VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages
Abstract
The ongoing transformation of historical rural landscapes presents a conflict between international heritage values and the everyday demands of the communities that inhabit them. In Morocco, the Kasbah of Ait Ben Haddou was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. Though the Kasbah stands intact today, the site now functions as a movie backdrop and tourist destination, while residents rebuilt their lives and livelihoods immediately adjacent to the boundaries of the “Heritage” designation. In this case, ‘traditional’ heritage expertise preserved the physical form of the Kasbah at the expense of the social mechanisms that had kept the Kasbah alive for six centuries. The recent recognition of rural landscapes as heritage by the ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) brought attention to the lack of empirical and theoretical data about rural landscapes outside of the West. This study examines the Jbala region of Morocco and dchar communities similar to Ait Ben Haddou. Using typo-morphology with ethnographic research, we describe the physical, social, and cultural landscape of Ain Barda. The project documents a dynamic local landscape and the hybridizing architectural know-how that resides within the living community. It is not the present or past form of such rural landscapes that should be seen as “preservable” history, but rather the social mechanisms of reproduction that continue to generate the landscape itself. Here, we discern how local communities deploy patterns to appropriate space, thereby documenting a culturally-informed heritage pattern, rather than the Western conception of heritage objects-to-be-preserved.
Dr. Henn is an Associate Professor of Architecture examining the social structures that shape the built environment. She previously investigated the social barriers to environmental sustainability in the U.S. design and construction industry, partially documented in the MIT Press book, Constructing Green: Social Structures of Sustainability. Her current work with doctoral students investigates architectural self-determination of rural and displaced populations.
Ms. Zerkaoui is a doctoral candidate at The Pennsylvania State University. Her Masters work at l’École Nationale d’Architecture de Rabat investigated the rural center of Ain Mediouna, Morocco, highlighting the functional and morphological continuity between new and old forms. In this case, “rural center” better describes the constellation of five ancestral dchour that function as an integrated rural settlement, rather than any Western conceptualization of urban conglomeration. Her work contributes to theories of New Rurality that belies popular conceptualizations of an urbanizing world.
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Thursday 29th June, 2023