Heights on protected Wilga Street are ‘necessary evil’ says watchdog

Adding three storeys to a row of protected townhouses is a “necessary evil” to protect Paceville’s Wilga Street from blank walls, the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage has told MaltaToday.

The two-storey, early 20th-century townhouses dating back to the interwar period are scheduled at Grade 2 because of their architectural and historical value. This scheduling normally precludes demolition or significant alterations to the buildings.

But as proposed by one of the owners, the application seeks to raise the building height of the existing scheduled townhouses in “a uniform architectural vocabulary reaching the adjacent blank third-party walls”.

The Superintendence said that adding new floors “in an architecturally sensitive way” was the only way to “valorise” the scheduled town houses in Wilga Street “given their immediate surrounding context”.

In its official assessment, the Superintendence has recognised that the buildings are of “significant cultural heritage value” but added that “prima facie” it was in agreement with the proposed application and the proposed additional facades, “provided that the newly proposed structures above the existing roof level are receded in order to protect the visual integrity of the existing scheduled structures”.

The Superintendence is insisting that normally it does not agree with an increase in volumes and heights of scheduled buildings. “However, in this particular case, the setting of the scheduled houses has been severely prejudiced with modern high development that is creating very unsightly blank walls and overbearing massing which have a detrimental effect on the legibility and appreciation of the scheduled houses themselves.”

Heritage NGO Din l-Art Helwa is strongly objecting to the proposed new storeys, warning that the proposed three floors above the existing volume “will completely transform the site, with the original massing and traditional character being completely obliterated”.

DLH said buildings scheduled at Grade 2 must be protected in their entirety. “Furthermore, additional development can only be permitted if truly minimal and would not detract from the architectural form and massing of the scheduled property,” the NGO said.

Describing the application as completely unacceptable, DLH called on the Planning Authority to ensure “the protection of our island's limited and increasingly threatened cultural heritage”.

In another objection, environmentalist Claire Bonello described the proposed addition of extra floors on the scheduled buildings as an “insensitive and outdated proposal that set a dangerous precedent, threatening the integrity and protection of all scheduled properties.”