Lost in Translation

Heritage has been misused and mistranslated in the era of demolishing faster than we can preserve. This results in a discontinuity, whereby architectural discourse experiences progress and heritage thinking lags behind.

To recognize evolving heritage, the role of an ‘adversary’ for a heritage renovation has been assumed by my project; a new mechanism of ‘translation’ is generated and tested. It expands upon the meaning and essence of (in)tangible inheritances on site, while negotiating and enhancing tension between contemporary built forms and history.

Translation is neither preservation nor conservation. It re-appropriates, highlights and expands upon heritage built-form by continually (re)fabricating and acknowledging that reanimated heritage stays relevant.

Sitting quietly on the corner of Gertrude and Nicholson Streets lies the former Cable Tram Engine House. Built in 1886, it currently has no interaction with its adjacencies, little appreciation of its past use and no forward looking future. A Centre for Fabrication, to be occupied by advocates of history is proposed here.

Upon deep-listening to the site, new contending voices are interwoven, providing more opportunities for translating on a spectrum. Hence, interaction between architecture and urban environment increases and diversifies. The resulting built form is intentionally fluid; important structures, revealed in the process, take hierarchical precedence.

I have tested this working methodology on this site in order to try and develop a process that I felt captured a plurality of representation and enabled us to see old buildings as useful, relevant structures with both a past, present and future. They are not monuments, to be turned-on, or to be embalmed. Too often the approach is either one of tabula rasa, or guarded sentimentality. I’m interested in the in-between - with careful yet bold intervention we can re-use our built environment without erasing place.

The Centre for Fabrication teaches the skills needed to do so. Fabrication, once heritage’s gravest supposed vice, becomes a virtue.