Time's Arrow

Time's Arrow

Heritage exists because of destruction. Today, with the impacts of climate change affecting everyday life almost everywhere, adaptation is needed as much as preservation. We need to abandon a paradigm that fixes the past in place versus the dynamism of the new and expand the disciplines developed to protect historic buildings to be the new norm, not the exception.

How should heritage be preserved when the world is burning and flooding? It is a practical and philosophical question. How does the past adapt? Does the past change with the future? Should heritage be preserved at all or should we not protect all existing structures and the precious resources they contain?

Preservation, repair and adaptation could be part of one integrated and holistic architectural movement that breaks down previous distinctions. It would be argued that conservation practices have grown a quiet revolution in radical ecological architecture. Craft traditions, using low carbon, locally sourced materials have been the staple of the conservation industry.

The Limmat is a place that combines stability with constant flux. We shall survey a selection of historic buildings along the Limmat, uncover the knowledge of materials and construction contained in the existing as well as places that no longer exist but have left their traces in archives, maps and photographs to produce a palimpsest.

We will use today’s heritage as temporal landmarks, fixed positions from which to travel through time to investigate what has been lost alongside what has been protected. We shall map the past onto the future to provoke new ways to adapt without damaging what exists.

The survey will be the design the tool to document, excavate and speculate. We shall test how building traditions can be expanded to produce more culturally and climatically resilient places. Heritage practices may yet provide the most fertile and playful ground for the architectural imagination.