encroachment of the taste of other´s

by flickr-user  RUAMPS source

Le Corbusier´s Villa Besnus as it appears in 2010, adjusted to the means of aesthetic taste and practicability.
The originally austere modernist structure from 1922 has been accessorized with a hip roof and new windows that might just not follow the Modulor.

After Klaus Kinski, Werner Herzog takes on the Paleolithic

Click to see images from the production  on tiff.net

After Grizzly Man, the 30,000 year old cave art paintings at Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc in Southern France are next to undergo the Werner Herzog treatment. The German director and his team have gained exclusive access to the cave and the oldest cave paintings ever to have been found- the site is not accessible to the general public for conservation issues. "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" will be Herzog´s first documentary filmed in 3D and is to be released in April 2011.

In the meantime, we can enjoy a virtual tour of the caves at Chauvet and Lascaux.

The Bridge of Sighs, NYC

"The Bridge of Sighs", New York City, ca.1905 source

A covered bridge connecting Tombs prison and the Manhattan Criminal Courts building. 

Our musical heritage- Beatles & Burzum

The Beatles: Abbey Road 1969 LP cover

The iconic LP cover photo of The Beatles crossing Abbey Road is more than 40 years old. The original zebra crossing has been moved several feet 30 years ago and may be reconstructed.

The street crossing, popularly used by fans re-enacting the shoot is to be grade II listed along Abbey Road studios for its cultural and historical importance, following recommendations by English Heritage in an effort to recognize more popular and recent sites as heritage material. 

Save Britain´s Heritage criticizes EH for this ostentatiously middle-brow decision while neglecting Ringo Starr´s birth place, Madryn Street, which is often referred to in his music and part of an area scheduled for demolition under the Pathfinder scheme.

Burzum: Aske 1992 EP cover

Meanwhile the listing of the site of another iconic LP cover image in recognition of its importance in music history seems more unlikely.

Restoration of the material fabric of the now reconstructed Fantoft stave church to the period of its greatest cultural influence would infer its reconstruction as a ruin of smouldering cinders.

The burning of Fantoft stave church on June 6, 1992 was the beginning of a series of arsonist attacks on more than 50 church buildings by persons associated to the Black Metal scene in Norway. 

Many of the targeted structures were historical churches constructed in tarred timber. To great public outrage these heritage buildings were singled for arson attacks out as symbols of the subjugation through christianization of a pagan Viking Norway. In the same way as the remains of ship burials discovered in Viking grave mounds, stave churches were instrumentalized during the nation building process after the secession from Sweden and reinforced as physical symbols of a shared Norwegian cultural heritage.  

Varg Vikernes of the band Burzum, marked out as "the most notorious metal musician of all time" was a suspect in the burning and is rumored to have taken the photograph of the burnt out ruins for the LP cover himself. Heeding his self-created image, he went on to murder fellow musician Øystein Aarseth and embrace a cornucopia of fascist ideologies during his imprisonment. (cf Goodricke-Clarke, N. 2003. Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity)

material market forces

Changing market forces influence the conservation and deterioration of heritage objects in a multitude of ways. The official market is shadowed by its underground double- historic materials are subject to organised theft by gangs. Harnessing their material and contextual value, heritage assemblies are deconstructed and their parts sold to the highest bidder. The components are then either up-cycled or re-cycled: amalgated into new creations that cash in on reminiscing the past or harvested for their material value and maybe reused as building material in oversea countries experiencing a shortage of raw material supply. 

Lead- £1,500 per tonne
The steep increase in prices paid for lead makes the roofs of listed churches a target. Metal thiefs are said to conventiently locate lucrative targets with the help of Google Earth. Eleanor Clark, director of the Ragged School Museum is quoted "Any building that looks old is being targeted."- the equation being old=valuable. article and article

York stone pavement £110 per sqm
Meanwhile a posse of  fake council workmen keep themselves and the police in and around Camden borough hard at work by neatly cordoning off areas with official barriers, then ripping up pavement and spiriting their stony spoils away in a white van.  The stone paving, often used in conservation areas is later resold. The local council is appealing for locals to be on the look-out for the gang. article

Love´s Merry-go-round

Listed Urinal in Stensparken, Oslo/Norway.

Photo: Arne B. Langleite

2009 was the Norwegian Year of Cultural Heritage, as designated by the Norwegian government in its white paper “Living with Our Cultural Heritage”.

Its main theme, “Cultural Heritage in Everyday Life” encouraged the democratisation and popularisation of a recurrently elitist pursuit.

The Directorate for Cultural Heritage in Norway (Riskantikvaren) marked the year by listing twelve objects that would specifically represent communal values and experiences. Among the usual suspects relating to small town and rural culture such as kiosks and milk collection points, there is the more uncommon object of a public urinal.

The urinal in Stensparken, designed as a piece of street furniture by one of Oslo´s municipal architects, has aesthetic and historic value as a representative example of 1930s Scandinavian functionalism and urban sanitation.

Its distinctive appearance gained it a number of monikers such as “The Mushroom”, “The Umbrella”.

However, of greater interest and major influence to the decision of Riksantikvaren to list this particular structure are the nontangible values reflected in the colloquial name of the locale as “Love´s Merry-go-round”: the urinal was a popular and well frequented meeting place for Oslo´s gay community during a time when homosexuality was afflicted with serious social stigma.