VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages
Abstract
Between Sites of Built Heritage studies how architectural representation might describe multiple overlapping geographies, typologies, and chronologies of built heritage. The paper, and its associated visual work, examine World Heritage sites in Canada and the United States. It explores the commons between sites of cultural heritage, and how that ground covers many parallel, conflicting, and converse stories. It is part of a larger, on-going research project entitled Cultural Alignments which aims to examine regional and global narratives as a commentary on present day heritage and their delineations. This paper follows a design agenda to thicken our collective history. How this work is deployed might best be described through an example. Two cultural sites in western Canada are the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump and Writing on Stone in Alberta. From these two places, the nearest adjacent site is the Rideau Canal in Ontario – a place of recent colonial history. As a result, this paper asks: how might we describe a place that situates 6000 years of indigenous evidence of occupation in relation to a site that is some 3100 kilometers away and barely 250 years old. How can these two sites possibly define the breath and richness of interwoven, overlapping, and messy culture? Can we simultaneously understand two such remarkably different places on their own terms? How might our vocation visualizing discrete sites that sit in such incredible isolation while ethically acknowledge the space in-between, that has no internationally awarded heritage value?
Johan is an Associate Professor at the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism, Carleton University. His focus is research creation methodologies intersecting art and architectural practices. His work has been extensively published and exhibited including the Magazin Gallery and Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam, Royal Academy Summer Show London, and the Venice Architecture Biennale. Johan is a registered architect in the UK. Prior to his appointment at Carleton University, he taught at De Montfort University and London Southbank University.