The meaning of icons

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The equally distinctive eighties octagonal glass pyramid that tops the atrium of the former 'New Library' along with one length of external wall is all that remains of that edifice. The atrium has been stripped of its outer panelling, changing its colour from silvery white to pale blue, the colour of the thermal insulation beneath almost the colour of today's sky. Since yesterday one quarter of the octagonal top has been taken down. I guess by tomorrow lunchtime, when the guys knock off for the weekend, another distinctive townscape feature will be only a matter of photographic record. But will anybody remember them? Are there any stories attached to them that made them in a real since 'iconic'.
I hate the use of the word 'iconic' applied to any fancy edifice whose image PR people and politicians propose as representative of the thriving status of a city or an institution. I hear our poorly educated young graduate professionals talk about 'iconic' images. How oxymoronic can you get? Icons are pictures telling stories, usually sacred stories. There's little sacred about the modern vanities that 'iconic images' promote. But stories do give places and their distinctive edifices meaning approaching the 'iconic' - they earn the right to be regarded thus with the passage of time, rather than because somebody with cash or political clout decides it must be like that.
So are there, I wonder, any stories that might have attached some symbolic meaning to these two disappeared images from Cardiff's townscape. There have been many a moan from passers-by about the disappearance of these buildings so recently erected in the memories of most older Cardiffians, but I'm not aware of any protest campaigns to try and save them. Did they really matter to nobody? Or is it that people learned not to care when the original eighteenth and nineteenth century tenement buildings in the city centre fell to the developers' ambitions.
It's also important not to forget that there's nothing new in what happened to 'our heritage' in the city centre during the 1970s. My Grandmother lived in an old tenement building not far from the city market where the family had a stall in the 1880s. This was pulled down in the 1890s to make way for the final expansion stage of the venerable David Morgan department store, currently being recycled as prestigious expensive apartments and posh retail outlets.

Plus ca change!

Not with a bang but a whimper

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Lately, I've been out almost daily with the camera capturing changes in the cityscape, as the final stages of the SD2 demolition work draw nearer, then publishing them on the church website. Last week the Western Mail ran an article on my project, but I still haven't seen it. For once, none of the congregation have saved me a copy, as they usually do. So I'm not even sure if the journalist included the website address, which to my mind was the whole point of the exercise.
At the very last remaining corner of the Oxford House building the distinctive, very sixties 'modern' ironwork and glass brick lantern top began to list over the weekend, as the supporting structure was progressively eaten away by the huge 'lobster claw' demolition machine. It was still there last night when I left at four, but at this morning's Retail Partnership Board meeting, the chair, David Hughes Lewis, reported that it had disappeared overnight. Apparently it was taken down just after I'd gone home with a camera full of pictures last night. Taken down without ceremony. An icon that has outlived its usefulness. No even anyone cheering or booing as with Saddam's statue in Baghdad. I have published a shot of the crumpled lantern ironwork sitting on top of of a fifteen foot high pile of concrete rubble. It's still discernable, if you know what you're expecting to pick out in all that visual chaos, but so insignificant now it's not on the skyline.
It's rather strange to think that it's just gone from public view to the scrapheap with hardly a mention. Did anyone take a photo? If so, I'd be very jealous. Why? Because it's part of the story I want to tell, I guess.
The cherry tree just underneath the safety cladding at the foot of the building over which this lantern presided is now thick with pink blossom, and surrounded by white plastic shrouds that protect passers by from small flying particles. The tree is glorious, its setting is as bizarre as one of those expensive art installations that involve parcelling up public buildings. I remember seeing a park full of trees in winter thus wrapped, not against the cold, but to draw attention to their shapes (on the theory "you don't know what you've got till it's gone"?). Daft, but it made me think, as I watched the buildings to be demolished having shrouds up over them - like those to be executed .... defiant or otherwise.