Location of the initiative:
Flanders (BELGIUM)
Initiator
Agentschap Onroerend Erfgoed / National authority
Relation to Strategy 21 Recommendations:
D5 - encourage the reuse of heritage and use of traditional knowledge and practice
Time span of the initiative:
Start date: 2018 / End date: This selection will continue to grow in the coming months and years, giving an idea of new possibilities in the management of protected heritage
Motivation / Methodology
By collecting good practices from the daily work of our heritage consultants, illustrating them with good photographs, and by putting them together on the website we hope to inspire heritage owners and professionals.
The website provides practical examples of heritage projects in Flanders. Each example contains insights gained in projects to which the Flanders Heritage agency has contributed.
On a daily basis, our heritage consultants advise motivated owners, building owners and their designers in making quality management choices for their heritage. Such collaboration usually follows an instructive trajectory, which leads to striking results, new insights, and a great deal of satisfaction for all parties afterwards. We asked our heritage consultants to select a few projects they recently supervised, which they consider to be an excellent example of heritage management.
This Portfolio bundles those choices and illustrates them appropriately with colourful photographs. It is a sample of what heritage management in Flanders has to offer today. The overview on this website is intended as a source of inspiration for heritage owners, heritage professionals and anyone interested in dealing with heritage. This selection will continue to grow in the coming months and years, giving an idea of new possibilities in the management of protected heritage. We invite people to browse through the files, maybe get ideas for their own project, and dream away at solutions they didn't suspect existed.
Obstacles / Barriers
Examples have to be picked out and selected carefully. We are working with dozens of heritage consultants, that don’t always have the same opinion on the different projects. So, it is not always easy to obtain a result that is carried unanimously, when selecting examples
Change / Impact
People get inspired. The website helps to dispel prejudices such as "nothing can and should be done with protected heritage".
When first meeting new owners, heritage consultants can immediately refer to a number of good examples. Meanwhile we are receiving requests from designers, to include their projects in our Portfolio. The Portfolio is becoming a go-to website for the press, when we publish stories about restoration.
Lessons learned
As a governmental institute, it is important for us to remain objective. Theoretically, every project that received financial support from us, should be equally suited as a good example. Otherwise we wouldn’t have supported them. To select that top layer of projects as a source of inspiration for others, we had to dig deeper in each project, to find those examples of restoration that supersede the merely technical. Restorations that give a building a future and at the same time make it a central point of a community (neighbours, co-workers, …) or find a new role for a building that lies close to its origin and intended purpose, become increasingly more important in our society. High quality restoration and design is only a starting point; lifting an historical building to a higher purpose is a bonus that makes it fit in our Portfolio. This is the future of heritage conservation.
Online resources
- https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.onroerenderfgoed.be%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cvera.ameels%40vlaanderen.be%7Cada0c633f3824eac765b08d7d1831f92%7C0c0338a695614ee8b8d64e89cbd520a0%7C0%7C0%7C637208234596692402&sdata=XIcqRSeBYbhFw8gkvUtqaUcYzCUKTQKyUSihlpadg9U%3D&reserved=0
- https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fonroerenderfgoed%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cvera.ameels%40vlaanderen.be%7Cada0c633f3824eac765b08d7d1831f92%7C0c0338a695614ee8b8d64e89cbd520a0%7C0%7C0%7C637208234596692402&sdata=AsKE8OLpiakXtv86g20Z3K3m4J7ClD4IYFKehkH6a98%3D&reserved=0
Contact information
Contact person: Vera Ameels
Organisation : Agentschap Onroerend Erfgoed
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +32477560415
Website: https://www.onroerenderfgoed.be/
Source of financing
Public and private funding
