22 YEARBOOK 2025 the identity of their location⁷. To ignore or remove such elements picks away at the fabric of a place, causing it to unravel and disassociate. The sense of the place is fragmented and lost. What is retained needs to make sense in its recreated setting. Decisions must be made about worth and significance, relevance and meaning - what can be lost and what should be kept – and how what is kept can enhance the new, big picture. There are dangers associated with using heritage to merely market a place or to use the traces of historical toil to create theme-park relics of curiosity⁸,⁹. The context must be readable; details cannot be left stranded, as tokens of times past, in their new place. The incorporation of retained assets has to be meaningful, aiding the perception of place and adding depth to people’s understanding. The designer’s intentionality requires decisions about not only what is retained, but how it is retained and valued in its new setting; to the impact the heritage features will have on what people will see, how they will encounter it and what their perceptions of it will be. Features retained within the public realm are likely to maximise such impacts. There should be value of the old in the new; in terms of iteration, the evolution of a place, and of acceptance, recognition and legibility of the past, in the present, and into the future¹⁰. All too often, the temptation is for a developer, and therefore their appointed designer, to ‘wipe the slate clean’ as, somehow, this removes the obstacles from the design process. Such an act demonstrates a blatant disregard for tomorrow. The mapping of constraints and opportunities is a necessity. All too frequently, heritage assets are identified as constraints, rather than as opportunities. In truth, they can be both, but it is important for the proposers to acknowledge the positives and not to focus just on the negatives, that constraints can provide a springboard for invention and design innovation, for distinctiveness. Clearly, not everything can be kept; this would be undesirable. Any importance and significance of heritage assets would get lost amid the clutter. There has long been recognition of the need for conservation to be active, forward-looking and part of life, rather than the impossibility of an ever static past. As a corollary, the design of new development should not copy what is already there but take cues from the history of a place and what is retained, and reinterpret this in the new place. As conservationists, we know that restoration is better than creating anew; that the only thing that can be mended, truly, is the future. Of course, the test, in these times of reduced resources, diminishing statutory heritage consultees and amidst pressure to deliver more and more homes, is to have the courage and conviction to insist that heritage assets can help to inform what comes next. The skill is the ability to articulate this – to explain and justify what and why. There is environmental justification for making the most of what is already there¹¹ by reducing the amount of land reprofiling and the repurposing of built structures to minimise the release of embodied carbon. This demands collaborative working, to make sure designs are formulated across the built environment professions, arguably with conservation and heritage as a guiding forethought. Developments that embrace and incorporate heritage assets in a meaningful way create better places, and the communities that live in and use them are better placed. References ¹ Alexander, Christopher et al, A Pattern Language: towns, buildings, construction, OUP, 1977 2 Heatherwick, Thomas, Humanise: a maker’s guide to building our world, Penguin, 2023 3 Tibbalds, Francis (ed), Making People-Friendly Towns: improving the public environment in towns and cities, Routledge, 2001 4 Leary, Jim (2024), Footmarks: a journey into our restless past, Icon Books, 2024 5 Strike, James, Architecture in Conservation: managing development at historic sites, Routledge, 1994 6 Lynch, Kevin, The Image of the City, MIT Press, 1960 7 Worskett, Roy, The Character of Towns: an approach to conservation, Architectural P, 1969 8 Hewison, Robert, The Heritage Industry; Britain in a climate of decline, Methuen, 1987 9 Wetherall, Sam, Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain, Apollo, 2025 10 Lynch, Kevin, What Time is This Place, MIT Press, 1972 11 Design for Homes: building for a healthy life, Homes England, 2020, www.gov.uk/government/collections/ building-healthy-places 12 bc-url.com/IHBCYB2025b Dan Roberts worked in local government for over 25 years and also as a senior lecturer in planning and urban design. He is currently a senior planning and design manager for Homes England. Although uncontroversial, these are his views and not necessarily those of his employer. Redevelopment of the former barracks at Roussillon Park, Chichester. The historic boundary wall and entrance gates have been largely retained, except to create openings for logical connections from and routes through the site. The design and scale of the new homes is reminiscent, but not a copy, of the former barracks buildings12. (Photo: Dan Roberts)
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