Exploring the Relationship between History, Heritage, and Climate Change

Join the Irish Georgian Society and the University of Bristol for two half hour talks exploring the how the history and heritage of the historic built environment can be used to understand more about climate change in Ireland today. Wine will be served during the Q&A.

Rainfall and the Irish City in the Nineteenth Century by Dr Erika Hanna, Associate Professor of Modern History, University of Bristol

This talk will explore how understandings of the weather shaped nineteenth-century Irish towns and cities. It examines how town commissioners, architects, and engineers, made choices regarding the design of buildings and cities. This included—at a regional scale—the location of reservoirs, drainage, the orientation of streets and squares. Assumptions about the climate and weather also shaped the architecture of buildings, including roofs, windows, rainwater goods, and detailing. Ideas of good and bad weather also played a role in mens’ and womens’ fashions, and choices about who stayed and went out when rain fell. These histories are still present in the fabric of our towns, and play a determining role in shaping how changes to the climate are experienced today.

Cultural Heritage Activation as a Key Mechanism for Climate Action in Irish Towns by Dr Philip Crowe, Assistant Professor for Climate Responsive Design, University College Dublin.

This talk will explore how heritage conservation relates to climate action under 5 themes that will be illustrated by active research projects in Irish towns. It will be argued that the role of heritage conservation in climate action is under-appreciated and that the current focus of policy and grants on the reuse of individual buildings does not reflect the scale, urgency and complexity of challenges facing our historic towns. An emerging approach that reflects the theories and practice of Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), relating to ‘Conservative Surgery’, is put forward as an alternative.

BIOGRAHPIES
Dr Erika Hanna is Associate Professor in Modern History at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Modern Dublin: Urban Change and the Irish Past (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Snapshot Stories: Visuality, Photography, and the Social History of Ireland, 1922-2000 (Oxford University Press, 2020). She has research interests in urban history, visuality, landscape, and weather.

Dr Philip Crowe is UCD Assistant Professor for Climate Responsive Design at the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy (APEP) and the School of Civil Engineering. He is Director of Research in UCD APEP, co-Director of the UCD Centre for Irish Towns, and Programme Director of the MSc in Architecture, Urbanism and Climate Action. Philip teaches in areas relating to carbon management, sustainability, urban resilience and urban ethics. As a researcher, he is working on a range of EU and nationally funded projects relating to town revitalization, vacancy and adaptive reuse, compact urban growth, and citizen participation in processes of change. Philip’s background is in architecture, and he was previously Director of Sustainable Design at M-CO (Dublin) from 2003-2012.