Ward Block facade

THE HISTORICALLY AND ARCHITECTURALLY-PRESERVED 19C WARD BLOCK FACADES WITH THE NEW CORNICE.

(to view an enlargement click on the picture)

For about six months, right at the beginning of the project, it was thought that the top floor, added in the early 20C, was such an eyesore that it would have to be demolished and removed in order to return the Hospital to its originial 3-storey 19C state.Compare the picture of this 150-year-old state, after its use as a hospital, and the overdrawing of the proposed design.

The remedy JOA invented was regarded in the Journal of Conservation Architects as unique, in that it would never have been attempted by a Conservation Architect. This is because the normal solution is to either make new work very reticent, to the point of invisibility, but not to the point of 'faking' so that it looks 'old', or to make it aggressively alien and 'space age' using metal and glass.

JOA's solution is unique because it is a new 'masonry' cornice that is obviously novel - that is of no known 'period' But it is not 'alien' - in the manner of High-Tech. Nor is it, clearly, a 'period pastiche'. Our ability to invent such a thing derives from our thirty-year-long decipherment of the Architectural Tradition.

 

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