ICOMOS Livecast ‘Heritage & Resilience’, 11 November 2020, 19.30h.

Hoe kan erfgoed bijdragen aan de veerkracht van een samenleving? Wat is de toegevoegde waarde van erfgoed voor sociale- of klimaatverandering? Woensdagavond 11/11 belichten vijf sprekers deze vragen vanuit wetenschappelijk en practisch, hands-on perspectief: Edna Peres, Suzanne Loen, Nannette de Jong en Henk van Schaik.

ONLINE ICOMOS LECTURE

Organised by the ICOMOS Lecture Committee Netherlands

Dear heritage colleagues and friends,

We would like to invite you to the upcoming lecture and discussion evening on November 11^th. The theme of this evening will be ‘Heritage and Resilience’ How can heritage contribute to resilient societies? What could be the added value of heritage in the context of social or climate change? Have we – as heritage professionals – made sure this potential is tapped into?

We look forward discuss this topic –from both an academic and a more hands on perspective – with our four speakers: Edna Peres, Suzanne Loen, Nanette de Jong and Henk van Schaik. Please find short introductions below.

You can register by sending a message to lezingen@icomos.nl. After this you will receive additional information on how to participate in the Livecast (via Zoom). Please note that the event will be recorded.

Register lezingen@icomos.nl

We hope you will join us digitally.
Kind regards, the ICOMOS lezingen-team:

Ardjuna Candotti, Daan Lavies, Jean Paul Corten, Job Pardoel, Maurits van Putten, Remco Vermeulen, Sofia Lovegrove & Thijs van Roon

 

Resilience thinking in heritage spaces

By Edna Peres

Resilience is a popular topic in architecture and urbanism, but its full potential is often under-recognised. In a system, be it ecological, social or even urban, resilience results from the interaction between the system’s components which need to be understood before they can be adapted. This is the context within which this presentation will introduce resilience thinking, describe the qualities that contribute toward a resilient system and lastly explore how these may manifest in an architectural or urban setting with heritage value. The aim is to show how resilience thinking can influence our design approach when attributing new functions to places of cultural interest in buildings and precincts to allow them to adapt and maintain their significance for new generations.

Dr. Edna Peres completed her PhD at the University of Pretoria on the use of Urban Resilience theory to tackle issues like climate change and rapid urbanization, whilst aiming to promote quality of life for all living systems. Heritage and Cultural landscapes, as well as Regenerative Architecture and Urban Resilience, formed the focus of her academic and research work at the University of Pretoria and the University of Johannesburg where she was a co-leader of a Masters Unit. She has supervised various post-graduate dissertations and published articles on her research interests. She is currently living in Portugal on a small farm where she is slowly developing resilience and regeneration work.

Thirsty Cities: Learning from shared water heritage for a resilient future in the Small Island States Cities of the (Dutch) Caribbean

By Suzanne Loen

Cities are very thirsty. United Nations research projects that water demand will outpace freshwater supply by 30% in 2030. Current day practices like extreme groundwater abstraction without sufficient recharge, surface water pollution and climate change are amplifying the water crisis. Nowhere is this problem more acute than in areas most vulnerable to climate change such as Small Island (developing) States (SIDS) like the (former Dutch) Caribbean island of Curaçao. With limited fresh water reserves, growing water demand, floodings and rising sea-levels the competition over fresh water between Curaçao citizens, farmers and the private sector will only increase. The dependency on deep mining of water and sea-water desalination on Curaçao has its limitations. An integrated, contextual nature and heritage inspired approach is needed.

The Thirsty Cities design research project explores how knowledge and/or integration of historical and vernacular off grid fresh water management systems, such as Native and Afro-Caribbean water retention and soil storage systems, could help to develop water resilient settlements and landscapes for the future. A research into historical and vernacular water typologies has been conducted. In collaboration with National Archeological Anthropological Memory Management Curaçao (NAAM) a design research on three case studies, as proposed by the Curaçao Commission for Water Management, will be carried out.

Ir. Suzanne Loen, founder of LILA Living Landscapes, is a landscape researcher and architect with a focus and expertise on historical landscapes, water systems and resilient and healthy cities and landscapes. She is a part time lecturer for the department of Landscape Architecture at the Technical University Delft and a member of committees for spatial quality and heritage such as the advisory board for the reinforcement of the dikes of the Dutch river IJssel and the Municipality of the Krimpenerwaard. For the Dutch National Board of Advisors she conducted a design research into the benefits of urban green and led the seminars for the Dutch-Belgian European Interreg project Functional Green. She collaborated with Mo Smit, ITB Bandung and Bandung Creative City Forum on a research into a green urban re-development of industrial textile kampungs in Bandung, Indonesia. Together with Inge Bobbink she wrote Water inSight and initiated the NWO funded project Circular Water Stories. She currently works on Thirsty Cities, an investigation into the benefits of historical fresh water systems for a resilient future with a focus on knowledge sharing between the Netherlands and former Dutch colonial territories. A first output is published in Adaptive Strategies for Water Heritage. A publication on historical fresh water typologies in the (former Dutch) Caribbean islands is upcoming.

The cisterne to the rescue

By Nanette de Jong

After hurricanes Irma and Maria swept over Sint Maarten in 2017 the damage was enormous. Meanwhile, the residents of Sint Maarten have cleared much of the rubble, but the destruction is still visible. For example, the large hotel complexes, modern buildings that apparently could not withstand the enormous violence of a hurricane. The old buildings on Sint Maarten are more resistant and have already withstood several hurricanes. The damage to the protected monuments was mainly caused by flying debris, not the construction of the buildings themselves. The historic cisternes still fulfil an important function after a hurricane; then people come to the old houses to ask for drinking water from the cisterns. Because modern water supply systems are often no longer usable.

Nanette de Jong was trained as a conservation architect at the Technical University of Delft and has always worked in the field of architectural conservation. Since 2009 she works at the Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency. Her work field is mainly sustainable RE-use of old buildings. As part of the team of the Shared Cultural Heritage Program of the Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency she is involved in projects about shared Dutch heritage in Surinam and India. Since 2019 she is the liaison for built heritage between the European- and the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Water and Heritage on the global agenda

By Henk van Schaik

Understanding the way our ancestors dealt with water is beneficial for mastering water related challenges our societies currently encounter and will face in the future. Both the material and immaterial water heritage can inspire us in this quest. Making this work requires more interactions inspiration an knowledge exchange has to take place between heritage- an water professionals. In this talk I would like to inform you on steppes that are currently made on different forums to make more interaction happen, and I would like to invite all of you to think about how you could contribute to strengthening this connection.

Ir. Henk van Schaik is since 2012 Ambassador Water and Heritage, ICOMOS Netherlands and since 2019 Director International of the International Centre for Water and Transdisciplinarity (CIRAT) in Brazil. Till August 2019 he was Chairman of the Advisory Committee of the Sustainable Water Subsidy Fund of the Netherlands Government. From 2012 till 2019 he was Lead Water of the University for Peace, the Hague office, and till ultimo 2019 he was member of the Alliance of the Water Integrity Network. From 2001 till 2012 he was Director if the international Cooperative Programme on Water and Climate. And from 1987 till 2001 he was Water Advisor of the Ministry of Development Cooperation, The Netherlands.