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Policy & Research / New Buildings in Old Places

New Buildings in Old Places Conference

31st January 2008

A seminar on valuing and supporting our historic urban areas with sensitive new building, hosted jointly with the Prince’s Regeneration Trust at St. James’ Palace.

Kindly sponsored by the National Trust and Historic Royal Palaces

Led by a powerful opening speech by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, The New Buildings in Old Places conference brought together high level government figures, architects, planners,historians, institutional landholders, developers and heritage leaders to discuss the issue of placing culturally sensitive “well mannered” buildings in places of historic interest.

The Prince spoke passionately of the need to protect our precious heritage by making far more considered decisions about the scale and style of new buildings in historic contexts; “For some unaccountable reason we seem to be determined to vandalize these few remaining sites which retain the kind of human scale and timeless character that so attract people to them and which increase in value as time goes by. What is it, Ladies and Gentlemen, about our outlook which perpetuates desire deliberately to desecrate such places? You would think, wouldn’t you, that we might have outgrown this kind of attitude by now…in chasing the corporate tenant or the buy-to-let investor, we may not only be destroying our heritage, but killing the goose that lays the golden egg for we will destroy what makes our cities and towns so attractive to tourists in the process.”

He identified ways in which a more courteous, “slow architecture” could be developed in the manner of the slow food movement, reflecting our present age of environmental concerns, increased population and growth pressures.

Subsequent presentations by a series of prominent speakers argued how to marry the competing interests of development to arrive at sustainable, ecologically sound interventions in our old cities using modern building techniques and making them sit well in the context of historically important sites. This theme was expanded to include how to responsibly tackle the current housing shortfall by developing new towns on brown field sites as socially aware, pedestrian friendly, mixed use environments that will provide agood quality of life to inhabitants for generations.

Hank Dittmar concluded a lively and enjoyable day by identifying four key follow up actions that the assembly should pursue:

1. Argue convincingly, with supporting evidence, for the value of a multi-nodal approach to growth, planning many mixed-use, medium density centres rather than a small number of towers at the city heart.

2. Equip communities with the professional language needed to argue for the right kind of development, rather than having to take refuge in NIMBY reaction.

3. Present researched data on the economic value of heritage, drawing upon EH Heritage Counts initiative amongst others.

4. Encourage a broader dialogue with architects on the place of towers, through the Academy for Urbanism.