On Mar 3, 2012, at 10:02 PM, Bob W wrote: > after WWII a lot of old buildings, towns and cities were rebuilt as faithful > replicas of what they had been
Yes we're well aware of that, I've seen it brought up in the media many times. The difference we have is that we're needing to rebuild to a higher standard of safety from now on. This may make faithful replicas infeasible. > When I first went to the 'old' town in St Malo I was amazed at > how it could have remained in such a state of preservation, until I found > out that it's a replica and then I felt somehow cheated. Ignorance is bliss :) > Places are like people, and should wear the scars and wrinkles of their > lives with a certain amount of pride and defiance. From what I can see the > old cathedral had no special architectural merit*, although it clearly had a > place in people's hearts, so I think if I were a local, rather than > rebuilding something second rate I would want to see something modern, of > greater merit, while retaining some of the ruins. New Zealanders presumably > now have the confidence to want something that reflects their own unique > situation, rather than something that harks back to 'back home' and the > imperial past. I think this is very well said. Many visitors to the city found the Catholic Cathedral to be more impressive, but location is everything so the Anglicans have most of the attention. I do agree that it'd be better for us to construct a replacement that's more in tune with ourselves and our own country. There will doubtless be a call to have some link to the past so some elements, whether materials or design, are likely to be retained. > *George Gilbert Scott was a great architect and is responsible for much of > what is considered the quintessential English look, but the cathedral looks > to me like a run-of-the-mill Victorian Gothic church, of a type which is > ten-a-penny over here. I certainly won't argue with that but I'm sure you're aware that there's a lot of sentimental emotion flying around about the loss of an important landmark building. We don't have the same depth of human history here so such buildings are much less common. Dave -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
