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THE BURRA CHARTER

The Burra Charter: Uses and Abuses

Historians looking back on our treatment of existing, culturally significant building stock may well observe an oddity: a tendency to superimpose modernist structures, often in glass and steel or other alien materials, against the solid traditionally articulated forms of the older structures.  Such a tendency is unprecedented in history.  While the progressive additions to historic buildings over the ages before the mid twentieth century might have reflected an evolution of an underlying design language in each progressive addition, there has been a coherence in the balance between solid and void, proportions, use of materials and detailing.

The current tendency evolves out of a position that is part and parcel of the modern movement.  This position sought to posit that all architectural traditions before the modern movement were effectively dead languages without ongoing legitimacy, that the only means of expressing the ‘spirit of the age’ was through the use of the modernist design language and its derivatives.  This attitude and the disrespect it implied in relation to traditional forms of architecture led to wholesale destruction of historic precincts in the first half of the twentieth century, before the rallying of the heritage preservation movements in the 1950s slowed the rate of demolition somewhat.

The modern movement was successful in its objectives to the extent that an ongoing capacity and skill among designers to both understand, use and evolve traditional design languages to a large extent died out.  The lack of skill in use of traditional design elements led many to believe that buildings designed in these modes could be no more than shallow facsimiles or replicas of earlier structures, and that the ability to bring life these traditions had been lost.

Even the preservationist movements have not been immune from the pervasive influence of modernism.  In Victoria, Maie Casey’s seminal pictorial essay on Melbourne’s historic architecture, compiled in the 1950s and published in 1953, strongly favoured the more austere, early colonial structures, reflecting the Modernist abhorrence of what was perceived to be the overdecorated architecture of the later Victorian period.[1]

The modernist desire to create structures as sculptural entities that contrast with their settings is embodied in the tendency of architects operating in the heritage field to contrast old and new.  This work pays lip service to heritage by claiming a similarity of proportion, building structures that are lower than their heritage hosts, or claiming that their transparency will make the additions ‘disappear’.  The fatuousness of these claims is frequently betrayed by even the most superficial examination of the results.

To some extent clause 22 of the Burra Charter, the key policy document of ICOMOS (the privately constituted International Council on Monuments and Sites, and adopted as a defacto standard by heritage practitioners) has been open to this kind of interpretation, stating that:

‘22.1 New work such as additions to the place may be acceptable where it does not distort or obscure the cultural significance of the place, or detract from its interpretation and appreciation.

New work may be sympathetic if its siting, bulk, form, scale, character, colour, texture and material are similar to the existing fabric, but imitation should be avoided.

22.2New work should be readily identifiable as such.’

In the first instance, the declaration that additions ‘may be acceptable’[2] is an interesting reflection on current views of heritage environments, that is, that they are places to be maintained as far as possible as embodiments of particular periods and to some extent to be frozen forevermore in that state.  Yet ironically the very act of ‘freezing’ is a potent statement of the contemporary view of heritage, cultural and aesthetic values, and runs the risk of producing environments with a museum like sterility.  Certainly there is a long tradition of preservationist tendency extending back into the early nineteenth century and ICOMOS continues this essentially romantic desire to encapsulate and protect manifestations of the past.  There is certainly nothing wrong with this, provided it is clearly seen as a subjective cultural tendency, not couched in pseudo scientific way that makes both the preservationist desire and the mechanisms for implementing these desires appear to be objective facts.

More problematic has been the statement that ‘imitation is to be avoided’.  While the paragraph preceding this line would appear to prohibit the superimposition of glass boxes on heritage buildings, the word ‘imitation’ is very open to interpretation.  It would seem logical, for instance, to make a small, functionally necessary addition to a fine, ashlar sandstone heritage building in matching ashlar sandstone, and logical to line up the existing building plinths and eaves lines.  To the casual observer, the addition would thereby not call attention to itself, allowing the general heritage flavour and character of the whole entity to be enjoyed without distraction.  Yet in many cases heritage advisers have vigorously opposed such approaches, insisting that the new addition must, as the Charter says, ‘be readily identifiable as such’.  The clearly modern addition then becomes a distraction to the overall heritage flavour of the place, eroding the ability to read the character of the environment as it might have appeared at its inception.  The problem with this approach is also the tendency to objectify the heritage building as ‘old’ and frozen in time, a visual duality of old versus new, not a structure that has an ongoing capacity to be developed and evolved in a stylistically and visually consistent way, as might have happened in the past.  In short, this approach is a statement of the Modernist position, that all design languages before the Modern Movement are effectively dead, and must not be resurrected even if only for reason of visual congruence.

There is an alternative reading of this clause of the Burra Charter that is equally problematic, focussing on the need to ‘clearly identify’ new work as against existing fabric.  This implies that the humble man in the street will become confused by new work that closely matches the existing structure, and make some terrible error in his understanding of the heritage place.  This somewhat patronizing position seems to imply that the only means for interpreting the place is by viewing the fabric, and that supporting historic documentation of the evolution of the place is not available.[3]  It also targets the interpretation of the place at the lowest common denominator, and assumes the viewer does not have the analytical capacity to see beyond superficial similarity of form or detail.

It may be time to reconsider the way in which this clause is so often interpreted, to set aside the Modernist view of design evolution and open the door to work on heritage places using traditional design languages, allowing our heritage buildings to be evolve in ways more respectful of their underlying character, and which thereby more fully acknowledges their capacity to continue to be active, vital and useful elements in our cultural landscape.