Written by:
Sophia de Sousa
The first of our sixth series of Glass-House Chats, co-hosted with Stephen Smith of Wright & Wright Architects, explored Designing Sustainable Heritage. We were joined by a mix of participants with varied interests and experiences, which included community stewards of heritage, design practitioners, local authority officers, educators and students. They joined from different parts of the UK, sharing their knowledge, expertise, experience and questions to explore.
Key Themes
One of the key challenges that emerged as people introduced themselves was that very often, the juxtaposition of sustainability and heritage makes people nervous and can feel quite overwhelming. This led to a useful conversation about the importance of building these themes into education, and the power of good examples and precedents. It also led us into an interesting discussion about sustainability being about more than just embedding environmental technologies, and the importance of considering and planning for the social and economic sustainability of a building or landscape in the long term. This in turn led us to our third key area of focus, which was the value of making the space and time for conversation, to both learn about and build a community of interest around a heritage asset.
The Value of Guidance & Precedents
Taking on the revitalisation of a heritage asset, or simply introducing new elements to improve its sustainability, can feel daunting. It was noted that the heritage sector has moved away from a predominantly conservationist approach, which fought change of any kind, towards one that welcomes sensitively managed change. However, it is also clear that there is a huge range in interpretation of the guidance, and consequently the consent given, by heritage consultants and local planning authorities in different parts of the country. We all agreed though, that it is not just a matter of what you are allowed to do, but how you do it. The quality of intervention is as important as the kind of intervention.
Education undoubtedly has a huge role to play in achieving this, whether through formal education and professional degree courses, through continuing professional development or through raising awareness more generally within communities. However, capturing and sharing examples of successful projects done well is also valuable, as it helps build a kind of library of precedents that can inspire, inform and help make the case for what is possible and acceptable. Heritage organisations and networks, design practices and community groups looking after heritage all have a role to play in this, and it is essential that we find creative ways to share this knowledge and equip those embarking on projects of their own with a strong foundation of precedents and learning from others.
We also discussed another nice example of the power of education, and of creating the space for knowledge exchange, which is live student projects on degree courses. This is a practice that has been growing at several universities that train emergent built environment professionals. Live student projects give students the opportunity to work with local community partners. It can be a mutually beneficial and rewarding space, as it creates an opportunity for students to inject their growing expertise and creativity into a project, and at the same time, learn a huge amount from their community partners.
Considering Environmental, Social & Economic Sustainability
Making a heritage asset sustainable in the long term is not just about improving its environment credentials. The environmental aspect is, of course, ever more urgent and increasingly present in the national consciousness and narrative. This is evidenced in the growing number of retrofit projects being celebrated through design awards. However, if a heritage building or landscape is to live and thrive in the long term, a holistic view of sustainability, which considers how it will be used and maintained, and by whom, is equally important.
The sheer number of heritage (and more recent) buildings and landscapes that need attention in this country can feel overwhelming. It is also true that in some instances, people become accustomed to heritage assets looking a certain way, almost being a sculptural element of their local landscapes. They might even fight bringing one back into active use through refurbishment. However, as one of our participants put it, “Picturesque decay is a moment in time, but it is not sustainable in the long term.”
In design terms, sometimes small interventions that are not about building in new technologies or large-scale change, but simply about catering for certain needs, can have a huge impact on the social and financial sustainability of a place. Stephen gave the useful example that while a new cafe may help bring in revenue and visitors, a welcoming and functional space for volunteers behind the scenes may be equally valuable to the long-term support and maintenance of a building or landscape.
Creating Space for Conversation
This highlighted the importance of opening up the conversation with a wide range of people early on in the design process. There are different starting points for a project. Taking the time to understand a place, the communities and stories around it is a great investment. One participant commented that they found that the early stages of a project can be the most exciting part, particularly when you uncover a story that can help open up conversations. The designer can also be an enabler of those conversations.
We considered the value of not only speaking to a range of people and organisations, but also creating safe spaces for conversation to bring them together. This can help build a community of shared interest around a heritage building or landscape, and can also help build valuable social networks that can contribute to the long-term success of a place.
In some cases, heritage buildings and spaces carry challenging stories and associations for local people. In these cases, opening up that conversation is vital to both treating the local community with care and to engaging people in activating a change of direction and narrative together. Building environmental technologies into a building or bringing new species into a landscape can go some way towards changing people’s relationship with a place, but ultimately, it is people’s emotional and practical connection with that space that will ensure its social and economic sustainability in the long term.
Wrapping Up
Our September Chat, Designing Sustainable Heritage, benefitted from a really interesting mix of people in the room. This allowed us to share some very practical examples of good practice, and to identify what would help us all better build sustainability into the heritage spaces we design, manage and use. Above all, our conversation demonstrated the power of sharing experiences and expertise and the importance of creating space to build on collective knowledge, stories and passion for our heritage.
Spotlight Project from Co-host Stephen Smith
One of the initiatives our co-host Stephen Smith talked about was this recent publication Sustainable Futures, a concise knowledge-sharing White Paper on current topics in sustainable design by Wright & Wright Architects, with input from peers working across the heritage sector
From the complexities of retrofitting historic estates, to the role of biodiversity in public health, Sustainable Futures explores how heritage thinking can inform responses to the urgent challenges of sustainable development. Topics span national funding frameworks, biophilia, and the Church of England’s transition towards net zero. Throughout, the white paper foregrounds long-term thinking and adaptability as essential to addressing the climate crisis.