Heritage value: What is it, who decides and how can we respect the past while designing for the present and the future?

Heritage value: What is it, who decides and how can we respect the past while designing for the present and the future?

Interviews with Helen Lardner, Louise Cox, Sheridan Burke, Peter Elliott, Ruth Wilson, Kevin Palassis, Ingrid Richards and Adrian Spence, Angelo Candalepas and Glenn Harper

Practitioners working with heritage, and architects committed to extending the life of existing built fabric, are constantly considering these questions as our cities grow and evolve, and the need to reduce our carbon footprint becomes increasingly evident. Here, we ask nine individuals with experience in the field for their views on the value of heritage, adaptive re-use techniques and designing new buildings that will endure.

The question of architectural heritage, and what constitutes it, is an increasingly fraught one in our ever-changing built environment. The existence of a multitude of different organizations, each with their own criteria, might make decisions cut and dried in some cases. But, depending on the site and the structure, a building’s value can be tangible or intangible, obvious or hidden, and tick-box criteria can fall short.

Different community and other groups inevitably feel different levels of attachment to different places.

And understanding the true value of a place can take significant time and research. But this understanding, and a consideration of the building or site in its whole-of-life context, is crucial for architects responding to existing built fabric.

In this age of climate emergency, adaptive re-use – treating buildings as continuums rather than static artefacts – can be a practical solution to the problems of heritage preservation and environmental sustainability. Although working with heritage can bring with it apparent constraints, Peter Elliott, whose practice is “unapologetic about designing for the present,” views these constraints as “fundamentally enriching.” When thoughtfully designed and executed, an adaptive re-use project can successfully nurture a building’s legacy while extending its life and the comfort, convenience and delight it can offer.

New buildings are, potentially, our future built heritage. In their work in the fast-growing city of Brisbane,

Ingrid Richards and Adrian Spence seek to contribute to the city’s “future history.” And in Sydney, Angelo Candalepas speaks of the need to create enduring architecture “which may be looked back upon by those yet unborn citizens with affection.”

As Lee Hillam reminds us in her review of Hill Thalis Architecture and Urban Projects’ adaptive re-use project 44A Foveaux Street (page 78), we never have a blank slate when creating architecture. “There is always context, there is always landscape, there is always memory, there is always value; we shouldn’t need a heritage listing to tell us that.”

How do we determine which buildings have heritage value, and who decides?

Helen Lardner: World Heritage listing is based on the concept of Outstanding Universal Value, meaning “cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity.” This suggests judgement will favour the exceptional, be inclusive regardless of culture or time and be values-based. In Australia, heritage assessment criteria generally stem from The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter

for Places of Cultural Significance, first adopted in 1979. Usually, the level of significance determines whether the responsible authority is the national, state or local government.

Heritage places are often assessed by practitioners using rigorous methodologies against agreed criteria. These practitioners may be a team with historians, archaeologists, architects, horticulturists or other trained specialists working alongside the community and stakeholders. People may struggle to appreciate heritage places when they don’t like them because of factors such as appearance or uncomfortable historical associations. Many heritage places have multiple historical layers and their significance is only revealed with detailed study.

Helen Lardner is the Australia ICOMOS President, a World Heritage advisor and specialist in twentiethcentury and industrial heritage. A heritage architect, Helen is chair of the Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority Conservation Advisory Committee and a member of the Victorian Design Review Panel. Helen is the director of HLCD, an award-winning, innovative heritage consultancy with a focus on high-quality conservation and adaptive re-use of complex places.

Contemporary attachment to place is hard to measure and sometimes contested. The concept of social value considers the nature and size of community groups, and the time and intensity of their attachment to places. A “rights-based approach” is about giving voices to community groups, including minorities, and embracing the principle of free, prior and informed consent of source communities before adopting measures concerning their specific cultural heritage. Indigenous people have a clear role in determining matters related to their cultural heritage.

So, who decides? Whose voice counts most when balancing multiple viewpoints and complex heritage values? In Australia, it is ultimately a politician or responsible authority who decides.

Louise Cox: In Australia, heritage value is determined by a multitude of different organizations. There are statutory bodies such as local government authorities, the state and territory heritage councils and the Australian Heritage Council, each with their own heritage registers. There are also non-statutory bodies like the National Trust of Australia, the Australian Institute of Architects and Engineers Australia, all with their own criteria and lists. Additionally, there are international organizations with local working parties; these include ICOMOS International with Australia ICOMOS and Docomomo International with Docomomo Australia. All of these organizations have similar criteria to assess buildings and sites for listing, as they share their expertise locally, nationally and internationally.

There are more specialized bodies that also feed into the statutory bodies.

We need independent bodies now more than ever to assess heritage, and we also need the views of the general public. Heritage should not be a political football used by governments to demolish things because they do not know what to do with buildings or sites, or because they are seduced by developers. Development can be good; alternatively, it can be disastrous and lead to the loss of items of great importance, or to terrible and unsuitable interventions that do not nurture a building’s heritage aspects. Adaptive re-use can actually extend the life of something and find a new way of using built heritage.

Louise Cox AO AM was the National President of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects from 1994 to 1995. She was elected to the Council of the International Union of Architects (UIA) in 1996 and was its President from 2008 to 2011. She is the Treasurer/Secretary of Docomomo Australia and a member of the 2020 Australian Institute of Architects National Heritage Committee.

Heritage buildings are sustainable buildings and should be assessed using more extensive criteria that look at the whole-of-life of the building or site, not just tomorrow’s narrow use or the current condition of an item that may not have been loved or tamed in recent years. As the principles of The Burra Charter establish, a considered approach to adaptive re-use can help extend the life of places of significance and allow new insertions in new forms.

Sheridan Burke: Australians may see places of heritage significance through different lenses but recognize the same core values, their lexicon similar. Historical, aesthetic, scientific and social significance are often used as criteria, with defined thresholds determining whether places are significant at a community, state or national level.

Sheridan Burke is a Sydney-based heritage consultant, advising and collaborating with owners and asset managers about practically sustaining heritage places. She is an appointed member of the ICOMOS international Advisory Committee, the Sydney Opera House Design Advisory Panel and deputy chair of the NSW Heritage Council.

Today’s national heritage conservation practice, led by the principles of the Australia ICOMOS Charter for

Places of Cultural Significance (The Burra Charter), has evolved beyond preserving building fabric and form to guiding the key processes of conservation and adaptation. It’s now well-recognized that building use or function and intangible or social values are part of assessing the significance of a place and are among the keys to achieving sustainable management in the long term.

Well-established tools such as Conservation Management Plans

(CMPs) and Heritage Impact Assessments play important roles in heritage decisions. Today, good heritage conservation practice also aims to ensure that progressive energy and emissions reductions are implemented as part of protecting and sustainably managing heritage significance. Energy Life Cycle Assessments repeatedly demonstrate that the conservation, adaptation and re-use of existing buildings is a highly sustainable practice, reducing resource consumption and minimizing waste. Integrating such an approach in managing heritage buildings provides new avenues for growth as the climate crisis pivots away from the “demolish and rebuild” development model toward the “sustain and adapt” future.

When the Sydney Opera House was World Heritage inscribed in 2007, the federal government’s nomination dossier noted that the use of the building was an integral part of its significance and that change would be ongoing. Indeed, the building has been in a state of almost continual adaptation to extend its life and prominence as Australia’s major performing arts centre since its opening in 1973, guided by a series of successive CMPs.

All works at the Sydney Opera House consistently implement its CMP policies as it navigates a pathway to becoming climate-positive by 2023, demonstrating that sustainable management of a place begins with understanding and defining how, why and to what extent it has cultural and natural heritage values: in sum, its heritage significance.

Just as the Opera House is continually changing to meet its future needs and conserve its significance, so too are many more everyday heritage buildings in which adaptation is based on a sound understanding of significance, and opportunities for change are readily achieved: new into old.

In heritage projects, how can architects best respect the past while also designing for the present?

Peter Elliott: Our understanding of architecture is deeply rooted in the world as we know it, embedded in our history and alive in our current milieu, past and present inextricably intertwined. One of the intrinsic qualities of architecture is its capacity to both reveal prior histories and encompass the new, as each generation rolls into the next. In our practice, heritage is a word we rarely use. We prefer a more nuanced respect for the architectures we inherit, regardless of their designated status. We search for potential value in the ordinary as well as the exceptional. Often, our architectural interventions are modest, almost not noticed. At other times, our actions are drastic and transformational.

Peter Elliott is the principal of Peter Elliott Architecture and Urban Design and the recipient of the 2017 Gold Medal from the Australian Institute of Architects.

In the end, we have to make judgements about what to keep and what to remove, before adding in the new. Sometimes the best strategy is to quietly leave the original building alone and build a companion architecture, leaving a clear demarcation of new and old. Whatever the circumstance, we are unapologetic about designing for the present, albeit mixed with the past. This is a design strategy that welcomes the contingent and accepts constraints as fundamentally enriching.

Ruth Wilson: Winston Churchill once said, “The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward.” For the State Library Victoria redevelopment, we looked back and saw a building that had been crafted with such beautiful ambition: to be the cornerstone of the new egalitarian and knowledge-based “Marvellous Melbourne.” When we looked forward, we envisaged a much-loved community place, welcoming to all and with something to offer everyone. The rich resource of its collection is an anchor and attractor but, equally, the spatial qualities of the 23 buildings that form the library, and the calm respite the institution offers a busy city, are just as valued in the ever-growing, ever-changing metropolis.

Ruth Wilson is a principal and board member of Architectus and the studio leader in Melbourne. She works in the higher education and public domains, most often in the redevelopment of large existing precincts. Ruth led the State Library Victoria redevelopment, delivered in collaboration with Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects.

Respect evolves from knowledge, so it’s hard to be truly respectful of something you don’t understand.

Taking time to deeply research a building’s history is the foundation of any successful refurbishment, restoration or adaptive re-use of a heritage asset – and it was the genesis of the State Library redevelopment. Gabrielle Moylan from Andronas Conservation Architecture played a pivotal role in researching the building’s fabric and the social history of its many functions over the decades. We wish to pay tribute to Gabrielle, who passed away after a period of illness just before the Institute’s 2020 National Architecture Awards.

Gabrielle encouraged the whole design team to look at the library as a continuum and to consider it our privilege to be shaping just one era of the building’s

history. Her research uncovered new aspects of the library’s history, which we came to know and love; that respect laid the foundation of our approach to reveal its authentic age, to strip back years of clutter and to honour the original form and spatial qualities. Ultimately, by understanding the building’s original ambition, we were able to meet its contemporary purpose.

Kevin Palassis: In the context of a heritage place, true understanding of place and past are the most valuable skillsets an architect can have when commencing the design process leading to re-use and adaptation. There is always a mix of obvious and hidden values within the existing fabric. The delight in the design process is to find what these are.

Though understanding can be met by following the requirements outlined in legislated processes establishing the significance of place, the most valuable approach should be to identify what the heritage place has to offer as an opportunity for current and future use – and not seeing heritage protection as a restriction.

Kevin Palassis is principal of Perth-based Palassis Architects. He has more than 40 years of experience in the field of heritage architecture, including masterplanning for Fremantle Prison, conservation works for Midlands Railway Workshops, and new adaptive works for the State Buildings, in conjunction with Kerry Hill Architects, and The Cadogan Song School at St George’s Cathedral.

It is important to note that not all proposed re-use and adaptation schemes are ideal within heritage sites and these make for the most demanding projects, placing enormous pressure on the heritage fabric.

We have the view that if you push a heritage place too hard toward a new use, you can “break the building,” degrading its heritage and artistic values. Analyzing the use and how it might fit successfully into the constraints of a heritage site is important as a primary action prior to any implementation.

To achieve the most successful outcome from the conservation and adaptation process, the quality of the new insertions should aim not to replicate but to respond to the existing fabric in order to create balance in the dialogue of old and new. That balance is the key. Ignoring it can only lead to disrespect, as in all of life’s situations.

When designing new buildings, how can architects ensure their work endures for future generations?

Ingrid Richards and Adrian Spence:

The accumulation of buildings over the history of a city is not only desirable but necessary if buildings are to embody our collective memories and aspirations.

Ingrid Richards and Adrian Spence are the directors of Richards and Spence, a Brisbane-based architectural practice specializing in urban infill retail projects and the creation of vibrant public spaces.

If our hometown of Brisbane is to “grow up,” we cannot keep demolishing our buildings to start from scratch each time. The instant precinct often lacks charm. Precincts that evolve over time, layering new uses and fabric over existing, allow the thread of past occupation to give character and delight.

We seek to widen our city’s local vernacular – a shift from a perceived temporality, with the aim of contributing to the “future history” of the city.

For this to occur we need well-designed buildings made of durable materials that are contextual – buildings that add value beyond their location. More importantly, the design must contemplate the evolution of the site beyond the current tenure through spatial flexibility that anticipates future programs.

The need for densification to accommodate population growth has long been at odds with the perception of Brisbane as a subtropical place dominated by single, detached, lightweight character housing (notably, the Queenslander). Surges of growth experienced in the past 50 years have struggled to address the transition from big country town to Australia’s third largest city. Central to this conundrum is the design of buildings that address issues of permanence and adaptability. Buildings designed for a long life with flexibility to accommodate various tenures is a type of passive sustainability that is difficult to quantify and seldom discussed in environmental forums.

Angelo Candalepas: The nebulous concept of “endurance” is cast in the minds of many in our profession as having to do with something “worth keeping”; something amiable to its time, unexpected yet delightful; something well-crafted that can last both through the tumultuous rivers of fashion and the burdensome gravity of time.

We have sadly started to believe, however, that architecture is no longer to be found in a “building” and that it is enough to simply create an “image” or something on paper. A memorable discussion with a professor of architecture developed my idea on the topic. I was being told that drawings were architecture more than buildings were, because images last longer; with the computer they never die. My only response was that anything that cannot die is not living in the first place.

Angelo Candalepas is the director of Candalepas Associates, a Sydney practice that has produced a wide array of projects with diversity in scale and typology. Angelo’s honouring of the great architectural influences of Kahn, Scarpa, Corbusier and the more local work of Murcutt and Madigan has seen his work develop into becoming a personal stamp on the Australian landscape, one that attempts to support ancient values within a contemporary practice.

The tools of architecture are fast becoming rare. Who these days presents ideas to their clients about the joy of movement through a work, the constriction or expansion of space, the materiality and history of a joint, the structural order and ethic of a plan, enfilade, spatial equilibrium, layering, rhythm, repetition, shade, shadow, light, fenestration, procession, compositional balance and that difficult subject, colour? We are far more inclined to present a concept rather than an architectural intention and we are fast becoming unaware that the two are not the same.

It is no surprise that there is a question here about endurance, as the subject of architecture is fast becoming elusive. My experience is that all attempts to create a work of architecture must start with observing and understanding the human and environmental condition of a place.

The language a work of architecture must use is its own language. The only way to create enduring works that may last for future generations is to offer buildings with “universal” and “architectural” intentions using the language of architecture.

Perhaps then we can also develop our skills toward an understanding of “beauty” or appropriate “aesthetic”; that which we have discovered to be relevant to our time; that which may be looked back upon by those yet unborn citizens with affection.

Finding an architecture that is beautiful is the final way and not knowing this has become the realm of those not engaged with the tangible world.

Who decides which late-modern buildings have heritage value?

Glenn Harper: The benefits of adapting built heritage, late-modern or otherwise, are well established. Yet in New South Wales, a state with many important late-modern public buildings, this opportunity is fraught as the state’s democratic system of heritage management is manipulated.

Glenn Harper is an architect, urban designer and heritage specialist with PTW Architects Sydney, and a member of the AIA (NSW Chapter) Heritage Committee. In 2015 he was awarded the Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship and in 2018 he edited the Brutalist Sydney Map for Blue Crow Media. Glenn was an expert witness in the New South Wales Land and Environment Court for the City of Sydney over the demolition of the former Bidura Children’s Court.

Complicit is the current New South Wales government, which curtails the recognition of heritage significance for many late-modern public architecture projects known to have heritage value. This was most alarmingly witnessed when the Sirius building (Tao Gofers, 1979), an important state public housing project, was sold without attributing heritage significance, an action that ignored the recommendation of the Heritage Council of NSW. This discriminatory approach to the future of this cultural item was tendentious and not in the public interest.

In 2018, the New South Wales

Land and Environment Court favoured the developer in the demolition of the former Bidura Children’s Court in Glebe (NSW Government Architect’s Office, early 1980s), a distinct public asset sold by the state government in 2014 for $30 million without attributing any heritage value. The court’s judgement determined that the building could not be adapted feasibly, and that it did not have any heritage significance.

The outcome at a third Sydney site, the former National Acoustic Laboratory (Department of Housing and Construction, 1975), gives us pause. The site was rezoned for housing prior to its sale by the Commonwealth, on the assumption that it contained no items with any heritage value. The Church of Scientology, Australia bought the site and then adapted this purpose-built complex successfully. Only by removing the politics and the associated, uninformed valuejudgements can the sustainable and cultural practice of adapting built heritage be validated.