1st Edition

Routledge Companion to Global Heritage Conservation

Edited By Vinayak Bharne, Trudi Sandmeier Copyright 2019
    530 Pages
    by Routledge

    530 Pages
    by Routledge

    The act of identifying, protecting, restoring, and reusing buildings, districts, and built landscapes of historic and cultural significance is, at its best, a reflective and consequential process of urban and socio-economic reform. It has the potential to reconcile conflicting memories, meanings, and cultural tensions, bridging and expanding the perceived boundaries of multiple disciplines towards bigger aspirations of city-making and social justice.



    How and where do such aspirations overlap and differ across nations and societies across the world? In places with different histories, governance structures, regulatory stringency, and populist dispositions, who are the specific players, and what are the actual processes that bring about bigger and deeper change beyond just the conservation of an architectural or urban entity of perceived value?



    This collection of scholarly articles by theorists, academics, and practitioners explores the global complexity, guises, and potential of heritage conservation. Going from Tokyo to Cairo, Shenzhen to Rome, and Delhi to Moscow, this volume examines a vast range of topics – indigenous habitats, urban cores, vernacular infrastructure, colonial towns, squatters, burial sites, war zones, and modern landmarks. It surfaces numerous inherent issues – water stress, deforestation, social oppression, poverty, religion, immigration, and polity, expanding the definitions of heritage conservation as both a professional discipline and socio-cultural catalyst. This book argues that the intellectual and praxis limits of heritage conservation – as the agency of reading, defining, and intervening with built heritage – can be expansive, aimed at bigger positive change beyond a specific subject or object; plural, enmeshed with multiple fields and specializations; and empathetic, born from the actual socio-political realities of a place.



    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Preface & Acknowledgements

    Introduction: Global Perspectives in Heritage Conservation by Vinayak Bharne & Trudi Sandmeier

    SECTION 1 – GLOBALIZING THE CONSERVATION DISCOURSE

      1. Re-examining World Heritage and Sustainable Development by Sophia Labadi (University of Kent)
      2. Re-conceptualizing ‘historic urban landscapes’ by Kalliopi Fouseki (University College London)
      3. Earthquakes and Afterlives: Heritage Conservation and Seismicity by Elizabeth Aitken Rose (University of Auckland)
      4. Beyond Nostalgic Appeal - The Means and Measures Dictating Heritage Management Trends in Pakistan by Noman Ahmed and Anila Naeem (NED University of Engineering & Technology, Pakistan)
      5. Formal Order Out of Informal Chaos – a New Latin American Dialogue between the Official Practice of Heritage Conservation and the Concept of Self-Organization by Jaime Correa (University of Miami)

    SECTION 2 – RE-EVALUATING AN AGING PAST

      1. Towards an integrative and empathetic heritage conservation: The Case of Kandy, Sri Lanka by Kapila D. Silva (University of Kansas)
      2. Rural Cultural Landscapes and the Purposes of Heritage - the case of the Cultural Landscape of Bali Province (Indonesia) by Kristal Buckley, Deakin University (Australia)
      3. Continuing Culture and Meeting Modernity: The World Heritage Villages of Shirakawa-Go and Gokayama, Japan by Rana P.B. Singh (Banaras Hindu University)
      4. Visioning Cultural Heritage and Planning: Banaras, the Cultural Capital of India by Rana P. B Singh & Pravin s. Rana (Banaras Hindu University)
      5. Natural, Cultural, and Heritage Landscapes: Intersections of authenticity, preservation, landscape, and heritage in rock art conservation by Kristin Barry (Ball State University)

    SECTION 3 – EMBRACING AN UNDERESTIMATED HERITAGE

      1. Revaluing Industrial Heritage: Transformation of the Port District in Nantes, France by Ann Borst (Wentworth Institute of Technology)
      2. Accumulating Memory: The Shenzhen Value Factory by Eric Schuldenfrei (University of Hong Kong)
      3. From obsolete military infrastructure to public space: the evolving identity of Latvia’s Riga Central Market by Mia Bennett (University of California Los Angeles)
      4. The Once and Future Dingbat: Conserving Dingbats’ Future will Require Redressing their Past by Elizabeth Faletta (University of Southern California)
      5. Dwelling in Possibility? A Case Study of Deep Heritage Conservation: Liverpool’s Temple of Humanity by Matthew Wilson (Ball State University)

    SECTION 4 – BALANCING NATIVE & FOREIGN

      1. Ritual Practice and Place Conflict: Negotiating a Contested Landscape along Jamaica Bay by Alison Hirsch (University of Southern California)
      2. Modern Infrastructure and Historic Urban Landscape: Re-Evaluating Local Conservation Practices in Light of Hanoi’s Metro Project by Huê-Tâm Jamme (University of Southern California) and Floriane Ortega
      3. Chinatowns as Territorial Trope: A Case Study of Vancouver, San Francisco and Los Angeles by Mari Fujita (University of British Columbia)
      4. Theming as a preservation tool? On the authenticity of Thames Town, the English village of Shanghai by Maria Francesca Piazzoni (University of Southern California)
      5. Designs upon Jerusalem: Bezalel Academy occupies the historic Russian Compound by Christopher Pokarier & Erez Golani Solomon (Waseda University)

    SECTION 5 – RECONCILING SOCIO-POLITICAL TENSIONS

      1. Heritage Preservation as Survival: Mediating Social and Ecological Risk and Resilience at the Slave Port of Badagry, Nigeria by Charisma Acey (University of California Berkeley)
      2. The Identification, Preservation, and Interpretation of Slavery Sites in the United States by Mary Ann Heidemann (Ball State University)
      3. Heritage Conservation and the Transformation of Institutions of Incarceration into Community Arts Centers in Postcolonial Australia by Kate Darian-Smith (University of Melbourne)
      4. South Africa’s Constitutional Court : Landscape of Resistance, Inversion, and Civic Re-imagination by Jocelyn Eisenberg Zanzot (Auburn University)
      5. Reinterpreting Fascist Built Heritage: The Reuse of Rome’s Foro Mussolini by Anna Mascorella (Cornell University)

    SECTION 6 – ESTIMATING OUR RECENT PAST

      1. Social Housing with a Human Face: Conserving Moscow’s Soviet Era Housing Legacy, by Nathan Hutson (University of Southern California)
      2. Fragile, Even the Best of Them: New Zealand’s Modern Heritage Buildings by Julia Gatley (University of Auckland)
      3. Historic Preservation Battles: The Historic Hotels in Los Angeles by Karolina Gorska and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris (University of California Los Angeles)
      4. The Future of the Recent Past: Challenges Facing Modern Heritage from the Postcolonial Decades in India by Manish Chalana (University of Washington Seattle)
      5. Tokyo’s Modern Legacy and the 2020 Olympic Games by Christian Dimmer (University of Tokyo) & Erez Golani Solomon (Waseda University)

    Biography

    Vinayak Bharne is Adjunct Associate Professor of Urbanism and Heritage Conservation at the University of Southern California, USA, and Principal and Director of Design at the architecture and urban design firm Moule & Polyzoides, USA. His books include The Emerging Asian City: Concomitant Urbanities & Urbanisms (2012), Rediscovering the Hindu Temple: The Sacred Architecture and Urbanism of India (2012), and Zen Spaces & Neon Places: Reflections on Japanese Architecture and Urbanism (2013).





    Trudi Sandmeier is the Director of Graduate Programs in Heritage Conservation and an Associate Professor of Practice in Architecture at the University of Southern California, USA. Her work centers on the conservation of the recent past and efforts to make visible the impact of underrepresented constituencies on the historic built environment.



    This exciting addition to the literature on what, how, and why we preserve cultural resources and the tangible manifestations of history has extraordinary reach across intellectual and physical realms. Heritage conservation, or historic preservation, has been undergoing a radical rethinking globally, because of new contexts (climate change, population shifts, social and economic inequality, the rise of populism…) and new understandings of the ethical implications of existing theory, policy, and practice. The essays in this volume leap forcefully into these debates, using case studies from two dozen countries, and bringing the insights of an impressive array of new voices—both practitioners and scholars—to the conversation.

    The authors address a wide range of difficult and challenging issues that confront practitioners in heritage conservation, along with a broad diversity of sites, from indigenous habitats to war zones, classic landmarks to industrial compounds. Meanwhile, the editors have placed these explorations into a rich intellectual framework of themes and conceptual dualities that reveal the polarized discourse Bharne and Sandmeier see as heritage conservation today. The result is a provocative, stimulating, and profoundly useful text.

    Jeffrey M. Chusid

    Chair, Department of City and Regional Planning

    Associate Professor, Historic Preservation Planning Program

    College of Architecture, Art and Planning

    Cornell University

    This volume may well exceed heritage conservation to also be a guide of design consideration of projects throughout urban settings. It will be an essential reference for those who have just become curious about conservation because of an issue nearby, for those learning in college about "what is conservation anyway," and for those in professional practices who properly struggle with the complex range of conservation problems and opportunities at home and abroad. Having this volume available will help us work our way more regularly to public acceptance and cultural delight, extending heritage conservation globally.

    Robert S. Harris, FAIA, Hon. ASLA

    Emeritus Professor of Architecture

    University of Southern California

    There are three seemingly obvious but often overlooked aspects of what makes a city so vital and vibrant: the city belongs to all of us; the city is combination of old and new; and the city is global. This book embraces all these crucial aspects of heritage conservation in the urban context, which is an issue at the forefront of the 21st century: What do we value as worth conserving? How do we do it and for whose benefit? None of these of questions have easy answers, but this welcome addition to the literature enables – and indeed, empowers – us to reconsider heritage conservation by paying close attention to pressing local challenges in an increasingly global context.

    In this regard, the scope of the book is breathtaking, taking us Bali to Jerusalem Los Angeles to Shanghai and beyond, while addressing a wide range of issues - from cultural landscapes to industrial heritage to earthquakes to military infrastructure. For those who may be new to the topic, the introductory chapter itself is a brief yet excellent overview of the major themes in the field. Perhaps this book’s most significant contribution is in the ways it reaches far beyond the usual aesthetics and materiality of the objects to be conserved and critically examines relatively invisible aspects such as the underlying perceptions, approaches, and values that actually drive global heritage conservation yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

    Professor Aseem Inam,

    Chair in Urban Design,

    Cardiff University