A recently completed restoration project [of Spain's Matrera Castle] has provoked an incredulous reaction from some locals and a Spanish conservation group...
However, Carlos Quevedo, the architect who oversaw the restoration of the castle...pointed out that the project had been painstaking, professional, and legal...'I do think that some basic, accurate information can help avoid some of the prejudices that spring from a simple image.'
— The Guardian
Spain is having another cultural kerfuffle over the recent restoration of the ancient Matrera Castle in Cadiz. While locals and preservation groups are mocking and criticizing the makeover, architect Carlos Quevedo says that it was done to prevent further structural collapse.
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17 Comments
I like this. I understand that many people would not. But according to the article (IIRC) the program given to the architect was 1. stabilize the historic material, 2. show the original massing of the structure, and 3. clearly delineate between new and old materials. This project does those things perfectly.
Preservation is such an interesting topic once it moves beyond the stereotypical busybody neighborhood ladies trying to live in the past and into questions of how we live history every moment, even though it's not there. Our podcast with Jorge Otero-Pailos - Archinect Sessions Ep. 47 "Never the Same River Twice" - delves into the controversial side of historic pres.
One of my favorite preservation/reconstruction/etc. projects is Koldinghus in Denmark by Inger and Johannes Exner.
"stereotypical busybody neighborhood ladies trying to live in the past"
Leaving aside the fact that you chose a gendered stereotype, Donna, I'd disagree with your characterization of preservationists.
I understand that they're going to be butting heads with architects, who are beholden to unscrupulous developers for work, but I see what preservationist do as way of limiting the worst impulses of the market: tear it down and build a big cheap box with granite countertops in every luxury unit. Fuck beauty, fuck the neighborhood.
If I remember right, the best places in your city are the old ones.
Oliver Wainwright has a good article about the "Botcher of Cadiz" in the Guardian, accurately comparing his brutal mess to another recent Spanish restoration:
Hey now...
that aint what donna was getting at. There is a difference between professional preservation and people who just wish things were how they used to be (like say that Trump guy) without any rational image of what the past ever was,and a lot of hostility about the present.
Preservation is not reconstruction. So they faced a challenging assignment when they took on the job of keeping a collapsing building in place. What should they do instead? disney-fy it? rebuild at 5/8th scale and stick a mcdonalds inside?
ahem . . . .
Sure would like to see its backside . . .
winks Spanishly
but all I can see is a one-liner headline whipping around the internets 'news' outlets . . .
anonitect, you might find the podcast I linked to interesting. Otero-Pailos discusses the reality of history always being not only a physical structure, but a cultural construct. It's fantastic.
That Spanish fresco restoration never doesn't make me laugh.
Will - Trump's pandering has absolutely nothing to do it. (see: Straw Man Fallacy.)
There is a difference between professional preservation and people who just wish things were how they used to be. The impetus for preserving landmarks and districts should come from communities, not professionals. (Although professional historians can uncover associations that people not doing research full time are unlikely to discover, citizens should be the ones deciding what's important to their history and their places.) Just because they're not professionals doesn't mean that they're ignorant or obstructionist (stereotypical busybody neighborhood ladies trying to live in the past.)
What should have been done in Cadiz? A limited restoration to arrest further deterioration, that's it. Think Ruskin.
Donna, I'll listen tomorrow, thanks.
anon, I think you still aren't taking my context properly, which means it must be my fault for being unclear. If you say "preservationist" to a typical US citizen they're going to imagine a bunch of old ladies clutching their pearls about an unremarkable Victorian being torn down. My entire point is that preservation is so much more interesting than that very stereotypical reading. Preservation is an exceptionally active and even radical movement to consider the things we have in context of what we don't have any longer AND what is likely coming. Every single act we do as architects is part of a continuation of time and culture going forward, nothing is ever "done".
That Cadiz ruin left in a state of ruin makes it appear as though it has always been thus. The addition of clearly new material to show a history that no longer exists, in the face of a coming future, makes it appear as a living piece of a constantly changing landscape.
Freezing things in time kills them.
Like this:
Donna, thanks for clarifying. I understand what you were getting at.
I disagree about the Cadiz ruin, though. It's funny that you went with pickled heads as an analogy for what I suggested would be an appropriate treatment, because I had thought about going with this:
to illustrate the Cadiz intervention (man, I wish I knew how to size images for posts here.) That wonderful old ruin, having witnessed centuries of weather and human history is now frozen in a tortured stasis. Nothing could look more trapped in time than that castle does now, its just trapped in our time.
David Chipperfield's grand stair at the Neues Museum in Berlin is white concrete - obviously new material - but it feels appropriate in that space. At Cadiz, it overwhelms.
And, sometime the little old ladies are pretty great.
@anon so if intervention had used a different color than white, or perhaps brick but very/distinctly modern brick, you would have been more ok with?
That's not how you do it.
This is how you do it.
Nam, Concrete is a problem for a couple of reasons, the first one being aesthetic. More importantly, though, what was done in Cadiz is just bad practice. Here are a few places where the intervention is completely antithetical to the ICOMOS Principles for the Analysis, Conservation and Structural Restoration of Architectureal Heritage (2003):
3.4 No actions should be undertaken without demonstrating that they are indispensable.
3.7 The choice between “traditional” and “innovative” techniques should be weighed up on a case-by-case basis and preference given to those that are least invasive and most compatible with heritage values, bearing in mind safety and durability requirements.
3.9 Where possible, any measures adopted should be “reversible” so that they can be removed and replaced with more suitable measures when new knowledge is acquired. Where they are not completely reversible, interventions should not limit further interventions.
3.11 The distinguishing qualities of the structure and its environment, in their original or earlier states, should not be destroyed.
3.12 Each intervention should, as far as possible, respect the concept, techniques and historical value of the original or earlier states of the structure and leaves evidence that can be recognised in the future.
The intervention didn't follow any of these principles. Its bizarre, unprofessional, and practically irreversible.
Here's a proposal in Virginia
Menokin Glass House project
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