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Steve replies:
John, I agree wholeheartedly with the above and the rest of your post, and since I'm from Philadelphia, I can easily see historic 'preservation' at its best and at its worst, and, unfortunately, taken as a whole (here in Philly), the summation comes close to being a joke (and I use joke here in its most serious sense). Hence, I will again bring up the notion of palimpsest, not only in reference to the new forthcoming Quondam, but to historic preservation as well. Regardless of whether its widely understood as such or not, all architectures manifest many layers of masks, and, like cosmetic surgery, historic preservation is a most extreme form of mask. With palimpsest on the other hand, although there is erasure and then over-writing, traces of the original (text) remain. The notion of layers (of texts), be they new or old, discernible or discrete, genuine or faux, is (for me at least) the 'true' reality. Semper theoretically took architecture back to the weaving of fabric. Perhaps Semper should have said architecture goes back to the weaving of fabrication.
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