Wealden Times | WT171 | May 2016 | Restoration & New Build supplement inside

WT Supplement
Richard Hawkes
for and on behalf of Hawkes Architecture
The main danger when approaching a project which involves an
extension to a listed or historic building is forgetting that we’re
living in the 21st century. Too many architects are obsessed with
mediocre pastiche mimicry of the past, distilling the wealth of
historic building development and using it like a crude kit of
parts to be assembled to create all manner of banal hotchpotches
of nonsense. In any other period of history, buildings and their
extensions could be dated easily by looking at the materials and
techniques that were used and the limits of technology at any
given time. Elizabethan oak-framed farmhouses were often
unashamedly face-lifted when Georgian façades were the
equivalent of Botox for buildings.
An elegantly proportioned clean-lined parapet extension with vast
sash windows crashed on to the side of a 300-year-old Wealden hall
house would seem brutal today, yet we now seek to preserve the
tale such buildings tell in aspic and resist any notion of maintaining
philosophical consistency by using 21st century materials, fashions
and functional indulgences.
The National Planning Policy Framework states at paragraph
60: “Planning policies and decisions should not attempt to impose
architectural styles or particular tastes and they should not stifle
innovation, originality or initiative through unsubstantiated
requirements to conform to certain development forms or styles.”
I applaud and fervently support this national guidance. Maybe
we’ve been tainted by mediocre post-war development or the
dismal reality of many 1960s
architectural explorations? I
prefer the consistency revealed
by the old buildings, whose
story more honestly reflects the
sourcing of materials, sense
of place, limits of technology,
cultural obsessions and fashions
which prevailed at each stage of
their rich development.
The images, above, of Tidebrook
Manor demonstrate my philosophy perfectly. The architects were
ORMS, where I used to work before setting up my own practice.
Hawkes Architecture, The Bull Pen, Saynden Farm, Five Oak Lane,
Staplehurst, Kent TN12 0HX
01580 892739 www.hawkesarchitecture.co.uk
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