Paul Finch's letter from London: A talk at the RIBA highlighted our obsession with history, and how we sometimes misunderstand it

摘要

The British near-obsession with heritage, and the dilemmas involved in architectural responses to it, was well ventilated at the RIBA last Friday at an afternoon debate titled "The Architectural Uneasy: Relationships between old and new'.rnThis was a memorial event (two others will take place later in the year) on issues that interested Peter and Muriel Melvin, two architects who practised for four decades and, in Peter's case, served many years as an RIBA vice-president. In his later career, he had conversations about old and new, partly in the context of his own work, with Francis Golding, former secretary to the Royal Fine Art Commission, who chaired the event with characteristic insight.