How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built by Brand Stewart

Author:Brand, Stewart [Brand, Stewart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101562642
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 1995-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

1990 - The new oak beams of New College, Oxford, were installed in 1865 by Gothic Revivalist Gilbert Scott, using timbers from college estates at Great Horwood and Akely in north Buckinghamshire. The building is the oldest surviving college hall at Oxford, completed in 1386 by Bishop William of Wykeham (master mason, William Wynford). The now-windowed opening in the roof was originally to let out smoke from an open fire in the center of the hall.

And he pulled his forelock and said, “Well sirs, we was wonderin’ when you’d be askin’.”

Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the College was founded, a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for five hundred years. “You don’t cut them oaks. Them’s for the College Hall.”

A nice story. That’s the way to run a culture.

Every time I’ve retold this story since I first heard it from Gregory in the 1970s, someone always asks, “What about for the next time? Has a new grove of oaks been planted and protected?” I forwarded the question to the authorities at New College—the College Archivist and the Clerk of Works. They had no idea.

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