Tony Watkins

Our way of seeing a Precinct underpins our actions.

62) A Heritage Precinct is a repository of the whakapapa of place. It is where those who belong to this unique location feel at home. This is their turangawaewae. This is where they stand tall. This is the gathering together of the accumulated understanding of ancestors so that the community might move forward with intense self-awareness.

63) At a superficial level a Heritage Precinct could be seen as a museum collection of buildings but it is much more than this, just as buildings are much more than weatherboards and corrugated iron. Buildings are stories, memories and anecdotes. Buildings are constant growth, and the development of understanding about who we are.

64) You either plane both sides of any kauri timber you are recycling or you quickly discover that the timber has never died. The strong scent as you plane the kauri is the scent of a thousand year old forest. A Heritage Precinct can only be understood by those who have an emotional response to the smell of the forest.

65) Building is more than a noun. Building is also a verb. The way you go about building when you are motivated by love is different from the way you go about building when you are motivated by profit. Any Heritage Precinct reeks of passion, hope, commitment and dreams. It is alive, like the kauri.

66) Through buildings, their urban context, and the relationship between them we are able to access the wairua of place. Buildings may pass away in the same way that generations pass away, but if the wairua is strong the continuity of whakapapa is assured.

67) In an ideal world the whole built environment would be a Heritage Precinct. Every building would grow from and give form to urban design whakapapa. Architecture would sustain the wairua of place. Anything less than this is unacceptable in a time when sustaining the life of the planet is a moral imperative as never before.

68) This ideal world has unfortunately been compromised in at least two significant ways. First a materialistic ethic has resulted in the cult of the object. Architectural magazines are now crowded with buildings which have nothing to say.

69) The second great compromise in the built environment has been a lack of architectural ethics. Building normally begins by destroying. Buildings destroy stories, memory, love, context, place, traditions, geology, history and almost everything which they should respect.

70) In this context Heritage Precincts become those few remnants which have not yet been destroyed. All this would change if we all resolved to protect and nurture life and to do no harm. A Heritage Precinct is what might be rather than what has been.

71) Our heritage is everything which has been passed down to us. Our role is to sustain and enrich our inheritance so that it might be passed on to future generations. This is the only sense in which “sustainable development” has any meaning.

A Heritage Precinct is a repository of the Whakapapa of place.