eset rey een Rea ny James Crick emer’ ace) eee) Michael Hughes reer rer es Pee ees rt) eng aaa ao er eae) Scio) eC eee A eR egImmature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and goad poets make it into something better, or at least something different. T.S Eliot, 1920, ‘The Future of the Past Unit 12 investigates contemporary and historical trends that emphasise the interrogation of historical discourses and styles as a means of design. In particular we examine how these practices sample, adapt and then hybridise pre-existing references to elicit new significance. Such a hybrid can be a means of criticism as well as production, both in terms of what is proposed and how it is communicated, so that individual architectures explore and expose understandings of site, time and history. Modern Romanticism The term ‘romanticism’ is often applied pejoratively, suggesting disengagement from contemporary concerns. Instead, collaborations and conversations between painters, poets and scientists characterised early romanticism, which valued intellect as well as emotion, invention as well as history, time as well as place. Unit 12 identifies the romantic origins of an architectural environmentalism that has had a profound influence on subsequent centuries. Today, anthropogenic climate change ensures the increasing relevance of this evolving tradition. Monument and Ruin Contemporary technologies tend to focus attention on the ephemeral. But architecture has always involved a dialogue between the material and immaterial. In Unit 12 we consider the contemporary meaning of monumentality, and to do so, we draw attention to the ruin. Contemporary society tends to consider the ruin only in terms of melancholy decay. In earlier centuries, however, the ruin was associated with imagination as well as memory, indicating the potential for reinvention as well as decay, establishing a symbiotic relationship with an ever-changing context. The Air and Industry of London Recognising a ‘Hellish and dismall Cloud of SEACOALE’, John Evelyn proposed a number of practical and poetic remedies in Fumifugium, 1661, the first book to consider London's atmosphere as a whole. Coal-burning trades, butchers and burials were to be relocated east of the city so that the air and water would be unsullied. Evelyn’s proposal was only instigated centuries later, and London continued to be known as the “Big Smoke’ until the mid-twentieth century. London is now the cleaner, functionally segregated city envisaged by Evelyn. But to create compact and sustainable city, MArch Unit 12 proposes that London's industries - breweries, brickworks, cemeteries, power plants ~ are once again integrated into the city as long as they do not pollute its air and water, responding to Evelyn's poetic intentions. Matthew Butcher, Elizabeth Dow, Jonathan Hill