VIRTUAL ISTANBUL HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

Heritage reflects cultural environments through institutional structures that are responsive to shifts in rooted practices, refuting the relation of governance to cultural systems as strictly hierarchical or patrimonial. This conception of heritage as a cultural paradigm can be considered a form of collective artistic manifestation of everyday life; a ‘living heritage.’ Alternatively, ‘Living Heritages’ represent cultural environments that display a perceptible continuity in habitat and tradition with limited evidence of urban intervention, disruption, discontinuity or reconfiguration. Underscored by this premise, the account seeks to narrate a cultural discourse of resilience for Smithfield Market in the City of London that represents a long and turbulent history of trade, spanning the course of eight centuries. Threatened by fire and damage during the Second World War and plans of relocation in response to the regeneration of the site as the new premises of the London Museum, the trading industry has been contested over the years affecting living practices within a significant urban node in the north of the city’s historic core. Following plans that terminated the relocation of the markets to Dagenham, the decision to relocate Smithfield Market to Albert Island adjacent to the London City Airport has provided a temporary solution, offering means of sustaining a living heritage that has survived since the Medieval period. These decisions and negotiations have rendered the trading industry a practice that has constantly reinvented itself in the face of conflict, adversity, pressures of development and new and engaging challenges over the course of history.