Patricia Green | Maintenance and upkeep – Jamaica architecture writing on the wall

When the women’s Bible study group dissected Daniel chapter 5 verses 25-28, “the writing on the wall”, amazingly, a number of persons began to send in the group chat images of writings on their own walls. The general feeling was fear: Will my apartment collapse on me? Even before I commented, the chat resounded with: “These are structural cracks.” “Yes, my apartment building is on sloping land.” “My landlord is unable to do anything about them.” “Imagine that mine is a new building.” Are these the same signs today of “… mene, mene, tekel, parsin …” that Daniel interpreted for the King of Babylon around 626BC?

I recall my commentary in The Gleaner on May 15, 2018, ‘Cornwall: It’s the maintenance, not the design’. Cornwall Regional Hospital is an outstanding modern architecture internationally whose building failure stemmed not from design, but from systemic lack of maintenance and upkeep. Opened over 40 years ago in 1974, there have been piecemeal repairs, seemingly without a comprehensive maintenance strategy.

SINGAPORE HIGH-RISE REHABILITATION

Ng Keng Gene wrote in the Straits Times on April 16, ‘URA to study how to give Singapore’s ageing modernist buildings a new lease of life’. He introduces its high-rise architecture, “… built during Singapore’s post-independence years in the 1970s and 1980s, are an important and often striking feature of its cityscape. Yet time has taken its toll on many large modernist buildings, which are in need of major retrofitting and upgrading … .”

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) of Singapore is to guide policies on how to maintain and rehabilitate its city of modern high-rise architecture. The strategy is to examine buildings constructed in the modern architectural style that are about 30 to 50 years old and have a gross floor area of at least 8,000 sq metre or are at least eight storeys tall.

Interestingly, Singapore government-led strategy also assumed a responsible lead to rehabilitate a number of prominent state-owned modern buildings.

What of the Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay, Jamaica, after closure three years later still to resume full operations?

A URA spokesman added “… instead of redevelopment, URA would like to encourage building owners to explore rehabilitation ... this extends the buildings’ lifespan and allows them to be adapted for new uses … it could allow them to retain elements of heritage, identity, and a sense of community … .”

HELP CUT CARBON EMISSIONS

Gene cited Associate Professor Yeo, of the Singapore University of Technology and Design, “… rehabilitating large, modern buildings was not only a technical challenge but also a financial one … it typically is less profitable for owners under current real estate market conditions to rehabilitate buildings than tear down and rebuild them, and hence it would be useful if there are also policy studies on how to make rehabilitation more financially viable … this will correct the current financial imbalance between conservation and redevelopment of older buildings, and may incentivise more to consider conservation … .”

Yeo also said that ‘… a push for conservation makes sense in the context of the Government’s initiatives to cut carbon emissions under the ‘Singapore Green Plan 2030’… .”

Repeatedly, pleas to successive governments to incentivise conservation and preservation strategies of Jamaica’s historic architecture proved unsuccessful. Valuable building stock across rural and urban environments as educational tools for sustainable construction detailing to teach the next generation of architects and others in the construction sector continue to perish. These architecture survived earthquakes and hurricanes as historically resilient responses to the vagrancies of climate and natural disasters as products of Jamaican craftsmen of African descent. Today, this architecture suffers neglect, with looming destruction through urban ‘renewal’ from bulldozers, instead of urban ‘regeneration’ with conservation strategies for the next generation.

The sad collapse of a two-storey house in Rosemary Lane, Central Kingston, December 2017, inspired the recently aired Television Jamaica documentary ‘Living in shacks’ magnificently produced by Kelisha Williams. This also exposed the extent of heritage architecture stock in downtown Kingston rapidly facing bulldozers.

What would be an appropriate Singapore model for Kingston with its enviable collection of post-1907 earthquake technology of a modern architecture response in both reinforced concrete and ‘nog-framed’ building technology, some unique to Jamaica? Yeo may have the answer, “… rehabilitating buildings will serve Singapore not just on the heritage front, but also in terms of sustainability, especially with the high carbon footprint of demolishing buildings … .”

The G8 Summit, which took place June 8-10, 2004, at Sea Island, Georgia, USA, produced the three R’s initiative of sustainability: ‘Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle’. Gene reported that heritage-conservation expert Johannes Widodo, from the National University of Singapore’s Department of Architecture, lamented the loss of modernist buildings, adding that the Singapore study was timely and urgently needed. Widodo, who is also the founder of the International Network for Tropical Architecture, is very interested in Jamaica architecture and how it enhances the study of Tropicalism. He added that the COVID-19 pandemic had “… provided us [Singapore] with the opportunity to rethink the possibilities to retain, recycle, reuse, and rehabilitating our modern heritage … .”

KINGSTON ARCHITECTURE HERITAGE CONSERVATION

In 2015, Kingston was declared a UNESCO Creative City of Music, then reggae music of Jamaica was inscribed in 2018 as UNESCO Intangible Heritage, thereby the Kingston historic urban landscape and its architecture became an international platform requiring conservation, not demolition.

As restoration architect and creator of the Bob Marley Museum at 56 Old Hope Road, another example of Jamaica heritage architecture, guiding Rita Marley along with Dr Eleanor Wint and Neville Garrick into the end-product enjoyed by President Obama on his Jamaica visit in 2015, I have been working with my close professional colleague and friend, Architect Christopher Whyms-Stone, on the restoration of the Trench Town house of Bunny Wailer’s father, Thaddeus “Thaddy Shut” Livingston. It is architecture heritage of significant Jamaica native ‘bullet-wood’ technology, and Whyms-Stone was instrumental in its Jamaica National Heritage Trust designation in 2018.

Citizens yearn for Jamaica to follow the Singapore practice of sustainable governance. Therefore, should Jamaica adopt this Singapore architecture maintenance and upkeep strategy including incentives for conservation and preservation of its urban environment? How should citizens interpret the writings on the wall as heart-retching news unfolds over the Surfside condos in Florida?

Patricia Green, PhD, is a registered architect, former head of the Caribbean School of Architecture in the Faculty of the Built Environment at the University of Technology, Jamaica. Send feedback to patgreen2008@gmail.com.