Parliament refurb poses important questions about correct way to conserve architecture

I recently spent a weekend in Paris. While there, we decided to queue to see the recently(ish) reopened Notre Dame.

I spent the queue reading an article on Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc that I had been meaning to get to so entered the great cathedral feeling particularly thoughtful about the great conservation debate – to restore as was and risk fictionalising a building by choosing an imagined moment of perfection, or to stick rigidly to the The Society For The Protection Of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) approach, repairing in such a way that the fabric is protected and the full history is seen. (I’m great fun on holiday!).

In these two buildings we seem to have particularly tricky case studies of the “correct” way to practise conservation architecture

It seems a particularly topical subject in light of the recent publication of the report into the refurbishment and renewal of the Palace of Westminster –  which has caused much comment in political periodicals about consultant overreach, and even led to conspiracy theories that the report was designed to add weight to arguments to move Parliament out of Westminster altogether. In these two buildings we seem to have particularly tricky case studies of the “correct” way to practise conservation architecture.

It’s a question I didn’t give too much time to for the first few years of my career as I was largely working on new-builds. However, in the past few years I have been increasingly engaged in retrofit, conservation and heritage work and this debate has been sitting behind about half the decisions I make on a daily basis.

The SPAB repair of old buildings course and the books on conservation practice slowly accumulating on my bookshelves have not answered the question, they have raised more; and the approaches I see from other architects on published projects all offer different answers, that all seem valid, well intentioned and well reasoned.

To return to Notre Dame, Viollet-le-Duc’s approach of “restoring to a complete state that may never have existed at any time” is startling, bold and one I would struggle to convince myself of the validity of… but nevertheless created (or recreated) a building central to the French psyche. Despite contemporaneous protestations from artist August Rodin that Viollet-le-Duc had “delivered a cathedral which had never existed at any time”, Viollet-le-Duc’s “complete state” of 1864 is the state that the French demanded this 13th-century cathedral was returned to following the 2019 fire.

There was no public desire to rebuild the cathedral in a new version of a “complete state” or a “truer” medieval one, and even President Macron’s strong desire to leave the mark of the 21st century (or his presidency) on the building was not enough to create significant change. 

And the Palace of Westminster? Options in the recently published report are, perhaps, a version of a “complete state”. They consider the decarbonisation of the largely 19th-century building – a highly ambitious and technically challenging feat; the increased accessibility of all areas (even the most back of house); and new visitor centres. This restoration project goes far beyond conservation of the stonework.

The biggest problem with conservation is that it isn’t just the buildings we are conserving. It is the image of them that lives in the minds of all the people who have ever interacted with them

To follow the logic of Viollet-le-Duc, would this to be to create a “complete state” that reimagines Parliament in a more perfect state? Or is it sacrilege to adjust the listed building for the 21st century in this way? Or is it a vision of Parliament that Britain in its current imperfect state just cannot afford being leveraged to political ends?

Perhaps the biggest problem with conservation is that it isn’t just the buildings we are conserving. It is the image of them that lives in the minds of all the people who have ever interacted with them, and the more noted the building the greater this image is. In Notre Dame and in the Palace of Westminster we have buildings that are more than the sum of their parts – their “complete state” is a deeply, emotionally held image tangled with political and religious ideals and national identities.

Conservation debates about whether or not it is good practice to clean stonework showing the grime of centuries barely even register here – the physical reality of the building is almost secondary to its emotional resonance.

I don’t have a good answer. However, I did leave the queue for Notre Dame, entering the cathedral as Sunday mass was finishing – the building filled with the sound of the organ and the smell of incense. The (cleaned) stone is glistening white, the side chapels repainted, the atmosphere thrilling in the way that only great cathedrals are.

Perhaps it was fanciful for me to glimpse the last remnants of carefully shrouded scaffolding, the white limestone and to relish the stones resonating with the last notes of the organ voluntary and imagine my experience similar to that of someone 100, 200, even 800 ago. However, regardless of whether this was the “correct” thing to do, the French have achieved a stunning feat of rebuilding in an improbably short time and Notre Dame lives on.

Wherever we land with the Palace of Westminster design options, I hope our national monument lives on with at least half as much vigour.