This just in from the They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To team of critics.
I was listening to a guy who was introduced on a talk radio program as an outstanding expert on architecture. Now, I would have to take the host's word on that because my own knowledge of architecture ended when the crate pallets from the deep freeze my mother had shipped to our house when I was eight years old were used to build my backyard fortress. It fell down quite easily when attacked by a marauding team of boyhood bandits who then joined me for a celebratory drink of Kool-Aid at our makeshift saloon. End of fortress, end of my construction and architectural career.
Therefore, I had to believe the guy on the radio was good because it seemed none of his buildings fell down, at least not easily.
Architect guy claimed that North America, which includes Canada by the way, wasn't much interested in building grand structures any more.
He claimed that 90 per cent of the big buildings going up now were engineered Lego structures built to house big box retail outlets like Target and Walmart and people and were meant to last no more than 20 years. And that would be fine, he said, because the business experts were telling him that with the rapid changes being experienced in the retail and social world we live in now, we should not expect our business outlets and living quarters to last that long anyway.
"Put them up, knock them down, put another one up, probably somewhere else," he said.
With that in mind, there wasn't much use in spending time and money on design work. Build the rectangular box and move in within a year. Wait for the roof to leak and the cement to crack in 15 years and then move out.
There are still some magnificent structures going up, but they are usually giant edifices paying tribute to some giant of industry as a head office in a large centre or a Middle East emir wanting to prove to the world that he's richer than that other emir and/or sheik next door. Those guys are still building wonderfully original structures or at least their architects are.
That's why I think it's rather important to preserve the few wonderfully old and interesting buildings we have in our midst now. We must understand, however, that while we'd love to preserve them all, some just aren't conducive to the preservation treatment. We can't make them work, we can't use them as historical structures and they're taking up valuable space. There are some like that. We lament their passing, but they just have to go. Others, however, are well worth saving, renovating and being given a new life, perhaps as something other than what they were originally designed to do.
I'm thinking of some former railway stations as one example. Some old arenas qualify, too, many of them built in post-war Saskatchewan as a community gathering place along with some well designed Legion Halls and other service clubs. That seemed to be a golden age of building in this province, that era from 1945 to 1960 and then again in our centennial year. How many Centennial Halls were built in 1967? Some of them were pretty neat looking, because we could make them look different if we wanted to. Now many of our structures are pre-determined cookie cutters using poly this and plastic that with vinyl touches and pasted on bricks and stones.
I guess that works for some.
