CIP Niagara Conference: Contemporary Approaches to Urban Heritage
Tags: architecture, CIP, heritage, heritage preservation, Montreal, Participation, toronto
This post comes to you from an afternoon session entitled “Saving our cities: Contemporary approaches to heritage planning.” The two joint speakers are Phil Goldsmith and Antonio Gómez-Palacio, who have worked together on several projects. Mr. Gómez-Palacio works with the Office for Urbanism, while Mr. Goldsmith has extensive experience in adaptive reuse of Toronto’s heritage buildings.
Phil Goldsmith and Antonio Gómez-Palacio argue for a hybrid approach to heritage restoration and new architectural styles. Photo by author.
The session opened with the quote “Although […] heritage belongs to everyone, each of its parts is nevertheless at the mercy of any individual” (Amsterdam Charter, 1975). Intensification of urban fabric places stress on heritage buildings, so the present is an important time for the heritage of Canadian cities. The first task is identifying “what is heritage” – not just beautiful historic buildings and districts, but “new heritage” from the 1950s and 1960s, as well as cultural landscapes and associated memories. The Ontario Toolkit, coming out of the 2005 Ontario Heritage Act, helps to systematize heritage processes in Ontario. It determines heritage value through:
- design (physical) value
- historical or associative value
- contextual value (symbolic, or linked to cultural landscapes)
What is significant enough to restore, preserve, or rehabilitate and how can it be kept alive against neglect or development pressures? Intangible heritage like community stories presents particular challenges because values are hard to capture in a plan, and it is difficult to argue for the preservation of a building for symbolic (rather than physical heritage) value.
Opportunities lie in leveraging the heritage physicality and memories of urban places for the achievement of other planning goals, such as place-making (in a world where places are becoming more alike: nowhere is everywhere) and economic development through tourism. Heritage can be a “dirty word” in some local councils, so it is important for planners point out other relevant economic and social arguments for heritage preservation like urban revitilization, job creation, and sustainability. Mr. Goldsmith argues that the LEED system is short-sighted in only allowing one or two points for reusing an existing building. In fact the most “green” building is the one that does not need to be built anew. Perhaps this devaluing of conservation comes from our “culture of new”, which he considers to have evolved from Canada’s pioneer heritage.
Incorporating heritage into contemporary projects often involves presenting historic design and craftsmanship in the context of new design, without insisting on very expensive historic restoration for an entire project or on the very cutting-edge of new architectural trends. The design of the National Ballet School in Toronto is an example of this very practical hybrid approach. Responsible adaptive reuse minimizes the loss of original fabric, and its new components are reversible – if the new parts were torn down, the heritage structures would remain. The contemporary additions to either heritage projects or heritage districts should be sensitive to the surviving historical parts. New buildings that fill in the gaps in a heritage district can be similar or different to their surroundings in terms of architectural style, but should respond to urban surroundings in a similar way, especially in terms of scale and street frontage. Old Montreal provides many good examples, but Mr. Goldsmith is critical of many examples in Ontario where plans and guidelines have been thwarted by allowing too much height and density in heritage areas.
Heritage conservation does not “freeze” districts , but shapes change. The session concluded with a discussion of how guidelines and policy, if done well, shape the artful expression of urban design that actually integrates heritage into the living urban fabric. As Mr. Gómez-Palacio wisely observed, “policy is a way of preventing the miserable, but it cannot guarantee excellence.” In addition to good policy, community involvement is essential for attaining the best results in heritage conservation. The good news for fans of Canadian urban heritage is that heritage is now taken more seriously within Canadian planning than ever before.
