58 C O N T E X T 1 1 4 : M A Y 2 0 1 0 Vox pop James Moir, guest commissioning editor for this issue’s theme on building preservation trusts, is director of the UK Association of Preservation Trusts and works part-time as a conservation officer with Dacorum Borough Council. I find APT members hugely inspiring for their sheer tenacity in championing buildings at risk. As far as anything else is concerned, my partner Liz manages to put all the above into perspective. What has been your best idea? Probably realising that historic buildings are the best templates both for great design and understanding past societies – in their massing, proportions and detailing; in their use of sustainable local materials; in the way they encapsulate the skills required to produce great architecture; in the way they are ordered into spaces that tell us about how past societies lived and worked; in their decoration and embellishment as records of past aspirations and achievements. Take historic thatch. It is a beautiful, sustainable material that bears an individual’s signature. At the same time it can tell us what medieval peasants were eating, what their corn fields would have looked like and how the corn was harvested. What would you like to have been if you had not become a conservationist? A film director or, more plausibly, a global locations scout. How do you reply when at a party someone asks what you do? I am upfront about the APT as the conversation usually leads to asking them for some kind of support or involvement. What is the biggest frustration in your job? Generally, people failing to realise that the historic environment is irreplaceable, the most sustainable resource that we possess and an unrivalled catalyst for regeneration. Specifically, knowing that I am using only about three per cent of what my computer is capable of doing. What would you like to be doing in five years time? Sitting on a sunny veranda playing with my grandchildren or writing a novel. Maybe that is the 10-year vision. What is your favourite building? I was lucky enough to grow up in an Old Rectory designed by Edward Buckton Lamb, so that was a good James Moir at theVivat Trust’s North Lees Hall in Derbyshire (see p40) Who has been your greatest inspiration? Someone different at each stage of my life – as a kid, probably my Dad, who produced TV programmes about the National Trust and wouldn’t hesitate to drive up to country houses and ask to be shown around. At school, my history teacher, who abandoned the curriculum and spent a whole term instead on the Observer’s Book of Architecture. As a graduate, Colin Richmond, who taught me that dung was as valid a topic of history as great deeds. As a postgraduate, Raphael Samuel, whose work on Headington Quarry revealed that 19th century squatters could speak directly to you, and Charles Phythian-Adams, who painted landscapes in words and wove together communities, folklore and social anthropology in an inspirational cocktail. Right now,
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=