Speakers
Description
Cultural heritage has gained importance in distinguishing cities and places in the competition for attracting international visitors. In the last decades, this prompted new projects to make historic sites more appealing, accessible, and functional to tourists. While a certain degree of novelty – e.g. new projects for historic buildings, museums and heritage areas – proved to be attractive, it can also risk oversimplifying cultural contents to promote tourism and commodifying heritage places (Gravari-Barbas and Renard-Delautre, 2016).
In particular, transnational actors, such as star architects, have contributed significantly to these trends (Ponzini, 2020). In the transformations of heritage-rich sites, international organizations such as UNESCO and internationally renowned architectural firms emerge as the obvious protagonists, since these projects generally need high-level technical expertise, specialized interventions and powerful narratives to gain legitimacy, especially in potentially controversial situations. A survey by Cominelli and Jacquot (2020) identified more than 400 projects across Europe designed by transnational firms and located within UNESCO-listed sites in the 1990-2015 period. However, little is known about the diffusion, features, and types of projects located in and near to such heritage sites, especially beyond Europe.
This paper aims to advance the state of the art by conducting a series of mapping and analytical exercises to uncover new insights into the interaction between transnational projects and UNESCO World Heritage Sites. First, it explores the geographies of projects designed by globally prominent transnational firms in UNESCO WHS and their buffer zones between 1990 and 2023. The analysis is based on an original GIS database with comprised of more than 5,000 transnational projects (Ponzini and Manfredini, 2017) overlayed with the UNESCO WHS database containing over 1200 sites. Using a 2km radius, derived from the maximum determined diameter of existing listed urban sites, the study identify over 200 projects in vicinity of WHS sites. Subsequent investigation and cross-checking reveal a diverse set of projects located directly within the World Heritage Sites, their Buffer Zones, as well as outside of listed areas, even if, in some instances, they fall beyond (but nearby) the designated boundaries. The analysis indicates that nearly three times more of the projects were completed after the site was listed as UNESCO, revealing that the heritage listing did not necessarily have an impact of reducing urban development.
This data will be thoroughly analyzed to identify patterns and trends in how these projects interact with their surroundings. A set of examples will be presented to narrate the different types identified to expand the discussion on how the ways these projects connect or disconnect with their heritage contexts. Finally, the paper will highlight key gaps and open questions regarding transnational architectural and urban projects in heritage areas, outlining directions for future research to be developed.
References
References:
Cominelli, F., & Jacquot, S. (2020). Star Architecture Landing in UNESCO Sites: Local Frictions and Regulations, in: N. Alaily-Mattar, D. Ponzini, & A. Thierstein (Eds.), About Star Architecture, pp. 247–266. Cham: Springer.
Gravari-Barbas, M., & Renard-Delautre, C. (2016). Iconic buildings and the Historic Urban Landscape. A joint analysis of urban globalisation., in: p. 20 pages. Budapest. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/14908871/GLOBAL_GEOGRAPHIES_OF_STARCHITECTURE?from=cover_page
Ponzini, D. (2020). Transnational Architecture and Urbanism: Rethinking How Cities Plan, Transform, and Learn. London: Routledge.
Ponzini, D., & Manfredini, F. (2017). “New Methods for Studying Transnational Urbanism and Architecture: A Primer”, Territorio, 80, 97–110.
| Keywords | Keywords: Transnational projects; Cultural heritage; Mapping; World Heritage sites; UNESCO |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
