IN-PERSON London Heritages. Section B

Abstract

This paper focuses on landscape and public spaces and discusses why, considering the current poly-crises, it is necessary to change the current Danish building-oriented conservation practice towards a more integrated perspective and practice, where landscapes and open spaces are treated equally with the primarily building-oriented focus. During the 1960’s and 1970s, several conservation associations emerged in Denmark as a reaction to the functionally determined standardization of cities and construction. This led to the development of the Survey of Architectural Values in the Environment (SAVE) system and includes: A. Mapping and assessment of one or more built structures. B. Registration and conservation assessment of individual buildings. However, the practice primarily focuses on individual buildings and built structures. An example of this is Aarhus University, where the buildings have been protected, but not the university park. The same trend can be seen in current urban development projects in Copenhagen. This means that identity-forming structures disappear, open spaces that could be used for climate adaptation measures are being built over, it becomes more difficult to incorporate biodiversity-promoting measures on increasingly smaller public spaces, and publicly accessible areas are being privatized. So why is it that the intentions to view cities and buildings in connection with the landscape and open spaces are not working? Part of the answer can be found in the discussions held around the adoption of the first Danish Preservation Act of 1917, to which landscape architect G.N. Brandt and architect Poul Henningsen, among others, contributed.