9 Comments

This is a fascinating story, all the better because there's a happy ending.

Expand full comment

From 1968 to '71, I lived in a multi-storey building in Cumbernauld New Town, NE of Glasgow. We had superb views of the Firths of Clyde and Forth and the Ochil mountains. We also had 200 rain days per year and frequent strong winds. When we opened the top-hung windows for ventilation, the rain blew UP into the flat (apartment). Electric storage heaters provided mostly adequate heating. The walls were 6" slabs of pre-cast concrete with NO insulation, resting in notches on the slab floors. There were two lifts (elevators), one serving odd-numbered, the other the even-numbered floors (!) Our upstairs neighbour played the piano late at night - we lived in the sound box. The nine buildings of that type were demolished in ~2016, long after a similar building (Ronan Point) partially progressively collapsed in 1968 after a gas explosion blew out a kitchen wall. I do not know the architect or if they were eligible for The Rubble Club. According to Google Earth and Street View, the replacement buildings seem to be conventionally built walk-up flats.

Expand full comment

Have you looked into the history of Japan’s traditional wooden buildings, especially the preserved castles, temples, and homes in which the wooden components are replaced as needed but the sense of the building as original survives?

Expand full comment

Yes, they even have one that they have rebuilt every 20 years for the last 1400 years https://www.archdaily.com/1002972/the-eternal-ephemeral-architecture-of-shikinen-sengu-the-japanese-temple-rebuilt-every-20-years

Expand full comment

I seem to remember reading somewhere that under some form of Islamic law, a building should last for the remaining lifetime of its builder (I imagine that would be the architect too). If it does not, the aggrieved householder has the right to see the builder stoned to death with the stones of the building. Though I suppose that's really in the event of it falling down accidentally!

That is a very handsome restoration, isn't it?

Expand full comment

Way before Islam, it is the Code of Hammurabi from 1750 BCE. "If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death." https://www.smithcurrie.com/publications/common-sense-contract-law/construction-law-the-history-is-ancient/pdf/#:~:text=Hammurabi's%20Code%20was%20one%20of,shall%20be%20put%20to%20death.

Expand full comment

Well there you go! Doesn't mention doing it with the materials of the building though, maybe I made that bit up, or someone did :~)

Expand full comment
Comment removed
7d
Comment removed
Expand full comment

sorry V no attacks on religion here

Expand full comment

Whatever.

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp

Readers can go there and read for themselves the 282 laws Hammurabi wrote down before making up their own minds about why Lucy was confused.

Expand full comment