Chesterfield Spire

There is no finer spire than that of Chesterfield Church. It is the result of a mistake of course but is the finest piece of Gaudi architecture north of Barcelona.

Spire of Chesterfield Church
Spire of Chesterfield Church seen from train

Walter Benjamin was concerned with ‘aura’ and the impossibility of meaning remaining constant across time.  The ‘aura’ of this spire is maintained by it being quite simply ‘up there’ and properly hard of access.  The ‘aura’ is the twisting of the ordered, the contortion of the normative.  All the result of error, poor planning, imperfect execution.  There the passage of this artefact across time both changes in meaning (a mistake to the object of admiration – the failed engineering feat to one more wonderful than the ideal) and changes meaning (embodies the post-modern condition a materially emergent from the collapse of modernism).

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