The street complex of iconic early 20th century town houses on Saqqajja Hill, Rabat, are under threat by an application (PA/09516/18) filed at the Planning Authority for the construction of a four-storey boutique hotel on the footprint of houses number 14 and 15.
To sweeten the pill the application is not for demolition but for the addition of two extra floors. This creates the impression that the original houses will be preserved and only added to by a two-floor accretion. Even assuming that this is the well-meaning intention of the applicant and his architect, what is being proposed will have a disastrous impact on the harmonious integrity of the complex, resulting in a visual eyesore.
The houses have been called picturesque, which they certainly are, but they are much more! The houses are eloquent examples of sensitive design, which is the essential ingredient of good architecture. What gives them added significance is their design association with Andrea Vassallo (1856 - 1928), the self-made brilliant architect who turned eclecticism into a vibrant aesthetic virtue.
His buildings include the Virgin of Ta’ Pinu church, Gozo, the Neo Gothic house in Cathedral Square, Mdina, the Villa Rosa, St Julian’s, and the domes of Siġġiewi and Ħamrun parish churches.
Mutilating the homogeneity of the complex would be yet another unpardonable offence to the national heritage, the destruction of which has become an endemic national disease. The houses in the complex deserve a Grade 2 protection order, which means that their street elevation must be preserved in its integrity.
As someone with an intimate experience in the card indexing and grading of groups and areas of buildings that goes back to the late 1960s, when I was very actively involved in the Protective Inventory spearheaded by the then Ministry of Education, Culture and Tourism, under the expert direction of the Council for Cultural Cooperation of the Council of Europe, and, later on, for the card indexing methodology of the Planning Authority, which I directed for several years, I feel I have a right and a duty to express my concern.
May common sense prevail and may the Planning Authority rise to the occasion and refuse the application.
Meanwhile I call on heritage and conservation NGOs to add to the pressure.