Hmmmm.  Respect, meaning, head and hands.  Can I get fries with that?

-jc

>----------
>From:  Ken Follett[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent:  Monday, June 22, 1998 3:56 PM
>To:    [log in to unmask]
>Subject:       Re: Public respect for architecture (was: Franchise design....)
>
>Dan Becker wrote, "Why is it that we have in this society lost public respect
>for existing architecture?"
>
>Decades of defered maintenance, causing everyone to wonder why NYC is
>suddenly
>falling down, may have resulted in part from a subconsious reaction to the
>Cold War in that there is little reason to maintain buildings today if you
>expect the world to be nuked tomorrow. The same sentiment can be applied to
>an
>appreciation of architecture, including the everyday vernacular, as well as
>historic preservation. There is little need to worry about preserving
>anything, whether it be buildings or canned peaches, if you have no
>anticipation of any future. That we have the nuclear ability to destroy the
>earth 14,000 times is cause to wonder, especially since one time would be
>more
>than enough for most of us. (We should look at the trend in reduced family
>size, a potential result of the fear of nuclear annihilation as much as from
>the benefits of modern technology, and see if there is any comparison to the
>reduction in the durable aspects of domestic architecture.) A socio-political
>position for appreciation of architecture, and of the built environment, is
>to
>force maintenance of the environment as a positive issue against the negative
>and deadly aspects of our culture... in this light preservation of the built
>environment may be interpreted as a sublimated anti-nuke, anti-war, peace
>movement. Though this may be more speculation than the statistics of our
>culture will support. It would be interesting, in exploring this thread, to
>compare the number of x-beat, x-hip, x-artist that have pursued craft and
>historic preservation counter to the mainstream progress of construction
>technology. How many of us on BP have worked on the construction, or
>preservation, of a nuclear reactor? How many of us have been politically
>active against armed aggression?  Preserving the built environment has a
>slight tinge of civil disobedience to it... as it manifests itself counter to
>the actions of the politically popular notions of PROGRESS as being good. I
>do
>not believe that wanting a "job worth doing" to also be a "job well done"
>makes one a post-Luddite, but I suspect the motivation of many craftspersons
>is a desire to find personal meaning in their work. The desire for personal
>meaning is not well served by working at McDonalds, on a hi-rise brickline,
>or
>at a GM assembly plant. Personal meaning does begin to occur, respectfully,
>when the hands are recombined with the head. I suspect that as we imagine the
>world feels more secure in peace, if such feelings do occur, there will be an
>increased amount of activity in preservation of existing structures, and more
>building of new structures with an idea that they would be intended to endure
>through several generations, and not just to be thrown away at the end of a
>short life cycle.
>
>][<en
>