IN-PERSON: Prague – Section B
Abstract
The Dorset village of Tyneham was a farming and fishing community with over 900 years of history. It was requisitioned in 1943 to be a training ground for tank soldiers. The village’s landscape was transformed due to growing ecology over the built environment, including listed buildings and ruins. Nowadays, the village presents an outstanding landscape and the remaining structures describe the life of a coastal, pre-industrial community. The village is loved by the local community and is a major tourist destination, attracting thousands of visitors annually, although it is still a live firing training site. This paper explores what makes Tyneham a unique heritage site and what it means to contemporary visitors/communities; these questions are investigated by a bottom up approach, mixed methods, historic narratives and the contemporary social values of the place. Literature analysis aims to illustrate the historic, aesthetic and cultural qualities of the site, while empirical study will inform the understanding of the site’s physical and ecological qualities. Through a two-day onsite activity, first hand data was collected from visitors to uncover the contemporary social value of the place. The site’s social and political narratives have developed a unique character and preserved the place’s stories. Using a comparative approach, the article spotlights how the various events of the site have strengthened its heritage in a completely different way. The story of Tyneham and its unravelled values elucidates complex arguments behind shaping heritage place-making and the growing culture of merging the tangible and intangible values.
Milena Metalkova-Markova is a Bulgarian architect who specialized in history of architecture and heritage preservation in Japan. Her research there was focused on preservation issues of historic wooden townhouses. She has taught architectural anthropology, history of modern architecture and architectural design within historic contexts in Japan, Bulgaria and the UK. She has been awarded several times for her work with students in preservation and urban design – Japan Tohoku International Competition 2nd Award, Japanese Ambassador Award-2018, Historic England Angel Award-2019.
Tarek Teba is an architectural heritage scholar who has developed his leadership and research through local, national and international collaborations. I believe historic structures bear valuable knowledge of place, being authentic as their architecture is frozen, but their tangible and intangible significance is detached from contemporary debates. Therefore, my research focuses on setting a conservation framework to enhance the understanding of historic structures, landscape and ruins and their cultural values, and eventually contribute to their preservation and presentation. This multidisciplinary framework is based upon critical analysis of the building’s history, architecture and archaeology.
Rachael Brown is a Senior Lecture within the School of Architecture. As a practice-based researcher, she uses collage, printing, and painting to visualise social, political and cultural narratives. Current projects include Time after Time, a series of three hand-crafted artist’s books that illustrate selected elements of the extraordinary social, political and environmental global events that occurred between 2016 and 2021, events that are bookended by the presidential elections in the United States of America.
8:30 am - 10:00 am
Thursday 29th June, 2023