Sometimes I find it hard to understand these architectural taboos:
No matter how beautiful they are, we must not try to recreate the architectural styles of the past, because that would be kitsch.
No matter how ugly they are, we must not destroy buildings that are representative examples of architectural styles (be they Brutalist, modernist, or whatever).
Here’s a relevant (if extreme) case from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. The House of Soviets was built in the 1970s on the site of an old Gothic castle. However, the new building was never finished and never usable. It is considered an eyesore - the locals call it “the buried robot” because it looks like a head made of Lego bricks. Now it is to be demolished. There was talk of rebuilding the Gothic castle, but now they have decided to build a replica of the 1970s monstrosity!
Doesn’t an approach like this end up making cities into museums of buildings?
What are your thoughts?
Do architects and urban planners go too far in restricting the revival of celebrated old styles of architecture?
And do they go too far in protecting outmoded styles of architecture?
In the Kaliningrad case the appearance of the building is almost irrelevant - its the symbolic place it has in people’s lives as a reminder of their Soviet connection. And as Russia becomes more out of step with Europe again that feeling of attachment only increases.
As for cities being ‘museums of buildings’, do you mean something specific? Most normal cities reflect their history in their buildings, leaving aside those Chinese cities that are built in one big campaign. Architects and urban planners remind us that places with a variable building stock are inherently more vibrant, because they are more interesting to live in and visit, and the different age of buildings mean you have more variability in rent and the types of activities that can be fitted into a given place. Older and more run-down parts of cities can be more affordable and viable for arts and small business enterprises. Humans respond very well to variability at different scales in their environment, and helps to orient them in scale.
As a tourist I like to visit places that reflect their distinct history and place. Why bother travelling if I will see the same urban environment in Sydney, outer Mongolia or Ukraine?
Sigh, a couple of buildings at our university were built in the Brutalist style. There’ve been rumors of them being rebuilt (hopefully in the preferred Not-At-All-Brutalist Style).
Those rumors started twenty years ago, and the massive chunks of concrete still stand. I think that’s part of the problem; a chunk of concrete (with a few slits for windows) can just sit there for a century without falling over.
Moscow has been doing this since the late '90s: Tearing down ugly Soviet-era buildings because they’re crumbling/energy-inefficient/hard to maintain/infested with vermin, and then replacing them with exact replicas.
Decisions made about the House of Soviets are not those of architects or urban planners: they are making political statements, specifically that Kaliningrad is NOT Koenigsburg, is NOT a German city, is NOT the product of centuries of organic development the way Berlin or Paris or Munich or London or Prague are. The German heritage was wiped away just as the German inhabitants were. When politics enters the picture, questions about beauty and artistic merit and historic preservation go right out the window.
I’ve been to Kaliningrad and found it unremarkable in terms of architecture. It was bombed by the British and Americans before the Soviets all but razed it to the ground, so yeah, the German heritage is largely gone. This is a pity, as it was once a beautiful Hanseatic city. Neither Tallinn nor Riga suffered as much damage as Königsberg.
