As detailed in my article on Lovin Malta today, the Planning Authority has dashed hopes of revoking the permit given for a block of flats to engulf a centuries-old house with an interior described by Din L-Art Helwa as "so pristine it could serve as a museum of typical Gozitan architecture."
Din L-Art Helwa argued in press statement that “photographs submitted to the PA obscured or totally excluded some of the most important elements of the building which had substantial historic, social and architectural value.”
Yet a spokesperson for the Planning Authority said that calls for revocation of permit are “prima facie unfounded” because the photographs submitted by the architect “portray a very detailed and thorough pictorial documentation of all the spaces within the building.”
You can read the whole story, including extensive comments by the Superintendent of Cultural Heritage, on Lovin Malta.
On this page you can see extended pictures released by Din L-Art Helwa – and compare them to pictures on Planning Authority file in two instances.
You be the judge: do the architect’s pictures show “all the spaces within the building” in a “detailed and thorough manner”?
Din L-Art Helwa mentioned various features that were not included in the submissions to the Planning Authority by the architect. It said that these "include a ‘birth room’, beautifully constructed stone stairways, rare stone sinks (‘Mejjilli’), animal pens, a Gozo-cheese (‘Gbejniet’) drying room and increasingly rare, extra-long stone roofing slabs (‘Xorok tal-Qasba’)."
These features are shown in the pictures released by Din L-Art Helwa and published below - click on any of the images to enlarge.
Don't forget to go to Lovin Malta to read the whole story.
Also check out the Planning Web, a tool published by Lovin Malta that enables searches of Planning Authority permits in different ways, including by type, architect, and applicant. I use the Planning Web in the course of journalistic investigations and research into planning system, including the intial research I did on on this development.
