Rethinking Built Heritage with Caitlin Mitropoulos

Extent Heritage x World Architecture Week

To celebrate World Architecture Week 2025, we explore how historic buildings and places shape culture and identity. At Extent Heritage, we see architecture and heritage as partners in creating places that endure, rather than as opposing forces.

To reflect on this relationship, we spoke with Caitlin Mitropoulos, Associate – Team Coordinator at Extent, whose career spans the National Trust of Australia (Victoria), Heritage Victoria, and private consultancy. Her passion for history and architecture is interwoven by a belief that heritage should be positioned as an opportunity as opposed to a constraint.

Figure 1. Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash

Figure 2. Royal Exhibition Building, Photo by Luis Chávez on Unsplash

From Marvellous Melbourne to heritage practice

Caitlin’s connection to heritage began in high school with a love of history and a curiosity about historic buildings. During her studies at the University of Melbourne, a subject on Australian urban history coordinated by Professor Andrew May changed how she saw the places around her.

In particular, it was a lecture on nineteenth-century Melbourne, detailing the height of the boom period known as Marvellous Melbourne, that captured her imagination. “Having come from regional Victoria and already being so captivated by the beautiful buildings in Melbourne, seeing those historic photographs from the 1880s and learning about the intricate urban rituals, was eye-opening,” she recalls.

Discovering her love for urban history led to a volunteer position with the National Trust of Australia (Victoria), shadowing the exhibitions curator Elizabeth Anya-Petrivna and getting the opportunity to visit the National Trust’s collection of grand mansions, including Rippon Lea Mansion in Elsternwick, Como House in South Yarra and Labassa Mansion in Caulfield North. The experience, she says, made her fall in love with old buildings and the magic they hold. Her academic work followed the same thread, with Caitlin going on to explore how nineteenth-century Melbourne’s architecture shaped social and cultural life, a perspective that continues to inform her practice today.

Seeing heritage as part of everyday life

For Caitlin, built heritage is part of daily experience, not an abstract idea. She believes preservation should be seen as an opportunity rather than a restriction; a way to retain and adapt what already exists so it remains relevant for the present.

She points out that most people encounter heritage constantly, often without noticing it: studying at the State Library of Victoria, seeing a show at the Regent Theatre, or picnicking in the Royal Botanic Gardens. “These beautiful places survive because people worked hard (sometimes behind the scenes) to protect and preserve them for future generations,” she says.

The Regent Theatre’s survival, saved by the National Trust and community activism in the 1960s, is a good example of where preservation rather than new development has ensured that such an important place could be enjoyed and celebrated by present and future communities. While new works have occurred in recent years to improve disability access and acoustics for contemporary audiences, significant fabric remains, and the Theatre is today one of the most significant places of art and culture in Melbourne’s CBD.

At Extent, this belief underpins the team’s approach: heritage is not only about conserving the past, but ensuring places continue to enrich contemporary life.

Figure 3. Labassa Mansion, Caulfield North, Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash

Figure 4. Regent Theatre. Source: Marriner Group

People-centred heritage

Extent often describes its approach as people-centred heritage, a principle Caitlin sees as essential. Heritage places are significant because of the communities that care for them, share their stories, and continue to use them on a daily basis.

Her recent work with Hobsons Bay City Council in developing a municipal-wide Heritage Strategy is a key example – recent stakeholder workshops with local historical societies and individuals to inform preparation of the Strategy have revealed layers of significance and meaning that otherwise could not have been captured.

Even in contexts where community input isn’t required from a statutory perspective, she insists on keeping that mindset. Heritage advice, she says, should always reflect the connection between people and place.

How heritage enables better design

Caitlin’s work often involves collaborating with architects and planners for places protected under prescribed legislation and policy framework, for example, for places included in the Victorian Heritage Register and local Heritage Overlay. While heritage policy can appear restrictive, she sees them as a powerful tool to guide good design rather than to limit it.

Heritage advice, she explains, helps architects and planners shape projects that respect context — adjusting setbacks, roof heights, or materials so new work complements rather than detracts from the old. When the reasoning behind heritage policy is clearly explained, projects can achieve stronger design outcomes and smoother approvals.

“I love contemporary architecture,” she adds. “Many new buildings will become heritage one day. Our role is to help them fit, so that the heritage building remains the focus of the streetscape.”

Figure 5. Nelson Place, Williamstown. Source: Extent Heritage, 2023

Figure 6. Melbourne University Boat Club, Photographer: John Gollings

Rethinking misconceptions

One of the most persistent misconceptions, Caitlin notes, is that heritage acts as a barrier to development. For her, the more productive mindset is to treat heritage as a key component in design development. “Respecting heritage and the past enriches development outcomes. It gives projects context and depth,” she says. “It’s not about freezing places in time; it’s about keeping culture and identity alive while making places suitable for current and future communities.”

Architecture and heritage in dialogue

World Architecture Week celebrates how buildings shape culture and identity – and for Caitlin, architecture and heritage are inseparable. “Architecture is heritage in the making,” she says.

She points to examples like Federation Square, once controversial but now integral to Melbourne’s identity; or the city’s brutalist architecture, once derided but now recognised as reflecting their era’s spirit. Even the NGV Contemporary, which is still under construction, she adds, will one day be seen as a landmark of its time.

Heritage, in her view, is as much about looking forward as looking back — recognising that today’s architecture will become tomorrow’s history.

Figure 7. Melbourne laneway, Photo by Dorian Stoici on Unsplash

Figure 8. Federation Square, Melbourne. Image credits: Visit Victoria

Bridging ambition with obligation

This concept defines Caitlin’s role at Extent. “We’re here to bridge architectural ambition with heritage obligations,” she explains. Our work is grounded in established frameworks but shaped through collaboration, guiding architects to realise their designs while respecting heritage values and community expectations.

She guides her team with the same philosophy across projects large and small: heritage is not an obstacle course, but a framework that allows creativity to flourish while keeping the values of place intact.

Heritage as a catalyst for excellence

To Caitlin, heritage represents possibility. Every heritage place, she says, has the potential to evolve and to meet contemporary needs while retaining its cultural heritage values.

Framing heritage as an opportunity opens conversations that might otherwise stop at compliance. It invites architects, planners, and communities to think creatively about how old and new can coexist.

At its best, heritage becomes a catalyst for design excellence - prompting architects to respond thoughtfully to context and helping communities see continuity in change. “If you start from the idea that heritage can enable good design,” Caitlin says, “you end up with places that feel grounded, that tell stories about where we’ve come from and where we’re going.”

In a city shaped by many eras of design, Caitlin’s perspective is clear: heritage is not something to fear or fight against. It’s an opportunity to create richer places, to tell deeper stories, and to ensure what we build today will still hold meaning tomorrow.

Heritage is not the opposite of progress; it’s what makes progress meaningful.

About Caitlin Mitropoulos

Caitlin’s career spans advocacy, government, and consultancy roles across the heritage sector. She holds a Master of Urban and Cultural Heritage from the University of Melbourne and has worked with the National Trust of Australia (Victoria) and Heritage Victoria before joining Extent Heritage, where she now coordinates a team advising on projects from urban regeneration to the conservation of landmark sites.

Figure 9. Caitlin Mitropoulos