ANGLIA POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY
(now
Anglia Ruskin University )

 BUILT ENVIRONMENT AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY

MAKING CONNECTIONS: DISCERNING RELATIONSHIPS

MICHAEL POWELL

 

 Doctor of Philosophy  February 2003

 

12 - TYPES AND PURPOSES: NEHEMIAH

Schools began with a man under a tree, who did not know he was a teacher... Spaces were erected and the first schools became. (Louis Kahn)

 

12.1 Purpose

 

The purpose of this Section is to consider materials that relate to wide-ranging types and purposes of buildings and other structures in Chelmsford and Tasmania . These are related to general matters of typology.

This information is drawn centripetally towards theological questions about the overall nature of the societies, of which the buildings and structures are manifestations.

 

12.2 Nature of the theme

 

In relation to Chelmsford , buildings, structures and services selected for inclusion here are the medieval water conduit, the grammar school, banks, Marconi factories, the new University campus and the new Essex Record Office.

In relation to Tasmania , buildings, structures and services selected for inclusion here are, in the Port Sorrell and Latrobe area, agricultural, ecclesiastical and hospital buildings. The general development of Devonport is noted, with particular comments on the mall and wharf areas, and on church and school buildings.

In neither case is housing considered as it is the subject of Section 14.

Categories such as these indicating use are not the only ways of typing. Approaches taken to typing has a fundamental effect on haw built environments are perceived­

 

12.3 Chelmsford

 

Discussing the late fourteenth century, Grieve considers the matter of the water conduit, first constructed by the Friars. The water supply came from a spring half a mile outside the town. It was led underground in pipes made of elm across the open country and down Duke Street to the conduit head, where it surfaced as a constantly running public source of spring water. It flowed down through the town as an open watercourse, attracting inevitable problems with filth and rubbish. Grieve speculates that the Friars, while arranging their own supply, may have assisted the townspeople because the Friars were known in England for skill in constructing conduits; both Southampton and Gloucester owed their water supplies to the Friars and at Shrewsbury the Friars laid for themselves a similar conduit to that laid for the Chelmsford Friary. The conduit head was later marked by a rotunda.

 

Tuckwell (2001) has produced a comprehensive history of King Edward VI Grammar School (KEGS).The school was re-founded in 1551, having existed earlier as a chantry school. The new foundation was located in the former Black Friars' buildings in Moulsham Street . Following a roof collapse, in 1627 the governors purchased land in Duke Street , the site of the present County Hall, where a two-storey brick schoolroom was built behind the master's house. A new schoolroom, resembling a chapel in design, was built in the 1740's.

 

By the 1870's the site had become very constricted and unsuitable. Some land had been taken to give access to the market behind the school. The proximity of the Coach and Horses created somewhat unsavoury conditions, as might the board of health's proposal `to build a public urinal close to the headmaster's gate in Threadneedle Street '. (Tuckweil 2001:61). On the other side of the school from the Coach and Horses was The George, part of which had, by 1890, been converted into school accommodation. A pupil of the 1890's recalled in 1933:

 

King Edward's Avenue cuts right down to what was once the school field. This stretched down to the market and was surrounded by a high wall and rows of very beautiful trees of various kinds, including a magnificent mulberry. The field was really pretty, especially from the market end looking towards the picturesque rear view of the old-fashioned buildings, with St Mary's in the background.

(Tuckwell 2001:64, quoting The Chelmsfordian of December 1933)

 

The governors and headmaster, faced with a pupil's death from diphtheria, were more concerned with health than with romantic townscape. Thirteen architects took part in a design competition for new buildings, at the same time as local argument waged on whether the existing site, with its health hazards, or a new site should be used. Ultimately a design by Henry Cheers was erected on a virgin site in Broomfield Road, where the school is still located, and opened on 29t' June 1892. The local architect, Frederic Chancellor, purchased the old site. The cost of the new building exceeded the estimates by 14%, causing the governors major financial problems. A problem of aesthetics arose, concerning the proposal to build three sides in red brick and one in yellow. The governors regarded this as an offence to good taste, not appropriate to a country site. Laboratories were added in 1899.

 

The campus made a good impression on the Cambridge University examiner:

I was struck by the substantial and imposing character of the buildings externally. .. In addition to the usual large schoolroom and classrooms, with dormitories for boarders, there were a gymnasium, two laboratories, and, just on the point of completion, a carpenter's shop with a quite surprising array of benches and tools.

(Tuckwell 2001:71)

 

On the new site, in a new educational climate, the school prospered. In 1909, the headmaster, speaking to parents, emphasised to whom it really belonged:

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Chelmsford district, the school is yours. The school is not mine. I only direct its working. It is not the governors'. They only hold it in trust for you. It is yours....

(Tuckweil 2001:108)

 

In the years between 1909 and 1914, many additions and improvements were made, such as the construction of a sanatorium, installation of central heating `from a stokehold' and the provision of changing rooms. The Chelmsfordian concluded `When the whole plan is carried out it will indeed be a puzzle to find anywhere a more beautifully built or more beautifully equipped grammar school for a town of this size.' (Tuckwell 2001:111).

However, as James Fenton discovered in Tasmania , `a thing of beauty is not a joy for ever'.

 

Further building work was carried out in 1936:

 

This term constant rains have turned parts of our surroundings into a slough, and building operations have turned the whole place into a scene of chaos through which it is quite as difficult and disheartening to thread one's way as through any legendary swamp.

(Tuckwell 2001:135)

 

Beauty returned on VE Day in 1945:

The floodlighting of the school on VE day.... expressed as could nothing else the complex of feelings which the occasion aroused. We have suffered a good deal from the menace of darkness in many ways and on many planes of experience, and so what could be more fitting than that, presenting as it did such a stirring and beautiful spectacle?

(Tuckwell 2001:149)

 

Chaos was back in 1973 when it was discovered that High Alumina Cement had been used in the construction of some post-war buildings: `There was a danger of collapse.... The offending buildings had to be underpinned and supported while remedial work took place. The entrance foyer was a jungle of props...' (Tuckwell 2001:172). Tuckwell continues: 'Perversely the boys showed that buildings do not matter all that much by producing the best ever Oxbridge results in January 1975... The following summer's A-level results followed suit with a record 84% pass-rate.' (Tuckwell 2001:172).

 

While short-term crises with buildings may not matter all that much, long-term under­investment and failure in maintenance does. Long-running and deep-seated uncertainties on whether KEGS Chelmsford , and other schools like it, would choose to remain under local authority control or opt for independence, caused local authorities to hold back on building-­related expenditure. An otherwise excellent HMI's report in 1989 said, `the poor condition of much of the buildings and furnishings is not conducive to learning'. (Tuckwell 2001:180).

 

The 450th anniversary in 2001 was marked by a £lm building appeal by the governors. In spite of difficulties of many kinds, not least with buildings, Tuckwell concludes that a description of the school given by Sir Thomas Mildmay nearly 450 years ago still holds good, `a wholesome and gentleman-like house'. (Tuckwell 2001:189).

 

Booker (1990) contributes a text on the architecture of banks. The earliest reference in Chelmsford is to the Savings Bank at 75 High Street built c1843 at a total cost £2572, of which £950 was attributable to the building estimate and the remainder presumed to have been for the purchase of the site. Booker takes £2500 as the threshold for the most costly 14 of 109 savings banks he surveyed. The building was subsequently demolished; Booker has no information on its architectural style, but believes the designer was probably James Fenton, the surveyor to the local board of health.'

 

Of the joint-stock banks, the first to be mentioned is Barclays in the High Street. The architects were Sir Arthur and AC Blomfield, architects to the Bank of England. `The first of AC Blomfield's branches was probably Chelmsford (1905), a well-mannered and friendly design adding a welcome contrast in red brick to the nearby greyness of the Shire Hall.' (Booker 1990:207). Booker's plate dating from 1905 shows the front elevation of red brick, four storeys' of Georgian windows, and classical stone cornice and porticoes to the doorways, to be as it is today. The other joint-stock bank featured by Booker is the then National Provincial designed by Palmer and Holden. A reviewer of their work writing in 1932 referred to this branch as `a scholarly, delicate interpretation of Palladio's Loggia del Capitanio at Vicenza for a routine branch in Chelmsford '. (Booker 1990:241). Today it is the HSBC bank.

 

Lee (2001), in the course of her text celebrating the centenary on 12 December 2001 of the first trans-Atlantic radio submission by Guglielmo Marconi, provides a survey of Marconi buildings in Chelmsford . In 1898 the Marconi Company took over a former silk factory in Hall Street . The building survives and is of yellow stock bricks, beautifully detailed and incorporating classical style pilasters. A Listed Building since 1974, it is now occupied by the Essex and Suffolk Water Company. When, in 1911, the Hall Street building became too small, purpose-built premises were constructed in New Street.2 This new building, visited by delegates to an International Radiotelegraphic Conference in London in 1912, together with the opening of the Marconi School in London as a training centre for thousands of wireless operators, enabled Marconi to exploit his new communications medium to the full.' (Lee 2001:7). !n World War I the Chelmsford factory became a messages interception centre for the British government, a forerunner of today's GCHQ in Cheltenham.

 

At Writtle, an ex-army hut from World War I became, in 1922-3, the location for the transmission of radio signals. After thirty years service as a school sports pavilion, the hut has been relocated on an industrial heritage site at Sandford Mill. In the footsteps of Marconi is a guide prepared by Chelmsford Borough Council, enabling one to trace a path from the Marconi memorial window in Writtle church, past the site of the hut,3 into town and past the Writtle Road Factory acquired when Marconi took over Grompton's electrical engineering business in 1968, and, after visiting various newer factory sites, reaching New Street and Hall Street. The journey continues to Sandford Mill and a transmission mast at Great Baddow.

 

The contemporary significance of Marconi is summed up by Lee:

The Marconi companies have made profound changes in the world of communications. The development of modern transistors and integrated circuits has led to a new era of practical electronics through the wide-ranging use of radio communications; radar installations; Intelsat; space communication; computers and microprocessors. In addition, they have produced digital data networks and the life­saving Argus thermal imaging camera. Today, despite reorganisation and redistribution of manufacturing and research interests, Chelmsford still retains strong links with the Marconi name in and around the town. More than 2500 local people are still employed in factories and offices in Chelmsford bearing the Marconi name, a testament to the foresightedness of their founder and the loyalty and expertise of Chelmsford people.

(Lee 2001:14)

 

With hi-tech industry such as this, the buildings communicate nothing of what is happening inside them. They act as walls, screens or envelopes. Particularry in the case of products for defence industries, confidentiality and security are of great importance.

 

Perhaps the most significant contemporary development in Chelmsford is the Rivermead Campus of the Anglia Polytechnic University , currently being developed on the extensive riverside site of what had been Hoffmans' engineering works.

 

The first academic building to be constructed was the Queen's Building, whose principal purpose is to house the Learning Resource Centre. Smith and Pitts (1997) adduce this building as an example of innovative, energy efficient design. The use of thermal mass, natural ventilation promoted by the stack effect, and the maximisation of daylighting are the principal features of the building. The building energy management system has been designed `to look after itself (Smith and Pitts 1997:77). The combination of these technical features with a fast-track design and construction programme gives the building a significant place in late twentieth century utilitarian architecture.

 

Currently (late 2002) under construction is the Ashcroft International Business School . Lord Ashcroft, prominent international businessman, is an alumnus of the Essex Institute of Higher Education and a major donor to the new Business School building. Although the APU Business School at both Cambridge and Chelmsford is long-standing and of good reputation, this new international school is major step forward. The new building is synonymous with the step, highly symbolic of it, and certainly the School's most permanent, and probably its primary, material resource. The promotional literature shows that there is a complex relationship between the University, the International School , the benefactor and the building:

The building - to be known as the Michael A Ashcroft building - was the subject of a Royal Institute of British Architects design competition..........

A glass-fronted entrance will welcome visitors to the new Business School , above which an auditorium will be positioned. The uniquely shaped auditorium will distinguish the facility from the main Business School as it is expected that the area will attract widespread corporate usage.

Leading from the central entrance area is the main wing of teaching, seminar and support accommodation. This space is arranged over four storeys. An additional storey, however, has been proposed that would provide a rooftop pavilion area complete with an external south-facing terrace. A River Wall constructed from transparent and translucent materials will follow the line of the nearby riverside walk.

( Anglia Polytechnic University , undated, unnumbered)

 

The main non-academic building on the campus is the student village. This comprises some 550 study-bedrooms in flats of four or five. The rooms themselves are generally regarded as adequate. The main criticisms of the village are that in individual flats the only shared room is the kitchen-diner and that there is no student common room or similar facility in or close to the village. This reflects government funding regimes for student accommodation.

 

Essex Record Office Update (2000) provides a comprehensive description of the new building for the Essex Record Office opened in March 2000. The functional heart of the building is the repository:

 

At the heart of the new Record Office stands the repository - the brick cube that dominates the site and protects the collections- The outside is almost featureless. All that the visitor sees is a solid three-storey block, capped by a lightly constructed plant room. Parts of the brickwork re-appear in the public foyer as a reminder of the building's purpose... [This] strongly built and windowless box (made from 337 000 bricks!) provides not merely physical security but also a high degree of thermal inertia, allowing the Record Office to achieve and maintain the prescribed levels of temperature and relative humidity without relying entirely on air-conditioning.

(Essex Record Office Update No 35 pp1-3)

 

Specialist rooms are provided for photographic records, magnetic media and conservation workshops. Public areas include the search room, lecture theatres and exhibition space.

 

12.4 Tasmania

 

A somewhat different selection of types of building has been chosen for Tasmania .

 

As one travels between the Rubicon and Mersey Rivers , one passes some of the richest agricultural land in Tasmania , peppered with homesteads and barns. Sassafras is a typical village of the area. Evers and Ingpen (1978) give their impression of it:

All of a sudden the road emerges from the bush and you are confronted with the most magnificent country you could ever hope to see. Smooth, low hills and gentle valleys. The bright green of rich pasture and the dark chocolate of rich soil...

     (Evers and Ingpen 1978:46)

 

They go on to tell of an eighty-four year-ofd resident, Tom McKenna, `surrounded by land and buildings that represent four generations of family achievement, of overcoming adversity, of hard and good work being duly rewarded'. (Evers and Ingpen 1978:46).

 

The authentic but impressionistic approach of Evans and Ingpen can be balanced with some comments on farm buildings from Morgan. While her work relates to the 1820's and to the Hobart area, her note of realism is relevant here. `The first farm buildings', she says, Were primitive and merely functional. To the British eye they were ugly and untidy.' (Morgan 1992:52). Governor Macquarie referred to farm properties as `wretchedly mean and badly built' (Morgan 1992:52). The building of permanent and better homes was both a time­consuming and expensive business, best left until the settler had achieved an appropriate degree of financial security. Morgan includes some observations from James Atkinson's earlier writings on the State of Agriculture . Atkinson believed that, while the settler should not overreach himself financially, a reasonable standard of building was necessary. Putting up with poor buildings for too long was `dangerous because the meanness of the surroundings could lead to depression and a consequent lack of interest in farm labour'. (Morgan 1992:53).

Latrobe is the home of what is now the Mersey Community Hospital . The foundation stone of the original local hospital was laid on Queen Victoria 's Golden Jubilee day 21 June 1887 and work was completed in January 1889. Ramsav (1957,19P0) records the beginning of the building:

 

... a committee was formed and they immediately set about taking steps to gather together sufficient funds for the erection of a hospital. When enough money had been collected an application was made to the government for a site next to the Latrobe recreation ground, and this was readily agreed to. Mr E Gadsby was selected to be the architect and builder, and he submitted plans of a building which he estimated would cost £500. It was to be of wood with a frontage of 63 feet, and it was to contain four rooms for beds, besides committee, operating and nurses' rooms, and it was also to have detached outbuildings comprising kitchen, scullery and servants' bedroom. The front of the building was to be of an ornamental nature, the two large wards to have bay windows 11 feet by 4 feet 6 inches with a connecting verandah between them.

(Ramsay 1957,1980:192)

 

The present hospital has grown by stages. A General Division, the present main building, was opened in 1961, the State's Director General of Health Services noting that `the newly­opened General Division exhibits the latest in design and equipment of a modern General Hospital and should prove of very great benefit to the people on the north-west coast'. (Parliament of Tasmania Department of Health Services: Annual Report 1960-61). What is described as Stage 1 of a refurbishment programme was carried out in 1996.

 

In his history of Devonport, Binks (1981) sets out the key events in the industrial and commercial development of the City, relating them to infrastructure construction. In 1851 settlers took up land on the east bank of the Mersey and coal was found to be present in the area. The coal fields were small, reaching a peak production of 1000 tons per month, but their presence did occasion the development of the estuary. Shipbuilding quickly followed as an industry of the estuary area. However, it was the building of roads from 1856 onwards that really opened up the Devon area as a whole. At first it was Torquay, not Formby, that Was the clear leader, with a police post, magistrate, at least three hotels, shipyards and stores'. (Binks 1981:30).

 

Continuous growth continued from the 1850's to the 1880's, when efforts to reduce and control the harbour bar were successful and the railway was extended from Deloraine and Latrobe to Formby. `The railway brought a building boom to Formby.... Apart from warehouses, shops, hotels and stores appeared, the new post office was opened in 1892 and large numbers of houses were built for the growing population.' (Binks 1981:35). The Bank of Van Diemen's Land, the Bank of Australasia and the National Bank of Tasmania , all opened branches. The crash of the first in 1891 brought financial disaster.

 

A listing of plaques on buildings in Devonport includes those on a number of hotels. Typical of the hotels is the Formby on the riverside in Formby Road . It was built in 1857 by Swedish bom Captain Nicholas Hedstrom. It had 29 rooms. Although modern in elevation, its toilet facilities drained into the street. The arrival of the railway just opposite the hotel in 1885 made it inadequate for the greater volume of business then occurring. It was substantially refurbished in 1899. Demolition and complete rebuilding took place in 1930, since when various further renovations have been undertaken. Another nautical hotelier was Captain Edward Taylor, who built the Sea View Hotel in 1884, regarded as the town's most important hotel until its demise in 1958.

 

In addition, the plaques give insights into the nature of some social and cultural buildings. The Majestic Theatre, built in 1915 by the Lane family, had seating for 250 in leather seats a further 500 in wooden seats. A sister theatre was located in Latrobe, films being shown first in Devonport and then dispatched to Latrobe where the audience would be waiting. Clubs included the Devonport Club, which was in being from 1899 until 1975. It was built by George Levy at a cost of £600. The Mersey Valley Workers Club shared its premises with the North-West Post newspaper, first printed in 1887. The former Baptist Church , built in 1904 by Stephen Priest senior and junior, was applauded for design and workmanship. It now accommodates the Devonport Gallery and Arts Centre.

 

Stubbs (1998) relates the history of the Anglican Church in West Devonport . Originally the area was part of the parish of Port Sorrell. Worship at first took place in Mr Levy's carpentry workshop and Mr Marsden's schoolroom. In 1887 a Mission Hail was built in Rooke Street . There were aspirations for a brick church and in 1903 a committee was formed to consider the matter. The foundation stone of the older part of the present St John's Church was laid in 1906. Stubbs quotes a local newspaper's description of the building:

 

The building is of Gothic design with bluestone foundations and stained cement dressings, and is tuck-pointed inside and out. Spreyton bricks have been used throughout. The roof inside is panelled with Oregon, panelled out in New Zealand white pine, while on the outside it is covered with iron, painted a slate colour.

(Stubbs 1998:19)

 

The description goes on to give details of windows, floor, ventilation and lighting. It concludes with praise for the builder: `Mr Hiller has carried out his contract well. He entrusted the plastering to Mr FH Bergmann and the painting and decoration to Mr Beale'. (Stubbs 1998:19). Happily for this thesis, the two large windows in the west wall are of St John the Apostle and of Jesus healing the blind man (John 9:1-41).

 

This first phase of building at St John's was the nave. The second was the adjacent church hall and the third, the porch and part of the tower. `If the western porch and tower were constructed that would have both utilitarian and aesthetic advantages. The porch could be used as a vestry and the tower could house a bell and enhance the appearance of the church'. (Stubbs 1998:22). The tower was built to approximately half the height of the nave roof but has never been completed.

 

In 1939 consideration was given to the construction of the chancel and in 1942 plans were commissioned from Mr Louis Williams, an eminent ecciesiastical architect in Melbourne . It was not until 1954 that work could be put in hand. Stubbs records a commendable example of parish teamwork:

In 1954 the building committee was set up.... A versatile team of parishioners headed it. Mr Tim Jacobs, the chairman, was a headmaster, Mr Ted Smith, the vice-chairman was manager of a wholesale business; Mr Walter Gerard, the secretary, was a teacher; Mr William Kildey... [and] Mr Amold Wertheimer [successive treasurers, were accountants].... It was decided not to call tenders but to ask another parishioner, Mr Ken Titmus, a master builder, to undertake the position of contractor. He accepted.

(Stubbs 1998:25)

 

The enterprising Mr Titmus visited brickyards and found the moulds with which the bricks for the nave had been made. To use them again would necessitate hand pressing. Mr Aubrey Luck, the brick maker, agreed to fire two hundred or so every time his kiln was used for machine-made bricks. Mr Reuben Kent, the bricklayer, offered to modify his schedule to accommodate this slow method of supply and `to wait at times should the supply of handmade bricks be held up'. (Stubbs 1998:26). A minor link to Witham, Essex , UK - some ten miles from Chelmsford - lies in the fact that the rose and lancet windows in the east wall were manufactured by the Victoria branch of the Crittall Manufacturing Company emanating from Witham.

 

An unexpected building site that is due to open up in late 2001 is that of the Reece High School . Following a major fire, the school is to be refurbished and partly rebuilt for reopening in January 2003. The texts for the project are the architectural drawings on public display and the Department of Education's web site. The three new buildings in particular are designed to be `a school for the future'. Designs have been developed by the school and the architects collaboratively. New facilities are being designed in such a way that non-­school users can enjoy them as much as the school community itself. The feature of the design that most attracts the eye is the `circular, centrally-located information resource centre housing traditional library functions, electronic access to media and information resources, and a dedicated vocational and futures education program area.' (www.doe. tased.edu.au/Reece/08/10/01).

 

 

12.5 General Built Environment texts

 

The above materials relating to Chelmsford and Tasmania are readily available to any enquirer. A more detailed investigation would have revealed an almost infinite amount of information about buildings and structures and the stories of their development. In locations such as these, wherever there is human life, there is built environment facilitating it and reflecting its activities and ideas. It may not quite be chaos but it is proliferation needing to be ordered in some systematic way.

 

Two ways of ordering are put forward here, the first by means of typologies and the second by questions concerning the values being promulgated.

 

It is the task of typology to bring order. Such can be a creative or a constricting process. Schneekloth and Franck (1994) comment on the power of such typing in terms of prison and promise: `One of the prisons we create and inhabit is an intellectual one: expecting and searching for fixed, clear and separable definitions and applications of type and typing where, instead, we could recognize their variable and contrasting meaning and uses'. (Schneekloth and Franck 1994:31).

 

Promise can come about through the openness of boundaries: `typing, as an activity and type as a form of knowledge are impossible to confine. Their fluidity and ambiguity defy definition. Type can refer to ways of structuring the built landscape where the boundaries are blurred and categories overlap. The type categories are fluid, the embodiment of essence, often emerging from experience of the world, and respecting differences and overlaps in specimens... `. (Schneekloth and Franck 1994:31). Paradoxically, `Type will always be a prison and a promise because it will always be open and closed at the same time....'. (Schneekloth and Franck 1994:35).

 

Typing can be repressive or transformative:

Typing is powerful and flexible, pervasive and useful; it enables our comprehension of, and living in, the world. But type thinking is also a prison that inhibits our inhabitation. Too often we forget that type is a constructed overlay on the world, that we (or others) made it and thus remake the world every day............... While changes in types can be transformative, supporting a more socially just and economically sound world, the changes can be, and often are, repressive and unjust.

( Schneekloth and Franck 1994:32)

 

Franck (1994) in her individual paper puts forward a web of building types relating to purpose:

 

REMOVAL AND CONTROL           Schools, prisons, hospitals, asylums, [various categories of multiple housing].

RETREAT AND ESCAPE               Parks, restaurants, cafes, theatres, nightclubs, health clubs, resorts, 

                                                            hotels, amusement parks, theme parks, museums, beaches, spas,  

                                                             golf courses and shopping malls.

              Churches, libraries, convents, monasteries. Single   family homes.

 

PROTECTING

& HONOURING                                 Churches, synagogues, mosques, cemeteries, memorials, monuments, battlefields, museums, historic landmarks and districts, wildemess areas, national parks, city halls, state and national capital buildings, courthouses, and possibly libraries and universities. Single family homes.

PRODUCING AND

CONTROLLING CAPITAL               Indoor markets, factories, mills, mines, warehouses, railroad stations, banks, office buildings, stock exchanges, shopping centres and malls,

industrial parks.

PUBLIC SERVICE                           Retail stores and commercial services.

Streets, sidewalks, highways, parking lots, train, bus and subway stations.

Airports, banks, schools, hospitals, clinics, libraries, day-care centres, post offices.

ENABLING AND

EMPOWERING                                 Libraries, schools, universities, town halls, state and national capitals, religious buildings, buildings for fraternal and charity organizations.

Co-op food stores, local green markets, community workshops.

 

 

The value of Franck's work is in the categories into which she places building types. The category says what, in her view as the classifier, that particular type of building does to human beings.

 

King (1980) brings together nine essays around the theme of built form and social form. These relate to types such as asylums, hospitals, prisons, temples, offices, places of refreshment and homes. He poses the parallel questions:

What can we understand about a society by examining its buildings and physical environment?

What can we understand about buildings and environments by examining the society in which they exist?

(King 1980:1)

 

In the consideration of any building or, we might add, built environment or type, the crucial questions are:

Whose ideas,

Whose beliefs,

                 Whose values or

Whose view of the world

 

are being considered here?

 

(King 1980:31)

 

 

12.6 General Biblical Theology texts

 

 

Schreiter (1985) advocates the construction of various types of local theologies. Today, he says, `The churches of Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania are not satisfied to repeat the tradition as it has come to them, in rote fashion. They are joined by many communities in the North Atlantic ambit, who are seeking new ways of giving voice to their experience of Christ in a rapidly changing world.' (Schreiter 1985:xi).

 

This search for the new takes place against a background of, in the case of the West, a theology whose purpose was primarily to gain `sure knowledge' or scientia. The domain of such theology is the culture of towns and cities disciplined by strong legal codes and marked by rigorous intellectual traditions. Theology was something that was reasoned and taught by specialists. It was strong enough to flourish where worldviews competed with one another. It contrasted markedly with the earlier, wisdom theology, sapientia, and spirituality, of the monastery and the rural world. The 1960's were marked by needs for major social changes. This gave rise to local theologies of praxis, which sought to bring about change in dominant social patterns. A further type is the theology that is variation or expansion of a sacred text by means of sermons, commentaries and anthologies.

 

Schreiter goes into much specialist detail on how local theologians can learn to interact with local cultures, in order to listen to the culture and in order to speak to it. All that can be done here is to note that there is such a practical activity as local or contextual theology which can be carried out in locations such as Chelmsford and Tasmania, or in relation to built environment as a sector of life, or possibly in relation to both, taking into full consideration what happens when typologies are used and embodied values interpreted.

 

12.7 Nehemiah

 

In the context of this Section, Nehemiah is a quite narrow text. One structure dominates, the city wall of Jerusalem , being rebuilt to express and protect a threatened religious and national culture. That work is undertaken quite explicitly `for the common good' ( 2:18 ). Yet, incidentally and almost inevitably, references to other locations, buildings and structures creep in. These include: Susa (1:1), city gates (eg 2:13) and towers (eg 3:1) incorporated in the wail, springs and pools (2:13,14), houses (5:3,11), property in general (5:13), temple (6:10), the treasury (7:70) assuming it was an identifiable place, the square (8:1), booths (8:14) - temporary structures for the festival made, reminiscently of Australia, of olive, myrtle, palm and leafy trees - roofs and courts as parts of buildings (8:16), fortress cities and houses captured of old (9:25), chambers in the House of God (13:9), storehouses (13:12) and, by inference, selling places, if only open-air paving, for merchandise (13:15­16).

A significant cross section of the built world is here.

 

12.11 Synthesis and centripetal dynamic

 

In terms of infrastructure, Chelmsford 's water supply and Devonport's railways and docks have been noted. In terms of education, Chelmsford 's historical grammar school and new university, and Devonport's fire-damaged school have told their stories. Rural farm buildings in Tasmania have emerged in our thinking alongside the industrial premises of the Chelmsford company that pioneered international telegraphic communication. Banks for the deposit of money and a Record Office for the deposit of documents, hospitals for the sick and hotels for travellers, and churches for worship, all adding further dimensions, have been noted. Further building types could have been included.

 

From another age, the text of Nehemiah takes us into the palace and streets of Susa and into various parts of Jerusalem with its permanent structures and the temporary structures of celebration.

 

The centripetal force is at work when it demands that local theologies be done asking what these arrays of buildings not only say but also do. The true answers to those questions can be revealed or hidden by such matters as the categories and typologies with which one chooses to work.

 

The most generic questions for any theological or other ethical consideration are those posed by King:

 

Whose ideas,

Whose beliefs,

Whose values or

Whose view of the world

                  are being considered here?

 

In relation to King Edward's Grammar School, Tuckwell starts to answer such questions when he notes one of his predecessors as Headmaster insisting that the school belonged to neither him nor the Governors but to the parents. Today, perhaps, we would put the students first.

 

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