Historic Block Cores. Modernist Spaces Caught Between Heritage and Change

HISTORIC BLOCK CORES: MODERNIST SPACES CAUGHT BETWEEN HERITAGE AND CHANGE
During the 1960s and 1970s, a new approach to historic urban fabric emerged across Europe. In response to the destruction wrought by two world wars and to demolitions carried out in the name of urban sanitation and modernisation, urban blocks were granted heritage status and became the focus of “reviving” projects. In this context, parts of the buildings making up these blocks were rehabilitated, and new public spaces were created, particularly within their interior courtyards. Unlike the buildings themselves – whose envelopes were often subject to extensive restoration – these public spaces represented genuine modernist creations, replacing the gardens, yards and service areas that had themselves been transformed during the industrial period. These new layouts notably contributed to a reorganisation of circulation, separating pedestrian networks from motorised traffic.
Today, these spaces occupy an ambiguous position. Frequently unprotected in their own right, their proximity to listed buildings limits their scope for transformation – at a time when public spaces could make a significant contribution to urban climate adaptation. Drawing on historical research into conservation practices in France and Belgium, and adopting a comparative perspective, this paper examines how the current status of these public – or publicly accessible – spaces at the heart of heritage blocks has been constructed, with a view to informing reflection on their potential for adaptation to contemporary climate challenges.
Between Modernisation and De-modernisation
The reduction of traffic flows, the pursuit of unsealed ground surfaces, greening strategies and the staging of the water cycle are among the defining features of contemporary public space transformation. These orientations might be read as a return to conditions predating the modernisation of cities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — an attempt to undo the effects of industrial urbanisation. Yet the history of urban neighbourhoods is less linear than such a narrative suggests: reducing soil sealing, welcoming biodiversity and fostering new shared uses remain quite remote from pre-industrial configurations. Research on urban metabolism helps us understand the dynamics through which urban expansion and the shifting relationship between city centres and their territories have reshaped the historic city.
From the interwar period onwards, and more extensively during the second half of the twentieth century, new publicly accessible spaces began to appear at the heart of historic blocks. Alongside demolition-reconstruction operations – often labelled “urban renewal” – that radically transformed portions of the historic urban fabric, conservation-rehabilitation schemes were also carried out. These involved the reorganisation of plot structures, selective demolitions, and the creation of new pedestrian routes, as well as car parks. Far from representing a return to any known historical state, these spaces were designed in service of the heritage buildings surrounding them: facilitating circulation and access, providing shared outdoor areas, and enhancing the visibility of remarkable rear façades. An analysis of clearance, plot consolidation and access-road reconfiguration projects reveals that many schemes from the second half of the twentieth century proposed a radical reorganisation of uses and flows, aimed precisely at adapting these blocks to new needs – integrating car traffic and parking, modifying plot layouts and public-private boundaries, and opening up pedestrian circulation.
Heritage Constraints and the Limits of Adaptation
While some twentieth-century interventions have recently gained heritage recognition –the Barbican in London being a notable example – public spaces created through conservation-rehabilitation projects tend to acquire heritage status only by extension from the listed buildings that surround them. This indirect status calls for careful attention to the objectives and uses envisaged at the time of their design. Should the inner courtyard gardens created within France's Secteurs sauvegardés – made possible by opportunistic demolitions – be treated as immutable, or reconsidered in light of the climate challenges facing the dense city? And what of the shared spaces created within the Great Beguinage of Leuven during its rehabilitation: are they compatible with the constraints of the World Heritage status the site has since acquired – a status that has in practice contributed to their closure to the public?
As witnesses to a particular way of imagining parking, commerce and the sharing of public space that is now questioned, these spaces warrant thorough analysis of their conception and evolution – both to draw lessons for current projects and to envision their future in the face of the new challenges confronting our cities.