(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)
Abstract
Rapid changes in local climates and land use, increasing spatial isolation, fragmentation, loss of socio-economic viability and other related challenges pose threats towards the resilience of many socio-culturally, ecologically, and historically significant heritage estates. While their preservation is often a prime concern, current heritage policies mostly focus on the two-unity of the main estate building and surrounding landscape park. However, investigating the landscape history of these estates, the importance of various tangible and intangible relationships between estates and their hinterlands comes to the fore. Estate owners relied on their hinterlands for agricultural production, forestry, recreation, display of power, and other functional and aesthetic purposes. As such, these hinterlands could be considered as the estate’s economic, ecologic, social, and cultural lifelines. The tangible/intangible relations between estates and their hinterlands, as a consequence, make up an integral aspect of this heritage. At present, with the decline of the economic support from the hinterlands and current conservation focus, these strong functional and experiential linkages are somewhat forgotten or lost. But in absence of these links, the estates lose much of their purpose and meaning. In this paper, we argue that heritage estates cannot be conceived as individual points in space, and that these tangible/intangible links need to be rethought and restored between the estates and their immediate (local) as well as larger (regional) landscape contexts, to build up environmental, social, cultural, and economic resilience. We furthermore explore how a relational landscape approach can start restoring these links between heritage estates and their hinterlands, by means of research by design in the Baakse Beek area, Gelderland (NL) performed at TU Delft. The research shows how the non-hierarchical multi-scalar restoration of tangible/intangible heritage linkages can promote new landscape meanings for these heritage places while ensuring future resilience for both the estates and the greater region.
Ir. Alia Shahed: Alia Shahed is an architect, landscape architect and academic currently working in Bangladesh. Alia completed her Bachelor of Architecture (B. Arch awarded with Honors) from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, BUET in 2016. In 2020, Alia completed her master’s in landscape architecture (fully funded by JvEffen Scholarship, TU Delft) with Cum Laude from Delft University of Technology, TU Delft, Netherlands. Alia worked as a professional landscape architect at “Bosch & Slabbers Landscape Architects” (The Hague, NL) focusing on public landscape architectural projects of different scales and research related to heritage landscapes and their management through landscape architectural means amid the imminent climate crisis. Currently, Alia is a lecturer at the Department of Architecture, North South University, Dhaka. Her current research and practice endeavors are primarily focused on the landscape architectural history, heritage landscapes of Bangladesh and their future possibilities. Her field of interest and current practice also focuses on the relationship between urban ecology, architecture, and landscape architecture.
Dr Ir. Bieke Cattoor: Dr Ir. Bieke Cattoor is Assistant Professor in Landscape Analysis, Methods, and Imagination at Delft University of Technology (NL). She studied architecture, urbanism, and spatial planning at the University of Leuven (BE) and Columbia University (US), obtained her PhD (KU Leuven) on designerly mapping practices, and has held visiting research fellowships at the University of Manchester (UK) and ETH Zurich (CH) in cartography, cartographic theory, and human geography. Her ongoing research programme ‘Reimagining Landscapes’, develops new ways of representing landscapes and at the same time investigates everyday (sub)urban landscape transformations. This research contributes to urgent urban landscape problematics such as unsustainable urbanization, climate change and biodiversity loss, in a twofold manner. Firstly, by presenting novel insights into the processes and mechanisms shaping our everyday environments; such knowledge is invaluable when designing for sustainable urban futures. Secondly, by developing new ways of representing landscapes, and thereby augmenting the critical capacity of designers and other stakeholders involved in rethinking, reimagining, and reshaping our world. Concretely, her projects contribute to more sustainable and resilient (sub)urban landscape development in Flanders, Gelderland, and the Randstad. Research has been published in four narrative atlases, academic monographs, peer reviewed journal articles, edited volumes, and international exhibitions.