(now
BUILT
ENVIRONMENT AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY
MAKING
CONNECTIONS: DISCERNING RELATIONSHIPS
MICHAEL POWELL
Doctor of Philosophy February 2003
11- RESOURCES: GENESIS AND JOHN 1
It
is a decision coming from commonality that you
choose a place out of all places to build...
It
is important that you honour the material
that you use... (Louis Kahn)
11.1
Purpose
The purpose of this Section is to develop insights into
some of the main resources used in the development of the built environments
of
The centripetal pull brings these usages and practice
up against the challenges of environmental theology and of the biblical texts
themselves.
11.2
Nature of the theme
Land, seen as locations and sites, and materials are
the main physical resources required for the creation of built environments.
In the case of both
The longitudinal relationship beiween wooded sites and
timber as a common building material is particularly enlightening and
significant.
While in the contemporary world issues of mechanised
construction and energy consumption in buildings are part of the resources
agenda, they are not specially considered here_
11.3
LAND
In the
Materials relating to the wider
The detailed exploration of the town of
Grieve's comprehensive history and other specialist
studies, emphasise that site is significant. Grieve (1988) notes that
the Friary was near to the town in order that the friars could work in the
town. Like other medieval towns,
It can be noted that a site of six acres was purchased
in 1822 for the prison and that High Street sites were purchased for banks.
The Hylands landscape was a gentle one of `rolling meadows and well-cultivated
fields'. Skreens at Roxwell was constructed for a family of landowners and
political figures. In the twentieth century riverside farmland became the
location of South Woodham Ferrers.
The re-development of land is a continuous process. In
TREES AND TIMBER
The Roman circus at
Brown's (2000) wrote as part of Essex
County Council's celebration of the Millennium. His text is a book of over a
hundred images, which are a mix of paintings, drawings and computer
reconstructions, depicting interlocking locations, buildings and people. Well
outside the Borough but highly significant is
Rackham (1999) considers the woods,
parks and forests of inland
I have estimated that the Barley Barn represents 50
years growth of timber oaks on 11 acres of woodland, at a reasonable balance
between timber and underwood. The Wheat Barn represents about three-quarters
of this. The barns would thus have been well within the capacity of the
Knights Templars' woodland. Having 110 acres of wood, they could (had they
nothing else to do) have built one Bailey Barn every five years, or one Wheat
Barn every four years, for ever.
(Rackham 1999:32)
Roxwell Revealed Group (1993)
is the publisher of a village history. The text is notable for the drawings it
contains of a range of listed buildings, mainly residential, annotated with
the statutory details including materials, construction methods and dates.
Some thirty relate to dwellings, either in the central area of the village or
farmhouses, and the remaining ten to barns, the mill, a shop and to Skreens,
the large countryseat of the Bramston family, who were extensive landowners
and major political figures. The dwellings illustrated date mainly from the
15th-17th centuries and are of timber frame construction with various rendered
and boarded finishes. The bams are of similar construction. The notations
frequently draw attention to extension, adaptation and alteration. One
contributor to the text comments:
The survival of so many early buildings may seem
curious at first sight but it illustrates the lasting qualities of good oak
and the real economic advantages of adapting an existing building. Historical
buildings are valuable, not only as beautiful objects in the landscape but
also as reminders of man's social development and of the evolution of building
techniques.
(Roxwell Revealed Group 1993:84)
While timber was the main structural material for
relatively ordinary property and earlier stages of the large house, known as
Skreens, it was a contributory finishing material in relation to the later
stages.
When purchased by Sir John Bramston in 1635, Skreens
was said to be a dark wooden structure with brick chimneys and foundations
with gardens, orchard and moat. In the early eighteenth century the estate was
enlarged and a new manor house built on a new site to the southeast. `This was
a very imposing structure of red brick with stone facing, a large entrance
porch and many windows. There was a large, richly decorated Hall, the Drawing
Room had a very ornate ceiling and the Dining Room was panelled with wood and
had many good pictures on the walls.' (Roxwell Revealed Group 1993:26).Walled
kitchen and fruit gardens were constructed in 1765. The estate was a
significant employer of local labour. However by 1860 the tide had turned,
mortgages were taken out and the Bramston interest had changed from ownership
to life interest only. From 1870 the property was let to a series of tenants
and by 1916 much of it sold off as twenty separate farm lots, the manor house
itself having been sold in 1914. After Worid War I, demolition followed
quickly. The staircase was believed to have gone to
In 1840 a new building for the Baddow Lane Independent
Chapel was completed, a large building with seating for between 1500 and 2000
people. The interior would have been fitted out in timber; like the exterior
it was in the classical style. It had `a spacious gallery running around the
front and both sides and a singing gallery at the back behind the pulpit'.
(Grieve 1994:311). Contributions towards the building fund had been made the
brewers William Collings Wells and Isaac Perry of
Opposite the Chapel and built at the same time was the
Institute, a lecture and debating hall_ That too had an interesting interior.
`The main part of the building had room for 650 people, and was fitted up like
a theatre, with raised stage, pit boxes and gallery'. (Grieve 1994;313). A
colonial link was made by the inaugural lecture which related to the
emancipation of slaves in the
The work of carpenters is included in the descriptions
of the restoration after fire of St Mary's Church in 1800 and in the 1990's
restoration of Hylands House.
Marconi's wooden hut at Writtle could become an icon
for modem communication technology.
Traditional elevationai boarding, reminiscent of both
Essex and New England, features prominently and characteristically in some
contemporary housing developments such as those at
OTHER MATERIALS
None of the texts studied is a specialist treatise on
the building materials of
Stone is imported to the area. The town water conduit
incorporated an arch of
Brick is local. The brick at Barclays was applauded for
being red and attractive, unlike the grey Mildmay stocks used for the
non-frontage parts of the adjacent Shire Hall. Yellow stocks feature in the
former Marconi building in
External rendering is noted in locations as diverse as
Hylands House and the new housing developments at
In the texts under consideration materials of the modem
era frequently go unmentioned. It is only war damage to key factory buildings
that causes reinforced concrete and steelwork to be mentioned. However, brick
is noted as a principal material in the new Essex Record
Office building; not only is it hidden, it is also
displayed as a feature in the reception area. Glass as an elevational material
is mentioned in relation to the
11.4
LAND
Since the arrival of the Europeans, the story of land
and sites has been that of
settlement. It has been shown how the development of northwest
TREES AND TIMBER
Louisa Meredith (1852) describes
her first sighting of the cottage which was to be a temporary home for the
Magistrate's family, located about five miles inland from the police office:
The
cottage occupied the top of a slight slope, which was so far cleared that the
chief of the great trees had been cut down, but not cut up, and the enormous
dead trunks, lying over and under and across each other, made a most
melancholy foreground to the everlasting forest, which bounded the narrow view
on all sides, like a high dense screen.........
From the back of the house, the close dense forest was
the only view; so close that anyone looking for sky from the kitchen door must
gaze up to the zenith for it. Altogether, as may well be imagined, our new
home was not a cheerful one in its external characteristics; and we soon found
it to be exceedingly damp, and very cold.
(Meredith 1852 Vol 2:134-35)
The Merediths were able to improve the situation by
carefully burning down trees to 'excavate an opening towards the sunshine'.
(Meredith 1852 Vol 2:178).
Meredith is a concise observer of construction
technique and a frank critic of house design:
The walls were built of upright "slabs', that is
to say, of pieces of rough split timber, six or seven inches broad, two or
three inches thick, and about nine feet high, fastened to logs at the bottom
and wall-plates at the top. These slabs were lathed and thinly plastered
within, and lathed, but not plastered, without; whence, as the cottage had no
name, I bestowed upon it the sobriquet of "Lath Hall". The slabs
were in many places some inches apart, and the inside plaster displayed
multitudes of capacious crevices, which enabled the external air to keep up a
friendly and frequent communication with that within. Five doors and a French
window, all opening into our only parlour, were not calculated to diminish the
airiness of the apartment.
(Meredith 1852 Vol 2:129)
When they had moved to their permanent home, the visual
situation was much better:
We continued to improve our pleasant seaside home in
various ways... [including] marking an avenue through the wood, in the
direction of the police station, which was partly cleared at our own expense,
and partly by the occasional labour of watch-house prisoners; and, when
completed, opened up a beautiful vista, ending in a distant view of the
station, and the woods and mountains behind...
(Meredith 1852 Vol 2:243)
Fenton (1891, 1970) describes how
virgin bush land becomes built environment in a very
immediate way. He describes his first house at the
swamp in detail:
The house was built of green saplings placed upright,
secured at bottom by a trench in the ground, and on top by a wall plate of the
same material, with tea-tree rafters, nailed on the plate for a skilling roof.
The roof was covered with sheets of bark, weighted by spars to keep them from
warping, and the end walls were also lined with bark to keep out a portion of
the wind and wet. The fireplace, which occupied the whole end, was built of
long spars leaning inwards against a framework of saplings to reduce the size
of the opening at the top. This, with a partition in the middle, and the
sleeping bunks, completed the first settler's edifice in
(Fenton 1891, 1970:42)
His sensitivity enabled him to see when beauty and
business went hand-in-hand. Rather cavalier clearance of the bush yielded a
rich timber by-product:
The ornamental woods of
(Fenton 1891, 1970:109)
On a visit in 1875 to the hotel at
Gardam, Don's historian of
today, has entitled her first major work Sawdust,
Sails and Sweat. Sawdust evokes the work of the timber-getters and
sawyers 'who laboured for six long days a week' (Gandam 1996:30). Trees were
commonly 7-17 feet in diameter and height could be up to 200-300 feet. It
could take 40 bullocks to move a large log to the tramway, sometimes working
knee deep in mud. Exported timber could be taken to
In her later text, Shifting
Sands Gardam (2001) considers the development of the riverside Victoria
Parade area of Devonport, which `enjoys one of the best outlooks in Devonport;
tall trees, attractive gardens, the various moods of the river entrance, and a
view of shipping coming and going.' (Gardam 2001:81). The clearing of woodland
on a significant scale began in 1889. This consisted of a mix of tea tree
scrub and some heavier timber. Earlier, in 1873, the
Gardam goes on to describe the planting of the new
promenade area:
Some trees were marked for retention and the remainder
of the vegetation removed to make way for extensive planting of ornamental
trees. .... The parkland plantings were all fenced off from the street, a
necessary action to protect the trees from the town's roving cows.
(Gardam 2001:83)
Moving to the Latrobe area, we find adjacent to
Sherwood Hall'8 an uncommon sight in this part of
In contrast to this basic building, the texts tell of
the beautiful Tasmanian hardwood timbers, including blackwood, box, musk,
myrtle and sassafras, being incorporated into individually designed and built
houses and into special features such as the altar reredos in St John's Church
Devonport.'9
All early bridges were of timber, including the 1902
major town bridge at Devonport. One of the bridges at Don was called the
Although timber itself was plentiful, labour to use it
was limited. Therefore complete buildings were moved from place to place, for
example
A particular case of temporary buildings were the huts
for the accommodation of men working in the highlands over the period
1910-1968 in the construction of dams and other works for the hydro. To
commemorate that centenary, the local community at
Because so much bush land was taken and so much timber
utilised from this part of
One knows that here past ravaging of the land is being
healed. An eight year old turns and says that she comes here often, and adds,
`I love this place'. That is hope!
OTHER MATERlALS
Faye Gardam at Don tells how rocks gathered from the
hillside became the foundations of her cottage home. Logs and stones were used
for building the breakwater at Don.
In Devonport the brick-veneered house is an advance on
the timber-clad and
The 1950's wharf extension in Devonport utilised
materials from
In Latrobe, timber and brick walls, iron and tile
roofs, together with refinements such as ironwork lattices and Georgian
windows in the hotel, mark variety and movements towards sophistication.
Inter-state and international movements of materials are in evidence. The
hotel's iron shed comes from
Cement is a major export from Railton near
Port Sorrell's early school was a redundant one brought
from East Sassafras and the top storey of the
11.5
General Built Environment texts
If land, timber and other materials are the practical
basics of built environment work, a philosophy of some sort is a necessary
intellectual basis. Benedikt (2000) advances such a philosophy in the
text of his Raoul Wallenberg lecture in architecture at the
In this lecture, Benedikt expounds particularly on the
matter of security as a facet of material shaping, and he does so in relation
to the eariy chapters of Genesis: `The first and culturally all-important
chapter of Genesis portrays God as good - indeed, as happy in His work. He
creates the world we see as an ordered one, sheltered from chaos, protected
from formlessness. The Garden of Eden is finite, protecting.' (Benedikt
2000:37). All architecture as we know it happens outside the security of
Whatever
the location or site of a particular built environment and whatever the
building materials of which it is formed, by Benedikt's argument ft has a
direct, conceptual link to Eden and Genesis.
11.6
General Biblical Theology texts
Northcott (1996)
writes on the environment and Christian ethics. One of his principal concerns
is `relationality`, by which he means the perceived relationship between human
beings and the earth, which is the resource for life.
He notes that in medieval
.... the crucial distinction between traditional
societies and modem societies is the spatial distancing and abstraction of
human relations which is enabled by the new power of money.......... money is
a means of bracketing time and so lifting transactions out of particular
milieus of exchange..... money provides for the enactment of transactions
between agents widely separated in time and space.... It creates a new concept
of space and time which is abstract from the natural order of land and
seasons, night and day..........
.... money, commodity, dissolves traditional time-space
relations, and it dissolves traditional ethical obligations of neighbourliness,
justice and care between persons, and between humans and the non-human world.
(Northcott 1996:77)
This depicts what Northcott takes as a major loss of
the given and essential relationality within the created world. Not only
Christianity fostered good relationships but other religions did so as well:
`... this conserving function of religion may be seen as much in the rituals
and offices of the medieval Cistercian or Benedictine monastery, based as they
were on the Hebrew Psalms with their powerful natural imagery, as in the
rituals of the African Nuer or the Australian aboriginals'. (Northcott
1996:84).
The contemporary need is for reformation of approach to
the environment. This must begin with giving an ethical account of land,
which, Northcott argues, needs to be viewed in terms of relationality. The
land is the focus for creativity and it provides the resources necessary for
food, shelter and imaginative work. The highest good is the relationality
between God and creation. Part of that relationality is human vice-regency as
set out in Genesis. In practical terms, the aim must be to order human affairs
so as to achieve the common human good which will tend to preserve the good of
the non-human material creation also. Such an approach contrasts with modem
economics which works to generate scarcity in land, food and shelter and which
sees land as a commercial resource.
Living in harmony with the land is a characteristic of
indigenous peoples, which came into conflict with the approach of
colonialists:
The denial of native land tenure was the first act of
colonialism during European expansionism. The recognition of inherited land
tenure is a fundamental feature of an ecologically revised natural law ethic.
The quest of native peoples for the return of their stolen lands is the first
step in the reversal of the racism and genocide to which they have been subjected
on every continent at the hands of Europeans. In
(Northcott 1996:281)
Northcott asks: `How in a globalised economy can we
begin to rebuild the moral economy that must underiie the economy of wealth
creation if industrialism is not to undermine both human goods and communities
and ecological integrity? How can we begin to draw anonymous and dehumanising
economic and industrial processes back into scale with the face-to-face
character of human communities and the self-in-relation, and the localised and
particular character of ecological goods and biodiversity?' (Northcott
1996:299). He dismisses consumerism as an abdication of political
responsibility to mere market forces and is sceptical about internationally
driven ecological programmes: `The emergence of an international ecocracy is
not without ambiguity for like sovereign national governments, global
environmentalism can also subvert the environmental responsibilities and
potential of local communities. The new ecocracy conjures up the chimera of
global resource management which is in reality the continuation of the Western
myth of limitless economic growth facilitated by new levels of human
technological control over nature.' (Northcott 1996:310).
Northcott supports emphasis on local decision-making,
including environmentally driven urban planning decisions: 'Instead of the
mass division of social life into sectors connected up by cars, we need to
recover neighbourhoods and communities where people can work, live, relax,
learn, communicate, and knock about, and which they manage together as their
place of life in common'. (Northcott 1996:306).
There is a need to recover a robust theology of
creation: ; It becomes clear then that the recovery of an ecological ethic in
the modem world requires the recovery of a doctrine of creation redeemed and
the worship of a creator who is also the redeemer of the creation. It will
also involve the reaffirmation of the relationality of God as creator to all
that is created, to the materiality and embodiedness of all life, and of all
human selves-in-relation.......... it is the divine intention not only to
restore the created order but to make it new, a 'new creation' in which the
deep relationality of all things as
well as all persons is, in the eschaton or the last days, finally affirmed.' (Northcott
1996:222).
Perhaps most fundamental of all in Northcott's approach
is the belief that land, as part of creation, is gift for which praise is due
to God: `Human praise, the praise of kings and commoners, of young and old, is
part of this heavenly chorus, but it is a praise which is also a participation
in the whole of creation. This praise is the response of thanksgiving to the
creator for the plenitude of creation. It receives creation as gift, not as
right, as promised land held in trust, not owned or possessed by humans.' (Northcott
1996:181). Such praise is response not only to the physical but also to the
covenant: `The covenant which was established after the Flood offered the
promise that the fruitfulness of the earth would not again be threatened by
the bursting forth of the chaotic waters and that Noah and his children would
themselves be blessed. !t was a covenant made between God and humans and
"living things of every kind"....' (Northcott 1996:168).
11.7
Genesis and John 1
In Genesis 1:9-10, the dry land is separated from the
waters. In Genesis 2:8, after the creation of man, a garden is planted in
In Genesis, trees are the source of fruit for food (
Genesis 11:3 refers to the brick, stone and bitumen
used at
In
John's prologue, the fact that `the Word became flesh and lived among us' (
The following excerpt from Macquarrie's paraphrase of
the prologue links with Benedikt's approach to shaping:
meaning has been embodied in the world from the
beginning and has given the world its shape.
11.8
Synthesis and centripetal dynamic
The
While all materials used in building are derived
directly or indirectly from the earth, it is timber that is particularly vivid
in its demonstration of the connection between what grows and what is built.
The growing tree has life and the timber that it becomes has new life as built
environment, whether in medieval Cressing or the new Axemen's Hall in Latrobe.
In
In
both locations a range of building materials is apparent, from imported stone
to local brick, including traditional iron and the newer lightweight
materials, and, in the case of
Northcott's text is the most systematic and
integrating. There must be a sense of relationality between human beings, the
earth and God. This was achieved in medieval monastic estates. Today there
needs to be a rediscovery of land, and its products, as gift to be used for a
common good, bringing about a new and redeemed creation. This is neither
conventional economics nor a Babel-like eco-globalism that detracts from the
acceptance of local responsibilities. His final notes are of the
reconciliation of all things to God, and of praise; these have resonance with
the Ephesians and Colossians texts, and with Westermann's emphasis on praise.
These complementary insights give the centripetal pull
into the biblical materials where Cain and Noah and their families do
practical things and where towers are built with real bricks and bitumen.
John, as interpreted by