Questioning the Perceived Failure and Lost Heritage Value of James Stirling's Southgate Estate: A Post-Structuralist Post-Mortem

本研究质疑了在历史实践的目的论和总体性声音中表现出来的霸权真理，质疑了话语、事件和解释导致建筑遗产价值不稳定的方式；这一过程往往不能保存具有重大社会、文化和历史意义的例子。它以James Stirling的拆除的Southgate Estate（1967-1992）作为案例研究，该建筑是作为Runcorn新城社会住房供应的一部分而建造的。斯特林是国际上公认的20世纪最重要的建筑力量之一，作为他最大的住宅项目，这个遗产在今天的背景下无疑具有巨大的遗产价值——他所有幸存的英国建筑现在都被法定列入名录。使用福柯式的“知识考古学”，围绕索斯盖特庄园的概念，生命和死亡的话语将被分析：一种认识论上适当的手段，通过它来检查寓言，差异和思想的界限，使这种从乐观到崩溃的急剧转变。是什么支撑了这种对建筑师实验方法的信任？反过来说，这种对物质实现的蔑视的传播背后是什么？其结果不仅是建筑文物的大规模损失，而且是对公共资金和隐含能源的不可否认的浪费。口述历史将被捕获，用于对档案材料的广度进行怀疑和合法化，在一致的后结构主义框架内进行分析，以揭示构成这一遗产的经验记忆的流动的多元真相。建筑是基于材料因素的组合而进行仲裁的，这些因素决定了其对象的感官知觉，以及社会构建的编纂意义，容易产生主观解释。前者具有很大程度的持久性，而后者是短暂而脆弱的。现代遗产的价值增值主要依赖于后一种影响，这种影响使用武断的真理——由机构权力创造、证明和采取行动的真理——来判断具体的文物；代表一个反民主和暂时无效的制度。索斯盖特被用来挑战最近的保护方式的概念化和管理。

This research questions the hegemonic truths that are manifest within the teleological and totalizing voice of historical practice, problematizing the manner in which discourse, events and interpretation lead to an unstable valuing of architectural heritage; a process that often fails to preserve examples that represent great social, cultural and historical significance. It employs as a case study James Stirling's demolished Southgate Estate (1967-1992), which was built to form part of Runcorn New Town's social housing provision. Stirling is internationally revered as one of the Twentieth Century's most important architectural forces, and as his largest realized residential scheme, this estate would incontrovertibly signify immense heritage value within the context of today - all of his surviving UK buildings are now statutory listed. Using a Foucauldian 'Archaeology of Knowledge', the discourses that surround the Southgate Estate's conception, life and death will be analyzed: an epistemologically appropriate means by which to inspect the allegories, differences and boundaries of thought that enabled such an acute shift from optimism to collapse. What supported such faith in this architect's experimental approach? Conversely, what lies behind the propagation of such disdain for its material realization? The result was not only the large-scale loss of architectonic artefact, but an undeniable waste of public money and embodied energy. Oral histories will be captured, used to both scepticise and legitimize the breadth of archival material, analyzed within a consistent post-structuralist framework to uncover the fluid plurality of truths that constitute the empirical remembrance of this estate.Buildings are arbitrated based on a combination of material factors that determine the sense perception of their object, and on socially constructed codified meanings, prone to subjective interpretation. Whilst the former carries a large degree of permanence, the latter are ephemeral and fragile. The valorization of modern heritage is principally dependent on this latter influence, which uses arbitrary truths - as created, vindicated and acted upon by institutional powers - to judge concrete artefacts; representing an anti-democratic and temporally ineffective system. Southgate is used to challenge the way conservation of the recent past is conceptualized and administered.