(now
BUILT
ENVIRONMENT AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY
MAKING
CONNECTIONS: DISCERNING RELATIONSHIPS
MICHAEL POWELL
Doctor of Philosophy February 2003
13 - COST AND WORTH: JOHN'S GOSPEL
The only way you can build, the only way you can get the building into being, is through
the measurable. You must follow the laws of nature and use quantities of
brick, methods of construction and engineering. (Louis Kahn)
13.1 Purpose
The purpose of this Section is to consider various
aspects of cost and worth as they arise in relation
to
The centripetal pull is towards some theological
insights and to aspects of John's Gospel, such as saving action and the value
of persons.
13.2
Nature of the theme
Whether or not they are expressed in terms of money,
built environment activities inevitably involve expenditures and costs of
various kinds.
When a built environment experiences unsought damage,
as through war, that too involves cost, whether in terms of finance or some
form of human suffering. Parallel to the concept of cost is that of worth,
material and spiritual.
The
The wider built environment material is
both factual and evaluative in relation to built environment economics.
The wider theological material can be interpreted in
terms of value. John's Gospel is about absolute
value or worth and absolute cost.
13.3
Grieve (1988) tells
the story of the medieval bridges' in terms of money
spent at various times on materials and labour for maintenance and more
substantial reconstruction.
The
The court decided that the bridge was broken on the
Moulsham side. The abbot camed out minor repairs in 1350-1 but they cost no
more than 8d for the work of two carpenters. This patching up was clearly
inadequate, for in 1360-1 the bridge cost the abbot £6. 9s 6d, including a
fine of 3s 4d, presumably for not having repaired it properiy before.
(Grieve 1988:29)
Grieve continues:
The work done in 1360-1 suggests that the bridge was
basically a timber structure and that it was the carriageway which was
collapsing. The contractor employed to restore it was a carpenter, hired for
£3 6s 8d. Two sawyers, each paid 5d per day, were hired for 18 days to saw
timber and planks. Eight men on a daily wage of 3d each were hired for eight
days to lift old timbers from the bridge and lay new ones. Carters were hired
at a shilling a day: five of them fetched timber from Feering; one spent five
days carrying timber cut in Moulsham to the bridge; another spent three days
carrying hurdles to the bridge, and another two days carrying gravel. Two
ropes were bought for 2s to haul timber to the bridge; food and drink bought
for the workmen at various times cost 2s 6d.
(Grieve 1988:29)
The later bridge constructed under Johnson in the
1780's involved the purchase of stone at 26s per ton delivered to Maldon plus
9s per ton for carting to
Unexpected costs but also unexpected architectural
benefits arose as a result of the major disaster that took place at St
Mary's Church on
A notable feature of the restoration work was the
ceiling:
There appear to have been at least three designs for
the ceiling: two were produced on
(Briggs 1991:128)
The Cathedral has
a current (2002) programme of improvements estimated to cost £1.2m. This
includes: renewal of the audio and lighting installations to give both general
enhancement and benefits to disabled people; reordering the vestry block to
provide kitchen and servery facilities and a counselling room, as well as
renewed toilet facilities, including provision for the disabled; and an
Education Room. All this has been carefully planned so that no large-scale
additions to the building are necessary. The programme is an integral part of
what the Cathedral is and does:
Chelmsford
Cathedral is no vast, vaulted hall.
Its
qualities are more jewel-like:
small,
light, colourful, precious and cherished.
When
you walk in the building it seems to welcome you.
It
lifts the spirit and its silence sings.
(
The funding comes from the Cathedral's funds, the
giving of the people and a range of charitable and business organisations. The
cost of the work is finite, its value in terms of hope and faith expressed,
almost infinite.
Begent (1999) in Chelmsford
at War demonstrates how war can destroy and change buildings and
localities. Using newspapers of the time, he paints a powerful picture of what
happened to
The
Marconi works in
...struck the comer of the fan house
superstructure on the roof of the Ball Lapping Shop, and broke and dislodged a
five feet by two feet lump of reinforced concrete. It then passed through and
demolished a parapet brick wall, was deflected and travelled parallel with the
western wall of the building before it detonated at ground level.
(Begent 1999:19)
A further bomb on Hoffmans that October led to loss of
life and extensive damage:
The
blast destroyed practically all of the Shop's roof, some 20 000 square feet's
worth, and further disrupted a large area of the Turret Shop's roof.
Considerable damage was inflicted on the building's steelwork but fortunately
none collapsed.
The brick wall which divided the two Shops
considerably relieved the blast effect on the roof of the Turret Shop.
Stanchions and RSJ's were perforated and bent, and around 150 feet of the
outside western wall of the Cage and Assembly Shop was demolished. This ran
parallel [with] and immediately behind houses on the eastern side of
(Begent 1999:22)
The raid of
It
was in the next month, June 1943, that the Borough Council discussed for the
first time how it would set about post-war rebuilding, particularly of
housing. Already speculation in land had commenced:
Problems were also encountered with local landowners
who sought premium prices for their land; on 29th September 1943, for example,
the council decided not to pursue offers to buy land from two local
landowners: Robert Fleming of Barnes Farm who had offered to sell land
fronting Chelmer Road at a cost of £600 per acre; and Sir Alexander
Livingstone, who had offered for purchase part of the 164 acre Melbourne Park
Estate.... at £300 per acre.
(Begent
1999:4)
The Town as a whole turned its mind to the future when
the Chelmsford Area Planning Group, a voluntary organisation, held a public
meeting at the Shire Hall early in 1944. The biggest three employers in the
town, Marconi's, Hoffmans and Cromptons had agreed to fund a planning study.
The results were displayed at an exhibition, also in the Shire Hall, in May
1945.
The story of King Edward's Grammar School is one of
investment to meet the requirements of change and growth.
13.4
The writer found that working over an extended period
in
Aborigine
life, which included the making of shelters, went on for perhaps 30 000 years.
European-led development and building has been going on in
The human experience of being involved in the work, in
occupying the buildings and in living in the scattered and concentrated built
areas has ranged from oppression and Gardam's sweat5 to delight,
health and wealth. Much hardship has been endured and much beauty beheld.
Human built environment work has taken its place within and alongside the
natural environment.
The built environment of the Four Western Rivers' Area
has never been static. Places have arisen and declined. Materials and
buildings themselves have been used and reused. Lives have been spent in this
work. Timber grown and cement made here have been taken to far places and
products as strange as an iron shed have been brought here. Styles and designs
from far times and far places have ended up in the same remote Tasmanian
street.
Much that has happened and been built even over so
short a period as 150 years is now long forgotten, with just bumps in the
ground, as with the boatyards on the west bank of the Mersey on Victoria
Parade, as reminders of what once was. Only a few metres walk away the facade
of the Town Hall and the whole Court House are retained because they, like
some areas of housing, seem to stand for something precious. A lighthouse is
built, occupied and used, and continues to be a reminder that this is a
maritime area, with the sea as both lifeline and death threat to human beings.
A canoe made by hand in a time of crisis and dubbed Forlorn
Hope has been replaced by a succession of bridges across the rivers.
In most streets and in many stand-alone dwellings there
are veranda, meeting places between what is inside and what is outside. Beach
and riverbank are meeting places too. From time to time, in a few places, one
sees a timber framework going up, a new home, or plans on display to show what
a new school will be like, setting right the ravages of fire.
Artists paint murals on walls. Photographers record
panoramas of 1890 and the homes of the rural poor a century later. A company
historian with access to its records tells the story of the
Guides, with a deep knowledge of their territory, take
visitors to see Weindorfer's hut, at the beginning of the duckboard walkway
setting out from
Again, in Devonport on the Victoria Parade, a wall a
few metres long and perhaps one-and-a-half metres high, bears the names of
those who lost, or gave, their lives in the Vietnam War.
At Baker's Beach on the east side of the
From the houses built up the north-facing cliffs
at Devonport one looks east in the morning to see the light of the
rising sun against the Asbestos Range, and west in the evening to see it
setting over Don Heads. In between and back to Cradle Mountain is all this
building, all this creating, destroying, neglecting, re-creating, living in
and walking through part human made, part natural places, unknown to the world
which has little cause to come this way, except for a few fleeting days on a
tour of Australia.
Yet
it does link, almost to
The worth of the built environments of
13.5
General Built Environment texts
Two writers are to be considered, one very
tightly focused on matters of architecture as seen in Presbyterian Scotland in
the nineteenth century and the other, Davis, wide open to the world.
Stamp (1999) has edited work of the
nineteenth century
In
this way important buildings are begun and finished, and fabulous sums of
money spent in costly materials and mere workmen's wages, under the delusion
that a great work is being accomplished .......... the reason is obvious -
ingenuity of arrangement, variety of detail, costly material and the labour of
mere workmen do not constitute art - do not produce that kind of beauty which
`is a joy for ever'.
(Stamp 1999:75)
The use of the word 'mere' twice in this quotation
makes one wonder what the writer intends to convey. The implication seems to
be that workmen and their wages are a commodity of low value - however low or
high the wages in money terms might be.
In 1859, Thomson gave a lecture to the Glasgow
Architectural Society entitled 'On Masonry and how it may be improved'. He
expostulates on how excessive competition and speculation by house-builders
bring about sub-standard work:
When the erection of houses becomes a business, of
course it must be made to pay, and
when a builder feels he cannot offer to the public any inducement to purchase
from him rather than the trade in general, and so warrant him putting a profit
on his work, his next course is to see whether he cannot, by scrimping and
paring, manage to save a profit off the market price. This system gradually
gets beyond the surface, and eats into the vitals - the very bone and sinew is
withheld.
(Stamp 1999:43)
Thomson further commented on how the conduct of
quarries had an adverse effect on building practice in
Where generous expenditure is desirable, it is good to
have corresponding areas of minimum expenditure. Quoting Christopher
Alexander,'
In Renaissance Florence, where much newly created
wealth was invested in building, the effects were principally local. Materials
were purchased locally and the non-building additional purchasing power of the
occupiers of luxurious homes was locally directed. In other situations, there
is national and international commerce in building materials and components.
But large scale operations in building materials and
components is not ipso facto bad, and all materials do not necessarily have to
come out of the earth close to the building site. On the contrary, balance is
needed in the realm of materials, just as balance is needed between knowledge
that is contained within the building culture itself and knowledge that is
contained within other cultures that interact with it. Large companies do have
the ability to invest in research and development and to be responsive to
markets.
(Davis 1999:179)
13.6
General Biblical Theology texts
Hodgson (1994), in A Constructive Christian
Theology makes some interesting etymological points:
`[To "construct"
means "to pile up," "build," or "put together' (Latin
corn, together + struere, to pile
up, build)..... By a strange etymological quirk, struere comes from an Indo-European root that also means "to
scatter," "to spread," or "to strew," and what is
piled up may be more of a heap (cf Latin strues)
than a structure. To construe is to strew things together, to fashion a
meaningful arrangement, to bring a semblance of order out of chaos, to make
something out of straw. The words "strew" and "straw" are
etymologically linked: straw is what is strewn around and piled up...Straw is
all that we have - everything worldly is like straw... but we can
build things of it.'(Hodgson 1994:39).
`The work of building, construing, constructing is a
basic human work; without it we could not dwell humanly in the world. But this
work also always entails a kind of deconstruction - dismantling old
structures, using up resources, strewing them differently. In order to build
something new we must tear down or rearrange something that humans have
already made or destroy something that nature has created (trees, stones,
soil, minerals). Whenever we critically appropriate what has been thought
before, we destroy (de-strue) it ...lt is not too far fetched to say that
constructive theology is like grasping at straws.' (Hodgson 1994:39)
Catherine Keller suggests that the action of
"piling up together" (con-struere) involves "in community and
solidarity gathering together resources for saving actions, refusing the
ideologies of world-waste, woman-waste, people-waste, species-waste, by which
we also waste whatever resources we may have as theologians." (Hodgson
1994:39).
"Gathering together resources for saving
actions." is as good a definition of "construction" as any he
knows, Hodgson continues. He is talking of the theologian's work. The
definition is equally applicable to built environment work. It too can be
viewed as gathering together resources for saving actions, while avoiding
costly and unnecessary waste - a very comprehensive definition.
Block (2002) has written A
Theology of Access for People with Disabilities, from the perspective of
the mother of someone disabled. Her purpose is to create a conversation
between 'disability' and `Christianity' so that access, both social and
architectural, may be experienced by people with disabilities. She enunciates
four guiding principles:
1.
People with disabilities share fully in human nature and are not in any
way inferior to others.
2.
To reflect on disability is to reflect on the mystery of God's love and
the great paradoxes of the Christian message.
3.
People with disabilities are oppressed, and the Christian community has
an obligation to respond to this injustice.
4.
`The mandate for access and inclusion is biblically based, central to
our baptismal promise and commitment and rooted in the triune God'. (Block
2002:22).
In her discussion of architectural barriers, Block
states that `Architecture speaks loudly' (Block 2002:149) and, in the words of
Jan Robitscher, `The hospitality expressed in the architecture of sacred space
is really a sacrament (outward sign) of the hospitality of the people who
worship there'.9 The problem is not just to do with liturgy but
also with the basics: 'Not being able to enter a building, get a drink of
water, or use the bathroom is a terrible violation of the dignity of a human
person'. (Block 2002:150).
Block forces consideration of the worth of all persons
in relation to the costliness of using buildings sometimes imposed on people
with disabilities.
13.7
John's Gospel
Block (2002) addresses herself
specifically to John 9:1-41, the story of the man born blind. Of the man
himself she says:
Who is this man?
Like
almost all of the people with disabilities in the Gospels, the man does not
have a name, which renders him
status in the ancient world. He is merely an object of the seeing
world....
He is a beggar...
He is, however, an intelligent and articulate man for
he stands up to a series of intense and pointed questions about his experience
of being healed and the identity of Jesus...
Although he may have been somewhat overwhelmed
and disoriented by the bright light and first sights, he remains in control.
He is not easily intimidated and even has a sense of
humour.
(Block 2002:111)
For Block, the essential points of the story are that
it is as a result of the removal of the disability of blindness that Christ is
identified and that old arguments about the relationship of disability to sin
are no longer valid. In the vicinity of the
On the premise that the sacraments are the enacted Word
it is appropriate here to quote Block's Eucharistic Prayer of Inclusion:
Giving
praise and thanks to you, O God,
In
whose image we have all been created,
We
gather in faith and love,
Where
through the power of the Spirit,
all
our bodies, disabled and non-disabled alike, become one Body in Christ Jesus
..........................................................
Devoted
God, ,
again
and again,
you
lead your people from chaos to covenant
reminding
our ancestors that your passion for
our
holy freedom never wavers.
When
the time for the new and final covenant arrived
your
divine vulnerability graced the earth
and
your Word was made flesh and
dwelt
among us
showing
us how to live in your love and
to
care for each other.
.................................................................
Recalling
Jesus.
who
was friend to people with disabilities
all
through his life,
Recalling
Jesus
and
the gaping wounds in his hands and feet
at
the time of his death and
Recalling
the Risen Christ
who
showed his disabled body without shame,
We
offer you our Creator,
these
gifts of bread and wine
and
we ask that your Spirit which rests on these gifts,
descend
on and hover around this community
so
that we may learn to be Christ to one another."
(Block,
Jennie Weiss 2002:157,164-5)
Vemey (1985) writes of how, as a
young priest, he found himself keeping a daily diary. When he first started,
he noted the day's events and linked them back to John's Gospel. Later he
reversed the process, starting with the Gospel and linking the day's events to
it. He discovered the very close connection between `the story John was
telling and the story in which I was living'. (Verney 1985:14).
Verney's rendering of John 15:13 is `Nobody has greater
Love than this, that he lays aside his ego [lays down his life] for the sake
of his friends'. (Verney 1985:164). Expanding on the idea of ego he says, `In
each of you, your ego is of absolute value.......... there has never been
before, and never will be again, a person quite like you with the genius to
create and the capacity to love as you can create and love'. (Verney 1985:23).
That is a statement about the absolute value of persons - including those who
make, inhabit and visit built environments.
In People and
Cities (1969), Vemey tells of how, as a residentiary canon of Coventry
Cathedral, he organised an international conference in
His visit to
He was describing a city of the future which wound
across the countryside like a huge and undulating spine. It was divided into
small neighbourhoods which were intimate and free from traffic, so that
children could play safely. A fast motorway or monorail ran down the centre of
the spine, so that people could move swiftly to any part of the city, and the
countryside was within easy walking distance for everybody. What concerned me
most of all was the concern this speaker obviously had for people, his
insistence on `the human scale' in planning, and his optimism that in spite of
the inevitable growth of cities we could build a humane environment if only we
started now to think accurately and to ad bravely.
(Vemey 1969:47)
Vemey, it can be maintained, had been discussing the
true worth of built environments.
13.8
Synthesis and centripetal dynamic
This Section has tended to coalesce around the idea of
investment, which could, in the light of experience, have been the starting
theme.
The medieval bridge in
A broader view was taken in respect of
In nineteenth century Glasgow, Thomson argued against
extravagant, inappropriate design, against crass commercial speculation in
relation to homes and against what might be called crooked walls, crooked not
because of their geometry but because of the ethics of specification. 1n
contrast with Thomson's relative invective,
Hodgson
enabled us to see the built environment process, and therefore the investment,
in terms of `gathering together resources for saving action'. Verney takes a
wide view of the city. Perhaps for him a good city would be one in which the
resources were gathered and deployed so as to achieve the human scale that he
and Doxiadis considered to be vitally important.
Block returned us to the immediate, the practical and
personal. An example of a good investment is one that accepts cost and creates
worth for persons with disabilities, epitomised by John's man blind from
birth. Built environments cannot restore sight as medicine sometimes can, but
they can embody expenditure and human worth. That can be embodied
sacramentally.
The centripetal pull is of everyday particularity and
policy into `gathering resources for saving action' and into the sacramental
expression of that biblical truth.