Where to stop?
Picture this _ it’s the year 3000 (yes the one all the boy bands were singing about), you get the chance to walk again in your city. You see new buildings, new technologies, may I venture and say flying taxis? However, you also see that same tower that your city celebrated 100 years ago, but it is now a piece of archaic history turned into a touristic experience to see how the people of this land lived 1000 years ago. Cool, right? I won’t argue with that.. It is fascinating. Then you walk around a bit more and you see that your city is much bigger than what you’re used to, people have to travel distances to get to things they need or to visit each other, the land has become almost obsolete of crop completely due to the vast urbanization needed to help accommodate the population increase. You ask yourself: Why does no one live near the center anymore? Why have people moved so far if it’s so hard? Is it because it’s too expensive, or maybe it’s because there is no more space? Or maybe it’s because it’s too crowded with tourists the whole time… A bit dramatic, I know, I just wanted to make a grand entrance into the topic- so let’s get to it:
Heritage is defined as something that is passed down or inherited from a generation to another; in this definition, everything from the past technically is heritage.
Heritage is also known to be features belonging to the culture of a particular society, such as traditions, languages, or buildings, that were created in the past and still have historical importance. Keyword: importance … What is worth to keep and what is not? Who decides value? What decides value? And most importantly, where do we stop? How old is old enough?
In the midst of globalization, there have been certain standards of what constitutes heritage on a world scale and most countries have the standard old towns made of brick, mortar, clay and local materials and in the upscale of all this, there has been a new global movement in cities around the world of preserving Modern Heritage. Unlike older trends where there were clear boundaries of what constitutes old and what is new, classifying modern heritage seems to be trickier!
The criteria in which it is defined or preserved are linked to the obvious elements such as architectural characteristics, building materials and typologies… however in a sea of buildings, the ones that stand out to be preserved rely on a more nostalgic sense, a collective memory. This opens a plethora of questions:
o First and foremost, as I alluded before, the question of Whom rises
— whose memory matters? Are minorities considered? Are buildings that matter to them put within this criteria?
— Who decides what matters and what doesn’t? and why are they given this power? Like they say: History is written by the victors, so who in this case is choosing what parts of memory are to be kept and what parts we could do without?
o Then, if we delve into the topic of modern heritage a little more, the later styles of modernism had the very distinctive global style, the international style: glass skyscrapers that could be placed anywhere. These styles are still used to this day to create new buildings and if we take the definition of heritage we start seeing, how piece by piece the whole city becomes a piece of the preservation story. So, Where do we stop? Where do we, as humans, say this is no longer heritage? Are buildings built by the starchitects of today with such massive scales to be considered heritage tomorrow? Is this a vicious cycle that will never stop?
o If so, then I would like to turn your minds into one last depository of thought… sustainability, the infamous word of the 21st century (I know) many of the buildings being preserved today are being reused which has been a great contribution to less demolition waste and a way to repurpose abandoned buildings. Most reuses however for iconic buildings focus on museums, exhibition spaces, cafes, supplementary services of the city. This has been a minor contributor to urban sprawl of mostly houses and residential amenities that are needed as populations in the city increase creating a counter effect to the sustainable narrative of reuse posing the question, is it really necessary to keep every piece of the city? And if not, what are we saving?
