I have just returned from the annual meeting of the ICOMOS Theory and Philosophy Committee.  The meeting was held in Baku, Azerbaijan, and the subject was ‘Heritage Under Pressure: Perspectives of Historic Urban Landscapes’. The focus of the meeting was the recently adopted UNESCO Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscapes, more familiarly referred to as the HUL Recommendation. As one of the co-authors of the Recommendation, I felt a certain need to defend its theoretical orientation.

The meeting revealed, once again, the fairly deep philosophical debates currently gripping the heritage conservation field. This was perhaps most evident in the final presentation, by Boguslaw Szmygin of Poland, Secretary General of the committee. His presentation, entitled ‘HUL Recommendation as Element of Paradigm Shift in Heritage Protection’ was a pessimistic view on the potential impact of the Recommendation. He pointed out that it introduced at least three dangerous elements – a view that historic urban landscapes are dynamic rather than static, an acceptance that the opinions of heritage experts might be qualified by the opinions of the general public, and an interpretation of the historic urban landscape as having social, cultural and economic components of value in addition to, and potentially in competition with, material values.  These views were reinforced by a number of presentations by the Europeans at the conference, who see the greatest danger to the historic urban landscape being the intrusion of contemporary architecture, particularly high-rise buildings.

In a sense the title of Boguslaw’s paper is a reference to Gustavo Araoz and his Malta paper, which had suggested that there is a paradigm shift, whether we like it or not. There is a strong view that even the acknowledgement of a paradigm shift endangers the credibility of a carefully-constructed conservation field built on assumptions that should not be toyed with – views that privilege a material-based, more static and visual understanding of value. My own view is that not only is there a paradigm shift, but that the shift is necessary, and healthy, to ensure the sustainability of historic urban landscapes around the world.

One of the ways of viewing the difference between the two views is the emphasis in the HUL recommendation on a layered view of the historic urban landscape. The definition in the UNESCO document reads as follows: “The historic urban landscape is the urban area understood as the result of a historic layering of cultural and natural values and attributes, extending beyond the notion of “historic centre” or “ensemble” to include the broader urban context and its geographical setting.”  The acceptance of historic layering introduces an attitude that may, by extension, accept the introduction of contemporary layers. In my view, this is appropriate, with the question then being the need to develop the tools for ensuring the development of contemporary layers that protect and enhance the historic values of the place. The HUL Recommendation provides a framework for developing such tools, insisting that contemporary interventions be harmoniously integrated, and respect regional context. This seems to me a pretty good starting point for considering specific contexts.

A strong but poignant example of the complexity of historical layering was provided by Ms. Amra Hadzimuhamedovic, Commissioner of National Historic Monuments for Bosnia-Herzog.  Her presentation, entitled “Viva la Memoria: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape” sketched out the complex history of urban landscapes with successive religious and ethnic associations, now compounded by efforts to create new and false histories in support of current political objectives. Similar complex layerings were discussed by those involved in territories disputed by Azerbaijan and Armenia. Memory is a key component of the relationship between tangible and intangible components of urban landscapes, and an aspect that must be understood as a profound modulator of value and as an impetus for intervention. In the Bosnian case, the proposed contemporary intervention – a parody of history – was neither integrated nor respectful of context.

The development of a more dynamic view of the historic urban landscape is of course more complex and more risky than a static approach focused on protection. So too is a shift to an ecological view of the urban setting as an interplay of social, cultural, and physical forces – rituals as well as artifacts – rather than simply an emphasis on the material and visual understanding of place. But the insistence on what I would term the aesthetic bias – driven by architects and art historians and with the photograph as its primary analytical tool – is applicable primarily to those places constructed with an overarching aesthetic intent. Other than Versailles and Brasilia and Chandigarh and a few other architectural and urban design utopias, this approach may miss the components that create the memories that make historic urban landscapes so rich and so full of cultural memory.

The meeting in Baku did not resolve the issues, and a subcommittee has been established to capture at least some of the key discussions and debates. It will then be up to ICOMOS to decide whether to produce its own document, as a companion to the UNESCO Recommendation. The Recommendation itself is not a tightly-constructed document – it has the weakness of being the product of an international committee further edited by the member states – and it may indeed be useful for ICOMOS to develop something intermediate between theory and practice. There will be an enormous challenge in developing a language that brings together the widely diverging views of its members, but the Nara Document is proof that the possibility is always there.

Herb Stovel, one of the key architects of the Nara Document, might have been the very best choice at this point to take responsibility for a companion ICOMOS document. His recent death has left a void that was never more evident than in the context of the Baku meeting.

Three presentations at the meeting did provide wonderful promise for moving ahead – all were intellectually provocative and carefully constructed. The presenters were Michael Turner of Israel, who spoke on ‘HUL: The Way Forward’; Vassilis Ganiatsas of Greece, who spoke on ‘The Historic Urban Landscape as Finite Attributes and Infinite Wholes’; and Silvio Mendez Zancheti of Brazil, who spoke about the concept of dynamic integrity. Together with people like Amra Hadzimuhamedovic they provide the promise of strong intellectual debate and renewal within ICOMOS and the conservation field more generally.

Julian Smith

So I mentioned that we were going to Lunenburg in our last post. And we’ve gone and come back now about a week. It’s taken me a few days to recover from our marathon trip there and back and to reflect on the wonderful cultural landscape that Lunenburg represents.

While there we experienced Lunenburg in the tourism off season, which was nice – we never had to search for a parking spot and things were quiet. On the other hand, things were quiet!!! (I think we spiced things up a bit); most homes were still vacant (their owners only inhabiting them in the summer season); every shop closed at 5pm and I think that most of the people manning the shops lived in other small communities and not in Lunenburg proper. This is worrisome, since this is essentially what NOTL is like. Don’t get me wrong, the architecture was amazing (what up Lunenburg bump!), the people were wonderfully friendly and welcoming, and we even managed to find the one pub where dinner was served and locals attended. But you can feel that it is on the brink of becoming just another tourist town.

This is what terrifies me a bit about world heritage designations. The designation sets out to protect a place that has significant cultural and built heritage which seems to be at risk. But in order to stabilize the place, all but the smallest of progress is halted; all change is carefully controlled to the point of putting architectural creativity on the back shelf; but no matter what people begin to change how they live. The culture becomes one of tourism; the shops begin to cater to those from away instead of offering to locals; the boat building industry becomes a spectacle for entertaining tourists; the buildings begin to resemble something you’d find in a New England fishing town. It seems to be inevitable.

I’ve written before about putting your eggs in one basket, i.e. tourism. Unfortunately, it seems that once you start down the path of designation, all a place seems to become within the North American context is a caricature of its former self, for the sake of drawing in the tourist bucks, when people should be looking both to the past in order to identify what it is that makes their culture unique and bringing that forward.

That being said, there is hope for Lunenburg. There is a wonderful sense of community (which extends well beyond the borders of the old town of Lunenburg into the neighbouring towns and countryside. The local farmer’s market (which happens on a Thursday – totally new experience for me) was absolutely wonderful. The pickings were scarce, but there was still local wintering over produce, plenty of fish, locally roasted coffee beans and magnificent pastries. There is a great sense of local artistry still present, with wonderful shops that have locally made artwork, handicrafts, and of course the pride of making Lunenburg dories. There is a quirky little bookshop on Montague St. called Elizabeth Books, which is only open at night— sometime after dinner until 12 or until you are done hunting. There if you ask the right questions and wait for the book shop owner Chris to ponder your query, you’ll find great treasures. Oh, and he also rents movies to the locals.

These sorts of experiences really gave me hope that there is still enough of a sense of community awareness, of what is really necessary to make a place thrive, which is people, who work, live and breath the salty air of Lunenburg.

While we were there we also had a chance to take a look at the iconic Lunenburg Academy and do a bit of an assessment of its heritage features. This building is designated as being both of provincial and national heritage significance but more importantly it is of great significance to the community—being the school that everyone has attended since 1895.

The whole of the building is in remarkably good condition for being a wooden-clad building on the coast. The interior heritage material is also almost completely intact, and could easily be converted into a wonderful space that could continue to be the centre of the community.

All in all, our trip to Lunenburg was a wonderful experience. We got to bring all of the knowledge that we have been learning over the past two years together in one place. Not only did we do a hands on building assessment of the Academy, we were able to assess the cultural landscape that it is within, not only drawing from the history of the site but from its present conditions, both of which, I hope will help the community to find a great use for the building which will continue to represent the community’s cultural heritage.

Our friends in the environmental conservation field are not without some of the same problems as plague the cultural resource conservation field. With the introduction of both environmental and cultural heritage legislation in the last few decades of the twentieth century, experts sprang up in both fields. Experts were needed to testify in court cases, and to argue the finer points of impact statements and compliance performance and mitigation measures. Academic programs sprang up to certify the expertise. As a cultural heritage consultant recently advised a group of Willowbank students: learn the legislated requirements and then follow the trail of work that springs up in their wake. That advice could equally well be directed at young people wanting to earn a living in the environmental field.

But that is a problematic way to develop a culture of sustainability. In a legal framework, the focus is on problems and threats, and the quantification of the data. I have talked previously about the problem in reducing cultural heritage to its legislated norms, but three projects in the last two weeks have made it clear that we have the same problem in our relationship to natural resources.

The three projects – the Lansdowne Park redevelopment in Ottawa, a private home in eastern Ontario, and an institutional development in the Niagara area – are all facing enormous complications and costs brought on by current environmental legislation. The focus is on certain materials – asbestos, lead, a few others – where quantification is easy and the legislation is highly developed. There are now armies of experts scouring the countryside to make profitable careers from being paid to find the materials and organize their removal and disposal. The levels of threat are quantified in what appear to be scientific frameworks that are above question. And yet a number of the assumptions are questionable, and are driven by the experts who benefit from the consequences. Who is defining risk, and how? Who is quantifying the relationship between removal and leaving materials in place, from a global perspective? What happens to the enormous amounts of money being generated by this industry – is this a benign shift of resources?

More serious is whether this environmental activity, driven by bureaucrats and consultants and based on quantitative rather than qualitative criteria, is creating sustainability. As with the cultural heritage field, true sustainability is created by embedding, in the community, the skills needed to deal with the built environment. Expensive consultants and expensive removal and disposal requirements are not sustainable, and never will be. They do not create a social or cultural environment that is sustainable. Instead, as with the legalistic approach to heritage conservation, the instinct is to find ways around the system, to hide the problem, to hesitate to engage in conversation. Recent polls have shown declining commitment to environmental causes, at least in their more high-profile regulated formulations.

The recent experience in Goderich, where an August 2011 tornado did major damage to the historic core, is an example of the convoluted situation. The Ontario Ministry of the Environment invoked its legal authority under its regulations to prevent access to many of the damaged historic properties. Major additional damage over the following days, which were marked by heavy rains, occurred because building owners and conservation architects were prevented from repairing vulnerable parts of the buildings. The environment bureaucrats on site were inflexible, despite the presence of conservation professionals such as Chris Borgal who had proper protective equipment. Robert Shipley’s article on the situation, in the February 2012 issue of Municipal World, probably overdramatized the problem and in any case put it too much in the context of environmental regulations versus heritage regulations – two warring factions neither of which holds the answer for true ecological development. On the other hand, the rebuttal to Robert Shipley’s article by Goderich Councillor Jim Donnelly also has problems. He argues that Robert Shipley has no right to criticize the engineers who made decisions about structural integrity, safety, restoration or demolition, and costs. As he says “Such issues are the daily stock-in-trade for those professionals. That amorphous shadow cast upon their qualification must be eradicated by categorical rejection.” I would argue that it is entirely reasonable to question the qualification of many professional engineers to be controlling the agenda in either the environmental or heritage fields. They help create the regulations and they profit from their application. On the other hand, their training in dealing with historic properties is for the most part almost non-existent.

Creative solutions in both the environmental and heritage fields are needed before we fall prey to people in both areas continually pressing for tighter legislation and stronger penalties. The students who arrive at Willowbank are fully committed to the sustainable use of both cultural and natural resources. They understand the need for regulatory frameworks – the 20^th Century brought with it some very disturbing practices, which need to be continuously challenged. But they also are looking for positive rather than negative approaches to design and development, to qualitative as well as quantitative measures of progress. It is the positive approach, in the end, that wins friends and influences people, and that creates the basis for long-term and sustainable practices.

As a preamble to what I can imagine will be an amazing outpouring about our trip to Lunenburg, I thought I’d share some of my pictures and thoughts on our recent trips to Ottawa and Toronto.

Our trip to Ottawa was chockfull of events. Upon arriving, we had an overview from the NCC on how the commission is organized and works, as well as a tour of some of their projects on the grounds of Rideau Hall.

We then attended the opening reception of the 2012 ICOMOS Canada conference at the magnificently designed Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat. Visiting this architectural gem (it really is – it’s design is based on beauty and structure of a rock crystal) was an amazing and unique experience (See pics below). Not only was the space full of light and beauty, it was amazing to hear about the work that the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) does throughout the world. This was especially relevant for us, because the AKF’s take on development involves all aspects of culture, but often invests in the rehabilitation of an architectural feature within a community – by a community – to reinvigorate both the sense of a place and a people.

We then attended two conferences, the first being the ICOMOS Canada conference, which centred on tourism and world heritage sites. This was followed up by the Carleton Heritage Symposium. It was interesting to see where the thinkers in the world of heritage are at, and many of the speakers sparked lively discussion amongst our own Willowbank group. And we all shared a proud moment while listening to our very own Geordie Manchester speak about the importance of “the hand” in heritage appreciation.

After returning from Ottawa, we took the week to work with Francois LeBlanc on contemporary design interventions. Francois gave us amazing tools for identifying and speaking about design, not only in heritage settings but generally. We even went on a walking tour through Toronto with both Francois and Julian. We visited the Ontario Legislative Building, for a run down on how their heritage resources are managed. We then toured the Distillery District. It was incredible to see how some of these amazingly functional historic industrial buildings had been transformed into beautiful spaces full of patina and light, which conveyed the ambiance of the place’s history through modern interventions.

A modern design layer in the Ontario Legislature Building provides a beautiful, interesting and functional space.

Distillery District, its all in the human scale and feeling of the place.

One of the themes of both visits, though perhaps not the overt goal, was a comparison of how private and public funds accomplish heritage aims. It was interesting that in visiting both the NCC and the Legislature of Ontario, our visits were very similar. At both, we sat and were told how the organization of institution worked and who had purview over what, this was then followed by a tour of their respective projects. In comparison to this, at both the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, and in the Distillery District, we were first invited to experience the place before being told anything about the goals or organizational structure or overarching principles. In both of these places, the end result spoke for itself, conveying a story much greater than that told in the nuts and bolts of who has control over each individual heritage aspect.

This is not to say that a public institution cannot create amazing results, the Legislature building is a wonderfully conserved building but it has had many sympathetic architects who have gone in with an understanding of the earlier history and knowledge of the overarching design principles of the original architect as well as the purposes the building is meant to enable. But often on public projects, there are just too many people in the mix, and the overarching design clarity that can be afforded by the funds and vision of a private developer can produce absolutely magnificent results like that seen in the distillery district. And yet, often developers get it wrong too.

At Willowbank, we are being trained to understand how to work and accomplish great projects in both the private and the public sectors of heritage. I think that a lot of our success will come from being able to see the bigger picture, and keeping the end goal (creating places that give visitors a sense of what was there before) within sight. This has to inform not only the reports we write for our clients but also every job that is undertaken within a project, large or small. So instead of seeing a place which is made up of component parts we experience a place that is whole.

It seems somewhat unreal that it has taken us this long to make our way across the border for a full-fledged field trip, considering its been right across from us for a full two years, and we’ve only fleetingly seen the grandeur of its architecture in passing by for other field trips. So it was great to get a chance to take a look at some of the big projects there, namely, the Larkin Terminal Warehouse, the Guaranty Building and of course, the Darwin Martin House.

We started out at the Larkin Terminal Warehouse in the “Hydraulics” neighbourhood of Buffalo, in what was once a booming industrial area that housed the many buildings of the Larkin Company, perhaps most famously (and infamously, once it was demolished in 1950) the Larkin Administration Building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The Larkin Administration Building, built in 1906, a masterpiece of design by Frank Lloyd Wright.

All that's left of the Larkin Adminstration Building, is this sad and lonely pier...as well as an adjoining parking lot.

We met with the developer of the Larkin Terminal Warehouse, Howard Zemsky, who has fully embraced the task of reusing the heritage buildings of this neighbourhood, rehabilitating them and in the process helping to revitalize the area. He has developed quite a few of the buildings in the area, and is in the process of creating an outdoor recreational public space which will have a raised seating area, a restaurant and an open air pavilion and will soon host farmers’ markets, special events and festivals. He has managed to really showcase the buildings in this area, starting with the Larkin Terminal Warehouse, in a mere 10 years and really rejuvenate the area.

The Larkin 'U' Building, one of the many Larkin company buildings, rehabilitated by Howard Zemsky in the past 10 years.

The area being developed into an open public space, with the raised seating on the right, a small gas station building turned into a restaurant in the middle, the pavilion to the left and the Larkin 'U' Building in the background.

We followed that up with a great lunch hosted by Bob Skerker, the head of our U.S. Willowbank Foundation, at what is apparently a local icon of a restaurant, Chef’s Restaurant, where we had some real American Italian food, and got a chance to speak with Bob, whose advocacy for heritage buildings in Buffalo, and the heritage field in general is amazing.

From the “Hydraulics” neighbourhood, we went uptown to the Darwin Martin House, in the Parkside neighbourhood of Buffalo. It was amazing to hear the history of the site, and to really experience a Frank Lloyd Wright building in person — it was my first visit to one! And let me tell you, studying his work on paper and in books is nothing compared to experiencing what one of his homes feels like. His designs are so thoughtful and beautifully carried out. They are doing an amazing job restoring it, even though the price tag is amazing as well.

The Darwin Martin House! Two stories of pure horizontality.

Close up of the brick; it just exudes the horizontal. The thin vertical joints are struck flush to the brick face and in a slightly lighter mortar, meant to make their appearance recede. While the wide horizontal joints are deeply raked, so the horizontal shadows are emphasized. All I could think, was that the masons must have hated him!

Then we went to, what I think, was the piéce de resistance, the Guaranty Building. Built by Louis Sullivan, at a time when the last gasps of neoclassical architecture were dying out, this building was the forerunner to the Skyscraper, emphasizing the verticality of the building in a way that is a complete decorative celebration.  The building is one of the first steel and curtain wall construction buildings and is clad in the most beautiful decorative terra cotta units, while the inside has been restored to its former glory, complete with heritage mosaics, art glass ceiling panels, and beautiful bronze finished metal work. It has truly been a labour of love and real civic pride which has been the result of the law firm Hodgson Russ’s investment in the site.

This close up of the building's cornice really shows the decorative detail that the terra cotta contains throughout the whole building.

Decorative bronze light fixture with mosaic ceiling.

In all, it was an amazing field trip and I can’t wait to go back again and see what else Buffalo has to offer.

This time: the photograph.
Greg Hill, who has gone on to become the first curator of indigenous art at the National Gallery of Canada, wrote an exceptionally fine thesis as a graduate student at Carleton. In it, he pointed out that part of his cultural heritage as a Mohawk is to live in the world in a way that is not dominated by multi-point perspective and European notions of representation. And it is true that perspective’s strength is also its weakness – it creates a carefully-orchestrated separation between the observer and the observed, and thus begins the process of separating us from our environment.

Perspective became part of a specific relationship to landscape through painting, and it is perhaps not insignificant that two of the greatest imperial centres of the last millennium – Europe and China – were developing perspectival modes of landscape painting almost simultaneously. Separation from nature has the benefit of more easily allowing domination of the physical world, and a sense of our removal from the ecological ebb and flow.

In the last hundred years, perspective in landscape painting has given way to perspective in photography. While the painter at least went through a process of constructing the perspective, the photographer can let the camera do it automatically. The photograph is then easily taken as a kind of reality, rather than as a kind of representation. The photographer who understands his or her craft is always exploring that power of representation. But for the rest of the world, the photograph becomes the substitute for reality, an assumed one-to-one correspondence. And now that reality is transferred to three-dimensional mapping and to all varieties of Geographical Information Systems.

The challenges of the photograph as a key medium for understanding our environment are many. Much of our significant cultural heritage was created to be experienced, not to be photographed. Significant cultural information may be more accurately gleaned from more ‘primitive’ forms of representation. Photography as a primary mode of inventory is more likely to lead to object classification than to an understanding of ecological systems and process. The success of our interventions may have very little to do with the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs.

Willowbank has courses in photography. These mentors are fully aware of photography as an interpretive process. But at times we need to ask ourselves how to shape our understanding, design our interventions, and record our place in the world with other forms of representation.

In my last editorial, I mentioned the upcoming ICOMOS Theory conference in Azerbaijan. I have just received an invitation to present a paper on the opening morning, for which I am both grateful and honoured. One of the requirements is that each presentation must have, at a minimum, fifteen images. Does that itself become part of the discussion about new paradigms? It is interesting to muse on how the photograph can be used as a way of explaining the shift from an aesthetic to an ecological bias in heritage conservation.

Julian Smith

Over the past few weeks I’ve been struck by the differences in approach and attitudes towards heritage that have been brought forth by some of our instructors. We recently had one instructor who insisted that adaptive reuse was antithetical to heritage and would only ever contemplate doing “pure restoration.”

At first I was taken aback. We are taught about the many approaches to heritage, how to preserve, conserve, rehabilitate, adapt, renovate, reuse, and so on and so forth, but, we have never met someone who insists so whole-heartedly on pure restoration. On thinking about it though, I have come to the understanding that having a wide range of thinkers and other heritage advocates within my network (whether I call on them or not for every project) is beneficial.

Not only does it mean that I’ll always know who to call for each unique project but I’ll know that I’ll have to keep all these other people within my broader community in mind when I am working on projects, whether they are “pure restoration” or adaptive reuse projects or new builds within a significant historic contexts. I will know that there are people who are just as passionate as I am about bringing our heritage (both artifacts and the rituals) forward and that those people will have an opinion and hold me to account for my approach as well as the finished project.

We speak a lot about the “heritage community” as being this large group of like-minded individuals who wish to save built heritage resources. But, when it comes down to defining what heritage means to us and our motivations for saving “old” buildings, we often come up with very different opinions of what is important to save and why—let alone the how of it.

For me built heritage is about stories that are told through the artifacts of our past. A building has the ability to share the stories of the people who inhabited it just through existing as a memory marker. And though the importance of the lives of the people who lived there varied, the materials will tell us an important story if we are willing to listen.

But, there is no getting around that that is my own understanding and that other people will be affected by heritage differently. Much of the arguments arising on heritage have to do with aesthetics, which in the modern world is a very personal concept, that often denies the social and historical context out of which we are formed and inform ourselves. It is this sort of denial that leads designers/planners/architects/developers to create ill-suited plans, designs and developments in heritage spaces without considering the context of the community they are in. This is just another instance of the myth of the expert who cannot fathom that other humans might have an understanding of what is beautiful and comfortable and representative of a community’s past heritage and what they wish to become.

Thursday and Friday of this past week we had a session with two planners, Michael Seaman, Director of Planning for Grimsby and Eric Hanson, Heritage Resources Co-Ordinator for Peterborough. Both told us about their approaches to heritage and shared some of their success stories as well as projects where they had to compromise in order to gain a result that is perhaps not “pure restoration” but importantly still allows the story of the space to be told.

Eric Hanson quoted the popular cultural essayist Alain De Botton in his work: The Architecture of Happiness, who says, “To call a work of architecture beautiful is to recognize it as a rendition of values critical to our flourishing…” I think that this really gets to the heart of the matter, for when we appreciate our heritage buildings for their beauty it is often because we identify in some way with the values expressed in its design and material but also in its context. It is usually a very personal appreciation but in order to claim it as a culturally significant piece of heritage you must be able to point out why it is beautiful to others and find common value within it. In other words you must seek out what it is about a place which speaks to its embodiment of human flourishing. In order to do so you have to tell your story well.

I don’t happen to agree that every older heritage building needs to be restored down to the period furniture placed within it. We identify with places because of the cultural story they convey but in most cases (definitely not all) if we only tell the story of the past we leave no room for our own story to unfold.

That is not to say that there aren’t instances where intensive restoration should be undertaken—there are many government sites and some private individuals whose appreciation for the past is a very big part of their story. But for the most part, if we are to save our heritage buildings we’ve got to choose well what we emphasize and bring forward from the past, in order to have continuity within history.

A few days ago I presented the revised approach for the move and adaptive reuse of the Horticulture Building, a historic property within the Lansdowne Park redevelopment in Ottawa. The revised approach involves dismantling the three northernmost bays of the large north pavilion, before the move, and rebuilding two of the bays in a compatible but contemporary fashion after the move. The result is a more dramatic display of the historic components of the north pavilion – designed as a large open exhibition hall – by introducing a flood of light from the new glass and masonry north wall. There is also a significant programming improvement because the reduction by one bay introduces a small courtyard that connects the community gardens on the outside with a new community kitchen inside. Budget and schedule were also strong motivating factors – the revised approach saves significant time and money.

The presentation was made to members of Ottawa City Council, the media, and the general public. Afterwards, one of the members of the media asked how I could condone dismantling the three bays given the heritage value of the Horticulture Building.

This is an important question, and in response I referred to the newly-adopted UNESCO International Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscapes. Since then, a number of people have asked about that Recommendation and its content.

To understand the significance of this UNESCO document, it is worth reflecting on the international debate over the last few years about the nature of heritage conservation and in particular the debate between what I would term static and dynamic views of cultural heritage. The debate really came into the open in October 2009, with an address by the newly-elected President of ICOMOS, Gustavo Aaroz, to an ICOMOS meeting in Malta. The title of his paper was ‘Protecting Heritage Places Under the New Heritage Paradigm & Defining Tolerance For Change: A Leadership Challenge For ICOMOS’. Here are some excerpts from that paper:

The growing understanding of the nature of cultural heritage and of the role it plays in society is largely due to years of advocacy work by ICOMOS and the international cultural community. As implied by the almost universal ratification of the World Heritage Convention, humanity has achieved universal awareness of the need to care for the cultural heritage of all cultures in all places.

The first subtle sign that the ground was shifting under the heritage community was the adoption by ICOMOS in 1987 of the Florence Charter for the Conservation of Historic Gardens. For the first time heritage conservation specialists were being guided not to preserve historic fabric, but to manage a process in a place whose character was defined by living organisms with defined life and death cycles.

Later in the mid-1990s, the traditional pre-eminent focus of the ICOMOS doctrinal foundation on the conservation of material fabric was once again modified by the ICOMOS Charter for the Conservation of Vernacular Heritage, which advanced the notion that effective protection of the vernacular heritage was dependent on protecting the inter-generational transmission of the traditional knowledge that enables its endurance. There was further recognition that vernacular architecture and settlements do change over time as the society that produces it also evolves and adapts to the needs of its time.

Other shifts that were occurring in what at the time was believed to be the heritage paradigm resulted from the confrontation, also in the mid-1990s, between Eurocentric and non-Western perceptions on the acceptability of conservation treatments and their effect on the authenticity of heritage places. Asian traditions of replacement and renewal of historic fabric contradicted the overriding Western tenets that held form, materials, craftsmanship and setting to be sacrosanct. The Eurocentric doctrinal foundation that had been developed for over two centuries to sustain its focus on materiality was effectively challenged in the Nara Document, which recognized for the first time that authenticity is a relative concept that depends on its socio-historic context.

More recently, and without necessarily denying the aesthetic and historic values traditionally attributed to heritage, the concept of heritage places that is emerging characterizes heritage as a major anchor for cultural identity and positions it as an important element at the heart of community development. Under the new heritage paradigm, the range of values attributed to heritage places has expanded to reflect its new social role as well as the many ways in which it is appreciated by previously unrecognized stakeholding communities.

Gustavo then goes on to describe the challenge to ICOMOS as being the need to develop appropriate tools to deal with the new paradigm, and in particular its tolerance for change. He called on all members of the international heritage community to participate in this challenge.

The reaction was swift. Michael Petzet, President of the German National Committee of ICOMOS, published a major document a few months later entitled International Principles of Preservation. In his preface, he took aim at Gustavo with the following comments:

In the debate about the basic tenets of conservation / preservation we sometimes overlook – on account of such historically encumbered and variously interpreted general terms as “restoration” or “reconstruction” and such catchphrases as “conserve, do not restore” – the fact that generally accepted international principles do indeed exist, regardless of whether or not the goals of preservation can be made to prevail within the framework of differing provisions for the protection of cultural property.

The current reason for this attempt at an extended version of the Principles of Preservation are tendencies to ignore – in search of allegedly “new” topics – the traditions embodied in the principles. With inconsiderate general proposals, such as “conservation is managing change”, and the
call of October 2009 for a general discussion on “tolerance for change”, a slogan which can provoke dangerous misunderstandings, now even the core ideology of our organization is being counteracted. After all, conservation does not mean “managing change“ but preserving – preserving, not altering and destroying: ICOMOS, the only global international organization for the conservation of monuments and sites is certainly not an International Council on Managing Change.

The debate came to a head a few months ago at the Paris General Assembly of ICOMOS. These General Assemblies are held every three years and are important gatherings of the international heritage conservation community. Before the Assembly, a Resolution was circulated to the members of ICOMOS by the ICOMOS National Committees of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg. It contained the following points:

Culture and heritage are irreplaceable values expressed in an array of areas such as in literature, lifestyle, and beliefs. Foremost, they become visible in artefacts, monuments, architecture and places left for posterity. These materially bound heritage values served as the underlying elements of the Venice Charter (1964) and are also positioned in the World Heritage Convention by defining the cultural heritage as monuments, sites and ensembles of historic, artistic and scientific value. These values have given substance to the work done in conservational practice ever since.

This fundamental mission and value of ICOMOS was undermined in 2009 by the Malta discussion paper “Preserving Heritage Places under a new Paradigm”, relativising all our core values with sentences such as “the truth is that values can be neither protected nor preserved“. The National Committees, which according to the ICOMOS Statutes fight for the preservation of evidence of our past, should not be irritated by such “strategies” that express banalities and are incompatible with
our statutes.

Gustavo responded with his own comments, including the following:

Two years ago in Malta I issued a paper to the general membership challenging ourselves to a global discussion on issues that I consider of extreme importance. That paper was not meant to make my opinions prevail, but to stimulate a debate that would produce new tools for the conservation of heritage places. Proof that the importance of this these issues is shared by many in our field is the publication of my challenge paper in numerous journals and bulletins in various parts of the world.

Beginning in Malta, Mr Petzet responded passionately against the paper, something that I actually welcomed as a sign that our debate was being launched. However, as time passed, instead of joining the debate by developing his ideas, his tactic has shifted to stop the debate from happening altogether, which is the intent of this proposed resolution. That Mr Lipp has joined this campaign is a great irony, as he is running for President of the ICOMOS Theories Committee. How can the President of such a forum believe that discussion is no longer needed or acceptable since all meaningful philosophical evolution concluded in 1964 with the Venice Charter?

I will not dignify the personal accusations against me that are contained in the proposed amendment with a response. Instead, I will simply point out that this is a salacious intent to prevent an important professional discussion from taking place simply because the outcome of the debate may be feared, perhaps by the fact that evolving ideas could bring chaos to what some perceive to be the proper world order.

Never before in ICOMOS have voices been raised so loudly to silence new discussion on urgently emerging issues.

The forceful imposition of dogmatic and intransigent positions are inconceivable as well as intolerable in ICOMOS. We are an organization destined to lead the way for heritage conservation as we perceive and analyze emerging changes. If free and open discussions in the networks and forums of ICOMOS can be closed by intimidation from a handful of bullies, then ICOMOS is in real trouble.

The accomplishments of Messrs Lipp and Petzet over their professional life are indeed extraordinary and worthy of admiration. From the positions of authority that they once held, they ably safeguarded heritage places according to the concepts and practices that prevailed at that time. It is unfair on their part to attempt to prevent the incoming generations from doing the same.

The Resolution was indeed presented to the General Assembly of ICOMOS, and the decision of the ICOMOS membership was to refer the resolution to the Executive Committee of ICOMOS for further discussion and debate. Ironically, the members elected to senior positions on this Executive Committee would generally be considered sympathetic to Gustavo’s view rather than the view put forward in the recommendation. These include Gustavo Araoz, re-elected as President; Kirsti Kovanen (Finland) as Secretary-General; Laura Robinson (South Africa) as Treasurer General; and Kristal Buckley (Australia), Alfredo Conti (Argentina), Guo Zhan (China), Gideon Koren (Israel), and Benjamin Mouton (France) as Vice-Presidents.

While the debate between Gustavo and Michael was spreading to a larger discussion among the members of ICOMOS, UNESCO was developing its new recommendation on Historic Urban Landscapes (HUL). There was a set of regional meetings around the world and then a group was brought together at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris to draft the final document.

The following are key passages from the UNESCO document, which received its formal approval about ten weeks ago:

The historic urban landscape is understood as the result of a historic layering of cultural and natural values and attributes, extending beyond the notion of ‘historic centre’ or ‘ensemble’ to include the broader urban context and its geographical setting.

Urban heritage, including its tangible and intangible components, constitutes a key resource in enhancing the liveability of urban areas and fosters economic development and social cohesion in a changing global environment.

The shift from an emphasis on architectural monuments primarily, towards a broader recognition of the importance of the social, cultural and economic processes in the conservation of urban values, should be matched by a drive to adapt the existing policies and to create new tools to address this vision.

This Recommendation addresses the need to better integrate and frame urban heritage conservation strategies within the larger goals of sustainable development.

The historic urban landscape approach considers cultural diversity and creativity as key assets for human, social and economic development, and provides tools to ensure that contemporary interventions are harmoniously integrated with heritage in a historic setting and take into account regional contexts.

The historic urban landscape approach learns from the traditions and perceptions of local communities while respecting the values of the national and international communities.

The historic urban landscape approach supports communities in their quest for development and adaptation, while retaining the characteristics and values linked to their history, collective memory, and to the environment.

Where does this Recommendation, commonly referred to now as the HUL document, fit within the debate between Gustavo and Michael? It is a clear commitment by UNESCO to the new paradigm suggested by Gustavo – a commitment to a dynamic rather than static conception of cultural heritage. But the debate is not over. The HUL document will be the focus of the annual conference of the ICOMOS Theory committee, chaired by Wilfried Lipp who Gustavo refers to in his comments. The conference takes place in Azerbijan, in April.

My own position in this debate is strongly on the side of Gustavo, and I am one of the authors of the UNESCO Recommendation. It is my definition of the historic urban landscape as a layering of values that was incorporated into the document. I believe it is understanding the fundamental principle of historic layering that allows sympathetic contemporary layers to be introduced, and that allows the dynamic quality of the urban landscape to survive.

I describe the new paradigm as a shift from a primarily aesthetic view of cultural heritage to a primarily ecological view of cultural (and natural) heritage. Our experience at Willowbank is that this is a fundamental shift being insisted on by a new generation – one that recognizes ecological worldviews as basic to our collective health and survival.

Today I will be mentioning the UNESCO Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscapes once again, at a Community Council meeting in Toronto. The meeting has been called, in part, to discuss the future of Deer Park United Church on St. Clair. The future of this historic church property – which I believe will be the future proposed by the developer, not the one being insisted on by the Toronto Preservation Board – is one more instance, in my mind, of the paradigm shift that is occurring. The developer’s approach does not fit within the static aesthetic model of Michael Petzet and others, but it is the more appropriate, more ecological solution of the kind identified a few years ago by Gustavo, and endorsed more recently by UNESCO.

1873 facade of the Erland Lee Museum

This week we had the opportunity to work with Craig Sims on an historic structures report for the Erland Lee Museum in Stoney Creek. Craig is an experienced heritage building consultant with an incredible amount of knowledge on windows  in particular. It was an amazing experience to go through the museum and learn how to assess a building’s historic fabric with him and how to put all of our findings together into a report. It is one thing to have learned about the materials and the particular properties they will have from certain eras but it is a whole other things to put that knowledge to use on site. We have learned a lot in the past year and a half of school and it is still surprising to get on site and realize just how much we have learned and can recognize.

Geordie holding a scale up on the east side of the 1873 part of the house.

The Erland Lee Museum is perched upon the ridge of the escarpment, beautifully sited to overlook Hamilton. It is a small carpenter Gothic farmhouse from the 1870s that has remnants of an earlier turn of the 18th century building within it plus the inevitable additions of the mid-twentieth century. It was the home of Erland Lee, who, with his wife Janet, and Adelaide Hoodless, in 1897, founded the Women’s Institute, a foundation dedicated to the education of rural women. The museum has cultural associative value for these reasons but also has displays of earlier ‘pioneer’ experiences based on the portion of the house that is from the early 1800s.

Kristina; trying to keep warm while doing exterior field notes.

In order to do our assessment, we broke into groups of 2 or 3 and went through the house, attic to basement and exterior to interior, categorizing mouldings and doors, looking at windows for telltale signs of earlier divisions, and taking measurements to draw up our own plans. We also did what historic research we could and tried to match up those findings with what physical evidence there was in the house.

Inside what remains of the cistern built beneath the house. It would have held water that could be pumped into the kitchen above.

And we had some surprising results: like that the foundation seems to date from one event (the 1873 additions), which may mean that the early 1800s portion of the house was moved and reincorporated into the 1873 house. Other things left us perplexed, like the historic descriptions of the ‘pioneer’ part of the house, which often didn’t match up with what the physical evidence showed us.

Detail of some of the trellis work on the 1873 addition and verandah (can you tell they were put back on in the 1980s?).

In all it was great to get into the field and apply our skills of assessment. It is so much fun to start sifting through the historic ‘facts’, and the anecdotal evidence, and see if what we find physically backs up the stories we’ve encountered. We really are in training to be house detectives, to put together all of the evidence, and present our final findings, with information that will sometimes surprise people who think they know all about a place.