Conservation Now Mission Critical

BY HELEN LOCHHEAD, AUSTRALIAN HERITAGE COUNCIL BOARD MEMBER

Architect and urbanist Emeritus Professor Helen Lochhead poses that conservation and adaptive re-use are crucial to a more sustainable future, not just "nice to haves", in this extract from her address at the 2023 National Trust Heritage Awards.

Like many modern cities, over time Sydney has had to deal with the tensions of competing agendas – economic growth versus environmental protection, public versus private interests and conservation versus renewal. These tensions are inevitable, but how we react to them is not. At key moments, they have provoked public discourse and activism that has led to pivotal and positive urban transformation.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, the decline of industry coupled with the growth of the environmental movement saw a growing community groundswell that demanded environmental protection and amenity. Buoyed by the rise in Sydney’s service economy, the 1960s building boom brought unprecedented development pressures and the threat of wholesale destruction of our heritage. The threat to places such as the The Rocks and Kelly’s Bush spawned community action. The National Trust plus other groups not only agitated but organised, and with support of the Builders Labourer’s Federation (BLF), the first Green Bans got underway. This grassroots activism not only ensured the protection of these places, but also their regeneration and a different, more layered future.

Importantly, this activism prompted several landmark pieces of legislation. Successive governments of different persuasions showed considered leadership, triggering two decades of far-reaching policy reform and public investment in both protection and urban transformation. Notably, the NSW Heritage Act (1977) was instituted to protect and conserve places of State or Local Heritage significance, and then came the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act in 1979, with its primary goals being to protect the environment; and prevent, control and abate pollution and environmental harm. These acts were followed by a range of legislation, policies and investment that have shaped our city, making it denser but also cleaner, greener and more liveable.

While today we acknowledge the Traditional Owners for their care for Country and the pristine harbour setting that our forbears occupied, we also need to acknowledge that timely collective action, astute political leadership and robust public policy have, to date, saved our urban and natural environment from unmitigated exploitation. Yet over the past 20 years, with the rapid growth in our population, the scale and pace of urban transformation have accelerated exponentially, along with the environmental, social and climate impacts. Unsurprisingly, heritage has been getting an increasingly bad wrap, too often seen as standing in the way of development.

While there have been numerous losses, there is also cause for optimism. In May, the Land and Environment Court quashed a developer’s bid to demolish the MLC building, the first commercial skyscraper in North Sydney. Importantly, Senior Commissioner Susan Dixon found “the applicant was unable to demonstrate that there is no acceptable alternative to demolition,” and that complete demolition would have significant, irreversible heritage impacts.

I would argue that rather than the industry norm of a ‘clean slate’ as a starting point, all development should start with the principles of conservation and adaptive re-use. Wholesale demolition should be seen as the last resort. The only defensible development today is that which conserves, remediates and integrates as much as possible of what already exists, whether it is the natural site features or existing built and social fabric.

Existing fabric enriches a development as well as minimising its carbon footprint and climate impacts, making it more sustainable. The embedded carbon in the existing fabric versus the carbon generated by the manufacture, transportation and construction of a new build makes it clear that re-use makes more sense. The most sustainable building is one that already exists, and most developments today involve renewal. More than 50% of all buildings that will exist in 2050 already exist. In cities like New York it is over 80%.

To be sustainable all development projects, not just heritage projects, should start with the principles of conservation and adaptive re-use. Conservation is no longer a nice to have, it is mission critical. Importantly regeneration is crucial to a more sustainable, liveable future for all.