prior to the widespread destruction caused by allied bombing during World War Two. What you see in Berlin today is the tangible evidence of an often-troubled history as reflected in a changing built environment.

The most striking example of this has been the recent transformation of Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag – the handiwork once again of the British architect Norman Foster. Opened in 1894, the building was severely damaged by fire in 1933 as the Nazis came to power, and was not fully restored until 1990 after the re-unification of Germany. The outstanding feature of Foster’s restoration is the large glass cupola that now crowns the building. Once again, a great example of how blending the old and the new and disparate styles can create a fresh harmony. The development of Berlin may have been organic, but it has by no means been gradual.

To return to Roger Ebert’s opposition to London’s “Shard”,  he does admit to quite liking the building, it’s just that he doesn’t think it belongs in London. On that, as with the Eiffel Tower, only time will tell if he’s right or not.