Saving the spirit of our places: a view on our built environment.

• Author: Nivala, John

INTRODUCTION

The places where we work and live have a spirit, a spirit that enlivens our present by reminding us of our past and anticipating our future. The ancients called this spirit the genius loci, a "cluster of associations identified with a place: pervading spirit."(1) It is the "distinctive character or atmosphere of a place with reference to the impression that it makes on the mind."(2) In our built environment, the genius loci is the power of the structures around us to create these associations, to make that impression.(3)

What should we expect of our built environment?(4) It should offer us order and variety, stability and progress, the old and the new, working together to create an external environment which we can see as meaningful.(5) This is not a demand that our built environment be beautiful. Beauty, to the extent that it could even be satisfactorily defined, does not go far enough.(6) A responsibly preserved built environment engages more than our aesthetic sense. It engages all of our senses, it awakens our memories, it fuels our aspirations. This built environment is more than just depiction; it is representation. We ascribe personal and cultural meanings to the significant structures of our built environment.(7)

These significant structures enhance our identity and our understanding of our culture.(8) Their destruction or defacement creates a sense of loss. Recent examples of this effect abound.(9) When the Venetian opera house, La Fenice, burned down, Italy was described as being in mourning. Luciano Pavarotti said, "[t]he entire world of opera feels like an orphan"; Venice without La Fenice is like "a body without a soul."(10) When a Japanese heiress bought and then vandalized a chateau of Louis XV's mistress, Madame du Barry, the French were outraged because the heiress had shown a "complete disrespect for [the] country's cultural and architectural heritage."(11) The French government decreed that "[c]ulture is not a product, it is the vital part of the national identity."(12)

Closer to home, Harvard University's decision to renovate the Harvard Union dining room, the Great Hall, generated "a hyperbolic debate about tradition, diversity, the relationship between space and intellectual life and the future of Harvard, not to mention the very fate of American culture."(13) Some saw the Great Hall as great art, others as a great artifact.(14) On the opposite pole, some saw the Great Hall as "an outdated relic, a symbol of a Harvard that is no longer there, and to which they bid good riddance"; others saw renovation and reuse as "the price you pay for not having the building be a dead remnant."(15)

Such incidents illustrate the power of the significant structures in our built environment. Preserving these structures recognizes the power of our past--its ideas, values, and culture--to inform our present ideas, values, and culture. We do not have to agree with the statements made by the structures, but we do have an obligation to preserve what was said, both as a basis for present debate and as a record for those in the future. Our view on our built environment must be long as well as short term.

Admittedly, a bit of mystery is at play here. Our built environment can

move us deeply in ways which are more spiritual than temporal.

It is as if we are being manipulated by some subliminal code, not to be

translated into words, which acts directly on the nervous system and the

imagination at the same time, stirring intimations of meaning

with vivid spatial experience as though they were one thing--something

like Wordsworth's great evocation of "unknown modes of being"

provoked by our wonder at Nature, only this time provoked by structures

and images that are man made.(16)

It seems undeniable, if perhaps not conclusively demonstrable, that our built environment plays "a fundamental role in establishing for each culture its form of stability," providing "the images of reconciled conflict and integration that strive to make us ... at home in the world."(17)

The structures of our built environment are the products of architecture. Architecture seeks "to fit multifarious elements into some kind of compact, cohesive, apprehensible scheme" and is indispensible in "helping us to understand the world and to, change it for the better."(18) A well built environment is a richly representative setting which infuses our lives with an identity and a sense of continuity essential to our well-being.(19)

We can reasonably ask that the places where we work and live be "made by art, shaped for human purpose," permitting us "to adjust to our environment, to discriminate and organize perceptually whatever is present to our senses."(20) The structures of our built environment do more than permit us to move about with ease and speed. They also serve "as a broad frame of reference, an organizer of activity or belief or knowledge ... [and] a useful basis for individual growth."(21) It is orientation and identification, individually and culturally.(22) We need, individually and culturally, an environment

which is not simply well organized but poetic and symbolic as well.

It should speak of the individuals and their complex society, of their

aspirations and their historical tradition, of the natural setting, and

of the complicated functions and movement of the city world. But

clarity of structure and vividness of identity are first steps to the

development of strong symbols. By appearing as a remarkable and

well-knit place, the city would provide a ground for the clustering

and organization of these meanings and associations.(23)

Such a well-built environment merits protection.

However, this protection involves, in large part, the public regulation of privately owned structures. We ask private owners to maintain at least the exterior of structures that we as a society regard as significant. The clash is between public need and private rights. Who are we as a society to demand that privately owned structures be maintained by the private owner for our benefit?(24) If we love it, why don't we just buy it?

The reason is the United States Supreme Court's decision in Penn Central Transportation Company v. New York.(25) The Court validated a process for identifying and preserving the significant structures of our built environment even if that process resulted in the structure's owner being compelled to maintain at least the exterior of the structure. Although the decision has been recently attacked, this article concludes that Penn Central remains a vital and necessary judicial landmark. It is the foundation for a preservation system which serves us all by saving the spirit of the places where we work and live, a spirit which cares about the past and the future, a spirit which gives us in the present an individual and cultural identity.

Part I of this article describes the individual and cultural values provided by the significant structures of our built environment. Part II describes the judicial system's gradual acceptance of government's right to determine that its citizens' health and welfare encompasses their right to live in a place which has preserved its spirit. Part III focuses specifically on the Penn Central decision, concluding that despite recent attacks, it remains a foundation from which we, as a society, can choose to preserve, in a principled manner, the significant structures of our built environment. Part IV uses the New York law validated in Penn Central to illustrate how local government and the judiciary have responsibly used a preservation law to manage change in our built environment.

I.

PSYCHOLOGICAL, BIOLOGICAL, AND CULTURAL VALUES IN OUR BUILT ENVIRONMENT

The significant structures of our built environment are the visualization of its genius loci; they create the meaningful places where we work and live.(26) The architecture which produces these structures is a social art, "a means of understanding ourselves and nature, a means of creating and a means of communication," a means of expressing order and significance in our environment.(27) Our built environment matters, affecting us as individuals and as members of a culture.(28) Not all structures enrich our individual or our cultural lives. Some are pedestrian, some are disorienting, some are just plain bad. But those that are significant define the very character of our surroundings.(29) It is not because the structure is singularly beautiful, but because it has contributed to "the actual beauty of the strong, finely detailed, self-assured place."(30) If we do not respect the spirit of our places, our built environment loses "those qualities which allow for man's sense of belonging and participation."(31) This has been called the "loss of place."(32)

Our built environment is not a work of art hung upon a museum wall or sited in a sculpture garden or available at the local cineplex. The built environment is public and unavoidable.(33) The significance of any structure in our built environment depends not only on its relationship to other structures but also on its relationship to those who come together in that environment.(34) Significant structures give meaning to the places where

we work and live.(35) When these structures are destroyed or defaced, we lose a vital sense of ourself in a place:

In general, the loss of things and places makes up a loss of "world."

Modern man becomes "worldless" and thus loses his own identity, as well as

the sense of community and participation. Existence is experienced as

"meaningless," and man becomes "homeless" because he does not any longer

belong to a meaningful totality. Moreover, he becomes "careless," since he

does not feel the urge to protect and cultivate a world any more.(36)

We all need an "existential space," a meaningful place to live.(37)

There is a biological as well as a psychological basis for our response to the built environment. If a structure evokes a pleasurable response "regularly...