Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment

Andy is studying MSc Sustainable Heritage at UCL and is originally from the Philippines.

This picture reflects my perspective that heritage will not be sustainable if opportunities to practically address climate change are allowed to sail by, (and we miss the boat altogether!).

Aoife is studying MSc Sustainable Heritage at UCL and is from Ireland.

To me Sustainable Heritage is ensuring the continued relevance and protection of heritage by encouraging people (public, professional, institutional & governmental) to appreciate that the backdrop is as important as the foreground.To me Sustainable Heritage is ensuring the continued relevance and protection of heritage by encouraging people (public, professional, institutional & governmental) to appreciate that the backdrop is as important as the foreground.

Christina is studying MSc Sustainable Heritage at UCL and is from Scotland.

My home town

There’s a Scots word “heft” that most commonly refers to sheep and their attachment to hillside; they don’t merely sit on land, but become rooted in it; they become a part of it and it a part of them.

Sustainable heritage is an understanding that our communities are a part of place and place a part of our communities. It is an understanding that the cultural and natural processes that shape our world also shape our identities and values, which in turn inform our actions.

My sustainable heritage is Patrick Geddes and Alastair McIntosh; it is the hill and the city; it is the turret and the tenement; it is Seamus Heaney and Facebook. It is my “heftedness” to place and communities of every scale.

Pakhee is a student of MSc Sustainable Heritage at UCL and is from India.

Vernacular architecture of central India. These houses are rapidly being replaced by cement-concrete constructions. An array skills will be lost along with the vernacular architecture.

Sustainable heritage in my opinion is heritage which is accessible, both physically and economically, to all sections of society.

Tamsin is studying MSc Sustainable Heritage at UCL and is from the UK.

Euston Tap Bar. Photo taken by Bernt Rostad. “Euston Tap”. 31.05.2011. Online. Flickr. 17.04.2012. http://www.flickr.com/photos/brostad/5819058694/

Sustainable heritage aims to ensure that that which is significant and valued about heritage is preserved for future generations. To be preserved for the future, heritage often needs to be of use to present generations so that it is cared for and maintained. The creative re-use of a redundant building in a way which has a minimal impact on the environment is an excellent way to ensure its future when its original use is no longer possible. For example, turning an empty building outside Euston station into a ‘craft ale house’ – the Euston Tap – has brought the building back into prominence, offering travellers an interesting place to have a drink, and meaning that money is generated to maintain the building. To be truly sustainable, projects should be socially, environmentally and economically sustainable.

Agnieszka is studying MSc Sustainable Heritage at UCL and is from Poland.

Cracow Old Town Square

Project for Public Spaces voted the Cracow Old Town Market Place the best public Square in the world (http://www.pps.org/articles/internationalsquares/) This is an example of sustainable heritage because the square is not only a tourist attraction, it retains historical diversity of complementary uses and is a place where locals meet, hang out, celebrate and shop.

Columnar basalts from the Isle of Mull in Scotland

I would be willing to guarantee that this image is not what first springs to mind, but for me it is. This is a picture of columnar basalts from the Isle of Mull in Scotland, a photo I took on one of my field trips while studying geology as an undergraduate. The concept of heritage may at first seem far flung from this image of cooled molten lava but I would like to demonstrate the ties between these disciplines and why we need to ensure that this, too, is part of our sustainable heritage.

As a geology student, you are primarily taught about the scientific importance of these sites for education, however equally crucial are the links to the people, places and accomplishments associated with these sites. Many of these have been vital to the evolution of science and without them we would not have been able to make many of the technological and scientific advancements we have today.

Take Siccar Point in Berwickshire, Scotland as an example. This location was of seminal importance and built the foundation for evolutionary and geological science as we know today. It was here where James Hutton (often referred to as ‘the father of modern geology’) discovered ‘deep time’. At this site in 1788 Hutton noticed an odd sequence of rocks that proved the need for unfathomable amounts of time and forces to erode the layers and rotate them by 90° from their original position.

Our understanding of the several thousand million year history of the Earth in contrast to the religious standards of the time revolutionised our view of the world and the sciences.

It is my opinion that this site is an intrinsic part of our national, and global heritage. There are lots of areas similar to this across the world, many of which are in the UK with a significant set of the geological periods named after British ‘type’ localities.

Sustainable heritage should not only encompass the physical preservation of an object or historically important locality, but the preservation of the knowledge that it has entreated us with. In the case of Hutton’s Unconformity, along with many other natural landscapes, access to and preservation of the site is difficult. What we can do however is to ensure that we sustain the knowledge associated with that locality through a range of media, to make it permanently available for future generations to be continually inspired and educated.