34 Donald lnsall asks for a due sense of proportion from conservation professionals CITY CONSERVATION For those of us involved in the conservation of cities, it can sometimes be useful to pose and answer the question "What are our Weaknesses?". For these may indeed be damaging and offsetting our very real strengths. By remedying them, we can extend our effectiveness in city conservation. Perhaps the recession has for a time helped to conserve our heritage, insofar as the demand to replace historic buildings is currently reduced. Bur what may happen when prosperity dawns again? After the Second World War, we followed the guiding star of creating "Homes fir for Heroes to Return to ... " Salvation was to be by comprehensive redevelopment. The concept assumed the demolition of street after street of terraced housing - not all of them slums - allied to realising a dream of rail freesranding point-blocks of flats. These look so green on rhe map: bur the map was drawn looking down. We forgot; people stand upright! What they really see and read is the skyline. From this extreme the pendulum began to swing back towards a reawakening, and a realisation chat old places are important to people ... that their continuity has significance. We began to press not so much for 'preservation' as for 'conservation', which we saw as working 'with' a place. Our aim was to recognise character, to analyse it, and then to strengthen and sustain and indeed enjoy ir. We invented new ways and methods of expressing these principles. We ourselves carried our fascinating pioneer surveys of villages, and of towns like Lavenham and Blandford, and then the national pilot city survey of Chester. The methods and ideas we looked at at chat rime are still valid. Our motto was to enjoy and respect each place, making it 'more like itself'. In Chester, we began to develop more detailed planning control in Conservation Areas - over important features such as shopfronts and advertising. In a redundant Chester church, we designed and opened the first Interpretation Centre, displaying architectural analyses and a multiprojector presentation of the historical growth of char city, closely examining its present and continuing change. Our report had proposed a possible conservation policy, calculating a likely cost for repairs. It suggested where the money might be found, putting forward an achievable programme, and setting it out by priorities. The City took up the idea, and much was achieved. But what have been the main weaknesses of this movement, since those early days? 'Gentrification' has been one. It has entailed driving our everyday people in favour of others who had money and earned profit by ir. Actually this pejorative name is often misleading when applied to once-handsome neighbourhoods but which have since declined, and now cry our for rescue. Perhaps rhis particular weakness is receding. Bur does a more insidious weakness creep in - char of being too 'precious'? Have we really overcome chat weakness which drove us to spoc-lisc at the last moment, in the face of some threat? We know there are extremes of both kinds. Listing is still sometimes applied to buildings which are too big, like disused power-station complexes, without regard for their stultifying effect on an entire neighbourhood. Ar che other end of che scale, they may be too small. Listing telephone boxes is an example although this may have had its uses, given the thoughtless replacement programme then in hand. Yee we still fail to site these kiosks well: one recalls an example set right in front of an historic gateway, and prettified in turn by an island of tarmac with double yellow lines. Does all this add up to real heritage protection? We do, above all, need a sense of proportion ... In our planning techniques, there have also been some notable weaknesses: 'Zoning' was one, grouping all che offices here, all the houses there, with industry along rhe river... 'Maximum heights' for new buildings have been another, resulting in practice in a single bur uniform building height, like a line of people ducking under a projecting shelf. More recently, has not 'facade retention' gone too far? A fine exterior may indeed deserve this treatment; and there have been some brilliant and sensitive schemes. Bu c often, there is less excuse for this expedient, which may express only our timidity. It can be a nonsense laboriously to 'gut and stuff the inside of what is, after all, only an unsuspecting architectural nonentity. These are extremes, but they do set the alarm bells ringing. A new philosophical danger we face today is chat of re-writing and 'reconstructing' history, in a mistaken attempt to match up to the preconceptions of the viewer or the tourist. Now, all over the world, one can visit reconstituted birthplaces, set just where we would like them to be, but where they never were. They may be neither real nor historic, but merely a magnified and distorted echo. And one knows there are aberrations even in the best families, and the most learned specialisations. Consider an apparently serious recent archaeological proposal to erect a copy of Stonehenge, sited conveniently nearby, to save wearing out the real one - a kind of Polystyrene Henge, with a convenient coach park ... Then again, what about 'Overinterpretation'? I have yet to see a sign in a church saying "This is a Font", but it is very possible to over-interpret. In our historic houses, we have a tendency to over-purify period furnishings, banishing the bits the owners so loved. And why do all the gift shops exude that same whiff of pot-pourri? Perhaps simply because it is what we expect to find? So let us not be afraid to be ourselves: our real friends may like us the better. Let us be on our guard against our weaknesses, for rhe heritage movement also has immense strengths. Ic has made people look at their surroundings, enjoy and relish them. It has made us all more observant, more appreciative. It can help us to design good neighbours for our past, but which still speak the language of this century. For today is che heritage of tomorrow. Only if we are truly aware of what we value, guarding our standards and encouraging what we respect and admire, yet with a due sense of proportion, can we do true honour to the Heritage of our Cities. This article is based on an address given by Donald lnsall to the City Heritage Society in London lastyear. Donald lnsall is an architect in private practice. CONTEXT 40
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