At the end of October our team attended the 50th Anniversary of the National Trust for Canada Conference, in association with the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals and Indigenous Heritage Circle. This year’s theme was focused on transforming Canada’s definition of heritage, to advance decolonization and anti-racism, leading climate action, and supporting the efforts of heritage professionals working to address these challenges.
Chris: Realigning the Past for the Future, The Importance of Conservation Guidelines
Conservation guidelines are tools to understand a place and assist in managing change in a variety of place types including non-designated, but high value sites. There are a handful of key content areas within conservation guidelines that promote this enhanced understanding to create stronger foundation for managing interventions including articulating the original design vision; summarizing changes over time (and ideally why the changes occurred); and highlighting areas and components that contribute a place’s value. In the case of the 80 Elgin building, it is interesting that the new user undertook the creation of conservation guidelines as part of a larger suite of foundational documents to inform the eventual building revitalization. Regardless of whether a place possesses formal designation, there is typically an underlying logic and varying levels of value that can be used to proactively guide change.
Presentation Highlights:
- Recent changes to preparing Federal heritage designations include greater inclusion of context and landscape and the role of a place for communities.
- It is important to understand the evolution of a place over time to review changes and explore obscured potential.
- A more in depth understanding of place allows for thoughtful and better integrated interventions that focus on augmentation.
- At times a new use may be more compatible with a place rather than the original use.
- Repurposing existing buildings represents a head start in many different ways.
Emily: Heritage and Housing
Emily took part in Session 2.3 – Heritage and Housing: Resolving the Designation and Density Tension, an action-packed panel with interesting perspectives with regards to how the Heritage Industry can address the growing housing crisis in Canada. The panel focused on the Ontario context, specifically the Provincial Government’s influential Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force Report and passing of Bill 23: More Homes Faster Act. Bill 23 has made sweeping changes to how planning and development approvals happen in Ontario. Emily’s presentation focused on key details and concerns of the Bill specific to its impact on the Ontario Heritage Act, and subsequently the Provincial Heritage Registers, Individual Designations and Heritage Conservation Districts.
Of late, heritage has been portrayed as a hindrance to building targets, and allegedly abused by advocates as a means of NIMBYism. As the first presentation of the panel, Emily attempted to highlight facts and myths around Heritage, and considerations as to how the heritage community is, and can grow as advocates and facilitators of healthy density, and better development.
Carly: Embodied Carbon in Existing Structures
Building off of our work last year with Heritage Ottawa, Carly presented a summary and update of Mark’s presentation on the carbon benefits of rehabilitating the historic Alexandra Bridge, instead of building a new one. The embodied carbon of the materials of the existing bridge are approximately, 14,000 TONS of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Additionally, the government estimates that the materials for a replacement bridge would be another 30,000 tCO2e, and that’s before you even get to the impacts of the actual construction process itself!
Although these are very rough estimates (neither the design of the replacement bridge nor scope of the equivalent rehabilitation have been determined), the embodied carbon calculations clearly indicate that rehabilitation is by far the environmentally sustainable option, and climate action option. Understanding and quantifying the impacts of a building or large infrastructure over its entire lifecycle, including the extraction of raw materials, through to end-of-life disposal, can help heritage practitioners build an even stronger case for conserving our heritage.
After all, building and infrastructure reuse is climate action!
Mark: CAHP | ACECP Workroom
Mark was asked to actively take part in and engage with the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals (CAHP) “Workroom” workshop day, which looked at conservation and reuse of the built environment, including best practices for Adaptive Reuse.
Starting with a field session to The Slayte, a downtown Ottawa rehabilitation and retrofit of a mid-century modern Federal office building into a rental apartment community. The group of about 50 participants were treated to the successful completion of a project that, even though they had to “gut” it, probably saved close to 50% of the embodied carbon, avoiding yet more GHG emissions for a 12-storey structure.
The workroom then returned to the Chateau Laurier where the participants rolled up their sleeves and worked in subgroups to address obstacles to wise use and reuse of existing built resources. This collaboration is part of an ongoing CAHP Workroom series, where participants work in collaborative sessions, exploring ideas of how we as heritage professionals can participate in climate action. Stay tuned for the published outcomes!
At the end of the conference, Mark thought highly of the efforts that went into this stream and the intelligence that came out of it. The conservation community now knows the significance of our work on historic, and all existing, buildings, with respect to Climate Action. For next year in Montreal (2nd joint conference with The Association for Preservation Technology International (APT), Mark has advised that we now need to focus fully on concrete ACTIONS, to accelerate the deep green rehab/retrofit of existing and historic buildings in the urgent fight against Climate Chaos.
Capital Modern : A TRACE Initiative
If you were lucky enough to snag a seat on the Capital Modern bus tour, you might have met Chris and Catherine. The Capital Modern tour stopped at three iconic mid-century sites in Ottawa; The First Unitarian Church in Westboro, Hog’s Back Pavilion and Park in Confederation Heights and the Federal Study Centre (Campanile Campus) in Alta Vista. If you missed the conference and bus tour, you can still visit the Capital Modern website to explore self-led virtual tours around the city, including Suburban Ottawa!
