Stop the Bulldozer Architecture at the Crossroads


Stop the Bulldozer

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Archive programmes chosen by experts.

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For this collection, Janet Street-Porter has selected

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programmes about post-war architecture.

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More programmes on this theme

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and other BBC Four collections

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are available on BBC iPlayer.

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The world's need for housing and shelter

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becomes more desperate than ever.

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Even in London or Paris, the number of homeless is in tens of thousands.

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In the meantime, we continue to destroy units that have worked.

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Whole parts of cities have been wilfully demolished, and,

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with it, cultural and human symbols

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which once formed the landscape of a town.

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We live with the strange contradiction.

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While the span of human life has been extended

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by modern science and technology,

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the life of material things has been shortened.

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Everything is disposable - cans, houses, even cities.

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The last ten years has seen a change.

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Our euphoria for progress and the future has become stale.

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In its place, a longing to look back.

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The old wholesale market of Paris was, for 100 years,

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the centre of many activities.

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An entire neighbourhood lived off it.

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Shops and restaurants drew a lively crowd,

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often until the early hours of the morning.

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But over the years,

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the market outgrew its purpose, choking the area with trucks.

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Like everywhere else, there was a need to relieve the inner-city area

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from congestion.

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In 1969, the market was moved out of Paris.

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The attractive, cast-iron pavilions by Victor Baltard,

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built in the 1860s, stood empty and deteriorated.

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They were pulled down and the entire area razed to the ground.

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A new shopping centre was built in its place - the Forum des Halles.

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The architects for this vast scheme were Claude Vasconi

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and Georges Pencreac'h.

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Much of the shopping was sunk into the ground,

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leaving open the view of the old Bourse de Commerce

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and the church of Saint-Eustache.

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The new buildings are an attempt to create the modern equivalent

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of the old glass-and-iron pavilions.

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They filter the light down to the lower levels,

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minimising the feeling of oppressiveness.

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The fan-shaped architecture blends well with the surroundings.

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It does not dwarf the old buildings.

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The Forum des Halles is both urbane and expansive -

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a courageous step to create a generous public space

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few capitals nowadays can afford.

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There are new hotels, smart restaurants,

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sports facilities and many shops.

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But by pulling down the old markets,

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Paris misses out on a vital experience

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which people are only now beginning to recognise.

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The cheerful chaos, with its smell, noises

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and the mixture of people from all walks of life,

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was vital for the whole town.

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The boutique-ing, with the ensuing gentrification of commerce,

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has replaced the rough and tumble.

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Everything is orderly and sterile.

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As a result, a lifestyle Les Halles once generated

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and supported is for ever lost.

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London was faced with the same problem as Paris.

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The old wholesale market had outgrown its original purpose

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and the area was hopelessly congested.

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In 1974 the market was moved out to Nine Elms.

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The whole area lay open to greedy office development

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and major road schemes.

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Plans carving up the whole district were already on the drawing boards.

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Fortunately, by the time London had finished discussing

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the future of the market,

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the pendulum had swung away from modern solutions

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towards preservation of the old.

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Instead of destroying, they opted for repair.

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People realised that a planned environment can never have

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the same feeling of liveliness

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as an environment grown up over a long period of time.

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The present market buildings date from 1830.

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They were restored, the roofs were repaired and re-glazed

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and some of the later 19th-century additions were removed.

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But Covent Garden has done more than just restore buildings,

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it has restored a social context.

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The benefit for the whole area has been enormous.

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It has been revitalised.

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It has helped to revive a central urban space

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which most modern cities nowadays urgently need.

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CALL TO PRAYER

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In many places, a reconstruction of the past is vital.

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In the desire to join the 20th century,

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many Arab countries have blotted out their history.

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The almost total destruction of old buildings

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was a condemnation of the way of life associated with poverty.

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Nobody wants to live like their fathers.

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Many Arab cities have become places of nowhere.

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The future lay in the shining palaces which came from the West.

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The beautiful old streets and houses of Jeddah crumbled

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and were allowed to rot.

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A significant chapter in the history of Saudi Arabia

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was threatened to be wiped out, creating a collective amnesia.

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The Arabs, due to almost unlimited wealth, have become a fast-moving

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and almost continuously changing society.

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In recent years, it has dawned on them

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that in order to find a national and collective identity,

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people have to come to terms with their past.

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SPEAKS ARABIC

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An extensive restoration process of old Jeddah was begun.

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In America, too, people are learning that many old buildings have still

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a lot of life in them.

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The visible past may be culture, but it is also money.

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The old Washington post office,

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a ten-storey Romanesque wedding cake of a building dating from 1899,

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was considered an eyesore,

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out of step with the aspirations of a modern city.

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A few years ago, public concern prevented it from being pulled down.

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Now, it has reopened under the fancy name of The Pavilion.

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In the clock tower, ten enormous new bells, replicas of Westminster's,

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chime the hour.

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The main attraction of this building has always been its arched galleries

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looking down on a magnificent court -

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a cross between a cathedral and a cotton mill.

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The floor was once the sorting office,

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with a catwalk for inspectors to check on the honesty of the sorters.

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This is now a vast marketplace,

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housing 22 shops, 19 restaurants

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and eight floors of offices.

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A highly successful urban fairground

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and a perfect stage set for the wooden kitchenware

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and the lavender-filled cushions of Laura Ashley designs.

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The increasing appreciation of vernacular architecture,

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especially of industrial buildings, has saved many warehouses

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and factories from destruction.

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An old industrial car repair shop of the 1930s

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on the Regent's Canal in London

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was taken over by the television company TV-am.

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The architect for this conversion was Terry Farrell,

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an ardent postmodernist.

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It is a whimsical, glossy and, most of all, humorous.

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The showbiz razzmatazz of the exterior

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reflects what goes on inside.

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The egg-cup finials are a particularly witty touch,

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providing a corporate identity.

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The back facade overlooking the canal

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has preserved just enough of the old-world charm.

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It has been brightened up with colour,

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balconies and some additional windows.

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As a result, a relatively undistinguished industrial building

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has been saved and has gained in character and personality.

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Farrell's solution for the front is less happy.

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An Art Deco movie-house architecture.

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The architect could not work with a strong unifying statement

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as at the back.

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The old front was simply an undistinguished glass block

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that Farrell demolished totally, to replace it with a curved front,

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hoping to liven up a rather dull area.

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MAN: Well, TV-am has added a lot more life to the street side,

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where we radically changed the facade.

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And that was a rather seedy street. and it has given a lot of impact.

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It has said to that part of Camden Town that TV-am is here,

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this is your new neighbour.

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On the canal side, I think, by keeping the old wall

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and adding a bit of colour,

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the kind of colour you would find on canal boats,

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it really kept a continuity with the canal.

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It's a relatively good neighbour

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although it still looks like it is an entertainments building

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rather than a brewery or what have you.

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You see, the modernists threw away the history books.

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In the 1920s, they said history is dead.

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It's only the future we're now concerned with.

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And that was an attitude, it wasn't a reality. You never can.

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One exists...

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Society exists at a point in time, which is a continuity with the past,

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looking to the future, but it's now.

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And to express now is the act of the architect

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or the artist or the writer, whoever.

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And to express the now of where we are does involve looking back.

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NARRATOR: This is not the dawning of a new generation, conscious of some

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spiritual link with the past, as some preservationists want us to believe.

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It is simply the recognition that many industrial buildings provide

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marvellous large spaces surrounded by good solid walls -

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commodities that modern buildings seem to lack.

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Maintaining and renovating older buildings costs less than

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pulling down and rebuilding.

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The saving of energy and raw material is considerable.

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The dock areas of London have been derelict for 20 years.

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Ever since large container ships began to use the seaports,

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the warehouses that stored the goods shipped up the Thames

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from all parts of the world became obsolete.

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In the '60s and '70s, many were pulled down

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and replaced by undistinguished buildings.

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In recent years, a hectic restoration programme has been put in motion.

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The whole area has become one of the most active building sites in London,

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a paradise for speculators and developers.

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The New Concordia Wharf was built in 1885.

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It was commissioned by a wealthy grain merchant who named it

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after the town of Concordia in Missouri

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where much of the grain came from.

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The building served as a grain store for nearly a century.

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In 1980, threatened with demolition,

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the wharf was bought by a young developer who restored the building

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for private and partly commercial use.

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The original architecture has been retained where possible.

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The brick was chemically cleaned and the parapets and sills restored.

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Where new windows were needed, they were matched to the original.

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Inside, many of the original features are preserved.

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Past centuries preserved only what was precious,

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exemplary or sumptuous - castles, cathedrals.

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Now we preserve not only for symbolic, but for other reasons -

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for sentimentality, for decorativeness, for continuity.

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Recording and saving our past has become a widespread concern.

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A gregarious society collects.

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We all have become collectors of relics,

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many of us with an eye on profit

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rather than out of a genuine desire to preserve.

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One should conserve all buildings that still have a value,

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whether it's a human value, because people love it or remember it

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or remember people who lived there

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or actually like the appearance of it.

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I also include a value in resource terms, that it may actually

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be more economic to keep buildings

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than to pull them down and rebuild them.

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Of course we should preserve, but you have to preserve the very best.

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You can't preserve everything.

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The evolvement of a nation's culture is a continuing process.

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So when you are preserving today,

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you've got to bear in mind what the people in the future

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are going to think about what you've preserved,

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and when you are designing for today, you have an obligation to the future

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to demonstrate the best that today could do.

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And I think if we don't stop doing pastiche

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and if we don't stop preserving indifferent buildings,

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the future will look back on us

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and say, "They really didn't do what they should do."

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And you can learn about the future by looking back,

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and if you look back now, you can see how vigorous

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the patrons and designers of the past were.

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They were totally committed to the present.

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NARRATOR: The many insensitive ways

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in which architects have dealt with an old environment

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has made us afraid of modern solutions.

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Previous centuries seem to have had more courage

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and stronger convictions.

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In St James's Street, London,

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a row of houses built over a period of 200 years

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seems to create no discord.

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They acknowledge each other, enter into discourse.

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Yet when they were first built,

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each new addition must have come as a total shock.

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We seem to accept the red brick next to the Georgian sandstone.

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Nobody, except historians, is unduly worried

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about the total break in the window line.

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Why are so may people alienated by the latest addition to St James's?

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Have we become so familiar with the architectural language of the past

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that Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian styles all form a unit in our minds

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while the language of the modern architects strikes a wrong note?

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This office building by Tripos is a blatantly modern building.

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Like the others, it makes few concessions to its neighbours.

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It should soon be regarded as an equal partner, contributing its share

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to the patchwork of the street made up over a span of 200 years.

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It is vital that each period leaves its imprint.

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When a modern building, like this one by Timothy Rendle,

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matches the quality of the old one, the style seems immaterial.

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Good quality transcends time.

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Otherwise we end up with nothing but buildings like this...

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Georgian, 1982.

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MAN: We have lost nerve, because it's so much easier to look back,

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to copy the past rather than move forward.

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Any new buildings are put behind old facades,

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and, as William Morris said, that is the most terrible thing you can do

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to an old building - use it as a death mask.

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And it advances you nowhere at all

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because you don't get a good new building

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and you've lost your original old building.

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If you only keep the facade, what point is there keeping even that?

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The fashionable German architect, Helmut Jahn,

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was commissioned to extend Chicago's Board of Trade, built in 1930.

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Helmut Jahn's openly declared love affair

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with skyscrapers of the Art Deco period made him an obvious candidate.

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Synthesis is one of Jahn's favourite words - blending between old and new.

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Jahn has added a black-and-silver building.

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Its glittering grid looks like a Rolls-Royce car grille -

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sophisticated and chic.

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The glass panes are a striking contrast

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to the buff-coloured limestone of the old building.

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The rather squat shape does not obscure the original skyscraper

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by Holabird and Root.

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SHOUTING

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A new trading floor for the largest commodity market in the world

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was the main reason for this extension.

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Jahn has created a large,

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column-free space on the third floor of the building.

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Above it rises a soaring atrium 12 storeys high.

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It is a technical tour de force.

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The outside wall of the old building

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has become the inside wall of the new one,

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creating a clear visual link between the old and the new wing.

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The inside of the old Board of Trade is a marvel of Art Deco style -

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mirrored surfaces, black marble and ivory carving.

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Jahn repeats some of it in the entrance hall to his new extension.

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The motif of the scallop echoes the lush decoration in the old part

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in its various forms and sizes.

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Of course, the obsession of the 1930s with elegant surface detail

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can no longer be reproduced.

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A closer look at the new decoration reveals a distinct deterioration.

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Plastic will never be the same as lacquer.

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Where the new building gains over the old one is in its use of space.

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The architect has employed the modern findings of technology

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to create a dazzling atrium.

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The decorations are still historical,

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but in its spaciousness, and in its openly acknowledged eclecticism,

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it is the building of the 1980s.

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In many places, the lack of the past makes people invent one.

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The dividing line between the genuine

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and the fabricated past is getting thinner.

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Imitation villages and replicas of old buildings

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are springing up everywhere.

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MEDIEVAL MUSIC

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This is not a medieval festival in Italy,

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it is a commercial for a television station

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being shot in the court of the recently finished

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new arts centre in Miami.

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This blatantly historical building

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is the work of America's number-one architect, Philip Johnson,

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a man able to play with any style.

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For Miami, with a very large Cuban population,

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he has opted for this pseudo-Spanish architecture.

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With its cheap imitations of a vernacular style,

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it is not only a betrayal of the past,

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but also an appalling sell-out of modern architecture.

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The flimsiness of the ironwork

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and the fake old street lamps might fool the viewers of the commercial,

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but a second-rate Spanish pastiche is exactly what Miami did not need.

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In its quaintness, it is hopelessly provincial. It lacks any urbanity.

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A stunning contemporary and urbane building

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would have been more appropriate

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in a town striving to put itself on the architectural map.

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WOMAN: It is a most superficial kind of pastiche.

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And I am not against history.

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I'm a historian,

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I am not against using history.

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But I believe in the intelligent

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and responsible use

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of whatever source you want to quote...

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..within the requirements of society,

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of the programme for the building,

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of the need, of the use for the building.

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I don't think there's a great building

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that doesn't answer these questions.

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And I think you feel it the minute you see it

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and walk into the building.

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NARRATOR: This is a new office building in Soho.

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It is the work of Quinlan Terry, an ardent classicist.

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Terry built a replica of a Georgian town house.

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It is an attempt to recreate the architecture of the 18th century

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with scrupulous attention to detail.

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The building technique and finish

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are based on genuine 18th-century formulas.

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The building cannot hide a certain wooden expression.

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However pleasant to the eye, it does not breathe life.

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Buildings are a reflection of a certain lifestyle,

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certain views of the world.

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When these change, buildings must also change.

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MAN: You get this kind of schizophrenia

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when you have an office building

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by Quinlan Terry which looks like, I don't know what,

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some kind of housing stock on the outside,

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but it's ultramodern on the interior.

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You could say that this schism is very much part of modern life

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but I think the positive...

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positive achievements of the earlier 20th century

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was a confidence in its own time

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and a refusal to kind of split life in this way, you know,

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in such a kind of schizophrenic way.

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So, I think we've got to come back at some point, rather,

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to a confidence in our own capacity, you know,

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and our own capacity to build sensitively and realistically

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with the materials or sources and instruments of our own epoch.

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NARRATOR: Frankfurt had an old famous city centre.

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It was almost totally destroyed by bombs.

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After the war, the remains were cleared away

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to make room for modern solutions.

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These were meant to improve people's lives.

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Instead, they turned Frankfurt

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into one of Germany's ugliest post-war cities.

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During the last ten years,

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the city fathers decided to improve their image.

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3,000 buildings were given a preservation order

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and Frankfurt began to restore many of its old sites.

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This is the old town square of the city.

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The houses look as though they have survived several centuries.

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They were, in fact, built in 1985.

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After the war, all that remained were remnants of the town hall

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and a badly damaged church.

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Over the years some rebuilding was done.

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The various schemes reflect how our attitude towards restoration

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has radically changed during the last 30 years.

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The houses built in the 1950s

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try at least to keep to the scale of the original square.

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Then, in the '60s, the city opted for a modern building

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opposite the oldest remaining timber-framed house.

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The perpetrators of this act of vandalism, believe it or not,

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are, in fact, the keepers of our cultural inheritance.

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This is the museum of history.

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There is no doubt that the latest reconstruction is popular.

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The old town square has again become the parlour of Frankfurt,

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with an eye, as it is always nowadays, on commercial success.

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Boutiques and restaurants

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thrive in this sort of Hansel and Gretel architecture.

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The nostalgia of today is for Italian piazzas and cobblestone streets,

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but we want them without dirt, disorder, without the ugly grey.

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In short, we want history, but it has to be dry-cleaned.

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GERMAN MAN: Many people make fun about them,

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especially the intellectuals, of course.

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Whereas the people of Frankfurt, they like them because they are...

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somehow signs and symbols of remembrance, of the past,

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of that what Frankfurt has been before the war.

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And if one respects that desire of people,

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that at least on one place some of these houses have been reconstructed

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and showed the former structure of the city,

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I think it's worthwhile to do it.

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One should not take these houses serious.

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One should not take them as real. They are not real.

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They are something... They are symbols, like I say,

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they are signs, for something that has been, and that's all.

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NARRATOR: Frankfurt also possessed a splendid example

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of a 19th-century opera house, designed by Richard Lucae.

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It, too, fell victim to the bombs.

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The new opera house, built after the war,

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was very much in line with modern theatre building -

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functional, with no symbolic meaning or atmosphere.

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Recently, it was decided to rebuild the old opera house as a concert hall

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and conference centre.

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The badly damaged building was totally gutted,

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the facade skilfully restored and repainted.

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The present change has sharpened our eyes to the quality of past buildings

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and to craftsmanship.

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After the destruction of most ornament,

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we begin to value the rich language of the 19th-century architecture.

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The inside has been totally adapted to modern needs.

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A new concert hall was hung into the old frame,

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allowing for better seating arrangements.

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The old entrance hall, leading into the new foyer,

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was faithfully restored.

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FAINT PIANO MUSIC

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But a modern version has replaced the grand staircase,

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which was too expensive to reproduce.

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It is interesting to note

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that the juxtaposition between the old and the new

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makes one more aware of the historical elements.

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Some parts of the building, like the old crush bar,

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have been painstakingly restored.

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Modern rooms were introduced in the upper gallery.

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The restoration of Frankfurt's opera house is a good example

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of how one can adapt to modern needs

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without losing the advantages of the old building.

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This new opera house offers all the amenities of a modern theatre.

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At the same time, it responds to people's expectations

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of a festive event.

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"To beauty, truth and goodness," says the inscription.

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This restoration is a sign of our longing to regain a bourgeois world

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with the help of the props of the past.

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But the people who dress up for Sunday morning concerts

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are no longer motivated by the same feeling

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as those for whom the original opera house was built.

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The economic, social and spiritual world has altered beyond recognition.

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The architecture once designed for an elite has become a stage set,

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an anachronism.

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However loved, these restored buildings raise many questions.

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It was Andre Malraux who said, "No man builds in a void,

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"and a civilisation that breaks with the style at its disposal

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"soon finds itself empty-handed."

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Some architects are using the style at their disposal.

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Restoring a building can also mean the fusing of old and new.

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The south bank of the River Main at Frankfurt came through the war

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almost intact.

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It boasted many fine villas,

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which the town gradually purchased to turn into museums.

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The whole river bank will eventually become a museum area,

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stretching for over a mile.

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Several famous architects are engaged to create postal, film, fine arts

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and architecture museums.

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We did not make the decision like the Parisians made,

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the decision really to tear down the whole centre

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of one certain part of Paris

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and to build that huge Centre Pompidou

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which is almost a museums machine,

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containing five different museums under one roof,

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in one container.

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We decided to split up these functions

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and use all the different houses lined up on the Main, all of them,

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to make small museums out of them - small is beautiful.

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You still have contact,

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you still can relate to as a person, as an individual,

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which is why they're small.

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NARRATOR: The architecture museum is a neoclassical villa

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built in 1901.

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It was totally gutted, rebuilt and extended at the back and sides.

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The architect for this conversion was Oswald Mathias Ungers.

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Ungers left the facade

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but added a reddish sandstone base upon which the old villa sits.

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He grafted his new building onto the old one.

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A newly created arcade leads into the entrance hall.

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Here it becomes immediately clear

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how much the architect has imposed his own language.

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The older villa is only the shell for the complex.

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Ungers built a modern house within an old house.

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It's an ingenious idea, intriguing, like a Russian doll.

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The house becomes an exhibit.

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What could be more appropriate for an architecture museum?

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Being a postmodern building,

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it, of course, cannot resist quoting.

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The glass roof is a citation of Otto Wagner's Postsparkasse in Vienna

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of 1904.

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And the enclosed tree quotes

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Le Corbusier's Pavillon de l'Esprit Moderne in Paris of 1937.

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The square dominates the museum.

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It runs as a theme through the entire building right down to the furniture,

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also designed by Ungers, for the highly flexible lecture theatre.

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A little further along the river is Frankfurt's latest acquisition,

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the museum of fine arts, by the American architect, Richard Meier,

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an expert in museum building.

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Meier was also given an old villa dated from 1803.

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But he opted to leave the old building alone

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and construct an extension.

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The square ground plan of the villa

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is repeated in all its variations,

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right down to the grid and the windows.

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The new building forms an angle almost embracing the old villa -

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a solution which creates a harmonious balance between old and new.

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Meier links the two buildings by a dramatic bridge

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which seems to pierce the heart of the old house.

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Richard Meier's buildings

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are like the realisations of Le Corbusier's dreams.

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They are the last outpost of modernism, and yet, like Ungers,

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they are of our time.

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Everywhere nature is allowed to enter, creating airiness and light,

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which counteracts any impression of monumentality.

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MAN: Because the building as an addition, because of the site

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and the park and the existing trees,

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the idea of the building,

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the concept of the organisation of the building

0:37:290:37:32

is one which is extroverted, it looks out, it reaches out, it...

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Also the...the notion of the European curator

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towards the use of natural light within the museum

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allowed for the use of windows in all of the gallery spaces

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so that wherever you are, you're looking out into the gardens,

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into the city.

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NARRATOR: As in his Atlanta museum, the inside features a long ramp,

0:37:580:38:02

giving a sense of progression through space.

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The visit becomes a journey.

0:38:050:38:08

Making museum spaces is a very difficult task.

0:38:110:38:14

A neutral space is often the best way to see an object,

0:38:140:38:18

but it is also the most boring.

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On the other hand, a lively, interesting space

0:38:200:38:23

often competes with the exhibits.

0:38:230:38:25

Meier breaks up the monotony of too large a space

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with a highly flexible architectural solution,

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often heightening the dramatic effect of the objects.

0:38:340:38:36

Smaller spaces alternate with larger ones.

0:38:380:38:40

Both adaptations, Ungers and Meier, show how modern architecture

0:38:470:38:51

can deal with an old structure and turn it into a building of our time.

0:38:510:38:55

Pale copies of the past,

0:39:000:39:02

pale distillations of old messages, do not echo any meanings.

0:39:020:39:06

Only strong and assured solutions

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reflect the three dimensions of the past, the present and the future.

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