House rules
Britain’s dazzling Houses of Parliament building, constructed from 1840 until 1870, is an international icon. But the building’s greatest legacy may be something politicians and tourists don’t think about much: the clean air around it. That’s the implication of newly published research by MIT architectural historian Timothy Hyde, who through original archival work has reconstructed a piece of history lost in the haze of time. As his scholarship shows, Parliament’s decades-long reconstruction was so hindered by pollution — the air was eating away at the new stones being laid down — the British government convened scientific inquiries into the effects of the atmosphere on the new building. Those inquiries spurred new scientific research about the environment at a time when Victorian England was rapidly industrializing, and represent a first, seminal case of examining our built environment to learn more about the natural environment. “The Houses of Parliament project was a catalyst, because of...