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Prelude
Veronica calls in tears. It’s a Friday night in late February 2018. The author is sitting at her desk in Ottawa, surrounded by academic articles that deal with demolition – its history, value and effect on broader landscapes. Her friend has just exited Bathurst Station in Toronto and found herself in the presence of Honest Ed’s absence. “Tell me what you see”, the author prompts. “The sky”, she responds. “The condo across the street and a band of bright lights under the hoarding”. Like many other friends and colleagues, Veronica had been following the redevelopment of Honest Ed’s and Mirvish Village, sending updates via photos and informal reports.
“I thought they were going to keep the sign” she says, grappling with the loss of material. The author explains that just one of the five large signs was salvaged during the previous May with the promise of being reinstalled elsewhere in the city. This information does not seem to ease her friend’s immediate shock and grief. Perhaps this is because what was saved seems negligible after watching the remaining four signs un-ceremonially dissected or demolished and sent to the metal scrap yard. Or perhaps this scene, like the whole process, reveals something wholly unexpected. Together they attempt to navigate new understandings of the site, now transformed – one at a distance and in the depths of theory and the other, on site and in a sea of feelings.
This paper continues with this act of grappling. Investigating the connection between architectural waste and conservation, this study of materials in motion illuminates not only how materials gain and lose value within networks of people, process and place, but draws attention to the social and environmental implications of these maneuvers. In adopting this holistic perspective, it considers the consequences of determining heritage value and related conservation approaches in association with their broader social and environmental legacies. The paper asserts that in opening new ways of understanding and evaluating heritage value, an attention to these choreographies constitutes a form of conservation that simultaneously acknowledges the difficult heritage of demolition and deconstruction while also commemorating the site’s ongoing transformation. Lingering in the territory between the structure’s presence and its absence, it probes the intersection of heritage conservation, environmental sustainability...