ANGLIA POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY
(now
Anglia Ruskin University )

 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 Chelmsford and Tasmania and in the wider built environment context.

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 Chelmsford and Tasmania materials are relatively factual in terms of cost and calmly reflective in terms of worth.

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 Chelmsford

 

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 Stone Bridge spans the Can between Moulsham and Chelmsford . In 1351 it was reported as being partly broken down and in need of repair. The legal problem was that while Chelmsford and its half of the bridge were within the domain of the Bishop of London, Moulsham and its half were the responsibility of the Abbot of Westminster, each side arguing that its half was in good repair. However:

 

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 Chelmsford over Danbury Hill. The human costs involved in such prestigious projects as Johnson's was made clear by earlier references to Joseph Howard the carpenter employed on the New Bridge who was prevented from following his business for a considerable time because of cold and fever caught at work and of John Funnell who committed suicide at the Widford Bridge.

 

Unexpected costs but also unexpected architectural benefits arose as a result of the major disaster that took place at St Mary's Church on 17 January 1800 . The opening of a vault inadvertently undermined the foundations of the arcade separating the nave from the south aisle. The collapse brought down the roofs of the nave and both aisles, together with the greater part of the clerestory. The trustees' appointment of Johnson to supervise the rebuilding caused some consternation. He was accused of knowing nothing of business `and has been So Base as to Call the Tradesmen in Chelmsford a Sett of D-m'd Villions'. (Briggs 1991:126). Local masons and bricklayers were employed and Johnson's son from London provided carpenters, plasterers, painters and slaters for the later stages of the work. The probably local superintendent of the workmen, William Collier, was replaced part way through by William Cowper who had worked with Johnson elsewhere and who had contributed with Johnson to published architectural texts.

 

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 17 November 1801 , With Gothic ornaments and figures in a model of the inside of the roof. Johnson's son's plasterer's account charged £262. 10s for `the Gothic Tracery Ceiling with the figures between the Upper Windows and the Cherub Corbells that support them', plus £10 for `the Gothic Flowers in Facia'. Thus the decoration of the ceiling and clerestory was composed entirely of plasterwork, with the exception of the Coade stone clerestory windows. On the completion of this work in November 1802, Naples or Patent Yellow watercolour appears to have been used for the groundwork of the ceiling, the Gothic cornice and facia being yellow and white.

(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.

 

( Chelmsford Cathedral 2002)

 

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 Chelmsford between the Battle of Britain in 1940 and the cessation of hostilities in 1945. The first reference is to the damage to 43 properties in Mildmay Road in September 1940. No names of occupiers are given. This contrasts with the situation in October when the Mayor, John Ockeiforci Thompson, with his wife, son, two young grandchildren and house servant, were killed. The Thompsons' home in London Road was destroyed by a bomb, which fell into the basement before exploding. Sheila Wrenn as a four-year old child lived nearby. She said afterwards: `I can still remember the awful blackness that had been their home'. (Begent 1999:10).

 

The Marconi works in New Street was hit by three bombs in May 1941 and the Hoffman works in Rectory Lane , and five hundred nearby properties, by three bombs in July 1942. The second bomb on the Hoffman works:

 

...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 Henry Road .

(Begent 1999:22)

 

The raid of 14 May 1943 is described as the biggest of the War. It left more than fifty people dead, a thousand homeless and 3000 properties damaged.

 

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 Tasmania

 

The writer found that working over an extended period in Tasmania with the various textual materials and experiencing the various built environments at first hand, gave rise, not so much to factual information on categories of cost as to an attempt to enunciate the concept of worth. Worth, therefore, is the theme of the following paragraphs.

 

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 Australia generally for 200 years and in the Devon area of Tasmania for 150 years. It is impossible to envisage, let alone calculate, the hours of human work and the quantities of materials that have been expended on the making of built environments, varying from the isolated farmstead to a complex modern city and the engineering of the hydro.

 

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 Port of Devonport . Something prompts her to subtitle her work, The Quiet Achievers. The people of Bronte Park , at their home in the heart of the hydro country, remember with gratitude all who have taken part in a courageous enterprise that brought light and power to the whole State.

 

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 Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair . High on the Devil's Gullet a protected viewing platform projects out from the mountainside to enable one to look across the ravine. Not far away are the Walls of Jerusalem, reminders of other, built walls. At least some people for some of the time are enabled by modest and appropriate structures such as walkways to experience the spirit of a World Heritage Area.

 

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 Rubicon River , facing Port Sorrell, and in a National Park Area, there is not a built thing except a hut or two at the entrance. This place reminds one that life is not all about developments and built environments but that they must stand in contrast to an emptiness and a silence that come from the beginning.

 

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 Chelmsford . In a small, random coach party of ten visiting Cradle Mountain via Sheffield , there were, fortuitously, a young teacher from Romford and a retired railwayman from Harwich, as well as the writer.

 

The worth of the built environments of Tasmania 's Devon and Four Western Rivers area is that they provide a concrete - in the figurative sense - way of knowing something of this place and of its people. It is not a story of development, architecture and construction on a massive and highly professional scale. It is a story of indigenous people, of convicts and settlers, of miners and opportunists, of public servants and of enterprising people able to make a living for themselves, of those who give and those who receive help with matters such as housing. It may not be completely erroneous to suggest that what they have in themselves, and what they have written into their buildings, is what James Fenton saw in the prospective first Independent Minister at Forth, a highly developed `organ of hope'. (Fenton 1891,1970:67).

 

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 Glasgow architect, Alexander Thomson. He explains that Thomson, an Elder of the United Presbyterian Church, was highly committed on religious grounds to the simplicity of classical architecture and opposed to the excesses of Gothic. Criticising lack of clarity in Gothic design practice, he says:

 

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 Glasgow . Much of the rock was solid but it was broken up at the quarry to form rubble for infilling between ashlar (stone-faced) skins. The customer was required to pay a premium for large stones, when that was in reality the most economic form of the material. Thomson argued for the transport of solid stone to site, so that masons there could make practical and economic decisions on how it should best be used. He further argued that many walls could be much thinner. He looked for more appropriate ways of measuring and estimating. In these detailed issues concerning masonry, although the terms are not part of his vocabulary, Thomson was talking about the hard details of business ethics related to Built Environment.

 

Davis (1999) considers value and the flow of money from three points of view: first, the distribution of value in the built environment, second the value added in the construction process, and third the flow of money between the built environment culture and the larger culture within which it exists.

 

Davis observes that money has to be invested in the built environment where there is the best probability of economic gain as a direct result of the investment. This means that money tends to be directed away from public open spaces between buildings and communal areas within buildings towards locations from which revenue in the form of rent or the equivalent can be derived directly. This is in direct contrast to traditional and broader approaches such as Hyde Park in London , Bemini's fountains in Rome , or the courtyards of Islamic houses. `In these places investment is not based on the prospect of immediate financial return, and its distribution corresponds to the distribution of meaning and value in the environment.' (Davis 1999:161).

 

Where generous expenditure is desirable, it is good to have corresponding areas of minimum expenditure. Quoting Christopher Alexander,' Davis says: `Great buildings always have some luxury and some roughness.... It is a good thing because... the reduced areas provide a necessary counterpoint to the intense areas, allowing them to shine'. (Davis 1999:162). This good practice is more likely to be achieved where investment is by larger numbers of people directly involved with a building or location, rather than by small numbers of remote and powerful institutions. Money, meaning and value are brought closer together.

 

Davis compares the construction processes of a fifteenth century English farmhouse, an eighteenth century London house and a modem American house. The first involves the use of at most ten types of material, obtained locally and worked in close proximity to the place of use. The most skilled labour worked on the site itself. With the London house materials came from further away, such as timber from the Baltic or Scandinavia and commercial products such as nails and glass had appeared. With the modem American house the number of materials has grown to some thirty, very few of them coming to site without some previous processing, some of them highly engineered and highly manufactured. This is a production-oriented culture. Davis does not argue that one of these is better than another but that they are different patterns of investment and value distribution.

 

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. Davis argues for the taking of a balanced view, not only with regard to materials but also with regard to the knowledge needed for their manufacture and use.:

 

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)

 

Davis ' main point is that in a healthy building culture money flows within the culture to build it up and prevent stagnation and between the building culture and others to bring value that the building culture itself cannot generate.

 

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 Temple , against its background, his costly disability is taken away.

 

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 Coventry in 1968 on the theme of the future of the city to celebrate the jubilee of the diocese of Coventry . His researches took him to Rome , Athens , India , Thailand , Japan , Honolulu , Los Angeles , Chicago and Washington and into discussions, in the UK and abroad, with planners, philosophers, sociologists and others concerned with urban life.

 

His visit to Washington was just a few weeks before the murder of Martin Luther King. People in the Washington churches were concerned about violence in American society. `We want', they said, `to go back to the original dream of America where men are different, but where they have a common goal. We want America to be itself. This is possible on a basis of forgiveness, and the recognition that there is a common need to which all of us can make a contribution.... The church must not try to capture this movement'. (Vemey:1969:90). The church's contribution had to be for other people, not in an attempt to promote its own life. Vemey links this approach to John 16:7: `It is for your good that 1 am leaving you' ( NEB ). This is one of only two explicit references that Vemey makes to John's Gospel in this text. Yet care for the present and physical world comes out of the meaning of John. Commenting on his encounter with Constantine Doxiadis, a Professor of Ekistics (the science of human settlements) in Greece, Vemey refers to the working of the Spirit (cf John 14:26) suddenly giving him a clear picture as Doxiadis was speaking:

 

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 Chelmsford required public investment, reluctantly given, for public benefit of a utilitarian kind. The collective investment in the restoration of St Mary's Church in the nineteenth century was not only utilitarian but also in qualities to be experienced aesthetically. Today's Cathedral has to maintain that investment and move forward into a further phase of adaptation. Begent enabled us to understand the costliness of war, as depicted in damage and destruction in the built environment.

 

A broader view was taken in respect of Tasmania . The investment - or waste - of human time and labour over the whole area was reflected upon. Much of the work done was transient. In the case of locations such as Baker's Beach, the worth lies in the non-­investment in any development sense. One sees here a kind of 'anti-investment', or at least `anti- construction investment'. The place must not become a built environment.

 

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, Davis advocates a renaissance's man's approach to balance in evaluating the various patterns of investment that relate to built environments.

 

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.

 

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