Heritage restoration and conservation architecture is an ongoing learning and unlearning process. It demands interdisciplinary collaboration, strategy, a willingness to compromise and a penchant for adapting and improvising, as these industry figures tell inside.

The purpose of heritage restoration and conservation is subject to ongoing evolution. Victorian-era art historian John Ruskin equated restoring buildings with deceit – to rebuild was to betray the original intention of the building and produce a “false description of the thing being destroyed”.

Gothic Revival architect George Gilbert Scott adopted a slightly less fatalistic attitude, arguing restoration necessitated meticulous research and planning, yet should only be allocated to buildings crying out for “needful reparation”.

Restoration architecture walks a wobbly tightrope: how does a project protect the memory of the space while safeguarding a future? Whether a vast interdisciplinary team of architects, heritage consultants, building surveyors and carpenters is restoring a boatshed or Her Majesty’s Theatre in Ballarat, discovery and serendipity are on the cards, alongside compromise – however frustrating– that is likely to occur when working with heritage fabric.

There are many virtues a player in conservation architecture must possess in their arsenal, and patience is one such virtue. The restoration potential may not be immediately apparent, Technė co-director and adaptive re-use specialist Nick Travers tells inside.

“Sometimes the opportunity for adaptive re-use development isn’t very clear,” Travers says.

In addition to exercising patience, Travers believes assembling a mighty interdisciplinary team is crucial to the task of meaningfully honouring the history of a building.

“There is always a shared purpose for conservationists, authorities and stakeholders to find a way to keep the building a useful and ‘living’ place,” he says.

Melbourne-based Conservation Studio co-founder Christophe Loustau – who has worked on restoration projects at École Militaire, Paris, in front of the Champs de Mars, and most notably, the Palace of Versailles – echoes Travers’ call to gather a melting pot of heritage trades for restoration.

“Working with people who are passionate about heritage and making sure that the job is done properly is the key,” he says. “When you’ve got a combination that works very well together, you’ve got a beautiful project.”

Loustau and his Conservation Studio co-founders Dan Blake and Harry Jess demonstrate the value of multidisciplinary efforts in conservation projects through their collective resumes alone – all include the titles of conservation architect and heritage consultant. “It’s very important to embrace both of these titles because you give advice as both a heritage consultant and conservation architect and it flows together.”

The trio are bound by a philosophy to retain heritage fabric and invite collaboration at every step of the way. “We wanted to have a studio that is an open space of discussion and people of different levels working together.”

Forever adhering to the principles of the Burra Charter – a document published by the International Council on Monuments and Sites which defines procedures to follow in the conservation of Australian heritage places – Conservation Studio’s ethos lies in the name.

“We wanted to avoid big projects where the heritage fabric is not a consideration, and instead make sure that we conserve as much as we can.”

Conservation Studio specialises in a vast array of typologies, from residential to cultural relics like theatres and one of the last standing ski resorts near Mount Buffalo Chalet.

The idiom familiar to the entertainment world of ‘the show must go on’ resonated with Conservation Studio’s Princess Theatre restoration after the hugely successful Harry Potter and the Cursed Child show. The show concluded and the restoration needed to be completed in six months – which it was, and the team won a 2024 Victorian Architecture Award for heritage conservation to boot. “The Princess Theatre has stayed in my heart for a long time,” says Loustau.

The studio also relishes a complex project as a challenge. “The more complex the better, because that’s where we really drive a project – through solving issues.”

Almond Glassworks founder Brett Hutton believes delivering work of a premium quality supersedes all other considerations in restoration, particularly when relying on word-of-mouth advertising – a form of profile building readily used by the heritage glass specialty. “You have to have the quality because it’s purely word of mouth.”

The 30-year-old business vows to ensure each client is more than satisfied with restoration. “We don’t accept unhappy clients. If someone’s not happy, then we do whatever we need to make them happy. We try to keep people informed as to what the process of restoration entails.”

Hutton also prescribes a healthy dose of proactiveness to the mission-critical task of protecting heritage fabric – procrastinating restoration not only exacerbates potential deterioration but also extends the recovery period of the building. Many clients fear restoration will interfere with the heritage fabric’s integrity, yet they do not understand the power of restoration to save a building’s life.

“There’s so many heritage buildings that need work and if you don’t do anything, you are putting them on the shelf to just be addressed again in a few years,” says Hutton. “The fabric needs to be stabilised and you’re not helping the material if you don’t do what needs to be done to perpetuate its life,” he says.

“If you just let it fall apart, you haven’t done the right thing.”

Loustau has also experienced immobilising misunderstandings in the three-party dynamic between the design team, clients and heritage trades.

“Some clients can come to us initially because they just own a house and want to create an addition but there is heritage fabric in the way, and they request demolition. In this case, we need to assist them to understand the heritage value of the place and propose alternative options respectful of this value,” Loustau says. “It’s our job to make them understand why we are proposing this restoration solution,” he says.

It is an understatement to claim strategy as vital to restoration. ‘“The strategy is the most important part,” says Loustau. “What do you want to do with your building? Where do you see it in 10 years?”

Loustau says a clear conservation management plan is akin to a safety belt – it prevents restoration tampering with the spirit of the building and allows the team to sustain the initial vision throughout the duration of the project, even as obstacles arise.

“We have a heritage impact statement and conservation management plan to detail the issues and opportunities,” he says. “We find out where we want to go and how we can make this happen – while making sure the initial intent is delivered.”

The ill-fated budgeting discussion – where client expectations are often tested – generally follows the drafting of the conservation management plan. Conservation comes with an unavoidably hefty cost.

“Budgeting is one of the biggest issues with heritage work,” he says. “What is required is never the easiest and cheapest solution.”

Hutton says projects that panic over cost estimates and neglect to hire proficient heritage glass specialists are hazardous, as rushed and lazy efforts shorten a building’s lifespan.

“The hardest jobs we come across are ones that an incompetent practitioner has been at before and they leave this terrible legacy of missing glass,” he says. “Their work is probably two or three times more difficult to work on than a window that’s never been restored.”

Additionally, Loustau identifies an additional downfall in Australia’s conservation architecture landscape as a lack of resources and education opportunities. The composition of Conservation Studio’s team illustrates the somewhat fledgling nature of the specialty in Australia. “We have 13 people in the office and nearly half of the office has come from outside Australia.”

Australia does not have university degrees dedicated to conservation architecture, while Loustau estimates approximately 3000 heritage consultants and conservation architects currently practice in France, with 50 new architects introduced into the pool annually.

He posits tertiary education reform to allow conservation architecture to have a greater presence in scholarly discourse.

Travers’ adaptive re-use prowess saw him work on the restoration of the Esplanade Hotel in St Kilda, where he realised a major challenge in restoration is ascertaining a “synergy” between the heritage fabric and new additions to maximise the sustainability value. However, he says a willingness to improvise can remedy complications.

Many would agree witnessing layers of history within heritage fabric is wondrous – observing the choices made by craftspeople from a bygone era and hypothesising their stories and experiences.

Travers recalls the Esplanade Hotel project as skillfully paying homage to the inescapable history of the space. Comprehensive research allowed the team to honour areas of cultural significance. “We had passion from start to finish,” he says. “We fused the lines between the original building fabric and new works to bring the past to life and pay homage to the different eras of the building.”

However, for heritage glass restoration, unravelling layers of history can be challenging.

“When you work on a window, you can see the decisions a person made 120 years ago, and you often think ‘Why would you put this this way?’ But we have a warts and all policy, so if that’s a decision made in the past, then that’s the way it goes,” he says.

“It’s all about compromise, if the product doesn’t exist anymore, you try and find a salvage product or a copy of it.”

Loustau addresses an additional yet rewarding instance of compromise in heritage trades – inserting contemporary accessibility standards into historic buildings. The value of interdisciplinary collaboration again resonates, as engaging with accessibility consultants generally solves this pickle.

“Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, a building needs to be accessible to everyone and if your building has an entrance with steps, that means that you need to find an acceptable and compliant alternative like a ramp, but you’re in the city, you can’t have a ramp,” he says.  “You need to work with an access consultant who can help manage these issues.”

Heritage restoration and conservation involves a knack for identifying areas of possibility and envisaging the needs of future users of the space, just as architects, preservationists, and conservators did 20, 40 or 100 years ago. As John Ruskin attests in his work The Lamp of Memory, construction and restoration must honour “the sake of debtors yet unborn” and pursue the development of “cities for future nations to inhabit”.

Featured Image: Techne’s restoration of the Esplanade Hotel in St Kilda. Photography by Shannon McGrath.

This article appears in inside 120. Order your copy here or at selected newsagents.