Context 151 - September 2017

C O N T E X T 1 5 1 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 45 Interdisciplinary place care in conservation and urban design Director’s cut I have been asked by the Urban Design Group (UDG) to explore the links between our approach to conservation practice and their discipline in a forthcoming article. My evolving thoughts are built on discussions that go back to when the UDG’s then director, and our own editor of Context today, Rob Cowan was developing new quality assurance systems for its members: what the UDG describes now as its ‘valued affiliation (in many cases an additional one), proclaiming [UDG practitioner members’] commitment to – and experience of – urban design’. In effect this affiliation may be taken as the basis of an accreditation in urban design and a step towards in the more substantial quality assurance offered as a full member of the IHBC, formal qualification as a specialist professional. Looking at urban design practice from the world of conservation, it seems clear that both the UDG and the IHBC value interdisciplinary skills for the way such an integration of skills can help secure the care, management and informed development of places. That focus, on core skills relating to interdisciplinary practice, helps make both conservation and urban design operations stand out from the traditional built environment disciplines, such as architecture, engineering, planning and surveying . Reflecting perhaps those parallels in local planning services, officers’ roles in both conservation and urban design are often integrated, as confirmed in research by the IHBC in England. While recognising that conservation and urban design each has its own priorities and skills sets, it is useful to consider how support and advocacy for the distinctly interdisciplinary nature of conservation practice can suggest some opportunities for urban design. We can not underestimate the scale of the challenge of securing even the recognition of interdisciplinary skills, despite recent and successful progress in areas such as skills linked to sustainable development. Indeed, when faced by traditional practices that are more comfortable either with the peer-reinforced circumscription of boundaries to practice, or simply affirming authority in works despite the absence of a credible assessment, the concept of a tested, interdisciplinary competence can breed more fear than favour. For these reasons, both the IHBC and the UDG must be absolutely transparent about the promotion and specification of relevant skills, and their relevance to the outcomes sought. In considering these issues, we need to remember first that, in some very critical ways, the conservation environment of the IHBC is more fortunate than the working environment for urban design. For example, through the designation of historic fabric and conservation areas, conservation has at its core a statutory, regulatory planning infrastructure that specifically supports its operation. Through that, a body of specialist local and central government officers can be tasked with delivering on that legislative framework: the conservation officer and attendant services. Many officers came, and still come from quite diverse background disciplines – history, architecture, planning, surveying, engineering, archaeology and more – embedding an interdisciplinary approach in our work. Enhanced by resources and recognition of conservation objectives in public services, the conservation professional benefits from a critical mass of prospective members, and the recognition of an operational baseline.While that advantage may not be easily matched in urban design, there is other, no less critical, infrastructure to help its case for interdisciplinary fundamentals. The conservation sector has an externally validated core statement that specifies its distinct interdisciplinary foundations: the ‘ICOMOS Guidelines on Education and Training in the Conservation of Monuments, Ensembles and Sites’ of 1993, or the ‘Guidelines’. This document is a widely-recognised statement on conservation skills that defines conservation as an ‘interdisciplinary activity’ due to the need to take ‘a holistic approach to our heritage’. Focused first on conservation skills, the ICOMOS Guidelines represent a global standard and specification in built and historic environment conservation. As such, it serves as the critical bar that outlines the case for holistic, interdisciplinary conservation skills that it demands in practice. In this it specifies its vision of conservation practice: distinct from both the generic heritage operations with which conservation is often confused – such as history, archaeology or heritage management – and from the many mainstream built environment activities that, though taking place in the built and historic environment, lack conservation- specific priorities and skills. The impact of the ICOMOS Guidelines as a core statement of principles can not be under- estimated. For example, it serves as the baseline pre-condition adopted in ongoing discussions in England on the specification of relevant, credible conservation accreditation in the planning process, and it has been the core standard for conservation accreditation across professions since the inception of support for such conservation accreditation in the 1990s. It also remains fundamental to the work of the built environment link body COTAC (Council on Training in Architectural Conservation), while serving as the baseline for the IHBC’s own specification of conservation skills and competencies. Clearly, urban design practice could reap corresponding benefits from a prominent – ideally international – statement on its skills needs and priorities, and their rationale. This is