How'd They Build That?

[Hastur]

Sweden is the home of cabin romanticism. Everyone wants a little red stuga with white corners. Preferably on an island or by a lake.

[Speaker to Animals]

For Messina, the issue boils down to the fact that this is his building, and he should get to decide what happens to it, not a city council or neighborhood activists.

Bollocks.
This was privately owned until 100 years ago, should the owner have had the right to pull it down and build an apartment block?

Preservation of old buildings is important unless you want everywhere to look the same and towns and cities not to have any character.
Personal greed is no reason to destroy history.

Wouldn't want to lose classic 20th century amusement park architecture.

[Montegriffo]

Right, 'cos old buildings should never be restored or preserved?

[Fife]

The myth of "public" property is the straightest and most direct path to the eradication of history.

[Montegriffo]

Nope. The love of money is.

[Speaker to Animals]

Right, 'cos old buildings should never be restored or preserved?

We at least have some idea of how the Chartres Cathedral looked and how it was used. Stonehenge was a just a pile of rocks, dude.

That doesn't make the archaeology less interesting, but to pretend as though that structure you see now is the original is fucking hilarious. It would be like Americans pretending the princess castle in Disney World was a real medieval castle.

[Speaker to Animals]

You can kind of get an idea from medieval manuscripts, apparently.

[Montegriffo]

Right, 'cos old buildings should never be restored or preserved?

We at least have some idea of how the Chartes Cathedral looked and how it was used. Stonehenge was a just a pile of rocks, dude.

Yeah, the last private owner should have been able to remove the stones and plough it up like he wanted to do.
In fact, it's location alongside the busy A303 makes it a prime location for one of these.


Ps, that's Notre Dame, not Chartres.

[Montegriffo]

just a pile of stones

Really?

This is what Constable drew


This is from the atlas of John Speed, 1611


This is from before the restoration


This is the oldest known depiction from the 1440 manuscript Scala Mundi

The little sketch is a bird's eye view of the stones, and shows the great trilithons, the biggest stones in the monument, each made of two pillars capped with a third stone lintel, which stand in a horseshoe in the centre of the circle. Only three are now standing, but the drawing, found in Douai, northern France, suggests that in the 15th century four of the original five survived.

So, tell me again how it was a pile of rocks and no one knew how it looked.

[Montegriffo]

Notre Dame has been heavily restored many times over its 850 years.
That spire which collapsed during the fire was built in the mid-1800s to replace the 12th-century original which was unstable.
Now it's just a pile of melted lead and burnt oak timbers.
We should just knock the ruins down and build an apartment block.
The prime location makes it a very valuable piece of real estate and its owners should be allowed to do what they want.