(The scene: a gondola upon the River Thames, heading downriver just above Richmond. Handel’s Water Music, or something similar, fades on the soundtrack as the camera closes in upon the two passengers in conversation. One of them is wearing a spectacularly large wig.)
Sir Christopher Wren, as Surveyor-General of the Royal Buildings, and more particularly as the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral, you have been much in the media recently. Your plan for London has also been the focus of discussion among urban designers who are concerned about the development of the capital. A number of schemes along the banks of Thames, both actual and proposed, raise difficult questions concerning architects’ attitudes toward history. This riverside office development for Haslemere Estates, for example. How does it strike you?
At first glance, ma’am, I find it a devilish Conceit. Are these Buildings of a singular Vintage, hastily concocted as if to dissimulate many of different Pedigrees, or an accretion of dissimilar Specimens, grown up over Time? I cannot tell, and ’tis worriesome if the Whole be an instantaneous Sum of Parts.
In fact the buildings have all been completed recently to the design of one man, Mr. Quinlan Terry, although the composition is arranged to suggest a historic accumulation. It represents an extreme position in the current debate over “Post Modernism.” Some theorists have derided it as mere pastiche, but clearly the general public—whom we see here strolling in the riverfront gardens—obviously appreciates certain aspects, irrespective of academic opinion.
Well, I can only repeat what I wrote in my family memoirs. Modern Authors who have treated of Architecture, seem generally to have little more in view, but to set down the Proportions of Columns, Architraves & Cornices, in the several Orders, as they are distinguished into Dorick, Ionick, Corinthian, and Composite; & in these Proportions, finding them in the ancient Fabricks of the Greeks and Romans (though more arbitrarily used then they care to acknowledge), they have reduced them into Rules, too strict and pedantick, and so as not to be transgressed, without the Crime of Barbarity; though, in their own Nature, they are but the Modes and Fashions of those Ages wherein they were used; but because they were found in the great Structures, we think ourselves strictly obliged still to follow the Fashion, though we can never attain to the Grandeur of those Works.*
I take it, Sir Christopher, that you are not a great believer in slavish copying of the Ancients.
Mr. Terry, though clearly learned in the great Treatises, illustrates the Pitfalls of which I have spoken, adhering to Historick precedent for the sake of Cosmeticks. If this be a Manifestation of your Poste-Modernism, I tremble at the prospect of more of its whoreson Off-spring.
(They proceed along the Thames, navigated by their gondolier, Canaletto. Sir Christopher looks with wonder at the profusion of new bridges and construction. Just beyond his own Royal Hospital at Chelsea, the great chimneys of Battersea Power Station soar aloft, but no smoke issues from any one of them.)
What is this ruined Monument? I see its Columns are intact, but they support Nothing. What has happened to its Roof?
It never had one, Sir Christopher. It used to be a power-station, that is, a large edifice designed for the generation of electricity. It has been gutted, apparently with some liberties taken in order to comply with the Fire Regulations pertaining to Places of Recreation.
A Place of Recreation? A Power Station?
Yes, under the auspices of Mr. John Broome, Proprietor of Alton Towers, it is being transformed into a Theme Park for the diversion of the masses. In fact, by a paradoxical interchange, Sir Christopher, this actual Power Station is to become a Palace of Entertainment, while the National Theatre downriver has recently been designated a Nuclear Power Station.
What Wit performed this Trick of Rhetorick? Some scoundrel Member of the Royal Society, I’ll be bound, with Nought better to engage his Intellect.
None other than the Prince of Wales, who delivered his Theory of Aesthetics in a broadcast to the nation on television. His pronouncements caused quite a flurry among architects, especially when he called for Ten Commandments to regulate fine buildings and urban space.
But what, pray, is a Television?
It is a contraption for the extraction of revenue, Sir Christopher, based on the Laws of Electromagnetics, Optics, and the Free Market. People install them in place of the hearth, and enjoy watching the pictures which they initiate at the press of a button. These satellite dishes, which you see sprouting from the rooftops, act to trap the electronic particles sent by Mr. Rupert Murdoch and other proprietors of the Air Waves.
Manna from Heaven, indeed. And what a charming effect these Lenses have, too, like Buttercups growing Wild in the inner city.
Well, the Prince called for more curves in the Environment, in addition to Spires and Domes, but I fear that these concave dishes are not quite what he had in mind. We are in the age of Electronic Communication, Sir Christopher, when people work before computer screens and send all kinds of data across the globe in a matter of seconds by devices like the Facsimile Machine...
And yet the structures in which these transactions take place resemble Renaissance Palazzi, the gabled warehouses of Dutch merchants, or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, or whatsoever taketh the Fancy of the Real Estate Developer at that precise moment. It would seem there is a vexing disjuncture nowadays 'twixt Appearance and Reality. Beauty, Firmness, and Convenience are the principles as the great Vitruvius wrote, and they are equal sisters. Some family contention seems to have occurred.
Well, you could put it that way. You can find counting houses wrapped around skating rinks at Broadgate; a grocer’s store resembling an aerospace centre at Camden Town; a hardware suppliers masquerading as a cross between a fine art museum in Stuttgart and a tomb from the Valley of the Kings.
An Architect ought to be jealous of Novelties, in which Fancy blinds the Judgement; and to think his Judges, as well those that are to live Five Centuries after him, as those of his own Time. That which is commendable now for Novelty, will not be a new Invention to Posterity. Your architects seem to pay too little heed to this, if any purpose may disport itself in Vestments borrowed from any other, ransacked from the Treasure House of History. If Society has advanced from the Slide Rule to the electronic Abacus, it would be foolhardy to suppose that a modern Bank should look like a Counting House of Yore. Unless the Publick, quivering before the awefull strides of Science, prefers to retreat into the duplicitous Comforts of some nostalgick Vision of Britain.
(As they pass the National Theatre, Sir Christopher briefly succumbs to sentiment, wiping a tear from his eye with his lace-trimmed handkerchief.)
’Tis not the Nuclear Playhouse that distresses me but the Ravages of the Sky Line on the opposing bank, obscuring the Vista of my Cathedral Church of St. Paul’s. A pox on the Fools, they should have rebuilt the City in Correspondence with my Plan, after the Conflagration.
The controversy continues still, Sir Christopher. There has been great debate over the site adjacent to St. Paul’s called Paternoster Square. John Simpson has proposed a scheme which reproduces the medieval street pattern...
By G—! Spare me the Disclosure that they actually constructed it. The Destruction of that ancient Trash and Clutter was a most fortunate Freak of the Almighty’s imponderable providence—a consumption devoutly to be wished.
It seems an unlikely prospect, Sir Christopher, but now we are approaching a site where he might yet build, opposite the Tower of London, at London Bridge City. Here is a drawing of a scheme by Mr. Simpson commissioned by St. Martin’s Property Corporation.
Odd’s fish! But this, surely, is a reincarnation of San Marco in Venice, compleat with Campanile. Is this to be transport’d here from Italy’s watery trading post? My head swims, for this Estate befuddles all sense of Authentick Place and Time. I tire of saying it but Architecture has its political Use; publick Buildings being the Ornament of a Country; it establishes a Nation, draws People and Commerce; makes the People love their native Country. Surely this Fabrick will only sow confusion in the breasts of the loyal Briton. I fear that your descendants may say with a mournful voice of this decade:Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.