Can you say "Aesthetics"?

Sometimes I wonder how folk's minds work. (Promise this won't be TOO much of a rant!:) ).

I live and work on a campus that is nearly 100 years old. Many of the buildings are solid and beautiful - at least, the ones that were built years ago.

But 4 years ago they started building with styrofoam. Sure, it's easy - it's like building with Lego, unless you haven't yet filled it with cement, the wind comes up overnight and you find your carefully-put-together first stage blown all over the place! (Quite amusing from a distance). But I don't trust styrofoam and I don't like it. For one thing it's not exactly environmentally friendly. If left out in the air long enough it wears away into non-biodegradable "snow" of styro-pellets. Heat or flame make it melt into a choking mess of harsh chemicals. For another, if you want to knock in a picture nail, you have to drill 20cm deep to find the filler cement - and hope the plaster doesn't come off in slabs while you're at it. There's no noise containment, it's hot in summer and cold in winter - and cracks.

I was offered a 3-bedroom house built of styrofoam a year back, so we could move out of the one-bedroom flat we're in and have room to breathe. I turned it down. I'd rather not chance my health or safety on a fire-hazard of toxic compounds.

The places look OK once they're plastered (IF the plaster decides to stick, and not fall off a wall at a time, as initially happened) and painted. But they've even put in styrofoam ceiling board and moulding. My brother joked that a fire would reduce your entire house to a hand-full of molten junk. An apt description - considering the stove and oven is placed next to and under a good deal of the stuff...

And now they're at the styrofoam building thing again.

This time they're putting a wheelchair access ramp up to the college gymnasium. With no regard for the building itself. It's a face-brick edifice, with ceramic tiled floors and steps, bordered by hand-worked metal railings. They've plonked a styrofoam and cement ramp over all that!



No regard for the original structure, or matching the style of building, or anything! And the styro isn't cheap - it costs the same as face-brick! It's just a helluva lot easier to build with.

They recently bashed down one of the original buildings, which was damaged by an earthquake in the 70s. All that's left is the foundation. I shudder to think what they're going to put on top of it....

Rant over!