Progress Review: The Social Significance of Public Buildings: Informing Heritage Management - Nicholas Clarke

Please note this session takes place on a Monday - not our usual Friday Seminar. 

Architecture has historically played a key role in helping define how European cultures identify themselves, and to project images of power, wealth, and status to others. As inheritors of this Western European tradition, Australians place significance on their buildings, particularly those in the public forum. Public buildings were regularly the most expensive and impressive structures in a city or town, particularly in regional centres where private buildings were more functional in their form.

This thesis examines public buildings in the regional Queensland Centres of Toowoomba, Warwick, Maryborough and Gympie and assesses the influencing factors when preserving these public buildings, with the aim of guiding future heritage management assessments. Of particular focus is the impact of social significance on preservation decisions, and how the adaptation of function can assist in expanding on a building’s perceived value to its community. When attributing social significance to a building for the purposes of heritage assessment, a broad lens should be used to see how the community, and key individuals within it, interacted with it. Public buildings were, by their very nature, structures that embodied the fabric of a community: its people.