Din L-Art Helwa's Executive President Alex Torpiano, who is also the Dean of the Faculty for the Built Environment at the University of Malta, mentioned an interesting project during an interview with The Malta Independent on Sunday.

In order to address the lack of general awareness of the importance of modernist buildings, he said that "we will be inviting students to go out in their localities and identify modernist buildings, so that the Faculty, and DLH, can prepare a list for which they can push forward protection”.

"I'm also thinking about widening this exercise to identify those interesting buildings and spaces that make up the character of their area, and which ought to be preserved. This will not be the obvious parish church, or a chapel or even a palazzino, but would include the places that form the fabric of our urban space, which one may pass by without noticing. Unfortunately, it is only when these assets are lost that people would realise that they were important heritage. So I'm trying to develop an extracurricular project with the student organisation, where students would go out to their towns and villages and start compiling these lists, even if just to highlight them as being important."

Malta’s protection of its architectural heritage can be a bit limited. Actively identifying buildings and spaces which should be protected, but aren’t, is an exercise that is worth undertaking.

At the very least, the lists created could open a discussion about the importance of the identified buildings. Better actively undertake such an exercise, than wait until it’s too late.

Another point he raised during the interview was the understanding of, or lack of, protecting heritage.

He highlighted the importance of taking the surroundings of a building into consideration. “If you have an 18th century house which is to be preserved, but the buildings next to it are not as important, the fact remains that they still form part of the context of the area. So if you preserve, conserve and protect this house, but next door you allow incongruous blocks of apartments, you are still ruining the context and hence damaging the same place it is intended to protect."

Here, Torpiano hit the nail on the head. If we are going to protect our architectural heritage, then we should do so thoroughly. Protecting a house but then allowing the surrounding buildings to develop in a way that just doesn’t fit would ruin the context of what we are preserving. This must be taken more seriously into consideration when facing such applications.

Thankfully, when asked whether he believed that the Planning Authority Boards, Planning Commissions and even the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal had progressed over the years in their understanding of the importance of protection, he said that there were some Boards that had.  But others hadn’t, he said.

This means more work is needed to ensure the protection of our heritage. Perhaps new guidelines emphasizing the importance of protecting important buildings are required.