Ashdown Property - Traditional Design, Development and Management
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Conservation Area Architecture
This is an essential tool or methodology to demonstrate how a planning application is closely related to the established character of a conservation area.
Planning Applications for Conservation Areas
Contemporary or Traditional Architecture in a Conservation Area.
The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) paragraph 206 gives one key objective for development in Conservation Areas which is that it should “enhance or better reveal its significance”. So development in Conservation Areas must firstly recognise what is special or exceptional that makes an area worthy of conservation.
To enhance what is special we should closely examine and follow the historic trend of development, otherwise we are not enhancing, we are distracting from, deviating or diluting what is unique and special about the Conservation Area.
Traditional Architecture, closely reflecting the Conservation Area, does not try to advance development in a new direction away from what is special and unique about that area. So it is more likely to “enhance or better reveal” that significance.
Contemporary Architecture, on the other hand has, by definition, less reliance on the Conservation Area and its traditions. It is introducing new and experimental ideas or worse, modern standard ideas which have no relationship to the Conservation Area.