On Thu, 8 Mar 2001, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> Is not that amazing that there are places on earth where people live
> surrounded by structures created by civilisations that no longer
> exist? A sharp contrast to the American barbaric capitalism that
> incessantly levels even its own creations, no matter how magnificent
> (cf. the Penn Station in Manhattan).
As Ada Louise Huxtable once said: "There is no art as impermanent as architecture. All that solid brick and stone mean nothing. Concrete is as evanescent as air. The monuments of our civilizaiton stand, usually, on negotiable real estate; their value goes down as land value goes up."
Supposedly, according to Leon Krier, sixty percent of German buildings survived the Second World War, but less than 15 percent of those survived the industrial plans of 1954-1984.
According to Francis Duffy, the average life of an office building in Britain is 50 years. In North America, closer to 35.
Michael __________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com