Cultural Considerations
Impact on Cultural Significance: A Values-Based Approach to Architectural Heritage Conservation
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sofia Aleixo
The presence of the term ‘cultural significance’ in heritage conservation guidelines issued by ICOMOS, UNESCO and more recently the Council of Europe (CoE) has shifted the origin of evaluation of historic environments from experts to users. The social impact of architectural conservation is, therefore, a topic in need of research, so that cultural heritage values can be enhanced and not mitigated by inattentive interventions. In this presentation the values of a specific building typology of our common cultural heritage will be discussed, and a methodology developed to evaluate the impact of architectural conservation practices will be presented, using historic schools in Portugal as case studies. The presentation will conclude on the value of the use of research and evaluation methods in the built environment stakeholders when addressing the case of architectural conservation of historic schools.
The Power of Place: How the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Interactive Place Table Highlights the Social Impacts of African American Built Environments
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lindsey Bestebreurtje
The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) opened its doors in September of 2016. One of its inaugural exhibitions is the “Power of Place.” This exhibition uses ten case studies of places in the U.S. illustrating the distinct flavor and experience of each - including the Bronx, Oak Bluffs in Martha’s Vineyard Massachusetts, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Greenville, Mississippi. These place studies contain a mix of diverse stories—well-known and unknown; mainstream and edgy; celebratory and challenging. At the center of this exhibition the idea of place and region as a crucial component of the African American experience is explored through an interactive multimedia area called the “Place Table.” This table shows professional and personal photographs dating back more than a century. Behind each photo is a story that describes African American life in every pocket of the country. The stories reflect on themes of home, migration, community, displacement, neighborhood, travel, and loss. The table seeks to highlight regional African American culture, and also recognizes the ways in which place is tied to displacement for the community – those places that were lost. In this paper, I explore the development of the table, how stories and images were chosen to highlight the personal and social impacts of physical spaces, and the struggles of both finding stories from lost environments and crowd-sourcing new entries within the black community.
A Contemporary Review of the Ducal Palace of the Bragança’s Intervention in the Mid-twentieth Century
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Inês Graça
Built in 1420 –during the aftermath of the succession war with Castela and the arise of D. João I as King– the palace of the dukes of Bragança in Guimarães was intended to house the counts of Barcelos, later dukes of Bragança. Being the home of the dukes during the first period of the fifteenth century, it was slowly left to decay after the duchess’ death, resulting in its eventual abandonment in that century’s final years. Having met different usages and occupations since the sixteenth century, the palace was deeply intervened between the 1930s and the 1960s, as part of a larger and wider campaign undertaken by the National Board for Buildings and Monuments. This campaign contributed to the dictatorships rhetoric, which aimed to restore the country’s collective memory and national identity through interventions in selected buildings of historical significance. Being the original home of the last Portuguese dynasty –the Braganças– the Ducal Palace’s importance was undeniable. This presentation reports on the architectural design process that the Palace of the dukes of Bragança underwent in the twentieth century for its adaptation into a museum and the official residence in the north for the President of the Portuguese Republic. However, both the process and the intervention’s final design solution were extremely polemic and profoundly criticized, by the general population as well as experts. Nonetheless, new discoveries are arising regarding the original medieval construction, contributing to a refreshed contemporary understanding of the monument, in particular its mid-twentieth century architectural intervention.
