Building on the past
On old stones, constant change and the conversation across generations
Why is it that however much our economy chases the new, the old and outdated endures with impressive stubbornness? Or that however much our society clings to the old, life changes and makes new demands of the stones we call home? What is striking is how useful the building stock left over from another age frequently is, how it often has surprising spare capacity for addition and extension – and above all, how enriching it is for anyone to use. Might it be that the faster our economy and society change, the more important it is to experience this change against a backdrop of continuity?
Our studio has never gone looking for history, but we always seem to find it. A library closed and re-opened as an art gallery, old factories adapted for offices, houses knocked through to form an institution, whole areas of city remade but boathouses, pumping stations and transformers left standing: London, where we are based, offers an exhilarating experience of a city always changing but constantly unearthing its past.
The projects we have worked on over the years suggest to us that the new is seldom a clean break with the past, but is instead more often an evolution of it. Institutions like Amnesty, the Whitechapel, The Courtauld and United St Saviour’s have built their capacities bit by bit over time, and their buildings reflect this evolutionary model. Cityscapes like London’s Lea Valley and Elephant and Castle are accumulations of structures that have endured beyond their initial burst of life, laid on top of each other like a geological formation – they’re messy, but culturally rich, and because they aren’t the result of a single blueprint, they have spare capacity for future change. That’s what makes the best buildings and cities like conversations between generations.
Working with what is already there calls for a different sort of imagination, and more patient ways of realising projects, compared to building a product – it seems to benefit from a lighter touch, a kind of tactical flexibility, and a more discursive process. At Astley Castle, the new walls bear directly on the old stone ones, without the need for new foundations, and they bind and buttress the fragile old structure – old and new are interdependent. The new bricks mould themselves to the ragged edge of the stone, the big concrete lintels never touch the stone directly – junctions arrived at by negotiating between myriad individual conditions and the discipline of a few trades. Perhaps an adaptive imagination of this sort would allow our society to break the habit of repeatedly demolishing what is there, just to make it easier to build new – and instead find new possibilities in awkward legacies.
Photos by: Philipp Ebeling, David Grandorge, Tower Hamlets Archive, Hélène Binet
“It feels like a moment when the English have finally found an architect able to work with history without having to panic about modernity.”
“The architect must learn how to finish what others have started, and start what others will finish.”