Context 163 - March 2020

26 C O N T E X T 1 6 3 : M A R C H 2 0 2 0 leading to ‘comprehensive redevelopment’. Our project was a settled residential area of 18th- and 19th-century housing, which was to be redeveloped (demolished). Our response was to ask: what is wrong with the area? All that was needed was some traffic calming, play areas and, as there was a limited number of house types, we could design kitchen and bathroom pods (this being the 1960s). The staff was dismayed, as we were supposed to be designing new buildings, not doing repairs – which was, in fact, conservation. Our response could have been a reaction against the doctrine of high modernism prevalent at the time. I doubt if any of us had even heard of the term ‘conservation architect’ but the seed had been sown among some of those about to join the profession. In 1970 a group of architects, architectural stu- dents and their supporters occupied a Georgian house on Hume Street in Dublin city centre to prevent demolition. Ultimately the demolition did happen, with offices concealed behind ‘new’ Georgian facades. But the consequent publicity helped to change public and political attitudes towards Irish architectural heritage. There were some negative results of the Hume Street protest. The first was a growth of facade schemes as an acceptable solution for office developments, with the facade being no more than skin deep. The second was the term ‘Georgian’ being used as a brand, particularly in volume housing. One suburban scheme was namedThe GeorgianVillage. ‘Georgian’ became a fashion. The third was to have a long-term impact on the profession and conservation, regarding period building as good and new building as bad. As more historic buildings were preserved, the problem of finding new uses was to become a challenge for the profession. In 1974 the RIAI introduced a conserva- tion medal for high-quality work in this area. It was presented to three projects: Kilkenny Design Workshops, Ballintubber Abbey, and Dublin Castle. Dublin Castle and Ballintubber Abbey were restoration projects, while Kilkenny Design Workshops was a conservation project, adapting a period building to new uses. It would be some time before the profession saw these as distinct categories. While the separate silver medal for conserva- tion/restoration was not awarded until 1974, many of the gold medal winners from the early 20th century are now heritage buildings, and works to them fall into the conservation category. These include St Thomas’s Church, Dublin Airport, Busaras, Radio Telefis Eireann and Birt Church. Following the publication of the Charter of Venice in 1964, a small number of practitioners started to specialise in conserving and restoring buildings. By 1974 the philosophy of conserva- tion was being developed worldwide and Ireland, with its rich cultural inheritance of buildings, was well placed to be part of that developing knowledge. With the publication of the Burra Charter in 1979, the stage was set for a better understanding of our heritage and how to pass it on intact. Members of the RIAI were at the forefront of these developments, understanding that the architecture of today is the built heritage of the future. The conservation working group was set up and led to the development of the first RIAI conservation policy, which was adopted in 1994. A new conservation policy was developed and approved by council in 2018. The Heritage Act of 1995 gave us the Heritage Council, with funding for conservation works