Questioning the Perceived Failure and Lost Heritage Value of James Stirling's Southgate Estate: A Post-Structuralist Post-Mortem

This research questions the hegemonic truths that are manifest within the teleological and totalizing voice of historical practice, problematizing the manner in which discourse, events and interpretation lead to an unstable valuing of architectural heritage; a process that often fails to preserve examples that represent great social, cultural and historical significance. It employs as a case study James Stirling's demolished Southgate Estate (1967-1992), which was built to form part of Runcorn New Town's social housing provision. Stirling is internationally revered as one of the Twentieth Century's most important architectural forces, and as his largest realized residential scheme, this estate would incontrovertibly signify immense heritage value within the context of today - all of his surviving UK buildings are now statutory listed.

Using a Foucauldian 'Archaeology of Knowledge', the discourses that surround the Southgate Estate's conception, life and death will be analyzed: an epistemologically appropriate means by which to inspect the allegories, differences and boundaries of thought that enabled such an acute shift from optimism to collapse. What supported such faith in this architect's experimental approach? Conversely, what lies behind the propagation of such disdain for its material realization? The result was not only the large-scale loss of architectonic artefact, but an undeniable waste of public money and embodied energy. Oral histories will be captured, used to both scepticise and legitimize the breadth of archival material, analyzed within a consistent post-structuralist framework to uncover the fluid plurality of truths that constitute the empirical remembrance of this estate.

Buildings are arbitrated based on a combination of material factors that determine the sense perception of their object, and on socially constructed codified meanings, prone to subjective interpretation. Whilst the former carries a large degree of permanence, the latter are ephemeral and fragile. The valorization of modern heritage is principally dependent on this latter influence, which uses arbitrary truths - as created, vindicated and acted upon by institutional powers - to judge concrete artefacts; representing an anti-democratic and temporally ineffective system. Southgate is used to challenge the way conservation of the recent past is conceptualized and administered.