Community Values and Contemporary Architecture in Historic Urban Landscape

Ref.: 214
Key theme: 03 Visual integrity of historic urban landscapes
Date of reception: 29/10/2008

AUTHORS (*Main author)

GHAFOURI, Mehdi * (Canada) - Vanier College

ABSTRACT

Researchers and policy makers advance the idea that heritage, including Historic Urban Landscape, HUL, recognition and conservation must be a shared responsibility between citizens and decision makers. Consequently community values must inspire the formulation of heritage values of Historic Urban Landscape including its visual integrity. To achieve this objective decision makers consult citizens and civil society active in HUL conservation to better understand their views and integrate them in policies, evaluation, analysis of contemporary interventions in the visual integrity of HUL and facilitate the appropriation of HUL by the community.
This paper presents findings of our research on UHL heritage values including visual integrity attributed by citizens and association active in heritage recognition and conservation. Furthermore this paper will discuss the integration of identified values in the evaluation process of contemporary architecture insertions in HUL. The Historic Urban Landscape Mont Royal, located in geographic centre of Montreal, Canada was used as the case study of this research.

Mont Royal has played, through it presence and visual integrity, an important role in changing culture, economic, politic and social development of communities in the past and the present time, at local, national and global levels. Historic Urban Landscape of Mont Royal, including its built and natural components, tangible and intangible elements, as well as its visual impact and integrity is recognized as an emblem, symbol and icon of cultural identity and as a carrier of collective memory.
A list of thirty potential community organizations active in heritage recognition and conservation were complied. These associations were consulted in a private and informal setting. A series of questions were submitted to each organization for internal discussions amongst the members prior to meeting with researchers.
A list of heritage values attributed to this territory was complied and visual integrity factors were identified. This research underlines the importance of views towards, from and within Historic Urban Landscape as one of the major values attributed by communities. Visual integrity, visual corridors, scale, proportions, textures, materials and setting are some of the other elements of visual integrity proposed by the communities for recognition and protection of HUL.
The findings of this research were integrated in the analysis and evaluation process of contemporary architecture projects by the Quebec Cultural Properties Commissions where the author served as a member of advisory committee for over 15 years. The analysis process, values and visual integrity impact analyses, of a number of projects from initial proposal by the developers to the final approved project is presented.

REFERENCES

Getty Conservation Institute.
Values and Heritage Conservation. Los Angeles: Getty Publishing, 2000.

Hayden, Dolores.
The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. 1996
Hood, Edward J.
"Social Relations and the Cultural Landscape," pp. 121-46 in Rebecca Yamin and Karen Bescherer Metheny. Landscape Archaeology: Reading and Interpreting the American Historical Landscape. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996.
Howett, Catherine.
"Second Thoughts" [About Historic Landscape Preservation]," pp. 52- 55 in Landscape Architecture, July/August 1987.
Jackson, John Brinkerhoff.
Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, especially chapter 1, "The Word Itself" [definitions of landscape]. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
Lefebvre, Henri.
"The Right ti the City." In Writings on Cities, Eleonre Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, eds
and trans. Blackwell, 2006. 147-159
Sauer, Carl O.
"The Morphology of Landscape," University of California Publications in Geography, (vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 19-54). Reprinted in John Leighly, ed., Land and Life: A Selection from the Writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963.
Tuan, Yi-Fu.
Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. New York: Columbia University Press. 1974.
Yamin, Rebecca, and Karen Bescherer Metheny.
"Preface: Reading the Historical Landscape," pp. xiii-xx in Rebecca Yamin and Karen Bescherer Metheny, Landscape Archaeology: Reading and Interpreting the American Historical Landscape. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996.