Old buildings burn down. Why? Many causes have been reported.
Natural causes. Broken glass is heated by the sun's rays. Dry wood burns more easily. Rubbish collects and becomes a fire risk.
Squatters wire up electricity unsafely. They light camp fires to cook. They want to heat themselves and the building in hot weather. They light fires to create light.
Animals chew through wiring. This happened to my friends' home when they were on holiday.
Rats eat wiring. Rats ate wiring in my car in London.Why? To sharpen their teeth, like cats. Because they don't know if something is edible until they try eating it. (Our son, as a toddler, ate sand on the beach, thinking it was sugar. A nasty surprise!)
Don't the animals know something hard is not edible? No. Nuts are hard. Tasty nuts are hidden inside hard shells.
Sometimes down and outs build fires to keep warm. Children set fires for fun. for the spectacle. Fire-fighters want the credit for rescue. Arsonists enjoy the power. Owners want to claim insurance. Owners want to clear the land quickly to replace with modern, higher, buildings they can sell. Burning is quicker and cheaper than paying for demolition. You cannot get permission to destroy, and/or it takes weeks of waiting. Finally, electricians using sparks to repair, rebuild, replace parts, accidentally set fire.
How can you find the cause?
Poland's Rebuilt Old Quarters
In Poland I visited the old quarter of Warsaw. The basement restaurants were clean and new. When I asked, I was told that what was destroyed in the war, had been rebuilt in the old style.
The same applies to other historic old styles. I was impressed. We don't do that in England. Or do we? More often we replace the old with new.
UK Listed Buildings
But now we have regulations protecting listed buildings. Renovations must be done in similar style.
UK and Mock Tudor
In England we built new buildings in new places copying old styles. Victorian buildings were often mock Tudor, black and white, a style favoured for some semi detached housing estates.
Italy Influencing The USA
In Italy I was shown buildings with frontages which were Palladian style. I had never heard of Palladian style. But when I saw it, I recognized it immediately. Two or four or more columns at the front, not just over the doorway, but up two stories or more, to a flattened triangle across the whole roof area.
In the USA and UK, many public buildings are built this style. Called neo-classical. Such as a town hall, even a railway station. Many mansions and homes would be built in this style. In Washington DC, The White House.
Thailand Building Styles
In Thailand I visited the home of silk king, Jim Thompson. I learned that i that country, and other Asian countries (borders have changed over time), because of rainy season typhoons and flooding, houses were moved from place to place to avoid bad seasons and bad weather, or simply to relocate.
Plugs and Panels
Instead of metal nails, traditional wooden plugs were used. Like modern Ikea furniture, the building could be flattened, compacted, made lighter, transported more easily. Re-assembled from a picture, or from memory of that building, practise on similar buildings, or skill and initiative. Like a jigsaw.
Buildings were traditionally built from prefabricated panels. Maybe they slotted in. Like modern sliding doors of glass, and sliding windows.
The living areas were above, on stilts, to avoid water below, where animals were kept.
Singapore Style
Nowadays Singapore public housing can be built this style, around a central courtyard. Thai buildings had a flowering or perfumed tree in the middle of the courtyard to provide shade. A bit like cloisters in a European monastery, or the quad of colleges in Cambridge, England.
Singapore city, designed by British Raffles, had shaded five foot ways to shade pedestrians (as well as the shops and shophouses) along streets of shops.
Just hope you don't end up with an extra plank or wooden plug, wondering, where did this go? Will my building fall down without this piece!
Singapore early housing estates were built with speed. The story goes that the minister, who had no experience of house building, was told to submit a plan by the end of the year. Instead he started building straight away. At the end of theyear his ony plan was to conitnue cosntructing equally quickly!
Japan And Post-Earthquake Reconstruction
In Japan, where historic and important buildings suffer from earthquakes, old buildings are replaced by the same style building, using the construction blueprints which are preserved elsewhere.
Plutarch's ship of Theseus Puzzle
If you replace a ship's planks one by one, at which point is it new? The planks are used to create the building elsewhere, and new planks copy the original indistinguishably in the old location, which is the original building?
AI and Reproduction
One might pose the same question about the Parthenon. If the reproduction is on the old site, but the original is in the British museum. Do the tourists really care which is old and which is new? Children might not know nor care.
Do we need an original photo, death mask, skeleton? Or will an AI image work as well?
Dead Bodies Tell Tales
I want the original skeleton of a living being because it contains DNA. It could prove murder, inheritable disease, lifestyle, diet. Or even create a clone.
With cloned animals and plants more questions are raised.
Useful Websites
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15686631/Absolute-inferno-Grade-II-building.html
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