Our paper will present a current example of architectural design that conserves traces of past destruction: the Linsiadar House on the Isle of Lewis, designed in 2011 by studio KAP, Christopher Platt’s architectural practice.
The architects chose to design a new residential building in and around the stone masonry walls of a nineteenth century cottage that had fallen ruin during the latter part of the 20th century.

We argue that the visualization of such traces of the past is a timely reconciliation of the century-old controversy between John Ruskin’s famous dictum “conserve, don’t restore” and Viollet-le-Duc’s call for rebuilding destroyed structures in the spirit of the past.

The strategy applied in the Linsiadar House is not only appropriate for the present time in which, at a global level, living in an historic building has become the exception rather than the rule. It is equally significant for any environment in which the obliteration of destructive impact would mean to eradicate uncomfortable parts of history. This applies not only to buildings that stood at the forefront of political debate such as St Michael’s Cathedral in Coventry or the Neues Museum in Berlin, but similarly to more humble structures that bear witness to the disruptions of the past.