The ethics of lasting Middleton Inn revisited
james moses
Settlement implies a benign and sympathetic occupation, the selection of a specific and favored place, and the engagement of that place to economical use; settlement is the establishment of home. Our growth is the opposite of settlement. We have forgotten the rule that the use of a place must not be separate from the abiding in it; we are intent on uses so disrespectful and unnecessary that the place becomes un-abidable. — W G Clark, “Replacement”, 1991 1
To question architecture’s longevity in the climate crisis is critical as we come to terms with the fact that the carbon embodied in most of the planet’s existing buildings will linger in the atmosphere for three hundred to one thousand years. Extending the lives of buildings to amortise that carbon is increasingly obvious and urgent given the International Energy Agency’s forecast that global floor area will increase from 244 to 427 billion m 2 by 2050, a trend that means a doubling of area by 2060, equivalent to building all five boroughs of New York City each month between now and then. 2 While climate is the most pressing issue of our time, in the United States the interrelationship of race, power and democracy at the heart of both the mythology of the country’s founding and persistent conflict among its peoples, leads to the question of what should be done with buildings originally made to serve problematic, or worse, institutions. How should a building be re-purposed when the social conditions of the time in which it was built are abhorrent? As an opening to such conversations, consider the Middleton Inn in Charleston, South Carolina, designed by Clark and Menefee Architects between 1982 and 1985. 1 When the Middleton Inn was published in the architectural press shortly after its completion, the images were bracing. The architecture seemed both fresh and timeless. Its tactility and grounding in the landscape softened the abstraction of its expression; the simplicity of forms and materiality seemed appropriate and allowed its site to play an equal, and at times dominant, role in the composition. Forty years later, the architecture of the inn retains this sense, while merging even more fully with its site. Except for some interior finishes, the buildings feel like they could have been designed within the last five years. This does not imply that the project was ahead of its time, rather that it exists outside of time and that the influence of place is the driving force behind the architecture.
James Moses
1 Clark, W.G. ‘Replacement’ in Richard Jensen, Clark and Menefee . Princeton Architectural Press, 2000. pp 10-13 see also Boles, Daralice. “‘A Place Apart’. Progressive Architecture , May 1986, pp.83-91. Clark, W G and Charles Menefee. “A House and a Waterside Inn.” 9H: On Rigor, 1989. pp 104-109 McCarter, Robert. Place Matters: The Architecture of W.G. Clark . ORO Editions, 2019.
2 IEA, ‘Global buildings sector CO2 emissions and floor area in the Net Zero Scenario, 2020-2050’. International Energy Agency , 2022. iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-buildings-sector-co2-emissions-and-floor- area-in-the-net-zero-scenario-2020-2050 . Accessed 6/25/2023
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on site review 43: architecture and t ime
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