Heritage and Sustainable Urban-ism Symposium

Last Friday, on the 6th of May 2016, there was a seminar held in the URA Building. It was the second day of a symposium on heritage and sustainable urbanism, with four different speakers from France and Singapore who are expertise in conservation, protection, reusing and restoring heritage buildings. The hall where the discussion took place was quite full that day.

The first presenter was Alfred Peter, a landscape architect and urban planner, who came from France. Although he brought a translator, I think what is delivered to the audience is not so clear. In short, he explained his topic which was "protect to develop/ develop while protecting" by giving some examples of projects that sustain its heritage while interpreting it to new design. He said that we need to preserve heritage for the future generation. It is not only found in buildings, historic places and monumental scales but also the people who are in it.

Some examples that he told us in his presentation was Citadel of Vauban in France, the triple bridge in Slovenia built by Josip Plecnik which creates a heritage with pass-ism in its image, Schaulager in Basel Swiss which is a building that takes and reinterpret the elements surrounding it by using material from the site such as stones for walls and Le Peyrou Reservoir which has drinkable water under it. He also explained that sometimes to conserve a site they need to destroy other things like in Pointe du Raz where it is surrounded by too much water that keeps rising. They need to destroy the hotel there and rehabilitate the side because the road was too close to the sea. Then the City Palace in Berlin which was destroyed back in the 1945 could be reconstructed the way it was before by reinterpreting traditional knowledge so the heritage will remain. Some sites can be used for new purpose as well like in Zollverein which before was an industrial mine and now the cranes and other different elements in there are assembled to create a recreation and attraction space.

He gave quite a lot of examples related to the theme but they are all just introduced briefly. He also explained some projects that he was involved in like the Avignon city walls which fort is a UNESCO world heritage that he worked for 20 years. The parking space there is moved out from the town area to under the walls, the trees are cut to provide better view and providing public transport to reach the site. Another one is installing public transportation in Avenue de la Paix railway which is a very beautiful place. They must integrate a railway to the area. Lastly before he ended his talk he shared his experience on his most complicated project, Mont Saint Michel. This place is one of the most visited place in France and it is a structure that floats in the sea water. If they are not rehabilitated, they will be on the ground in the next few years. They did destructed the road that link the site with the ground and replace it with bridge, the parking area is moved further to the land area and create a hydraulic project to chase water to the sea. The entire project crosses heritage with architecture and sustainability and this was a big challenge for him and his team.

After his talk has ended, the second speaker came up to the stage. He is Dr. Imran Bin Tahudeen from architecture department of National University of Singapore. He deliver the topic "urban heritage as resource for the histories of diverse societies". In my opinion he actually presented his topic very well and detailed, but it is too narrow. He explained about the history of how Singapore divides its area based on the people who live in it, in the past and how has it become today. He pointed out how culture affected buildings shape, road names and areas as well as how Singapore has developed by repairing these elements selectively.

Following Alfred Peter and dr. Imran, in the second half of the forum the other two speakers discussed their topic. They are Ms Khoo Salma Nasution, the Vice President and Immediate Past President of Penang Heritage Trust and Dr. Jason Pomeroy, the founder of Pomeroy Studio who came to our school before. I only joined the first half of the talk as it was delayed because of the extended question and answer session but after all it was a good opportunity to meet new people and listen to new topic that we have not learnt ar=t school before.

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