Modern Movement Heritage

This collection of essays serves as an introduction to modern architectural heritage and the specific problems related to the conservation of modern structures. It covers policy, planning and construction. A selection of case studies elaborates on these issues and illustrates how problems have been addressed. This volume celebrates the first 5 years of DoCoMoMo's role and influence in this important area of building conservation.

This collection of essays serves as an introduction to modern architectural heritage and the specific problems related to the conservation of modern structures. It covers policy, planning and construction. A selection of case studies elaborates on these issues and illustrates how problems have been addressed. This volume celebrates the first 5 years of DoCoMoMo's role and influence in this important area of building conservation.

"The legacy of the Modern Movement has gained legendary status, largely as a result of the appreciation of the masterworks and the visionary architectural concepts. In the reality of everyday life, however, it has been difficult to maintain the architectural creations of the Modern Movement in such a way that they still reflect the original intentions of their designers. Many buildings and ensembles of the Modern Movement have already been saved; the icons amongst these have even become so precious that they are treated like pieces of art rather than as buildings in everyday use. But despite the successes that have been achieved, many buildings and ensembles are still at risk of demolition or maltreatment. The bi-annul international conference is one means by which it is possible to continue furthering the aims of Docomomo. Knowing that many modern architects aimed at functionality and changeability, the challenge for today is how to deal with the modern heritage in relation to its continuously changing context, including physical, economic and functional changes, as well as socio-cultural, political and scientific ones. It is with this in mind that conservation in general, and the conservation of modern architecture in particular, has become a new challenge. Rather than attempting to return a modern building to its presumed original state, our challenge is to revalue the essence of the manifold manifestations of modern architecture and redefine its meanings in our changing world of digital revolution, worldwide mobility and environmental awareness."--Jacket.

UNESCO aims to tackle Africa’s under-representation on its World Heritage List by inscribing instances of nineteenth- and twentieth-century modern architecture and urban planning there. But, what is one to make of the utopias of progress and development for which these buildings and sites stand? After all, concern for ‘modern heritage’ invariably—and paradoxically it seems—has to reckon with those utopias as problematic futures of the past, a circumstance complicating intentions to preserve a recent ‘culture’ of modernization on the African continent. This book, a new title in Routledge’s Studies in Culture and Development series, introduces the concept of ‘global heritage assemblages’ to analyse that problem. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork, it describes how various governmental, intergovernmental, and non-governmental actors engage with colonial and post-colonial built heritage found in Eritrea, Tanzania, Niger, and the Republic of the Congo. Rausch argues that the global heritage assemblages emerging from those examples produce problematizations of the modern’, which ultimately indicate a contemporary need to rescue modernity from its dominant conception as an all-encompassing, epochal, and spatial culture.

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.

This book is an intellectual discourse and a concise compendium of current research in architecture and urbanism. Primarily, it is a book of readings of 16 chapters. The book brings together theories, manifestos and methodologies on contemporary architecture and urbanism to raise the understanding for the future architecture and urban planning. Overall, the book aimed to establish a bridge between theory and practice in built environment. Thus, it reports on the latest research findings and innovative approaches, methodologies for creating, assessing and understanding of contemporary built environment.

Heritage Conservation in Postcolonial India seeks to position the conservation profession within historical, theoretical, and methodological frames to demonstrate how the field has evolved in the postcolonial decades and follow its various trajectories in research, education, advocacy, and practice. Split into four sections, this book covers important themes of institutional and programmatic developments in the field of conservation; critical and contemporary challenges facing the profession; emerging trends in practice that seek to address contemporary challenges; and sustainable solutions to conservation issues. The cases featured within the book elucidate the evolution of the heritage conservation profession, clarifying the role of key players at the central, state, and local level, and considering intangible, minority, colonial, modern, and vernacular heritages among others. This book also showcases unique strands of conservation practice in the postcolonial decades to demonstrate the range, scope, and multiple avenues of development in the last seven decades. An ideal read for those interested in architecture, planning, historic preservation, urban studies, and South Asian studies.