Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment

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.