Sitting in slow-moving traffic on the M1 the other day, I found myself looking at an enormous Amazon warehouse. It took 10 minutes to get past it, a testament both to its size and the dysfunctional nature of the nation’s motorway network. It looks horrible because, by convention, we don’t tend to beautify warehouses. Victorian ones can become beautiful as the passing decades apply a patina of post-industrial glamour – then they can be converted into desirable flats. It remains to be seen whether the warehouses we throw up these days will ever acquire an inhabitable ambience. But regardless of era, at time of building, nobody ever cares.
Not like cathedrals. The builders of Salisbury Cathedral wanted it to be enormous and keep the rain out, just as the Amazon warehouse builders did, but they also felt it should look amazing for some reason. I’m not 100% sure of the precise reason. To glorify God? To convince the peasantry for miles around that God existed? To pump public money into the depressed masonry sector? Just to be nice? Because it was the middle ages and there wasn’t much else to do? You couldn’t order a games console on Amazon to while away your mortal span, so you may as well spend it building the tallest and most beguiling spike anyone could imagine.
