Chester Cathedral Solar Panels, 2023, and St. Botolph’s Curch, Skidbrooke, 2024. Images used with permission from Chester Cathedral and Donald Insall Associates respectively.
Description:
What should be the dialogue between architects and architectural historians at a moment which has seen large-scale development and redevelopment globally while realising the full extent of the climate crisis? What is the future of our shared architectural heritage that can respond to the urgency of environmental change and cultural repositioning? We know the situation demands professions to learn from each other and to work together to frame debates about architectural conservation in the Anthropocene. In reflection of the occasion that 2025 will be the 50th anniversary of the European Charter of the Architectural Heritage, we have set the theme - 'a conversation about the shape of buildings to come' - to address the challenges of future heritage.
Today we are looking at a different type of change, one necessitated by the climate crisis, an aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. Aware that historians of the future would not be looking at our period of architecture in the same light as we at the Victorians, the need for us to learn to be more frugal with our building materials may be a counterpoint to the value of abundance of the Victorian era. We need to pick technologies and materials which best preserve our planet, to unlearn the graph which led us to disposables, and to re-learn how to reuse, repurpose, and generate energy more efficiently and sustainably. In the process, we need also to preserve our built heritage and understand its value and significance.
Inviting input from our guest speakers through their diverse expertise, experience and perspectives, as well as with our audience, we ask further: how can architects and architectural historians, between tasks of being chroniclers, designers, analysts, constructors and commentators, find ways to collaboratively rethink heritage and conservation practices while addressing challenges brought on by these large-scale changes and implications in buildings, resources, energies, policies, laws and environments?
Convener & Chair:
Tanvir Hasan (Director Emeritus at Donald Insall Associates, Trustee of the SAHGB)
Guest Speakers:
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Presentation title: Growth and the Future of Heritage in London
Description: The talk illustrates how London’s rapid growth has shaped its skyline over the past 20 years by considering some emerging trends and possible threats to London’s heritage. This will then lead to an optimistic account of what might come in the next 20 years.
Bio: Tom Foxall is Historic England’s Regional Director for London & SE. He is an architectural historian, heritage planner and urban designer, as well as a long-time member of SAHGB. He has developed a particular specialism in heritage planning, both in and out of London, through his 18 years at Historic England. His particular experience is of the most high-profile planning and listing casework in London. During his time in the London & SE Region he has overseen HE’s involvement in 8 public inquiries. His other interests include the regeneration of seaside towns.
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Presentation title: About Time
Description: This talk will present the argument that architecture is a material embodiment of performances. It is therefore a practice that creates a representation of time. Perhaps its deepest vocation is to manifest temporal depth, binding communities together to achieve complex social organisations.
Bio: Níall McLaughlin designs buildings for education, culture, health, religious worship and housing. He won Young British Architect of the Year in 1998 and received the RIBA Charles Jencks Award for Simultaneous Contribution to Theory and Practice in 2016. Níall was elected an Aosdána Member for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts in Ireland and as a Royal Academician in the Category of Architecture in 2019. In 2020 he was awarded an Honorary MBE for Services to Architecture. Níall has been shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2013, 2015, 2018 and winner in 2022 for The New Library, Magdalene College.
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Presentation title: Tangible Uncertainty
Description: Reuse and preservation have a different pace in non-European cultures that are experience rapid technological and economic growth. The existing environment holds different relative value. In parts of the world where heritage practice is less established and regulated there are rich examples of the adaptations of buildings and cities leading cultural practice and offering alternative models. Here building and arts practice provide a vital and humanising counterpoint to certainties offered by STEM based industries and learning.
Bio: Ingrid Schroder is the director of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. She was previously Head of Design Teaching and Director of the MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Cambridge Department of Architecture.
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Presentation title: Material Etymology of Future Architecture
Description: During his 1823 tour of industrialising Great Britain, Karl Friedrich Schinkel fell into crisis. The new ‘modern’ age demanded new building types assembled with new materials to form contemporary architecture and infrastructure with little if no reference to the classical language he had mastered, innovated with and believed eternal. Schinkel set Karl Bötticher and Gottfried Semper the questions: What is the etymology of all architecture and what will the future look like? This talk will trace why Schinkel’s and the period’s half education in architecture raised the question, and consequently why the answer could not then and nor now be universally applied and achieved without a fundamental change to how we train architects.
Bio: Amin Taha is an architect, trustee at the Soane Museum, teaches architecture at the RCA, Harvard and Yale, material technology and sustainability at UCL’s faculty of engineering and is chairperson at GROUPWORK. A practice known for their innovative use of sustainable materials reflecting a commitment to durability, local sourcing, and integrating architecture with its cultural and environmental context.
Tickets are priced at £10 for SAHGB members, £20 for non-members, and £5 for students. Please contact the SAHGB Administrator at info@sahgb.org.uk with any questions.
REGISTRATION FOR THIS EVENT HAS NOW CLOSED.
