Someone should write a musical about Bess of Hardwick, the Elizabethan aristocrat who got fabulously rich through her astute dealings in mining, glass-working and husbands. She outlived four of the latter, men who themselves had acquired great wealth through, among other things, robbing dissolved monasteries. She also had built, in her old age, Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, which should be on the bucket list of anyone with any interest in architecture. I finally got there last week, after speaking at the Buxton International Festival in the same county.
Nothing can prepare you for the impact of the building, which is a fraction of the effect it would once have had. It is a fearless and fragile hilltop castle, celebrated for its profligate use of glass and for the ornate tapestries on the inside walls, both of them bogglingly expensive at the time. The two together, when abundant daylight lit up the fresh colours of the fabric, would have made the building dazzle. The big windows would have made the Pennine crags and dales, seen from the grand rooms at the top of the house, feel like your personal property, which in Bess’s case was at least partly the case. Now the tapestries are pale and to stop them fading further the windows are shrouded, but with a little imagination you can make out a basic truth, that the past is neverendingly radical and strange.
Language barrier
The daughter of a Ukrainian friend goes to a London school. She is there, as are others from her country, because the Russians invaded their homeland. Her uncle was killed by the Russian army, while fighting on Ukrainian sovereign territory. So mother and daughter were horrified to receive a message from the headteacher telling them that the school’s language of the month would be Russian and that students would be encouraged to learn some of the country’s language and culture. When they objected, the school said that it was sorry that they were upset, and that the girl didn’t have to take part in these activities if she was uncomfortable.
Russia is of course the country of Tolstoy and Rachmaninov and Andrei Sakharov, as well as Vladimir Putin, in the same way that, even when Hitler was in charge, Germany was still also the country of Goethe and Beethoven. But just as no one should have asked refugees from the Third Reich to immerse themselves in German words and creations, the same should not be done to victims of Putin’s aggression, which includes among its aims the extinction of Ukrainian culture. I may be proving Godwin’s Rule here, but in this case the invoking of the Nazis is entirely justified.
Wall of shame
A living wall, where lush planting is made to grow on the vertical surfaces of a building, can be an appealing and diverting thing. It is never, though, in any meaningful way, a contribution mitigating climate emergency, as it requires maintenance and infrastructure out of proportion to its always modest size. This doesn’t stop corporations installing them on their buildings, in order to give off a vaguely ecological vibe.
But living walls are the pet hamsters of architectural virtue-signalling, in that they have a way of becoming dead if they’re not cared for properly. Green walls, as they’re also called, become brown – as has recently happened on a Marks & Spencer on Ecclesall Road in Sheffield, which when it opened in 2011 claimed to “fully embed” the principles of biodiversity. M&S blames “drainage issues” and promises to replant, but this doesn’t stop the eco-emperor looking very naked indeed.
• Rowan Moore is the Observer’s architecture critic
