What is worth keeping and who decides? Loren Adams, Caleb Lee, Felicity Watson, Kerstin Thompson, Aimee Howard, Rebecca Roberts, James Lesh, Cristina Garduño Freeman, Michael McMahon and Jack Isles

What is worth keeping, and who decides?

Introduction by Loren Adams

Words by Felicity Watson, Kerstin Thompson, Aimee Howard, Rebecca Roberts, James Lesh, Cristina Garduño Freeman, Michael McMahon and Jack Isles

Illustrations by Caleb Lee

The Heritage Overlay is a spatialised argument for the “significance of the place”. Its presence upon a land parcel can trigger the statutory protection of something significant – something worth keeping – within that title boundary. In planning, the what, how, why of significance is slippery, contingent, and evidenced through idiosyncratic bureaucratic processes.

I am neither heritage expert nor planner, so whenever I am forced to contend with the complex and entangled issues of heritage, I find myself returning to two foundational questions: What is worth keeping? And, who decides? I also find myself returning to an inventive student project by Caleb Lee from my Regulatory Nonsense: Wrong studio at RMIT last year. Frustrated by the “colonial facade as a stubborn monument of the past,” Caleb radically reimagined our bureaucratic processes of building preservation by offering each subsequent inhabitant of a home the opportunity to enshrine one new “clause of significance” within in a property-specific Heritage Covenant. When applied to a test site in North Melbourne, the resulting architecture quickly became a scrappy patchwork of personal significance – but it was scaffolded by a co-authored and perpetually incomplete statutory document outlining what is worth keeping, according to those who had lived there. Bundled together, my two big questions and Caleb’s pass-theparcel policymaking project became a springboard for this experimental article: a seven-episode, co-authored written performance of the heritage policymaking process. In the text to follow, a handful of spatial practitioners were offered Caleb’s project as a prompt, and then asked consecutively to mark-up and revise a short response to the questions, “What is worth keeping?” and “Who decides?” Admittedly, the production timeline of this issue also dictated the rules of the game. Rather than fighting against our tight turnaround time, I chose instead to succumb to it, to tighten it further – instead of five weeks, why not five days? And so, the chain began with heritage expert and advocate Felicity Watson, who was tasked with composing the first response. As the first author in the chain, Felicity occupies a curious

position: she has no existing text to respond to, granting her freedom to set the tone, structure, and conceptual direction for future iterations – but she is also subjected to more instances of potential erasure. Felicity’s response was passed to beloved Melbourne architect, Kerstin Thompson for markingup, whose revision was then passed to emerging architectural designer and artist Aimee Howard, who passed their revision to heritage stonemason and researcher Rebecca Roberts, who passed to urban historian Dr James Lesh, who passed to academic Dr Cristina Garduño Freeman, who finally passed to spatial practitioners Michael McMahon and Jack Isles of Beyond Heritage for one last mark-up before our submission deadline. In this quick and imperfect experiment, First Nations people have the last word. The act of marking-up, crossing-out, and writing-over the work of another can be fraught, especially where asymmetrical power relations already exist. There is also, inevitably, a process of exclusion in curating a shortlist of contributors. This means that, as the rule-maker and shoulder-tapper of the game, I am the meta-decider. I am the one who gets to decide who gets to decide what is worth keeping, and who decides.

Loren Adams RAIA Grad. is a disciplinary-promiscuous spatial practitioner. Trained in architecture and public policy, she is currently a Doctoral Fellow with the University of Melbourne Centre for Cities and teaches at RMIT. Previously, Loren led the Australian computational design team at Grimshaw Architects and was the inaugural coordinator of the Melbourne School of Design Robotics Lab. She began her career working as a fabrication specialist for blue-chip artists in Los Angeles.

Caleb Lee is a recent graduate of architecture from RMIT. Among his other interests, his research explores how unorthodox preservation of individual narratives might contribute to our collective understanding of heritage.

Felicity Watson is a heritage expert and advocate, and currently the executive manager of advocacy at the National Trust of Australia (Victoria). With a multidisciplinary approach across heritage, history, and urban planning, Felicity is passionate about advocating for the contribution that heritage conservation makes to vibrant, liveable, and sustainable cities. Kerstin Thompson AM LFRAIA is an award-winning architect, educator, and advocate for quality design in the built environment. She is Principal of KTA, Adjunct Professor at RMIT and Monash Universities, and a member of the OGVA Design Review Panel. In 2017, Kerstin was elevated to Life Fellow by the Australian Institute of Architects. She was appointed Member of the Order of Australia in 2022.

Aimee Howard is an artist, architectural graduate, and teacher at RMIT University in the School of Architecture and Design. Their practice is centred around post structuralist theory and ficto-critical methodologies for conceptualising alternative futures within the architectural profession.

Rebecca Roberts is a doctoral candidate with the Australian Centre for Architectural History, Urban and Cultural Heritage, University of Melbourne. Drawing on over twenty years’ experience as a stonemason, heritage consultant, and project manager, Rebecca’s research examines the role of traditional craftsmanship in maintaining enduring, adaptable, and resilient cultural identities through the preservation of the historic environment.

Dr James Lesh is an urban historian and lecturer in cultural heritage and museum studies. His research explores the theory and practice of heritage conservation in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He has also published widely in Australian urban history.

Dr Cristina Garduño Freeman is an academic at UNSW, Sydney, focused on how people’s connections with places can inform architectural history, critical heritage, and digital humanities. Her monograph on Participatory Culture and the Social Value of an Architectural Icon: Sydney Opera House, was published in 2018 with Routledge. Before entering academia, she practised in architecture, landscape architecture and visual communication design.

Michael McMahon and Jack Isles are founding collaborators of Beyond Heritage, an emergent research project, design practice and initiative celebrating, recognising and supporting the development of Australian First Nations design as front line responses to the climate and biodiversity emergency. Currently, they are establishing an online platform to publish and share the numerous ways in which First Nations expertise can, and is, transforming the landscape of Australia’s zero carbon future.

Authors in mark-up order:

1 Felicity Watson 2 Kerstin Thompson 3 Aimee Howard 4 Rebecca Roberts 5 James Lesh 6 Cristina Garduño Freeman 7 Michael McMahon and Jack Isles

Notes from authors

i Rebecca Roberts (4)

I quite enjoyed being nudged off-kilter by this playful opening of Aimee’s. It forced me to pay very close attention to which words I felt the authority to alter. And how. Yes, just like the heritage ‘process’. Who decides? The voice on the other side of the door? I concluded this voice was human and was compelled to remove the notion of a human voice for heritage.

ii Kerstin Thompson (2)

There is no place, no one, outside heritage.

iii Rebecca Roberts (4)

I felt justified deleting these words as I associate heritage with compassion, care, custodianship, and accountability.

iv Kerstin Thompson (2)

Who is this 'we'?

v Kerstin Thompson (2)

Whose law? How to attend to (conflict between) many laws?

vi Kerstin Thompson (2)

Oh to be deemed significant... Significance an accretion of many insignificancies which eventually tilt towards ‘heritage’.

vii Kerstin Thompson (2)

Assess: a clinical word for attempts to appreciate the various attachments humans form with their situations.

viii Cristina Garduño Freeman (6)

But don’t get confused, the Burra Charter is a best practice guideline; it is influential and important, but it is not one of the many legal documents that control what is kept And really, heritage is about what is important to you, to your communities (we are part of many) and how this contributes to your identity through the practices and activities that help you maintain it. This also means that the same place or object or activity will mean different things to different people. Knock, knock. Who's there?i Heritage. Heritage who? Heritage is about you. We are all surrounded byii I am heritage: Most definitions of heritage talk about, to and of the racially and environmentally extractive legacyies of the past, and what we will pass on to future generations. for Aanother that we want to keep in the present and for the future times, to share with and another other places and people. We're not nice. We're not caring.iii What do we make of these sandstone, bluestone and concrete buildings: Country, aggregated, cut up, divided, trapped and traded? To make sense of this This idea of a legacy, has grown into the weiv The heritage experts profession have developed and frameworks and systems of criteria and thresholds to that guide assessment of what is worth to keeping is important about the legacy Australia and also codifiedy these rules them into law.v This method of business is what keeps us alive. are founded on numerous legal and colonial fictions.

Here, in Australia, In our settler-colonial society To decide wWwhat is worth keeping kept is what is deemed significantvi –by expert heritage practitioners designations professionals whose assessmentsvii are limited to / and determined shaped by assess heritage places against guidelines rules guidelines we use such as the Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance, 2013 (the Burra Charter) that can be restricted by guided tours. such as the Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance, 2013 (the Burra Charter) which This which states defines that “cultural significance means aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual value for past, present or future generations.”viii These guidelines privilege certain values are founded on a law that and presumes a distinctive subject and an object. aAnd it views relations between these as separable. For another law lores they are not.ix

Every building in Australia is on unceded Aboriginal land. Every building in Australia is an aggregate of materials that are Country, will become Country. Let’s deconstruct our colonial notions of heritage and reimagine an equitable and

sustainable built environment with caring for Country at its core. Heritage is about respecting the past, present and future of Country, including everyone who has walked and will walk in a place.

So where does that leave us? With an imperfect system trying to keep up with our changing understanding of what heritage is, what it was and what it can be. This assessment, along with the views values of the property owner, landlord, relevant stakeholders and relevant communities and stakeholders, led to the beginnings of a master plan. This will usually always informs a planning decisions that affect heritage items. by a planner, councillor, or Minister, Prime Minister who decidesx wWhether a placexi is to be What is kept, changed, or destroyed. is the decision of a negotiation between authorised local, state, and federal government representatives communities, professionals, and authorities. who It is a This decision is final and often balanced justifiedy this balance between what heritage is to you and against alongside other objectives, social, economic, design & environmental priorities. like the need to develop new housing or infrastructure. But don't worry, there is one certainty. We need heritage; it brings us together and gives meaning to our lives.

Ultimately, Wwho decides the decision-maker does will not always value what is worth keeping. Though it has been said, this method of business is what keeps us them places alive.

Let’s think about history of the Country that we’re on. The responsibility that comes with this. Everything we design is made of County and will become Country. Today and tomorrow, when dealing with widespread climate transformations and a biodiversity emergency, First Nations culture, expertise and design represents a vital lifeline which, if given the chance, can catalyze paradigmatic shifts within our conception and design of the built environment. Raising the questions: What does First Nations design look like within the Australian continent? And how, in the pursuit of an equitable and sustainable future, can we move beyond our current conceptions of Heritage?

viii Michael McMahon and Jack Isles (7)

This reading of our built environment encourages the maintaining of colonial fictions: the literal paving-over of 100s of generations of First Nations people and their sites of significance. To reconcile place and people, we must move beyond limited and limiting concepts of heritage and instead be guided by our responsibility to connect with and care for Country.

ix Cristina Garduño Freeman (6)

I don’t understand this? Laws or lores?

x Kerstin Thompson (2)

Yes, who decides?

xi Kerstin Thompson (2)

A person (Aotearoa); the river our blood ("water in the river, like blood in my veins" Ian Hamm)

Above: After three successive occupants, the backyard is a haphazard shrine to collective personal significance.