UNIT 8

CULTURAL HERITAGE


DEFINITIONS

HERITAGE: the heritage is a set of assets acquired by inheritance. Also the meaning of heritage is often identified with other terms such as wealth or property, whether of natural or legal persons and origin from both and private spheres, which includes companies, non-profit organizations or countries

CULTURE: set of lifestyles, customs, knowledge and degree of artistic, scientific and industrial development, in an epoch, social group, and more.

According to its value:

  • Historical Heritage
  • Artistic Heritage
  • Cultural Heritage

 

CULTURAL ASSET

Cultural identity is something the world has tried to protect and preserve for years in stories, songs, poems, monuments, books, scrolls, etc. However, there have been many occasions when the signs of cultural identity were lost such as in the Second World War, many countries were effected in many ways but one of them was the aforementioned: loss of cultural identity,  cause many countries developed to such a degree that they ignored certain sectors such as agricultural culture or crafts, nevertheless they tried to reconstruct these signs.

TRADITIONAL HISTORY: it focused on the great events that marked history such as politicians, military, scientists, etc. These events were represented in monuments becoming in the best form of representation.

NEW HISTORY:  it focus on the existence of man, his instruments of work an daily use, showing a dimension that encompasses everything and therefore the remains to be preserved.

 

Over time there were classifications of what a cultural identity was. In 1972 UNESCO proposed a new classification which was:

  • Monuments: architecture, painting, archeology, sculpture, caverns, inscriptions, etc.
  • Sets: group of constructions that received an exceptional value from the historical, art, or science point of view.
  • Places: works of man and nature with universal value from historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological point of view.

 

 

 

WHY PRESERVING HERITAGE?

Preservation is a method of not losing the values of cultural identity (cultural value, artistic value, historical value of authenticity, value of antiquity, functional/social value, economic value). All goods contained in catalogues must be protected an preserved, but not only these ones, before any action we make as architects, we must think about the value  of the good on which we will intervene before deciding the type of intervention.

 

WHAT WE HAVE TO PRESERVE?

Every aspect of a building must be taken care of:

  • Use
  • Colors, materials, textures
  • Shapes, dimensions
  • Construction techniques
  • Matter
  • Meaning
  • Environment
  • Character

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://prezi.com/view/y1eeuvclGtF7SoCrm9T3/

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