Behind the Facade

Despite the role of heritage to preserve historic fabric, the restoration of Bristol's inner-city neighbourhoods reveals very little of its past, and the slave trade wealth that was funnelled into Georgian terraced housing. Deeming any intermediary changes to the terrace to be of lesser historic value, conservation authorities suggest that the intentions of the original developer should be given priority in its preservation. Yet, are the intentions of the original developer, a slave trader, the most appropriate to reinstate? And does this restoration erase more memory than it preserves?

Situated in Grade I listed Portland Square, St Pauls, the project aims to expose the material traces of colonialism held within the vessel of the Georgian terraced house, and explore the multiplicity of lived experiences that are erased by heritage-washing: moments of bankruptcy, industrialisation, migration and the settling of a new community. This begs the question: who decides which histories or events are worthy of national heritage and which are not? Alongside the Georgian terraced house the work interrogates another intertwined typology: the Creole house. Concluding that, in opposition to the common colonial narrative, the terraced houses of Bristol can be partially attributed to Caribbean construction techniques and that, through their materiality, construction and colonial associations, the two typologies are not so distinct. As such, a series of deconstructive acts unravels the purpose of listed buildings and the need for heritage at all. Would its value remain the same when cut into and these traces revealed? What is left to retain once extended and subverted? What possibilities would be opened up when punctured and pushed back? Legal precedents provide examples of where "the dismantled components of something, which had unquestionably been a listed building could, by the process of dismantling, become chattels rather than 'buildings' and thereby lose their statutory protection as such." In this worked example, the act of offloading the façade could detach it from the listing as a whole, pointing to the fragility of these systems built upon definition. Where ultimately redefining this typology as Creole, a term inherently ambiguous in its origins, meaning and value, renders any reversion back to one absolute heritage untenable.