http://blog.preservationnationleadershipforum.org/2014/07/old--paces-matter-beauty/#.Uvklz0JVYx
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Kykuit, the Rockefeller Estate
Sleepy Hollow, New York
Ron Blount
ronblountphoto.com |
Hello Everyone:
It is a very beautiful Spring day and what better time than now to talk about beauty and old places. Old places have an intrinsic beauty to them. They have a lived-in charm that new places lack. As part of his on-going series of blog posts on "Why Old Places Matter," Tom Mayes looks at old places and beauty. Today, beauty is not always the prime engine that drives preservation efforts, around the world, yet it plays a role in deciding what is deemed preservation-worthy. When queried why old places matter, Mark McDonald, the president of the Georgia Trust declared, "Because they are beautiful!" If you do a Google search of beautiful places, chances are you'll end up with images of the Zen gardens of Kyoto or the Campidoglio in Rome. Beautiful old places are treasures around the world and are a source of national pride, They are a testament to the experiential power of beauty. Sometimes, beautiful places are found in the least likely places and deserve our attention.
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The Dwelling Houses of Charleston South, Carolina
Alice R.H. Smith
ebay.com |
Beauty, and the threat to it, was the main driver of early preservation efforts in Charleston, South Carolina. In Charleston, individuals formed an arts movement, known as the "Charleston Renaissance," sought to save the pretty and picturesque. The Morris Museum of Art's website
(http://www.themorris.org) states, "Alice R.H. Smith, Elizabeth O'Neill Verner, and other Charleston artists helped inspire the historic preservation movement, awakening their neighbors to the charm and significance of the city's architectural heritage, through their images. As a result, the city's architectural and cultural heritage became the focus of pioneering efforts in historic preservation." In a similar vein, the San Antonio Conservation Society was established by artists who were worried about the loss of beautiful places in the central Texas city. Around the world, it's often the artists who lead the charge to save beautiful places that are under threat. Today, both Charleston and San Antonio are the beneficiaries of these preservations which includes economic benefits, precisely because of the concern expressed by the creative community over the possible loss of old places.
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Tempietto de San Pietro de Montorio 1502-10
Donato Bramante, Rome, Italy
es.wikipedia.org |
Beauty still is at the heart of why people care about saving old places. Tom Mayes cites a study by Marta de la Torre and Randall Mason (De la Torre and Mason, 12, 2002) on the values of cultural heritage, "The many interpretations of beauty, of the sublime, of ruins, and of the quality of formal relationships considered more broadly have long been among the important criteria for labeling things and places as heritage." Excellent point. Beauty, or at least what constitutes it, is a subjective value. To elaborate on this statement, Mr. Mayes quotes Dan Hurlin, a visual artist studying with him at the American Academy in Rome, "The primary reason to save old places is because they are beautiful, whether it's Penn Station or Fallingwater." However, Mr. Hurlin suggests that beauty is not a simple topic. There simply isn't one overarching point of view that guides what is considered beautiful and what isn't. Philosophers, artists, architects, planners, and poets have all spent time ruminating on the meaning of the subject for the last two thousand years. Everyone from Plato and Aristotle, Vitruvius, Edmund Burke, John Keats, Immanuel Kant, to David Hickey (Hickey, 1993) have debated the nature of beauty, redefined it, dismissed it, and rediscovered its meaning. Is beauty found in balance and harmony? Is it inherent or subjective? Is beauty truth and vice versa? Moral goodness? Awe and transcendence? Is beauty based on perception or is it a universal concept? You get the point, beauty is, indeed, in the eye of the beholder. Regardless, when referring to old places, communal perception and desire for beauty generate an interest saving old places.
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Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, c. 1640
Francesco Borromini, Rome, Italy
paradoxplace.com |
To further illustrate his point, Tom Mayes used his visit to Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, by Franceso Borromini, in Rome as an example of what he considers to be a beautiful old place. The Baroque-era church interior is a tall light-filled space that plays with scale and perspective. The form of the interior is a series of complex triangles, concave and convex curves with grey-colored pilasters and plain walls. Mr. Mayes recalls having his eyes drawn upward and feelings of awe and amazement. It was as if, in that moment, he was in the grandest space and the world was a wonderful place. It is what his fellow resident at the American Academy architect Catie Newell describes as "that moment of gasp." It's that moment we all experience when we encounter something so completely outside of ourselves that we stop dead in our tracks and suddenly feel that the universe is this big and glorious place. Mr. Mayes writes, "That may be as close to my own subjective idea about a moment of beauty as I can get."
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Tintern Abbey ruins
Monmouthshire, Wales
flickr.com |
Ruins, like Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire, Wales, may be beautiful for their design but it's their age that lends a loveliness to them. Ruins have been traditionally used as examples of the
sublime. The Ruins of Windsor-the monumental Corinthian columns of a long lost plantation house in Port Gibson, Mississippi have been a southern pilgrimage site for generations because of their palpable sense of "long times forgotten." This is also true of the ruins of Barbourville, Virginia, where one can see the the burnt remains of a Jeffersonian building, destroyed Christmas Day 1884. If you go to the social media sites, while you're checking out my pages, you can also check out the proliferation of something Mr. Mayes refers to as "ruin porn." The images posted on these pages are dedicated to presenting gritty, and haunting abandoned buildings in cities such as Detroit. Even yours truly has posted one or two "ruin porn" pictures. Despite this ignominious moniker, there is a certain state of elegant decay that makes these abandoned buildings beautiful.
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Pennsylvania Station
New York City, New York
en.wikipedia.org |
In his discussions with other people, Tom Mayes notes that many artists and architects, like preservationists including myself, are hesitant to talk about beauty. The hesitancy is borne out of the difficulty of defining what exactly beauty is or even the fact that the powers that be, i.e. the decision makers, often consider beauty frivolous. In citing Fallingwater and Penn Station, Dan Hurlin suggests that beauty can be found in different places and people's experiences of beauty often varies. Feeling and thoughts on the subject change over time. As any historic preservationist will tell you, the history of the field is crowded with examples of places, once considered ugly, now are thought of as beautiful. One example are the Victorian buildings, once written off as the worst expression of a decadent era or Art Deco-commercial and hideous; industrial buildings-no architectural value whatsoever; midcentury modern-
passé. Now, all of these once "red-headed architectural stepchildren" are thought of as beautiful. The point being, is that it's always easier to rally support to save a beautiful place, regardless if it's historically significant or not, than a place that people consider ugly or dated.
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Ruins of Windsor
Port Gibson, Mississippi
cityprofile.com |
Tom Mayes shares that many of the passionate discussions on his opinion of beauty have their foundations in Brutalist buildings, highlighting the fact that the field of preservation is one place where concepts of beauty and ugliness are publicly debated. Mr. Mayes expressed his surprised at the lyrical beauty of a video depicting Parkour athletes performing against the backdrop of the graffiti-ed walls of Miami Marine Stadium, a building once considered beautiful then ugly for a generation when "dated" became the new beautiful. So it goes.
Beauty has financial as well as psychological and sociological benefits. For example, in 2008, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia published a study that analyzed the financial benefits of beautiful places. The definition of "beautiful places" included a determination of historic places through listing on the National Register of Historic Place. The authors of the reported noted that tourists and permanent residents were attracted to certain places because of an area's "special traits, such as proximity to the ocean, scenic views, historic districts, architectural beauty, and cultural and recreational opportunities." (Carlino and Saiz, 3, 2008) Further, the authors concluded that "beautiful cities disproportionally attracted highly educated individuals and experienced faster housing price appreciation..." (Carlino, 33)
Moments of beauty, like the one Tom Mayes experienced at Sant'Ivo, are fleeting and unexpected. Yet, Mr. Mayes opines and I agree that it's important for people to live in beautiful communities and be surrounded by accessible beauty. It's a good value, not something to be embarrassed about and people should demand it from their leaders as did those the leaders of the City Beautiful Movement in the early twentieth century. In England, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environments published a series of essays on the subject in 2010 in order to engage people in the decisions about their built environments. Matthew Kieran wrote in one of the essays,
Whatever the reasons, as the 2010 Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) study People and Places
suggests, beauty is fundamental to many people's lives. Where we find beauty varies, but we do agree that appreciating it is a deeply positive experience contributing to happiness and wellbeing. This fact alone is enough to justify taking beauty more seriously. And a proper understanding of what beauty is and the purposes it may serve will show why beauty should be integral to planning and policy. (Kiernan, 2010)
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The staircase at Casa della Gioventu, 1933
Luigi Moretti, Rome, Italy
romethesecondtime.blogspot.com |
Old places are a key component of what makes our communities beautiful places. Tom Mayes quotes Alan Powers from his CABE essay
Beauty: A Short History, "[Preservation] was far more powerful as a means of restoring ideas of beauty in the public realm than architecture and planning of new buildings had ever been on their own. It was also a means of engaging a citizen population in debate and decision-making about their environment." (Powers, 24, 2010) In an interview with Sofia Bosco from FAI, Ms. Bosco told Mr. Mayes that she believed that Italians are very talented and creative because they live in daily contact with beauty. Beauty is a powerful thing so perhaps it's high time we all get comfortable enough to talk about it. We need to join together and demand it in our urban and rural environments so everyone can experience beauty.
Tom Mayes closes with a quote from the late President John F. Kennedy, "I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of out National past, and which will build handsome cities for our future."
To this end, Mr. Mayes invites all of you to send in pictures of places you consider beautiful so they can be posted on a pinterest board set up for this series. When click on to the article link at the top of this post, scroll down to the comments section and send the link or tweet it using hashtag #oldplacesbeauty and it'll get pinned.
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