Search results

Even if there is a wealth of research highlighting the key role of values and cultural significance for heritage management and, defining specific interventions on built heritage, seldom the relation to their leading values and values hierarchy have been researched. How do values and interventions relate? What values trigger most and least interventions on heritage? How do these values relate and characterize interventions? And what are the values hierarchy that make the interventions on built heritage differ?

This paper conducts a systematic content analysis of 69 international doctrinal documents – mainly adopted by Council of Europe, UNESCO, and ICOMOS, during 1877 and 2021. The main aim is to reveal and compare the intervention concepts and their definitions, in relation to values. The intensity of the relationship between intervention concepts and values is determined based on the frequency of mentioned values per intervention.

There were three key findings. First, historic, social, and aesthetical values were the most referenced values in international doctrinal documents. Second, while intervention concepts revealed similar definitions and shared common leading values, their secondary values and values hierarchy, e.g. aesthetical or social values, are the ones influencing the variation on their definitions. Third, certain values show contradictory roles in the same intervention concepts from different documents, e.g. political and age values.

This paper explores a novel comparison between different interventions concepts and definitions, and the role of values. The results can contribute to support further research and practice on clarifying the identified differences.

Attributes conveying cultural significance play a key role in heritage management, as well as in differentiating interventions in built heritage. However, seldom the relation between interventions and attributes, either tangible or intangible, has been researched systematically. How do both tangible and intangible attributes and interventions relate? What attributes make interventions on built heritage differ?

This paper conducts a systematic content analysis of forty-one international doctrinal documents—mainly adopted by the Council of Europe, UNESCO and ICOMOS, between 1877 and 2021. The main aim is to reveal and compare the selected eight intervention concepts, namely—restoration (C1), preservation (C2), conservation (C3), adaptation (C4), rehabilitation (C5), relocation (C6), reconstruction (C7) and renewal (C8)—and their definitions, in relation to attributes, both tangible and intangible. The intensity of the relationship between intervention concepts and attributes is determined based on the frequency of the mentioned attributes per intervention.

There were three key findings. First, although the attention to intangible attributes has increased in the last decades, the relationship between interventions and tangible attributes remains stronger. The highest frequency of referencing the tangible attributes was identified in “relocation” and “preservation,” while the lowest was in “rehabilitation.” Second, certain attributes play contradictory roles, e.g. “material,” “use” and “process,” which creates inconsistent definitions between documents. Third, as attributes often include one another in building layers, they trigger the intervention concepts in hierarchical patterns.

This paper explores and discusses the results of a novel comparative analysis between different intervention concepts and definitions, with a particular focus on the attributes. The results can support further research and practice, clarifying the identified differences and similarities.

Although residential neighbourhoods are the largest and most resilient share of a city and the process of urban conservation and renewal is ongoing, methods to assess their values are limited. This paper presents the results of a systematic literature review, revealing the state of the art and its knowledge gaps with regard to methods for assessing values of architecture in residential neighbourhoods.

The systematic literature review is based on studies selected by a research protocol, using a digital database of peer-reviewed literature. A metanarrative approach is used to synthesise the qualitative data from reviewed articles. This review has two stages: (1) giving an overview of the field and (2) categorising research methods and disciplines.

The review revealed a wide variety of studies from different disciplines and deduced its key trends, titled as “storylines”, concerning the methods to assess significance, integrating a broader scope of values and different perspectives. In particular, the “storylines” outside traditional heritage disciplines offer methods to include more stakeholders, link value assessment to policy development or highlight heritage potential. Results reveal the diversity in concepts and strengthen the need for an interdisciplinary vocabulary on values and methods, enabling planners and policymakers to compare their results and help to create more attractive and resilient cities.

By reviewing and comparing the selected studies from a wider range of disciplines and research fields, this paper shares insights into the complementary characteristics of the different types of value research, outlining the added value of the different perspectives.

This research presents the development of a Building Passport for Sustainable Conservation (BPSC) as a questionnaire with a set of 23 core indicators, for a baseline assessment of heritage buildings. The aim of this tool is to identify priorities for future interventions, by recognising the contributions of heritage buildings to sustainability that should be preserved and the fragilities that need to be improved.

The BPSC uses a selection of core indicators for sustainability observable on heritage buildings. It was applied to four different case studies of modern heritage in the Netherlands, to verify its applicability and limitations.

The results suggest that this tool has the potential to contribute to an expedite assessment, reaching consensual evaluations of priorities for sustainable conservation, while reducing the time and cost of the process, contributing to support informed redesign decisions.

Recently, existing building sustainability assessment (BSA) tools have been adapted and new BSA tools developed for heritage buildings. Some tools target existing buildings, but seldom cover cultural significance and heritage values. Others target the after-redesign situations – aiming at assessing how sustainable the redesign is. Often BSA tools are complex and time-consuming, with extensive indicators and data requirements. The BPSC developed in this research covers the main aspects of sustainability and related heritage values, in a simpler tool for a baseline assessment.

The paper explores the potential value of urban assemblage theory as a conceptual framework for understanding the role heritage has in social sustainable urban placemaking. The authors conceptualise urban placemaking as a dynamic and complex social assemblage. Heritage is one of the many dimensions of such a complex and dynamic urban assembly. Based on the approach to urban assemblage theory, the authors aim to uncover how postindustrial city-making unfolds. When approaching the case studies, the authors ask the following: Whose city for which citizens are visible through the selected case studies? How is social sustainability achieved through heritage in urban placemaking?

The main research material is derived from theoretical literature and the testing of an assemblage methodological approach through three Norwegian urban regeneration case studies where heritage partake in urban placemaking. The three case studies are the Tukthus wall (what is left of an 19th century old prison), the Vulkan neighbourhood (an 19th century industrial working area) and Sørengkaia (an 19th century industrial harbour area) in Oslo, Norway. The three case studies are representing urban regeneration projects which are common worldwide, and not at least in a European context.

The paper reveals the dynamic factors and processes at play in urban placemaking, which has its own distinct character by the uses of heritage in each of the case study areas. Placemaking could produce “closed” systems which are stable in accordance with its original functions, or they could be “open” systems affected by the various drivers of change. The paper shows how these forces are depending on two sets of binary forces at play in urban placemaking: forces of “assemblages” co-creating a place versus destabilising forces of “disassembly” which is redefining the place as a process affected by reassembled placemaking.

For research, the authors focus on the implications this paper has for the field of urban heritage studies as it provides a useful framework to capture the dynamic complexity of urban heritage areas.

For practice, the authors state that the paper can provide a useful platform for dialogue and critical thinking on strategies being planned.

For society, the paper promotes the significance in terms of fostering an inclusive way of thinking and planning for urban heritage futures.

The paper outlines dynamics of urban regeneration through heritage which are significant for understanding urban transformation as value for offering practical solutions to social problems in urban planning. The assemblage methodological approach (1) makes awareness of the dynamic processes at play in urban placemaking and makes the ground for mapping issue at stake in urban placemaking; (2) becomes a source for modelling urban regeneration through heritage by defining a conceptual framework of dynamic interactions in urban placemaking; and (3) defines a critically reflexive tool for evaluating good versus bad (heritage-led) urban development projects.