The Boiled Frog Syndrome

This book is a study of the effects on humanity of aspects of the environment, in particular, but not only, the built environment. Its title derives from our accommodation to gradually deteriorating, but unperceived, conditions, like a frog in water slowly being heated. It is really two books, the first on health hazards in the environment, and the second on the subtle qualities of architectural design. Each is likely to appeal to a sector of opinion, but a broad taste will be needed to be drawn to both parts of the book. The first part of the book examines the ways in which the built environment affects health – air contamination (especially by air conditioning), land contamination, radon gas, asbestos, lead, Legionella, negative ion depletion, noise, light and colour, geopathic stress, electromagnetic fields, energy fields, generated electricity, overhead power lines, radio transmission masts, mobile telephones, computers, electric wiring, strain injuries, and others. Each is studied in some detail, with reference to research and studies. To those leaning towards suspicion of these aspects of modern life, these pages will provide helpful material, and to those already convinced on these issues it will provide copious detail, but the unconvinced are not likely to be converted. The treatment appears buttressed by a powerful conviction that modern life is fraught with enormous risks, but ignores all the past threats that have been eliminated. Modern science and technology have brought enormous improvements to living standards, great reduction in poverty, more leisure, greater opportunity for education, and better health and life expectancy. In the developed countries there is a universal pension problem with people living longer than before, and in the undeveloped world modern health care has reduced premature mortality enough to produce population pressure on food resources. If cancer has increased, may it not be that we are now living long enough to contract it? In the developed world modern life has greater opportunities and greater richness than ever before. The chance that the people will turn from the benefits because they have brought hazards with them is inconceivable. The immediate hazards of the present are small beside those of the past. Who would reject modern dentistry? These are issues which concern only a narrow spectrum of public opinion, and which contradict accepted scientific and academic opinion: : this makes them neither right nor wrong, but it does impose a powerful duty of proof. Science has not always been right, but it is not often wrong. Many of us now make considerable use of computers, in ways that were unimaginable only few years ago. Fields familiar to me have been completely transformed. Computers seem to me a modern miracle, and I will not lightly give this up, since I so far perceive no ill effects whatsoever. While there are well known hazards of eye strain and posture, there were also posture and eye hazards in working at desks and drawing boards. If modern living has hazards, there are also hazards in traditional living. Even cello players have characteristic strain problems, I have been told! The second half of the book looks at more subtle aspects of the built environment: traditional design, natural ventilation, influences on site selection, orientation, and arrangement, geomancy, Feng Shui, subtle energies, the chakras, ancient medical traditions, and medicine and architecture, and this is followed by a substantial examination of the nature of architectural values and principles. This part of the books looks at proportion, number, astrology, and the architectural principles of the Roman Vitruvius. All of these studies are very fully examined, with great clarity, but the author's conviction is set out with assertion rather than persuasion. Thomas Saunders is very critical of modern architectural education and practice, and accuses it of ignoring all these values. This is not quite true, as, for example, the archetypal modern architect, Le Corbusier, fully embraced the use of proportion, the Golden Section in fact, and wrote about it in books that are well known. I was taught it in my architectural education. He writes critically of modern swings of fashion, but these have been a part of architectural life since the Elizabethan period, where architectural style could contradict itself completely in a few decades, and this has extended through every century since. In every aspect of modern life there is a spread of taste and opinion, and this reflected in architecture. Diversified contemporary life is not likely to accept a single strand in any field. He is critical of Town Planning legislation, asserting that it encourages more intense building. On the contrary, Town Planning legislation has restricted building, and has prevented all our cities from being surrounded by urban and industrial sprawl, as is the case in parts of France and the United States. It is the system of land tenure that encourages high density development, because the profit derived from the social need in the community goes to the land owner. He ascribes to architects far more power than they have. They are the servants of those who commission buildings, who accept nothing not to their benefit, including architectural style. Building has three foundations, the patron or client, the builder, and the designer, and they all work within contemporary society. Society dictates what it requires through its legislators, levels of government, financial institutions, economy, and popular culture. Conditions in Britain, and most of Europe, I dare say, do not allow some of the choices urged on architects. There is very little choice of building site – building where you will is not possible in a densely populated community. The use of land is constrained by the need to respect the rights of neighbours. In the past, the privileged could move whole villages if they spoilt the view, but no longer! While a good deal of what Thomas Saunders writes is valid, it stems from within society, and, largely, from past influences in society. There are many other negative aspects of society, social breakdown, family breakdown, the breakdown of education, and endemic greed, which similarly have their roots in the past. Some people view life today as a great disaster, with everything failing, but there are others who see that beneath the surface, a great and wonderful change is taking place. Sir George Trevelyan, who will have been known to many who read this, used to congratulate all who "had chosen to live now", especially "those younger ones, and we older ones will still be beside you when we have gone on to another life." He felt that we are at the birth of something new. I have often wondered what it would have been like to be alive when the cathedrals were built, or in Florence during the Renaissance (mainly dangerous, probably!), but perhaps we also are living in such a time, and in the future people will look back to our time with envious curiosity.

This spiritual change raises the final question. One of the more subtle issues raised by Thomas Saunders is essentially the question of the source of quality in architecture, which must also draw in quality in art, and perhaps wider fields as well. He places great reliance on The Ten Books of Architecture of the Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollo, usually known simply as Vitruvius. It is a pity that the only substantial guide is a work from Classical Rome, because while the political, military, and managerial skills of Roman civilisation are clear and still evident all over Europe, their art has never been held in the same regard. The sculpture is secondary to Greek sculpture, and their architecture never achieved the breathtaking quality of the remains of Classical Greece. Even the mouldings, the shapes of the architectural detail are crudely geometric beside the subtlety of Greek mouldings, which can never be described in terms of simple radii and dimensions. Rome built technical marvels, huge aquaducts, and the giant dome of the Pantheon, but it built no Parthenon, no Alhambra, no Hagia Sophia, no Palenque, no Durham, no Chartres, no Sainte-Chapelle, and probably not even a Petit Trianon. Vitruvius certainly wrote a primer of classical architecture, useful to classically oriented architects, but there are no primers on how to build marvels like those mentioned, because the quality of spirit can be expressed only in metaphor, and never explicitly. Builders (patrons, architects, and artisans) who have found some knowledge of spiritual reality, and who are also skilled in their craft, will build wonders, but sleeping builders will not be helped by any primer. I found this a provocative book, and the preparation of this review very thought provoking.